over-acted them all, a creature to whom whatever was little seemed great
and whatever was great seemed little. To Macaulay he was a
gentleman-usher at heart, a Republican whose Republicanism like the
courage of a bully or the love of a fribble was only strong and ardent
when there was no occasion for it, a man who blended the faults of Grub
Street with the faults of St. James's Street, and who united to the
vanity, the jealousy and the irritability of a man of letters, the
affected superciliousness and apathy of a man of ton. The Whartons
over-praise Walpole where Lord Macaulay under-rates him; the truth lies
between the two. He was not in the least an estimable or an admirable
figure, but he wrote admirable, indeed incomparable letters to which the
world is indebted beyond expression. If we can almost say that we know
the London of the last century as well as the London of to-day it is
largely to Horace Walpole's letters that our knowledge is due. They can
hardly be over-praised, they can hardly be too often read by the lover
of last century London. Horace Walpole affected to despise men of
letters. It is his punishment that his fame depends upon his letters,
those letters which, though their writer was all unaware of it, are
genuine literature, and almost of the best.

We could linger over almost every page of the Whartons' volumes, for
every page is full of pleasant suggestions. The name of George Villiers,
second Duke of Buckingham brings up at once a picture of perhaps the
brilliantest and basest period in English history. It brings up too
memories of a fiction that is even dearer than history, of that
wonderful romance of Dumas the Elder's, which Mr. Louis Stevenson has
placed among the half-dozen books that are dearest to his heart, the
"Vicomte de Bragelonne". Who that has ever followed, breathless and
enraptured, the final fortunes of that gallant quadrilateral of
musketeers will forget the part which is played by George Villiers, Duke