Walpole

“ There is nothing to charm in the outer aspect of the man; nor is there anything picturesque in the work which he set himself to do, or in the means by which he succeeded in doing it. But picturesque or no, the work of keeping England quiet, and of giving quiet to Europe, was in itself a noble one; and it is the temper with which he carried on this work, the sagacity with which he discerned the means by which alone it could be done, and the stubborn, indomitable will with which he faced every difficulty in the doing it, which gives Walpole his place among English statesmen. ”

“ Taking Walpole as the head, and nothing can be happier than his mixture of keen remark, intelligent knowledge of his time, high-bred ease of language, and exquisite point and polish of anecdote; his followers, even in these few volumes, show that there were many men, even in the midst of all the practical business and nervous agitation of public life, not unworthy of their master. We have no doubt that there have been hundreds of persons, and thousands of letters, which might equally contribute to this most interesting, and sometimes most brilliant, portion of our literature. ”

“ Walpole had now reached the summit of his ambition; and if he had only been just and liberal to his political associates, he might, perhaps, even in that faithless and intriguing age, have gone on to enjoy an undisputed supremacy. But his ambition was domineering and exclusive. He was jealous of every man in his own party, whose growing influence or force of character seemed likely to raise him above the station of a humble dependant. ”

“ Of an evening, in summer-time, trim Horace and portly Clive might be seen walking in the meadows together; or Walpole and a brilliant company, gossiping, laughing, flirting, philandering, might be noted on their way across the grass to Strawberry, after a gay time of it at "Little Strawberry Hill." Not always without mishap, as Walpole himself has recorded in his narrative of his perilous passing of the stile with Miss Rich; and not invariably in the very sunniest of humours, for Miss Pope had seen Horace "gloomy of temper and dryly sarcastic of speech." ”

“ Of crooked things made straight by Walpole, of heroic performance or intention, legislative or administrative, by Walpole, nobody ever heard; never of the least hand-breadth gained from the Night-realm in England, on Walpole's part: enough if he could manage to keep the Parish Constable walking, and himself float atop. Which task (though intrinsically zero for the Community, but all-important to the Walpole, of Constitutional Countries) is a task almost beyond the faculty of man, if the careless reader knew it! ”

“ Some of the speakers on Walpole's side—indeed, Walpole himself occasionally—strove to show their willingness to serve the prince by utterances which must have caused the prince to smile a grim, sardonic smile if he had any existing sense of humor. Please do not imagine—this was the line of observation—that we think one hundred thousand a year too much for his Royal Highness. Oh dear, no; nothing of the kind; we do not think it would be half enough if only the nation had the money to give away. ”

“ The resignation of Townsend enabled Walpole to take more part in foreign negotiations; and he exerted his talents, like Fleury in France, to preserve the peace of Europe. The peace policy of Walpole entitles him to the gratitude of his country. More than any other man of his age, he apprehended the true glory and interests of nations. Had Walpole paid as much attention to the intellectual improvement of his countrymen, as he did to the refinements of material life and to physical progress, he would have merited still higher praises. But he despised learning, and neglected literary men. ”

“ What say you? 'Tis Canon Keppel, brother to Lord Albemarle; and mark you, Kitty--the Honourable Mrs Keppel has the right to be presented where Miss Laura might knock at the door in vain! We come up in the world, child; but the Walpoles had always that secret.
'Twill set the other charming daughters dreaming of bride-cake. All the world talks of Maria, a shining beauty indeed. Horry Walpole is enchanted at Miss Laura's match--sure, an illegitimate Walpole, if niece to the Baron of Strawberry, is worth a dozen of your Cavendishes and Somersets! ”

“ Can’t you see that your confounded song is driving me mad?’
‘Faix, ye’re the first I ever see disliked music,’ muttered he, in a tone almost compassionate.
And now as Walpole raised the collar of his coat to defend his ears, and prepared, as well as he might, to resist the weather, he muttered, ‘And this is the beautiful land of scenery; and this the climate; and this the amusing and witty peasant we read of. ”

“ But, however ignorant Walpole might be of general history and of general literature, he was better acquainted than any man of his day with what it concerned him most to know, mankind, the English nation, the Court, the House of Commons, and the Treasury. Of foreign affairs he knew little; but his judgment was so good that his little knowledge went very far. He was an excellent parliamentary debater, an excellent parliamentary tactician, an excellent man of business. No man ever brought more industry or more method to the transacting of affairs. ”

“ But if his locks were not black, his heart was bold; and if his lip wanted mustaches, his mind wanted neither sagacity nor determination.
Walpole was born for a cynic philosopher. He treats men of all ranks with equal scorn. From Wilkes to George III., he brands them all. Ministers meet no mercy at his hands. ”

“ But the pages of Walpole give us the knowledge without the toil, and, instead of bending to the tillage, we pluck the fruit from the tree as we pass along. When he, too, is heavy, his failure arises simply from his attempting to assume the style of his contemporaries. ”

“ Walpole calls him 'one of those divine men who, like a chapel in a palace, remained unprofaned, while all the rest is tyranny, corruption, and folly.'
A huge stout figure rolls in now to join the toasters in Shire Lane. In the puffy, once handsome face, there are signs of age, for its owner is past sixty; yet he is dressed in superb fashion; and in an hour or so, when the bottle has been diligently circulated, his wit will be brighter and keener than that of any young man present. I do not say it will be repeatable, for the talker belongs to a past age, even coarser than that of the Kit-kat. ”

“ The inquiry into the administration of Walpole, the reform of the calendar, and the rebellion of 1745, are the most prominent subjects during these later years. The persistence, variety, and bitterness of the attacks on Walpole are something wonderful. There are diatribes in prose and in verse, in essays, in dialogues, in Parliamentary speeches, in letters to the editor — in every possible form of invective. He was the "grand corrupter," the "insolent tyrant," the "political pimp" of the age. ”

