rdson. In these last
judgments, at least nine-tenths of the existing race of mankind agree
with him; though few people have the courage to express their agreement
in print. We may be thankful that Walpole is as incapable of boring as
of enduring bores. He is one of the few Englishmen who share the quality
sometimes ascribed to the French as a nation, and certainly enjoyed by
his teacher, Voltaire; namely, that though they may be frivolous,
blasphemous, indecent, and faulty in every other way, they can never
for a single moment be dull. His letters show that crisp, sparkling
quality of style which accompanies this power, and which is so
unattainable to most of his countrymen. The quality is less conspicuous
in the rest of his works, and the light verses and essays in which we
might expect him to succeed are disappointingly weak. Xoho's letter to
his countrymen is now as dull as the work of most imaginary travellers,
and the essays in 'The World' are remarkably inferior to the
'Spectator,' to say nothing of the 'Rambler.'[11] Yet Walpole's place in
literature is unmistakable, if of equivocal merit. Byron called him the
author of the last tragedy and the first romance in our language. The
tragedy, with Byron's leave, is revolting (perhaps the reason why Byron
admired it), and the romance passes the borders of the burlesque. And
yet the remark hits off a singular point in Walpole's history. A
thorough child of the eighteenth century, we might have expected him to
share Voltaire's indiscriminating contempt for the Middle Ages. One
would have supposed that in his lips, as in those of all his generation,
Gothic would have been synonymous with barbaric, and the admiration of
an ancient abbey as ridiculous as admiration of Dante. So far from
which, Walpole is almost the first modern Englishman who found out that
our old cathedrals were really beautiful. He discovered that a most
charming toy might be made of mediaevalism. Strawberry Hill, with all its
gimcracks, its pasteboard battlements, and stained-paper carvings, was
the lineal ancestor of the new law-courts. The restorers of churches,
the manufacturers of stained glass, the modern decorators and
architects of all vanities, the Ritualists and the High Church party,
should think of him with kindness. It cannot be said that they should
give him a place in their calendar, for he was not of the stuff of which
saints are made. It was a very thin veneering of mediaevalism which
cov