the same time we may remark
in passing that his opinions and prejudices were not so invincible as to
blind him to real genius and eminent public services; and the admirers
of Lord Chatham may fairly draw an argument in favour of his policy from
Walpole's admission of its value in raising the spirit of the people; an
admission which, it may be supposed, it must have gone against his grain
to make in favour of a follower of Pulteney.

But from his letters on other topics, on literature and art, no such
deduction has to be made. His judgement was generally sound and
discriminating. He could appreciate the vast learning and stately
grandiloquence of Gibbon, and the widely different style of Robertson.
Nor is it greatly to his discredit that his disgust at what he considers
Hume's needless parade of scepticism and infidelity, which did honour
to his heart, blinded him in a great degree to the historian's
unsurpassed acuteness and insight, and (to borrow the eulogy of Gibbon)
"the careless inimitable felicities" of his narrative. He was among the
first to recognize the peculiar genius of Crabbe, and to detect the
impostures of Macpherson and Chatterton, while doing full justice to
"the astonishing prematurity" of the latter's genius. And in matters of
art, so independent as well as correct was his taste, that he not only,
in one instance, ventured to differ from Reynolds, but also proved to be
right in his opinion that a work extolled by Sir Joshua, was but a copy,
and a poor one.

On his qualifications to be a painter of the way of life, habits, and
manners (_quorum pars magna fuit_) of the higher classes in his day, it
would be superfluous to dwell. Scott, who was by no means a warm admirer
of his character, does not hesitate to pronounce him "certainly the best
letter-writer in the English language;" and the great poet who, next to
Scott, holds the highest place in the literary history of the last two
centuries, adds his testimony not only to the excellence of his letters,
but also to his general ability as that of a high order. "It is the
fashion to underrate Horace Walpole, firstly, because he was a nobleman,
and, secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the
composition of his incomparable letters and of 'The Castle of Otranto,'
he is the 'Ultimus Romanorum,' the author of 'The Mysterious Mother,' a
tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love-play. He is the
father of the first romance, and t