he is solemnly conducted to a temple of the
Muses and Apollo, and there finds one of his admirable effusions,--

T'other day with a beautiful frown on her brow,
To the rest of the gods said the Venus of Stowe:

and so on. 'She was really in Elysium,' he declares, and visited the
arch erected in her honour three or four times a day.

It is not wonderful, we must confess, that burly ministers and jovial
squires laughed horse-laughs at this mincing dandy, and tried in their
clumsy fashion to avenge themselves for the sarcasms which, as they
instinctively felt, lay hid beneath this mask of affectation. The enmity
between the lapdog and the mastiff is an old story. Nor, as we must
confess again, were these tastes redeemed by very amiable qualities
beneath the smooth external surface. There was plenty of feminine spite
as well as feminine delicacy. To the marked fear of ridicule natural to
a sensitive man Walpole joined a very happy knack of quarrelling. He
could protrude a feline set of claws from his velvet glove. He was a
touchy companion and an intolerable superior. He set out by quarrelling
with Gray, who, as it seems, could not stand his dandified airs of
social impertinence, though it must be added in fairness that the bond
which unites fellow travellers is, perhaps, the most trying known to
humanity. He quarrelled with Mason after twelve years of intimate
correspondence; he quarrelled with Montagu after a friendship of some
forty years; he always thought that his dependants, such as Bentley,
were angels for six months, and made their lives a burden to them
afterwards; he had a long and complex series of quarrels with all his
near relations. Sir Horace Mann escaped any quarrel during forty-five
years of correspondence; but Sir Horace never left Florence and Walpole
never reached it. Conway alone remained intimate and immaculate to the
end, though there is a bitter remark or two in the Memoirs against the
perfect Conway. With ladies, indeed, Walpole succeeded better; and
perhaps we may accept, with due allowance for the artist's point of
view, his own portrait of himself. He pronounces himself to be a
'boundless friend, a bitter but placable enemy.' Making the necessary
corrections, we should translate this into 'a bitter enemy, a warm but
irritable friend.' Tread on his toes, and he would let you feel his
claws, though you were his oldest friend; but so long as you avoided his
numerous tender points, he showe