great connexions and the
mere author. In the one case, the man may give a temporary existence
to his books; but in the other, it is the book which gives existence
to the man.

Walpole's writings seem to be constructed on a certain principle, by
which he gave them a sudden, rather than a lasting existence. In
historical research our adventurer startled the world by maintaining
paradoxes which attacked the opinions, or changed the characters,
established for centuries. Singularity of opinion, vivacity of
ridicule, and polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which
Horace Walpole sought distinction.

In his works of imagination, he felt he could not trust to himself--the
natural pathetic was utterly denied him. But he had fancy and
ingenuity; he had recourse to the _marvellous_ in imagination on the
principle he had adopted the _paradoxical_ in history. Thus, "The
Castle of Otranto," and "The Mysterious Mother," are the productions
of ingenuity rather than genius; and display the miracles of art,
rather than the spontaneous creations of nature.

All his literary works, like the ornamented edifice he inhabited,
were constructed on the same artificial principle; an old paper
lodging-house, converted by the magician of taste into a Gothic
castle, full of scenic effects.[34]

"A Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors" was itself a classification
which only an idle amateur could have projected, and only the most
agreeable narrator of anecdotes could have seasoned. These splendid
scribblers are for the greater part no authors at all.[35]

His attack on our peerless Sidney, whose fame was more mature than
his life, was formed on the same principle as his "Historic Doubts" on
Richard III. Horace Walpole was as willing to vilify the truly great,
as to beautify deformity; when he imagined that the fame he was
destroying or conferring, reflected back on himself. All these works
were plants of sickly delicacy, which could never endure the open air,
and only lived in the artificial atmosphere of a private collection.
Yet at times the flowers, and the planter of the flowers, were roughly
shaken by an uncivil breeze.

His "Anecdotes of Painting in England" is a most entertaining
catalogue. He gives the feelings of the distinct eras with regard to
the arts; yet his pride was never gratified when he reflected that he
had been writing the work of Vertue, who had collected the materials,
but could not have given the philosophy. Hi