s great age and his good
sense opened his eyes on himself; and Horace Walpole seems to have
judged too contemptuously of Horace Walpole. The truth is, he was
mortified he had not and never could obtain a literary peerage; and he
never respected the commoner's seat. At these moments, too frequent in
his life, he contemns authors, and returns to sink back into all the
self-complacency of aristocratic indifference.

This cold unfeeling disposition for literary men, this disguised malice
of envy, and this eternal vexation at his own disappointments,--break
forth in his correspondence with one of those literary characters
with whom he kept on terms while they were kneeling to him in the
humility of worship, or moved about to fetch or to carry his little
quests of curiosity in town or country.[36]

The following literary confessions illustrate this character:--

"_June, 1778._

"I have taken a thorough dislike to being an author; and, if it
would not look like begging you to compliment one by contradicting
me, I would tell you what I am most seriously convinced of, that I
find what small share of parts I had grown dulled. And when I
perceive it myself, I may well believe that others would not be
less sharp-sighted. _It is very natural_; mine were _spirits_
rather than _parts_; and as time has rebated the one, it must
surely destroy _their resemblance_ to the other."

In another letter:--

"I set very little value on myself; as a man, I am a very faulty
one; and _as an author, a very middling one_, which _whoever
thinks a comfortable rank, is not at all of my opinion_. Pray
convince me that you think I mean sincerely, by not answering me
with a compliment. It is very weak to be pleased with flattery;
the stupidest of all delusions to beg it. From you I should take
it ill. We have known one another almost forty years."

There were times when Horace Walpole's natural taste for his studies
returned with all the vigour of passion--but his volatility and his
desultory life perpetually scattered his firmest resolutions into air.
This conflict appears beautifully described when the view of King's
College, Cambridge, throws his mind into meditation; and the passion
for study and seclusion instantly kindled his emotions, lasting,
perhaps, as long as the letter which describes them occupied in
writing.

"_May 22, 1777._

"The beauty of King's College, Cambridge, now it is restored,
pene