of his temper, became the primum mobile of all his misanthropical feelings, and led him especially to calumniate by every indirect means, under every false pretence, but with inveterate and indefatigable malignity, everybody whom he knew or fancied to have interfered with his incessant endeavours to place his income on a more permanent footing. This was clearly the first and chief motive of both sets of Memoirs; and we have little doubt that if the whole truth could be discovered, we should find that all his animosities were, in some way or other, connected with this great pecuniary stake, or perhaps now and then with some collateral interests of the same kind. Nothing but some such all-pervading infatuation could have blinded the keen sight and blunted the nice taste of such a man to the mass of inconsistency, contradiction, and, in fact, nonsense which his Memoirs present, and which on any other hypothesis must we suppose appear to every observant reader, as it does to us, quite inexplicable; but we may say as Pope did of another noble and eccentric wit-the Duke of Wharton

"This clue, once found, unravels all the rest;

The prospect clears, and Walpole stands confest.'

If it be said that his animosity against the public men of his long day is too universal to be attributed to a single motive, it may be answered that in the corrupt and factious times of which he wrote there were so many changes of administration that—following up, as we shall see he did, on every change, this the first and most important object of his whole life-there was perhaps no minister or ministry from whom he did not receive the affront of a refusal. How many attempts of this sort he may have made we know not-certainly not less than half a dozen; but it is by mere accident that we have been able to trace so many. Such intrigues, especially when they fail, and still more when the offended postulant takes refuge in patriotism, are generally carefully concealed by both parties-by the jobber for his own sake by the Minister from motives of personal honour, official duty, or political expediency. Old Sir Robert Walpole is said, we think by Horace himself, to have declared that no one but a minister could fully know the turpitude of the human heart; and accordingly, except in a few rare cases of persons blinded by personal vanity or resentment, we have had scanty revelations of this sort-and we should never have known anything of the secret motives of Walpole's malignity but for that apology for his conduct which, with entirely other objects and a very different aim, he drew up in 1782, and which Mr. Berry, not, we are satisfied, seeing their real meaning or full extent, had the indiscretion

for

for historical truth a fortunate indiscretion-to publish in the great quarto edition of Walpole's works, and which somebody had, as we have said, the still greater blindness of republishing, the other day, as if, instead of being the pièce de conviction, it had been an honourable excuse. In that paper we found the account of his strange manoeuvres with Mr. Pelham, and were thence led to the details of his enormous sinecure income, and the influence which his expectations and his disappointments with respect to them had on his conduct and on his writings. In the Memoirs now before us this influence appears in additional and growing force, and indeed so mingles itself with every page that not only are we bound for the sake of historical truth to expose it, but we really do not think we could give a better general idea of the work than by following this clue. But in order to present a full view of the case, we must mention (very shortly) his first attempts with Mr. Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle, which were more fully detailed in our article on the first Memoirs.

In 1751, at the outset of Horace Walpole's political life, his first thought was to procure the addition of his own life to that of his brother in the Customs' place; and he reckoned confidently on the Pelhams-old friends of his father who were then in power, and of whom he himself was a zealous supporter-to make this change. The ministers, though willing to oblige him, were either reluctant or afraid to grant an additional life in so great a place; but they offered to substitute Horace for Edward, if the latter would consent. This Horace protests he most indignantly rejected; and it may be true, for he knew very well that Edward was not of a disposition to sacrifice gratuitously his present third of the place and the whole reversion.

Immediately on the failure of this negotiation, Horace, who had been up to that moment the obsequious servant of the Pelham Ministry, turned short round-and commenced those false and scandalous Memoirs of the last ten years of George II.-in which, while not merely concealing, but directly disclaiming, any personal motive, and assuming

he libels, with the most inveterate rancour, everybody whom we know, and many others whom we believe, to have had a share in his disappointment.

On Mr. Pelham's death the Duke of Newcastle became Minister, and we find that in 1755 there was some kind of negotiation through Mr. Fox for obtaining from the Duke a grant of the Customs' place for H. Walpole's life: that too failed-rejected, says Walpole, because he would accept no favour from that

Duke,'

Duke,'-which is certainly untrue; for we find that when Newcastle, after a short interregnum, again returned to the Treasury in 1758, Walpole made two attempts, both very corrupt, to sell this place to the Duke or his nominee.* This also fails; and yet Walpole has the may we not say--effrontery to declare in his first Memoirs that the Duke of Newcastle never gave him the most distant cause for dissatisfaction' (ii. 335).

Here open the new Memoirs, of which, as we have said, the most remarkable characteristics will be best developed by endeavouring to explain Walpole's statement of the motives of other men by what we know or have good reason to suspect of his own.

The most prominent feature that strikes us at the outset, and all through the work, is the large and very unfavourable share of Walpole's notice engrossed by Lord Bute. From the first pages of the first volume, to the very closing lines of the last, Lord Bute is the object of the most indefatigable malevolence. Everybody is ill-treated; most others, however, are dealt with as their names happen to occur in the course of the narrative; but Lord Bute, under the invidious title of The Favourite,' and with all the odious imputations and insinuations attached to that name, is introduced on every occasion-those even in which he could by no possibility have had any concern-and with, in a majority of instances, the most flagrant falsehood. Our readers will remember that we expected something of this kind, but our worst expectations are exceeded. In our review of the last collection of the Letters to Mann, we extracted two passages from Walpole's autobiographical Notes,' one dated 18th August, 1766, stating that he then began the Memoirs of the Reign of George III.,' which, we added, were about to be published; the second, we said, looked trivial, but might turn out to be important,' viz. :—

1761-16th July, wrote the "Garland," a poem on the King, and sent it to Lady Bute, but not in my own hand, nor with my name; nor did ever own it.'-Letters to Mann, vol. iv. p. 349.

and then we went on to say,

'We know nothing of this piece, and should be glad if it were recovered. If, as may be presumed, it was a panegyric, it would afford a curious contrast with Walpole's subsequent rancour against George III. and Lord Bute. We really have a curiosity to compare the Memoirs of George III. in 1766 [of which we then knew no more than the name] with the "Garland" of 1761.'-- Quart. Rev., vol. lxxiv. p.

