Among this noble and accomplished brotherhood the author of these
letters is by general consent allowed to be entitled to no low place.
Horace Walpole, born in the autumn of 1717, was the youngest son of that
wise minister, Sir Robert Walpole, who, though, as Burke afterwards
described him, "not a genius of the first class," yet by his adoption
of, and resolute adherence to a policy of peace throughout the greater
part of his administration, in which he was fortunately assisted by the
concurrence of Fleury of France, contributed in no slight degree to the
permanent establishment of the present dynasty on the throne. He
received his education at the greatest of English schools, Eton, to
which throughout his life he preserved a warm attachment; and where he
gave a strong indication of his preference for peaceful studies and his
judicious appreciation of intellectual ability, by selecting as his most
intimate friend Thomas Gray, hereafter to achieve a poetical immortality
by the Bard and the Elegy. From Eton they both went to Cambridge, and,
when they quitted the University, in 1738, joined in a travelling tour
through France and Italy. They continued companions for something more
than two years; but at the end of that time they separated, and in the
spring of 1741 Gray returned to England. The cause of their parting was
never distinctly avowed; Walpole took the blame, if blame there was, on
himself; but, in fact, it probably lay in an innate difference of
disposition, and consequently of object. Walpole being fond of society,
and, from his position as the Minister's son, naturally courted by many
of the chief men in the different cities which they visited; while Gray
was of a reserved character shunning the notice of strangers, and fixing
his attention on more serious subjects than Walpole found attractive.

In the autumn of the same year Walpole himself returned home. He had
become a member of Parliament at the General Election in the summer, and
took his seat just in time to bear a part in the fierce contest which