abolished evening
sittings on the ground that he was always drunk in the evening; and even
an archbishop--an Irish archbishop, it is true--whose jovial habits
broke down his constitution. Scratch those jovial toping aristocrats,
and you everywhere find the Squire Western. A man of squeamish tastes
and excessive sensibility jostled amongst that thick-skinned,
iron-nerved generation, was in a position with which anyone may
sympathise who knows the sufferings of a delicate lad at a public school
in the old (and not so very old) brutal days. The victim of that tyranny
slunk away from the rough horseplay of his companions to muse, like
Dobbin, over the 'Arabian Nights' in a corner, or find some amusement
which his tormentors held to be only fit for girls. So Horace Walpole
retired to Strawberry Hill and made toys of Gothic architecture, or
heraldry, or dilettante antiquarianism. The great discovery had not then
been made, we must remember, that excellence in field-sports deserved to
be placed on a level with the Christian virtues. The fine gentlemen of
the Chesterfield era speak of fox-hunting pretty much as we speak of
prize-fighting and bull-baiting. When all manly exercises had an
inseparable taint of coarseness, delicate people naturally mistook
effeminacy for refinement. When you can only join in male society on
pain of drinking yourself under the table, the safest plan is to retire
to tea-tables and small talk. For many years, Walpole's greatest
pleasure seems to have been drinking tea with Lady Suffolk, and
carefully piecing together bits of scandal about the Courts of the first
two Georges. He tells us, with all the triumph of a philosopher
describing a brilliant scientific induction, how he was sometimes able,
by adding his bits of gossip to hers, to unravel the secret of some
wretched intrigue which had puzzled two generations of quidnuncs. The
social triumphs on which he most piqued himself were of a congenial
order. He sits down to write elaborate letters to Sir Horace Mann, at
Florence, brimming over with irrepressible triumph when he has
persuaded some titled ladies to visit his pet toy, the printing-press,
at Strawberry Hill, and there, of course to their unspeakable surprise,
his printer draws off a copy of verses composed in their honour in the
most faded style of old-fashioned gallantry. He is intoxicated by his
appointment to act as poet-laureate on the occasion of a visit of the
Princess Amelia to Stowe. S