letter, rotund, fulsome, and in the language of the bended knee, begging
Lord Bute to be allowed to kiss the Prince of Wales's hand. His attitude
to the Court he described to George Montagu as "mixing extreme politeness
with extreme indifference." His politeness, like his indifference, was but
play at the expense of a solemn world. "I wrote to Lord Bute," he informed
Montagu; "thrust all the _unexpecteds, want of ambition,
disinterestedness, etc._, that I could amass, gilded with as much duty,
affection, zeal, etc., as possible." He frankly professed relief that he
had not after all to go to Court and act out the extravagant compliments
he had written. "Was ever so agreeable a man as King George the Second,"
he wrote, "to die the very day it was necessary to save me from ridicule?"
"For my part," he adds later in the same spirit, "my man Harry will always
be a favourite; he tells me all the amusing news; he first told me of the
late Prince of Wales's death, and to-day of the King's." It is not that
Walpole was a republican of the school of Plutarch. He was merely a toy
republican who enjoyed being insolent at the expense of kings, and behind
their backs. He was scarcely capable of open rudeness in the fashion of
Beau Brummell's "Who's your fat friend?" His ridicule was never a public
display; it was a secret treasured for his friends. He was the greatest
private entertainer of the eighteenth century, and he ridiculed the great,
as people say, for the love of diversion. "I always write the thoughts of
the moment," he told the dearest of his friends, Conway, "and even laugh
to divert the person I am writing to, without any ill will on the subjects
I mention." His letters are for the most part those of a good-natured man.

It is not that he was above the foible--it was barely more than that--of
hatred. He did not trouble greatly about enemies of his own, but he never
could forgive the enemies of Sir Robert Walpole. His ridicule of the Duke
of Newcastle goes far beyond diversion. It is the baiting of a mean and
treacherous animal, whose teeth were "tumbling out," and whose mouth was