ars before the death of William of
Orange as a young Norfolk landowner of fair fortune, with the tastes and
air of the class from which he sprang. His big, square figure, his
vulgar good-humoured face were those of a common country squire. And in
Walpole the squire underlay the statesman to the last. He was ignorant
of books, he "loved neither writing nor reading," and if he had a taste
for art, his real love was for the table, the bottle, and the chase. He
rode as hard as he drank. Even in moments of political peril, the first
despatch he would open was the letter from his gamekeeper. There was the
temper of the Norfolk fox-hunter in the "doggedness" which Marlborough
noted as his characteristic, in the burly self-confidence which declared
"If I had not been Prime Minister I should have been Archbishop of
Canterbury," in the stubborn courage which conquered the awkwardness of
his earlier efforts to speak or met single-handed at the last the bitter
attacks of a host of enemies. There was the same temper in the genial
good-humour which became with him a new force in politics. No man was
ever more fiercely attacked by speakers and writers, but he brought in
no "gagging Act" for the press; and though the lives of most of his
assailants were in his hands through their intrigues with the Pretender,
he made little use of his power over them.

[Sidenote: His policy.]

Where his country breeding showed itself most, however, was in the
shrewd, narrow, honest character of his mind. Though he saw very
clearly, he could not see far, and he would not believe what he could
not see. His prosaic good sense turned sceptically away from the poetic
and passionate sides of human feeling. Appeals to the loftier or purer
motives of action he laughed at as "schoolboy nights." For young members
who talked of public virtue or patriotism he had one good-natured
answer: "You will soon come off that and grow wiser." But he was
thoroughly straightforward and true to his own convictions, so far as
they went. "Robin and I are two honest men," the Jacobite Shippen owned
in later years, when contrasting him with his factious opponents: "he is
for King George and I am for King James, but those men with long cravats
only desire place either under King George or King James." What marked
him off from his fellow-Whigs however was not so much the clearness with
which Walpole saw the value of the political results which the
Revolution had won, or the fidelit