he was influenced mainly by their position in Society--that he regarded an
author who was not a gentleman as being necessarily an inferior author.
This is hardly fair. The contemporary of whom he thought most highly was
Gray, the son of a money broker. He did not spare Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu any more than Richardson. If he found an author offensive, it was
more likely to be owing to a fastidious distaste for low life than to an
aristocratic distaste for low birth; and to him Bohemianism was the lowest
of low life. It was certainly Fielding's Bohemianism that disgusted him.
He relates how two of his friends called on Fielding one evening and found
him "banqueting with a blind man, a woman, and three Irishmen, on some
cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth."
Horace Walpole's daintiness recoiled from the spirit of an author who did
not know how to sup decently. If he found Boswell's _Johnson_ tedious, it
was no doubt partly due to his inability to reconcile himself to Johnson's
table manners. It can hardly be denied that he was unnaturally sensitive
to surface impressions. He was a great observer of manners, but not a
great portrayer of character. He knew men in their absurd actions rather
than in their motives--even their absurd motives. He never admits us into
the springs of action in his portraits as Saint-Simon does. He was too
studied a believer in the puppetry of men and women to make them more than
ridiculous. And unquestionably the vain race of authors lent itself
admirably to his love of caricature. His account of the vanity of Gibbon,
whose history he admired this side enthusiasm, shows how he delighted in
playing with an egoistic author as with a trout:

You will be diverted to hear that Mr. Gibbon has quarrelled with
me. He lent me his second volume in the middle of November. I
returned it with a most civil panegyric. He came for more incense.
I gave it, but, alas, with too much sincerity! I added, "Mr.
Gibbon, I am sorry _you_ should have pitched on so disgusting a