can easily see who was the Man of the pair. When we
return to Walpole, the case is different. Horace never posed at all;
he was a natural gentleman, and anything like want of simplicity was
odious to him. The age lives in his charming letters; after going
through them we feel as though we had been on familiar terms with that
wicked, corrupt, outwardly delightful society that gambled and drank,
and scandalised the grave spirits of the nation, in the days when
George III. was young. Horace Walpole was the letter-writer of
letter-writers; his gossip carries the impress of truth with it; and,
though he had no style, no brilliancy, no very superior ability, yet,
by using his faculties in a natural way, he was able to supply
material for two of the finest literary fragments of modern times. I
take it that the most stirring and profoundly wise piece of modern
history is Carlyle's brief account of William Pitt, given in the "Life
of Frederick the Great." Once we have read it we feel as though the
great commoner had stood before us for a while under a searching
light; his figure is imprinted on the very nerves, and no man who has
read carefully can ever shake off an impression that seems burnt into
the fibre of the mind. This superlatively fine historic portrait was
painted by Carlyle solely from Walpole's material--for we cannot
reckon chance newspaper scraps as counting for much--and thus the
gossip of Strawberry Hill conferred immortality on himself and on our
own Titanic statesman. But Walpole's influence did not end there.
Whoever wants to read a very good and charming work should not miss
seeing Sir George Trevelyan's "Life of Charles James Fox." To praise
this book is almost an impertinence. I content myself with saying that
those who once taste its fascination go back to it again and again,
and usually end by placing it with the books that are "the bosom
friends" of men. Now the grim Scotchman lit up Horace's letters with
the lurid furnace-glow of his genius; Sir George held the serene lamp
of the scholar above the same letters, and lo, we have two pieces that
can only die when the language dies! What a feat for a mere
letter-writer to achieve! Let ambitious correspondents take example by
Horace Walpole, and learn that simplicity is the first, best--nay, the
only--object to be aimed at by the letter-writer.

We have forgotten the easy style of Walpole; we do not any longer care
much for Johnson, though his letters are in