well-descended English gentlemen who have often scorned the title of
noble, and who have repudiated the notion of merging their own ancient
names in modern titles. The commoners of England hold a proud
pre-eminence. When some low-born man entreated James I. to make him a
gentleman, the well-known answer was, 'Na, na, I canna! I could mak thee
a lord, but none but God Almighty can mak a gentleman.'

Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards minister to George II., and eventually
Lord Orford, belonged to an ancient family in Norfolk; he was a third
son, and was originally destined for the Church, but the death of his
elder brethren having left him heir to the family estate, in 1698, he
succeeded to a property which ought to have yielded him £2,000 a year,
but which was crippled with various encumbrances. In order to relieve
himself of these, Sir Robert married Catherine Shorter, the
granddaughter of Sir John Shorter, who had been illegally and
arbitrarily appointed Lord Mayor of London by James II.

Horace was her youngest child, and was born in Arlington Street, on the
24th of September, 1717, O.S. Six years afterwards he was inoculated for
the small-pox, a precaution which he records as worthy of remark, since
the operation had then only recently been introduced by Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu from Turkey.

He is silent, however, naturally enough, as to one important point--his
real parentage. The character of his mother was by no means such as to
disprove an assertion which gained general belief: this was, that Horace
was the offspring, not of Sir Robert Walpole, but of Carr, Lord Hervey,
the eldest son of the Earl of Bristol, and the elder brother of Lord
Hervey, whose 'Memoirs of the Court of George II.' are so generally
known.