, for a wedding as a funeral, becomes
immeasurably tedious. Against this tragi-comic background are relieved
two characteristic figures. The 'butcher' Duke of Cumberland, the hero
of Culloden, stands with the obstinate courage of his race gazing into
the vault where his father is being buried, and into which he is soon to
descend. His face is distorted by a recent stroke of paralysis, and he
is forced to stand for two hours on a bad leg. To him enters the
burlesque Duke of Newcastle, who begins by bursting into tears and
throwing himself back in a stall whilst the Archbishop 'hovers over him
with a smelling-bottle.' Then curiosity overcomes him, and he runs about
the chapel with a spyglass in one hand to peer into the faces of the
company, and mopping his eyes with the other. 'Then returned the fear of
catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat,
felt himself weighed down, and turning round found it was the Duke of
Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble.'
What a perch to select! Imagine the contrast of the two men, and
remember that the Duke of Newcastle was for an unprecedented time the
great dispenser of patronage, and so far the most important personage in
the government. Walpole had reason for some of his sneers.

The literary power implied in these brilliant sketches is remarkable,
and even if Walpole's style is more Gallicised than is evident to me, it
must be confessed that with a few French idioms he has caught something
of that unrivalled dexterity and neatness of touch in which the French
are our undisputed masters. His literary character is of course marked
by an affectation analogous to that which debases his politics. Walpole
was always declaring with doubtful sincerity--(that is one of the
matters in which a man is scarcely bound to be quite sincere)--that he
has no ambition for literary fame, and that he utterly repudiates the
title of 'learned gentleman.' There is too much truth in his disavowals
to allow us to write them down as mere mock-modesty; but doubtless his
principal motive was a dislike to entering the arena of open criticism.
He has much of the feeling which drove Pope into paroxysms of unworthy
fury on every mention of Grub Street. The anxiety of men in that day to
disavow the character of professional authors must be taken with the
fact that professional authors were then an unscrupulous, scurrilous,
and venal race. Walpole feared collision