“ An able speaker, without being a great orator, a superb administrator, eager rather for power than for good, rating men low by instinct and corrupting them by intelligence, Walpole was not the man, either in type of mind or of temperament, to bring great questions to the foreground of debate. He was content to maintain his hold over the respect of the Crown, and to punish able rivals by exclusion from office. One by one, the younger men of talent, Carteret, Pulteney, Chesterfield, Pitt, were driven into hostility. ”

“ Walpole begins to take notes of his speeches; he is the coming man, and is at once secured for the faction of the Prince of Wales. Then Walpole falls. There is a great crash, and the spectators expect to see the world in ruins. But when the dust has cleared away it is seen that things are much as they were; Wilmington, scarcely visible, in Walpole's seat; Newcastle rooted in his own; Walpole, with Pulteney his protagonist, seated smug and dumb among the distant peers. There is no room for Pitt among our governors ”

“ These epistles the fair-haired, blue-eyed, sweet-voiced woman would bring weeping to Walpole, in search of the comfort which he graciously gave, by assuring her that now that she was growing old she must expect this sort of thing! A little later Walpole drove from here to Kensington, and stood beside the King at her deathbed; Caroline commending to Walpole’s protection her husband and his monarch! Here came Bolingbroke on his return from his exile in France, to dine at the invitation of his great rival, whom he hated and envied. ”

“ Walpole is against this project of Mr. Wood, and is an entire friend to Ireland, only by this one invincible argument; that he has the universal opinion of being a wise man, an able minister, and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the king his master: and that as his integrity is above all corruption, so is his fortune above all temptation. ”

“ In his foreign policy Walpole was influenced by similar principles. Though the Peace of Utrecht was a Tory peace, its maintenance, and that of the balance of power it had established, was his chief object. Anything was better than that England should be engaged in war. War at once opened the door for Jacobite hopes. War at once touched that material prosperity which was to be the surest claim of gratitude to the reigning house. Moreover, as a financier, Walpole hated war. It was in this capacity, if we set aside his general ability and skill in management, that Walpole was greatest. ”

“ Although, during his stay in Italy, Walpole had neglected to accumulate the store of erudition which his friend Gray had been so industriously hiving for home consumption, he can scarcely be said to have learned nothing, especially at an age when much is learned unconsciously. His epistolary style, which, with its peculiar graces and pseudo-graces, had been already formed before he left England, had now acquired a fresh vivacity from his increased familiarity with the French and Italian languages ”

“ That was Walpole's method; with this to aid his great natural faculty, long-headed, deep-bellied, suitable to the English Parliament and Nation, he went along with perfect success for ten or twenty years. And it might have been for longer,—had not the English Nation accidentally come to wish, that it should CEASE jumbling NO-whither; and try to jumble SOME-whither, at least for a little while, on important business that had risen for England in a certain quarter. Had it not been for Jenkins's Ear blazing out in the dark English brain, Walpole might have lasted still a long while. ”

“ Walpole enthusiastically describes it thus: 'It is a set of letters in verse, in all kind of verses, describing the life at Bath, and incidentally everything else; but so much wit, so much humour, fun, and poetry, so much originality, never met together before. Then the man has a better ear than Dryden or Handel. ”

“ It was entertaining, it was sublime, it was hyperbole, it was ridiculous, according as the profusion of ideas crowded from him. He embraced systems like a legislator, but was capable of none of the detail of a magistrate. Sir Robert Walpole was much the reverse: he knew mankind, not their writings; he consulted their interests, not their systems; he intended their happiness, not their grandeur. Whatever was beyond common sense, he disregarded. Lord Mansfield, without the elevation of Lord Granville, had great powers of eloquence. ”

“ Walpole, on account of those halfpence; I dare boldly affirm, it was entirely owing to Mr. Wood. Many persons of credit, come from England, have affirmed to me, and others, that they have seen letters under his hand, full of arrogance and insolence towards Ireland; and boasting of his favour with Mr. Walpole; which is highly probable: Because he reasonably thought it for his interest to spread such a report; and because it is the known talent of low and little spirits, to have a great man's name perpetually in their mouths. ”

“ His family had belonged to the landed gentry of England since the days of William the Conqueror, but they had never distinguished themselves in any way. Walpole was educated at Eton, where he had as his school-fellow his future rival, Bolingbroke, and thence proceeded to King’s College, Cambridge. On quitting the university he went back to Houghton with a view to becoming a country squire as his father was. The future statesman spent his days at cattle fairs and agricultural shows, with fox-hunting and hard drinking thrown in by way of recreation. ”

“ A more friendly critic only praises Walpole for his industry (Wyke in Ann. Monastici, iv. 315) . The bishop-elect at once proceeded to Gascony to present himself for approval by the king. He found Edward at Bonnegarde ‘in ingressu Aragoniæ,’ and obtained from him a cheerful consent to his election. On 25 Jan. 1289 Walpole was back in England, and on 1 Feb. visited Archbishop Peckham at South Malling, where his temporalities were restored and arrangements made for his consecration. ”

“ All Walpole’s printed books and manuscripts were left to Robert Berry (d. 19th of May 1817) and his two daughters, Mary (1763–1852) and Agnes (1764–1852) , and Mary Berry edited the five volumes of Walpole’s works which were published in 1798. Their friendship had been very dear to the declining days of Walpole, who, it has even been said, wished to marry Mary Berry, By his will each of the ladies obtained a pecuniary legacy of £4000, and for their lives the house and garden, formerly the abode of his friend Kitty Clive, which adjoined Strawberry Hill. ”