In turning to Horace Walpole's letters from Cowper's (which has been the pleasant task of the writer) it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide which of the two men is the greater letter-writer. If we agree with Scott, who thought Walpole " the best letter-writer in the English language "; with Byron, who praised his " incomparable letters with Austin Dobson, who said that if " wit and brilliancy, without gravity or pathos, are to rank highest, he is first "; then Cowper must yield the palm to his contemporary. But if perfect spontaneity, complete absence of pose and mannerism, artless humour, and almost entire absence of prejudice are to have their due weight, then Walpole fails to supplant his rival.

On certain points regarding Walpole everybody is agreed. Few, for example, would dissent from the following opinion expressed by Dobson in his " Memoir " : " For diversity of interest and perpetual entertainment, for the constant surprises of an unique species of wit, for happy and unexpected turns of phrase, for graphic characterization and clever anecdote, for playfulness, pungency, irony, persiflage, there is nothing in English like his correspondence." Living in a great age of prose, when letter-writing was a sedulously cultivated art, Walpole attained perfection by constant practice. " You know," he wrote to Gray, " how rapidly and carelessly I always write my letters"; this fluency developed slowly, for we notice that many of his earlier letters are decidedly stiff and formal. Writing at such a speed, Walpole was occasionally guilty of pardonable errors in style—such as solecisms, and faulty order of words—but, with an eye to the future publication of his correspondence, he endeavoured in most cases to get his letters back and re-edit them to his own satisfaction.

He realised how great their value would be to the future historian. " Nothing," he wrote, " would give so just an idea of an age as genuine letters; nay, history waits for its last seal from them." This great collection of approximately three thousand letters is a veritable mine of information on nearly seventy of the most fateful years in English history.

The letters in this book have been selected from Cunningham's edition of Walpole's correspondence, and many of the former commentators' notes incorporated by that editor have been retained with some minor alterations and modifications. As in the case of Cowper's letters in this series, an attempt has been made not only to illustrate the life, character, and opinions of the writer, but also to throw some light upon the history of the period.

For further information the reader is advised to consult:

Mrs. H. Paget Toynbee's standard edition of Walpole's Letters. Austin Dobson, " Horace Walpole, a Memoir." A. D. Greenwood, "Horace Walpole's World." L. B. Seeley, " Horace Walpole and his World." Leslie Stephen, " Hours in a Library " (Second Series). W. P. Ker. "Collected Essays" (Vol. I). H. D. Traill and J. S. Mann, " Social England " (Vol. V). H. A. Beers, " A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century."

Macaulay, " Essay on Horace Walpole " (a biassed account).

To these, and many other sources of information, I am greatly indebted.

W. H.

March 31, 1926.