things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are
very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the
asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and
pummelling King Amulius's herdsmen.[1]

[1: Life by Warburton, p 70.]

'I remember,' he adds, 'when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had set me on
an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting
it, because it was not immediately my school business. What! learn more
than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning
that; for I was a blockhead, _and pushed above my parts_.'[2]

[2: Life of Warburton, p. 63.]

Popular amongst his schoolfellows, Horace formed friendships at Eton
which mainly influenced his after-life. Richard West, the son of West,
Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the grandson, on his mother's side, of
Bishop Burnet; together with a youth named Assheton--formed, with the
poet Gray, and Horace himself, what the young wit termed the 'Quadruple
Alliance.' Then there was the 'triumvirate,' George Montagu, Charles
Montagu, and Horace: next came George Selwyn and Hanbury Williams;
lastly, a retired, studious youth, a sort of foil to all these gay,
brilliant young wits--a certain William Cole, a lover of old books, and
of quaint prints. And in all these boyish friendships, some of which
were carried from Eton to Cambridge, may be traced the foundation of the
Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill and of Berkeley Square. To Gray he
owed his ambition to be learned, if possible--poetical, if nature had
not forbidden; to the Montagus, his dash and spirit; to Sir Hanbury
Williams, his turn for _jeux d'esprit_, as a part of the completion of a