t have wanted
the strong historic phraseology of Sallust; or, in a subsequent age, the
gloomy grandeur of Tacitus, that Caravaggio of ancient Rome; we might
have lost some of the classic beauty, and all the theatric drapery, but
we should have had a clearer, more emphatic, and more faithful picture,
than in the severe energy of the one, or the picturesque mysticism of
the other. We should have _known_ the characters as they were known to
the patrician and the populace of two thousand years ago; we should have
seen them as they threw out all their stately and muscular strength; we
should have been able to recover them from the tomb, make them move
before us "in their armour, as they lived," and gather from their lips
the language of times and things, now past away from man.

Still, we must acknowledge that Walpole's chief excellence is in his
letters. His sportive spleen, his polished sarcasm, and his keen
insight into the ways of men, place him at the head of all epistolary
authorship. He has had but two competitors for this fame,--it is
remarkable that they were both women,--De Sevigne in France, and Lady
Wortley Montague in England; yet, how utterly inferior are De Sevigne's
feeble sketches of court life, and vapid panegyrics on the "adorable
Grignan;" or the Englishwoman's rambling details of travels and
tribulations, to the pungent pleasantry and substantial vigour of
Walpole! The Frenchwoman's sketches are like her artificial flowers, to
the freshness of the true. Lady Mary's slipshod sentences and coarse
voluptuousness are equally inferior to the accurate finish and
fashionable animation of the man who combined the critic with the
courtier, and was the philosopher even more than he was the man of
fashion.

Walpole is now an English classic. It is striking, to see a man of
talent thus vindicating his genius in the grave, making a posthumous
defence of his character, and compelling posterity to acknowledge the
distinctions of which he was defrauded by the petulance of his time. His
example and his success administer a moral which ought not to be thrown
away. There are many individuals in our own time, who might thus nobly
avenge themselves on the injustice of their age. The Frenchman's maxim,
_Il n'y a que bonheur, et malheur_, is unanswerably true; and not only
men of the finest faculties are often ill used by fortune, but they are
often the worst used. Their conscious superiority renders them
fastidious of the l