STRAWBERRY HILL. BY LADY MORGAN.

"Some cry up Gunnersbury,

For Sion some declare,

And some say that with Chiswick House

No villa can compare ;

But ask the beaux of Middlesex,

Who know the country well,

If Strawberry Hill-if Strawberry Hill

Don't bear away the bell."

Earl of Bath's ballad on Strawberry Hill.

LORD BYRON has somewhere observed, that it has long been the fashion for the canaille of literary criticism, to vituperate Horace Walpole, "because he was a gentleman." An unfounded observation, which the "Edinburgh Review" has successfully refuted, and refuted upon the testimony of a deeper experience, and more intimate knowledge of the science of literary economy (if the phrase may be allowed), than could have been attained by one, whose high rank, and high genius, alike placed him far beyond the dabblings of literary intrigue, or the possibility of intellectual subserviency.

If ministers of state best know every man's price in the political market, if they are best acquainted with the inherent littleness of that "poor human nature," to the corruptibility of which they have the means of applying such powerful stimulants, such resistless temptations, -the editors of an influential party and periodical work best know of what stuff those "Swiss of the press" are made, who deal out opinion according "to the measure that is measured unto them" by their taskers, -of what mixed metal the current coin of literary criticism is composed, which ductile, though base, takes the mark of any dye impressed on it by the master-worker of the mint. The Edinburgh Reviewers, therefore, told Lord Byron, and told him truly, that, as a body, the periodical critics of the day bore no malice against Lord Orford, because he was "a gentleman," and that, far from rank being injurious to literary fame, even he Lord Byron, the star of the ascendant, stood indebted for the lenity, with which the author of "Don Juan" was treated by the most orthodox reviewers in England, at least as much to the elevation of his rank, as to the loftiness of his genius-to his " gentle blood," as to his splendid talents. The fact is, that

"If a saint in crape be twice a saint in lawn,"

an author in a coronet has twice the chance of obtaining a favourable judgment, that can be expected by mere plebeian talent, which has only its original merits to plead for those "sins" which all literary "flesh is heir to."

With what indulgence has not the accomplished, but titled Author of "Matilda" been treated by the reviewing hierarchy of the day, even in spite of the little faux-pus which forms the ground-work of his catastrophe, in spite of the vertu de moins of his bon-ton heroine-in spite of a moral produced by a cold in the head (when a more legitimate source of poetical justice was at hand, in the fate and story of many fair contemporary delaissées in real life and living frailty)-nay, in spite even of his whiggism, his liberalism, and his anti-Austrianism; and when re

buked, how gently and with what a patte de velours has this lordly author been treated by the great conservators of public and literary morals. What honours indeed have not been done to the light and pleasant pages of one, who has so agreeably added to the daily increasing list of noble authors, and who is certainly something more than "a wit among lords, and a lord among wits." But who among the literary toparchs, who are so ready to bring mediocrity into fashion, and to patronize the usurpations, that can never interfere with their own acknowledged supremacy-who among the great fame-bestowing reviewers, that "give and take away" the bubble reputation, or try to do it, have turned out the author of " Crohoore of the Bill Hook," and "John Doe," for public admiration? And yet in these two great pictures of an unopened vein of national manners, there is as bold etching, and as fine masses of chiaro oscuro, as were ever produced even by the exquisite burin of the Scottish Rembrandt. It was not then the gentility of Horace Walpole, that stood in the way of his preferment in Reviews, and his popularity with the members of literary coteries. Yet that he has been borne down on, from his own to the present time both by the corporate bodies, and by the honorary members of criticism, is quite true. His claims to genius denied, his pretensions to taste ridiculed, his style termed "slip-slop," his historic doubts doubted, and his villa at Strawberry, which he himself has named "a paper fabric to hold an assemblage of curious trifles," selected as a damning proof against his antiquarianisın, by the learned young gentlemen of the "old lady's logic"+-(the learning which draws fools from their obscurity) who have always affected to consider it as a "Gothic Vatican of Greece and Rome," and a standing monument of his ignorance of all true virtù. And yet Horace Walpole has established his claims to genius by its own highest prerogative-original invention! His "Castle of Otranto" is the first of its genus, and has consecrated him the founder of that delightful school of literary fiction, of which Radcliffe, Scott, and a host of far inferior spirits, are but the disciples; || while

Every possible encouragement should be held out to the rising aristocracy, to pursue other roads to distinction than those acquired by coronets and quarterings. Upon such heaven-born distinctions, the world is now somewhat désabusé! thanks to the Monsieur Tonsons of the French revolution, and to the Jesuitism and toujours en arriere vocation of the premier sang Chrêtien de l'Europe. The bel air pages of "Matilda" and "Granby," light as they are, are real benefactions, after the eternal imitations of the Scotch novels.

f Archaeology, so called playfully by H. W.

