humanity in his friendships and in his defence
of the house of Walpole; but if he descended from his mantelpiece, it was
more likely to be in order to feed a squirrel than to save an empire. His
most common image of the world was a puppet-show. He saw kings, prime
ministers, and men of genius alike about the size of dolls. When George
II. died, he wrote a brief note to Thomas Brand: "Dear Brand--You love
laughing; there is a king dead; can you help coming to town?" That
represents his measure of things. Those who love laughing will laugh all
the more when they discover that, a week earlier, Walpole had written a
letter, rotund, fulsome, and in the language of the bended knee, begging
Lord Bute to be allowed to kiss the Prince of Wales's hand. His attitude
to the Court he described to George Montagu as "mixing extreme politeness
with extreme indifference." His politeness, like his indifference, was but
play at the expense of a solemn world. "I wrote to Lord Bute," he informed
Montagu; "thrust all the _unexpecteds, want of ambition,
disinterestedness, etc._, that I could amass, gilded with as much duty,
affection, zeal, etc., as possible." He frankly professed relief that he
had not after all to go to Court and act out the extravagant compliments
he had written. "Was ever so agreeable a man as King George the Second,"
he wrote, "to die the very day it was necessary to save me from ridicule?"
"For my part," he adds later in the same spirit, "my man Harry will always
be a favourite; he tells me all the amusing news; he first told me of the
late Prince of Wales's death, and to-day of the King's." It is not that
Walpole was a republican of the school of Plutarch. He was merely a toy
republican who enjoyed being insolent at the expense of kings, and behind
their backs. He was scarcely capable of open rudeness in the fashion of
Beau Brummell's "Who's your fat friend?" His ridicule was never a public
display; it was a secret treasured for his friends. He was the greatest
private entertainer of the eighteenth century, and he ridiculed the great,
as people say, for the love of diversion. "I always write the thoughts of
the moment," he told the dearest of his friends, Conway, "and even laugh
to divert the person I am writing to, without any ill will on the subjects
I mention." His letters are for the most part those of a good-natured man.

It is not that he was above the foible--it was barely more than that--of
hatred. He did not tro