fugitive pieces, many from his own pen, which issued from it. An
excellent account of the press, by Mr. H.B. Wheatley, F.S.A., will be
found in _Bibliographica_, vol. iii., pp. 83-98. Walpole was the author
of many works, but his literary reputation now rests mainly on his
letters. Mr. Austin Dobson, in his delightful Memoir of Walpole, says of
them that '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 characterisation and clever
anecdote, for playfulness, pungency, irony, persiflage, there is nothing
like his letters in English.' A collected edition of his works, edited
by Mary Berry, under the name of her father, Robert Berry, was published
in 1798 in five volumes.

Although the library formed by Walpole at Strawberry Hill consisted
principally of works 'which no gentleman's library should be without,'
it also contained some beautiful manuscripts, a goodly number of rare
books of the Elizabethan and Jacobean times, and an immense collection
of interesting papers and letters, prints and portraits. Many of the
prints were by the great engravers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth centuries. The most notable of the manuscripts were a copy
of the Psalms of David on vellum, with twenty-one illuminations
attributed to Giulio Clovio; a magnificent 'Missal,' executed for
Claude, Queen Consort of Francis I., King of France; and a folio volume
of old English poetry, written on vellum, from the library of Ralph
Thoresby, the antiquary. Among the more important of the collections of
papers and letters were those of Sir Julius Caesar, which contained
letters of James I., Henry, Prince of Wales, the King and Queen of
Bohemia, and most of the leading nobility and gentry of the time of
Elizabeth and James I.; Sir Sackville Crowe's Book of Accounts of the
Privy Purse of the Duke of Buckingham in his different journeys into
France, Spain, and the Low Countries with Prince Charles; the
manuscripts bequeathed to Walpole by Madame du Deffand, together with
upwards of eight hundred letters addressed by her to him; and Vertue's
manuscripts in twenty-eight volumes. Sir Julius Caesar's travelling
library, consisting of forty-four duodecimo volumes, bound in white
vellum, and enclosed in an oak case covered with light olive morocco,
elegantly tooled, and made to resemble a folio volume (now in the
British Museum); and