"It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance (says its author), the ancient and the modern. In the former, all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be (and sometimes has been) copied with success. Invention has not been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life. But if in the latter species nature has cramped imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally excluded from old romances. The actions, sentiments, conversations, of the heroes and heroines of ancient days, were as unnatural as the machines employed to put them in motion."-Preface to the second edition of Otranto.

The first imitation of Otranto was "The Old English Baron," of which Walpole gives the following notice. "I have seen, too, the criticism you mention on The Castle of Otranto,' in the preface to The Old English Baron.' It is not at all oblique, but, though mixed with high compliments, directly attacks the visionary

his "Correspondence" has supplied to British literature that elegant branch of familiar composition, so long a desideratum. The letters of Horace Walpole have almost the merit of original inventions, compared with all the printed collections which preceded his own, (with the sole exception of those of his contemporary, Lady Mary Wortley Montague.) The letters of Howell (deemed models in their time) had long been condemned by the standard simplicity of modern taste, which loves epigrams, and hates essays; and had already taken their places on the dusty shelves

"Of all those books that ne'er are read."

The quaint and peremptory style of Swift's never very familiar epistles (his Journal to Stella excepted), though certainly a pure and sterling specimen of the English language of the Augustan day, wanted that laissez-aller charm, which is the perfection of letter-writing; and Pope's Voiture-like and spirituels epistles, have all the air of being got up for print, and were evidently as much intended for the public and his publisher, as for his mistress or his friend. Even Addison's " Letters," (to whose style and "study" we are ordered by the once colossal dictator of literature-ponderous but not powerful--already a Hercules without his club, to "give up our days and nights," a false and despotic counsel! as if every age has not necessarily its own style, dependent upon the progress of society and developement of human intellect and science)-even Addison's "Letters," cold, formal, and studied, are as devoid of originality as the travels, of which they are supposed to be a journal; while Richardson's epistles to his literary

part, which, says the author or authoress, makes one laugh. I do assure you, I have not had the smallest inclination to return that attack. It would even be ungrateful, for the work is a professed imitation of mine, only stripped of the marvellous-and so entirely stripped, except in one awkward attempt at a ghost or two, that it is the most insipid dull nothing you ever saw. It certainly does not make one laugh; for what makes one doze, seldom makes one merry."-Correspondence of Horace Walpole.

* Lady M. W. Montague's letters, judged by the conventional standard of modern refinement, must be deemed occasionally vulgar, coarse, and indelicate; but they are clever, spirited, and easy, and invaluable for the traits of manners they have preserved of her own times. Her anecdotes of her friends Moll Skerrett, Peg Pelham, Biddy Noel, and the pretty fellows,-her lady-like remedy against spleen, galloping all day, and Champaigne at night,-are exquisite. Her account also of the state of morals in those good old times is worth quoting:-"When honour, virtue, and reputation, are laid aside like crumpled ribbons, the forlorn state of matrimony is as much ridiculed by young ladies as by young fellows."-See her Letters, Vol. I.

It is worth adding, that Lady Mary was so sensible of the superiority of her own letters over those of her contemporaries, that she makes the following prophecy of their future success :-"The last pleasant work that fell in my way was Madame de Sevigné's Letters: very pretty they are; but I assure you without the least vanity, that mine will be full as interesting in forty years."

+ See Pope's love-letter to Lady M. W. Montague, in which he talks of " Momus his project," and gets in, neck and shoulders, Herod and Herodias, Jupiter, and Curtius, to show off his power of "wit and raillery," and prove the strength of his passion by the force of his learning. "Before Addison and Swift," says Walpole, style was scarce aimed at even by our best authors."

"Mr. Addison travelled through the poets, and not through Italy; for all his ideas are borrowed from descriptions, and not from the reality.”—Correspondence of Horace Walpole.

ladies are tiresome as the homilies of his own 66 good Mrs. Norton." Gay (and perhaps Arbuthnot sometimes) has alone given to his letters the charm of that exquisite simplicity, which was the characteristic feature of the talent of the English La Fontaine ; and Sterne, whose letters, though witty and agreeable, are affected, came rather too late to be offered as an exception to the studied and pedantic style, which left England without a good letter-writer, while France justly boasted so many.

