n order to relieve
himself of these, Sir Robert married Catherine Shorter, the
granddaughter of Sir John Shorter, who had been illegally and
arbitrarily appointed Lord Mayor of London by James II.

Horace was her youngest child, and was born in Arlington Street, on the
24th of September, 1717, O.S. Six years afterwards he was inoculated for
the small-pox, a precaution which he records as worthy of remark, since
the operation had then only recently been introduced by Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu from Turkey.

He is silent, however, naturally enough, as to one important point--his
real parentage. The character of his mother was by no means such as to
disprove an assertion which gained general belief: this was, that Horace
was the offspring, not of Sir Robert Walpole, but of Carr, Lord Hervey,
the eldest son of the Earl of Bristol, and the elder brother of Lord
Hervey, whose 'Memoirs of the Court of George II.' are so generally
known.

Carr, Lord Hervey, was witty, eccentric, and sarcastic: and from him
Horace Walpole is said to have inherited his wit, his eccentricity, his
love of literature, and his profound contempt for all mankind, excepting
only a few members of a cherished and exclusive _clique_.

In the Notes of his life which Horace Walpole left for the use of his
executor, Robert Berry, Esq., and of his daughter, Miss Berry, he makes
this brief mention of Lady Walpole:--'My mother died in 1737.' He was
then twenty years of age.

But beneath this seemingly slight recurrence to his mother, a regret
which never left him through life was buried. Like Cowper, he mourned,
as the profoundest of all sorrows, the loss of that life-long friend.

'My mother, when I learn'd that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son?
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun.'

Although Horace in many points bore a strong resemblance to Sir Robert
Walpole, he rarely if ever received from that jovial, heartless, able
man, any proof of affection. An outcast from his father's heart, the
whole force of the boy's love centred in his mother; yet in after-life
no one reverenced Sir Robert Walpole so much as his supposed son. To be
adverse to the minister was to be adverse to the unloved son who
cherished his memory. What 'my father' thought, did, and said, was law;
what his foes dared to express was heresy. Horace had the family mania
strong upon him; the world was mad