415.

We have not been yet able to discover the ، Garland : '-being, as Walpole tells us, anonymous, the copy sent to Lady Bute was probably lost or destroyed with the mass of fulsome trash with

* See Walpole's Works, vol. ii. p. 366; and Quarterly Review, vol. xxvii. p. 199.

which no doubt flatterers of less note, but not meaner or greedier than Walpole, overwhelmed the Favourite.' But as Walpole took the trouble of recording the composition, we dare say he also took care to preserve the original, which is probably amongst his papers. Walpole, it will be observed, states that he had sent it anonymously, meaning to imply that his flattery, since it was anonymous, must have been disinterested—a gross non sequitur— for the temporary veil might be lifted whenever any merit was to be claimed. It was probably, like all Walpole's rhymes, so bad as to be wholly disregarded, and was therefore never owned;' if it should be brought to light, we have little doubt that it will corroborate all our suspicions.

But we have evidence enough of Walpole's time-serving duplicity, without the actual verses. They were written, the 'Notes' say, on the 16th July, 1761. On the 8th July the King declared in Council his intention to marry; it is clear then that the Garland' transmitted to Lady Bute was a congratulatory poem on the intended marriage, written, we see, with all a courtier's haste, and with, we dare say, all a courtier's adulation. But in the Memoirs we find under the same date a sneering and sarcastic account of the intended marriage, in which it is represented as the device of a 'junto'-the Princess Dowager and Lord Bute-to perpetuate their power over the King;-and this 'junto,' being alarmed at some symptoms of the King's aversion to the match thus forced upon him, employ a tool to watch and interrupt His Majesty's conversations; and who do our readers think this tool was? No other than Lady Bute-Lady Bute, the very person whom Walpole had chosen as the most decorous and acceptable channel of his poetical congratulations on an auspicious union which he so soon after describes as the dark intrigue of an unprincipled junto. If a junto' be unprincipled, what shall we say of him who applauds its intrigues? If a Favourite' be so odious, what shall we say of one who descends to court him by such skulking flattery as we have seen; and, still more monstrous, boasts not only of his general high-mindedness towards all ministers, but that he had never bowed to the plenitude of Lord Bute's power?' (Mem. ii. 5.) It is true; he had not bowed-he had crawled.

At length, however, we arrive at the explanation of all this virulent animosity. We know from Walpole himself (Works, vol. ii. p. 376), that very soon after the King's accession he attempted some cajoleries of his Majesty and Lord Bute on their love and patronage of the arts, and their countenance of genius;' while in the Memoirs, under the same date, he sneers at the would-be Augustus,' who stupidly falls asleep over the objects of

art put before him by an ignorant, tasteless, and illiterate Mæcenas' (vol. i. p. 18).

Let us now look for some explanation of this duplicity-this fulsome flattery exchanged for virulent abuse. Having no information but the scanty traces which Walpole inadvertently supplies, we cannot say whether, on Lord Bute's accession as First Lord of the Treasury, Walpole made any overtures to him to obtain an arrangement of his offices; but we do know that Walpole again addressed an adulatory letter to Lord Bute on his Majesty's and his Lordship's patronage of the arts, quite inconsistent with the contemporaneous tone of the Memoirs (Works, ii. 378); and we find soon after a short dry note (which seems to imply a previous correspondence on the subject), requesting Lord Bute to order the payment of his office bills, which had been, it seems, for some months delayed. We shall see hereafter that Walpole attributed this delay to Fox's enmity. It is, however, clear from the style of his note, that there was a coolness with Lord Bute also on this point; but be that as it may-Lord Bute, just before he resigned the Treasury, committed an offence which Walpole never forgot nor forgave.

The place in the Custom-house held by my brother [Sir Edward], but the far greater share of which had been bequeathed to me by my father for my brother's life, was also granted in reversion to Jenkinson.* I was, I confess, much provoked at this grant, and took occasion of fomenting the ill-humour against the Favourite, who thus excluded me from the possibility of obtaining the continuance of that place to myself in case of my brother's death.'-Mem. i. 265.

He then affects to care little about it, and repeats a story, the falsehood of which he elsewhere reveals, of his having twice refused it; and then adds that he was on terms of 'great civility' with Lord Bute, and that his resentment towards him 'kept no deep root.' Alas! we have evidence that it rankled through the whole of Walpole's long life. He proceeds :

And I can with the utmost truth say that as I afterwards, though never connected with him, was on many occasions friendly to that great Favourite, so no word in these Memoirs to his prejudice has been dictated by a vindictive spirit.'-ib. 266.

And then, to show the absence of all vindictive spirit, he proceeds in the very same page to expatiate on the infinite ill he had occasioned to his country;' the meanness of his ability, and the poorness of his spirit, which place him below resentment;' and concludes with saying that this pusillanimous Favourite purchased' a scandalous peace. (1b. 267.) Is this not insanity? Could

*Private Secretary to Lord Bute.-Walpole.

any