Good letter-writing is but good conversation carried on by the pen, a familiar talking upon paper, the intimate chit-chat of the fire-side on its travels by post, not invented solely for some "wretch's aid,” but resorted to by the fond and the feeling to cheat absence of its pang; or by the intellectual, and the social," for the better carrying on" of that intercourse of mind and imagination, without which life is a blank; or by the gay, and the gossiping, for the circulation of those petty interests and every-day incidents and events, which, if important to none, are resources to all, which prevent time from stagnating, and which originate ideas, the lightness of which gives temporary relief from the great penalties of existence, deep thinking and deep feeling. The best letter, therefore, is that which makes the least demand upon the mind, and the most upon the fancy and the heart. He who writes to be studied, rarely writes to be read; he who writes to be admired, rarely writes to please. Ye Sevignés, and ye Ninons, to whom l'esprit Rambouillet was a source of perpetual ridicule, I invoke the careless spirit that pervades your delightful letters to attest the truth of the observation, and to bear witness in favour of the only letter-writer in the English language, who resembles or who rivals you! The letters of Horace Walpole were written evidently à trait de plume,† carelessly and playfully, and yet, like those of the goddess of his idolatry, they are eminently propres à faire connaitre les mœurs, le ton, l'esprit, les usages de son tems;" indeed he himself confesses, in one of his sketching details of the day, thrown off at a heat for the amusement of George Montague, and of his hero Harry Conway, (whose character and adventures, by the by, give a sort of epic interest to his correspondence) that he was "collecting the follies of the age for the benefit of posterity." He was in fact, and often unconsciously, the Dangeau of his times and class; and in the course of his agreeable and epistolary gossiping, "enshrined in amber" the ephemeral "flies" of fashion, the autocrats of high society, who, insignificant in themselves, illustrate by their reigning manners and vices the history of the age in which they flourish, as "Kitcats" and "schemers," the despots of Cornelis or Almack's. He has also

66

I allude here to Ninon's genuine letters, many of which are to be found scattered through the works of St. Evremond, and her supposed letters, addressed to the Marquis de Sevigné. "Les vraies lettres de Ninon," says a modern French critic, "étoient moins recherchées et plus delicates, quoique le tour en soit singulier et qu'elles soient remplies de morale et brillantes d'esprit."

He says of his own letters :-"I write more trifling letters than any man living; am ashamed of them; and yet they are expected of me."

For the schemers see Lady M. W. Montague's letters. The following passage from one of Walpole's letters contains a curious prediction of the future supremacy of Almack's :-" Mrs. Cornelis, apprehending the future assembly at Almack's, has enlarged her vast room, and hung it with blue satin, and another with yellow

left some characters of men, whose names belong to history, finer and truer than history herself could delineate. The true secret of Horace Walpole's unpopularity with a large class of professional and amateur literati, who deny his claims to that reputation which genius alone can give, is the unmitigated war, the guerre à la mort, which he waged, almost from the go-cart to the tomb, against all pretension, and against all unfounded and self-sufficient claims to distinction. He not only attacked those influential bodies corporate, who have obtained authority over public opinion, merely by assuming it, but with daring scepticism, and moral courage, he attacked the false gods of the popular worship of his day, set up by bad taste, or imposed on credulity by audacious talent. He attacked the cant of Warburton, and the affectation of Rousseau. He attacked the buckram heroes and heroines of Richardson, when it was "religion to adore them,"§ and declared Sir Charles a bore, and Clarissa a quiz! He attacked the authenticity of Ossian, when it was deemed heresy to doubt it. He attacked the most imposing historical fallacies, which ages had consecrated through party prejudice down to the present times. He attacked scientific pedantry in the "old lady's logic," and detected literary imposition in the person of Chatterton. He attacked those solemn and sentimental vices of high society, which were then beginning to make their way to England, from the voluptuous bowers of the Medici, to the sober mansions of the stern and rigid English gentry: || and lastly and worst, the head and front of his offence, he attacked that loyalty which he himself terms "the loyalty to Kings in possession," he attacked its alma mater, Oxford, as a "nursery of bigotry and nonsense," and made war upon Toryism in its strongest hold-divine-righted prerogative, and royal in

satin; but Almack's room, which is to be ninety feet long, proposes to swallow up both hers as easily as Moses's rod gobbled down those of the magicians."

See his admirable sketches of those "rags of a dishclout ministry," which he bas scattered through his letters; particularly the Duke of Newcastle. See also his letters to, and various anecdotes of Lord Chatham.

"For my writings, they do not depend on venal authors, but on their own merits or demerits. It is from men of sense they must expect their sentence, not from boobies and hireling authors, whom I have always shunned, with the whole fry of minor wits, critics, and monthly censors."-H. Walpole's Correspondence. "The turn-coat, hypocrite, infidel, Bishop Warburton.”—Ibid.

"There are two more volumes come out of Sir Charles Grandison. I shall detain them till the last is published, and not think I postpone much of your pleasure. For my part, I stopped at the fourth: I was so tired of sets of people getting together and saying, Pray, Miss, with whom are you in love?' and of mighty good young men, who convert your Mr. M.'s in the twinkling of a sermon."-Correspondence of H. Walpole.

"On Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor. Those learned luminaries the Ladies Pomfret and W- are to be joined by the Lady Mary Wortley Montague. You have not been witness to the rhapsody of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones debate incessantly, and consequently cannot figure what must be the issue of this triple alliance: we have some idea of it. Only figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, history, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and metaphysics, all except the second understood by halves, by quarters, or not at all. You shall have the journals of this notable academy."-Correspondence of H. Walpole.

"I was diverted with two relics of St. Charles the martyr, one the pearl you see in his pictures, taken out of his ear after his foolish head was off; the other, the cup out of which he took his last sacrament. They should be given to that nursery of nonsense and bigotry, Oxford."— Ibid.