Historical Essays of Thomas Babington Macaulay (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HORACE WALPOLE. 1717-1797. Lord Dover edited and published, in 1833, the Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford, to Sir Horace Mann, British Envoy at the Court of Tuscany. Macaulay had a most cordial dislike for Wai- pole and indulged his animosity in this review of Lord Dover's volumes, published in Napier's magazine in October, 1833. A letter to his sister Hannah gives us an insight into some of his methods of composition, and suggests the care devoted to even an unpleasant task. Under date of October 14 he writes as follows: " I have just finished my article on Horace Walpole. This is one of the happiest moments of my life: a stupid task performed; a weight taken off my mind. I should be quite joyous if I had only you to read it to. But to Napier it must go forthwith; and as soon as I have finished this letter, I shall put it into the general post with my own fair hands. I was up at four this morning to put the last touch to it. ... I think that this article will be a hit. We shall see. Nothing ever cost me more pains than the first half; I never wrote anything so flow- ingly as the latter half; and I like the latter half best. I have laid it on Walpole so unsparingly that I shall not be surprised if Miss Berry should cut me. You know she was Walpole's favorite in her youth." When we remember that Walpole was fifty years ahead of his age in his sentiments on the slave trade, it is surprising that a son of Zachary Macaulay held him in so little esteem. We cannot transcribe this title page without strong feelings of regret. The editing of these volumes was the last of the useful and modest services rendered to literature by a nobleman of amiable manners, of untarnished public and private character, and of cultivated mind. On this, as on other occasions, Lord Dover...