iew of the grand problem, which still puzzles some
historians, as to the genuineness of Chatham's gout. He smiles
complacently when the great actor forgets that his right arm ought to be
lying helpless in a sling and flourishes it with his accustomed vigour.
But Walpole, in spite of his sneers and sarcasms, can recognise the
genuine power of the man. He is the describer of the striking scene
which occurred when the House of Commons was giggling over some
delicious story of bribery and corruption--the House of Commons was
frivolous in those benighted days; he tells how Pitt suddenly stalked
down from the gallery and administered his thundering reproof; how
Murray, then Attorney-General, 'crouched, silent and terrified,' and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer faltered out an humble apology for the
unseemly levity. It is Walpole who best describes the great debate when
Pitt, 'haughty, defiant, conscious of injury and supreme abilities,'
burst out in that tremendous speech--tremendous if we may believe the
contemporary reports, of which the only tolerably preserved fragment is
the celebrated metaphor about the confluence of the Rhone and the
Saone. Alas! Chatham's eloquence has all gone to rags and tatters;
though, to say the truth, it has only gone the way of nine-tenths of our
contemporary eloquence. We have, indeed, what are called accurate
reports of spoken pamphlets, dried specimens of rhetoric from which the
life has departed as completely as it is strained out of the specimens
in a botanical collection. If there is no Walpole amongst us, we shall
know what our greatest living orator has said; but how he said it, and
how it moved his audience, will be as obscure as if the reporters'
gallery were still unknown. Walpole--when he was not affecting
philosophy, or smarting from the failure of an intrigue, or worried by
the gout, or disappointed of a bargain at a sale--could throw electric
flashes of light on the figure he describes which reveal the true man.
He errs from petulancy, but not from stupidity. He can appreciate great
qualities by fits, though he cannot be steadily loyal to their
possessor. And if he wrote down most of our rulers as knaves and fools,
we have only to lower those epithets to selfish and blundering, to get a
very fair estimate of their characters. To the picturesque historian his
services are invaluable; though no single statement can be accepted
without careful correction.

Walpole's social, as disti