more than forty years I have never received an important complaint, nor given occasion to one.

Having said that there is no certain time settled for my being paid, and as I have sometimes had large arrears due, and, consequently, as one year frequently runs into another, and thence I may in one year receive four or five thousand pounds, because in the preceding I did not receive half so much, the Commissioners of Accounts, having examined my deputy but on a single year, were just in their report of what I received that year; but had they gone farther back, would certainly not have given in 42001. as my receipt communibus annis. This unintended misrepresentation* I bore in silence; it having been my steadfast purpose not to interfere with the public examination of places, nor take the smallest step to mitigate my own fate, which I submit implicitly to the discretion of the Legislature. What I hold, I hold by law; if the law deprives me, I have too much reverence for the laws of my country to complain. No man ever heard me utter a syllable in my own behalf. My nearest friends know that I have required them not to interpose to save me. This dread of seeming to make interest to save my place, preponderated with me to appear grateful for a time, lest it should look like a selfish. compliment. I have never yet thanked Mr. Burke for the overflow. ing pleasure he gave my heart, when, on moving his bill, he paid that just compliment to the virtues of my honest, excellent father. This acknowledgment I hope he will accept as a proof that, though. silent, I was not insensible to the obligation. Just praise out of his mouth is an epitaph of sterling value, and, standing in his printed speech on that occasion, will enjoy an immortality which happens to few epitaphs.

This apology for my conduct will, I hope, be accepted from a man who has nothing to boast but his disinterestedness, and is grievously wounded by standing in a light of one by whom the public suffers. Were my place worth double 40007., I could resign it cheerfully, at the demand of my country; but having never flattered the Ministers I disapproved, nor profited to the value of a shilling by my dearest friends when in power,-which they have been twice of late years, -(and having so much reason to be proud of their friendship, why should I not name two such virtuous upright men as the Duke of Richmond and General Conway?) I cannot bear to appear in the predicament of one enriched to the detriment of the country. This stab has been given to my peace; and the loss of my place will find, not cause, the wound, nor will the retention of the place heal it. It

*My deputy received my positive orders to give to the Commissioners the most particular detail of my profits, and to offer them in my name my account-books of all my receipts, which they declined accepting, and which would have shown them a very different state of the medium of my place. Had they accepted those books, I intended to send them word that they were welcome to examine my receipts, but that I hoped, as they were gentlemen, they would not look at the foolish manner in which I had flung away most of what I had received.

VOL. II.-36

is this most scrupulous state of facts that alone can rehabilitate me in the eyes of the public, if any thing can; and though nothing would have drawn a vain detail from me, unprovoked, it cannot be thought arrogant to endeavour to wipe off reproach, nor impertinent to aim at negative merit with the public, instead of submitting to undeserved and invidious obloquy.

March 30th, 1782.

HORACE WALPOLE.

SHORT NOTES OF MY LIFE.*

BY HORACE WALPOLE.

I was born in Arlington Street, near St. James's, London, September 24th, 1717, O. S. My godfathers were Charles Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, and my uncle Horatio Walpole; my godmother, my aunt Dorothy, Lady Viscountess Townshend.

I was inoculated for the small-pox in 1724.

In 1725 I went to Bexley, in Kent, with my cousins, the four younger sons of Lord Townshend, and with a tutor, Edward Weston, one of the sons of Stephen, Bishop of Exeter; and continued there some months. The next summer I had the same education at Twickenham, Middlesex; and the intervening winters I went every day to study under Mr. Weston, at Lord Townshend's. April 26th, 1727, I went to Eton school, where Mr. Henry Bland (since Prebendary of Durham,) eldest son of Dr. Henry Bland, master of the school, and since Dean of Durham and Provost of Eton, was my

tutor.

I was entered at Lincoln's Inn, May 27th, 1721, my father intending me for the law; but I never went thither, not caring for the profession.

I left Eton school September 23rd, 1734; and, March 11th, 1735, went to King's College, Cambridge. My public tutor was Mr. John Smith; my private, Mr. Anstey: afterwards Mr. John Whaley was my tutor. I went to lectures in civil law to Dr. Dickins, of Trinityhall; to mathematical lectures, to blind Professor Saunderson, for a short time; afterwards, Mr. Trevigar read lectures to me in Mathematics and philosophy. I heard Dr. Battie's anatomical lectures. I had learned French at Eton. I learned Italian at Cambridge, of Signor Piazza. At home I learned to dance and fence; and to draw, of Bernard Lens, master to the Duke and Princesses.

In 1736 I wrote a copy of Latin verses, published in the Gratu latio Acad. Cantab., on the marriage of Frederic, Prince of Wales. My mother died August 20th, 1737.

Soon after, my father gave me the place of Inspector of the Imports

These memoranda were probably not intended for publication; but as they furnish dates and some other interesting particulars, it has been thought desirable to insert them here.-ED.

and Exports in the Custom-house, which I resigned on his appointing me Usher of the Exchequer, in the room of Colonel William Townshend, January 29th, 1738-and, as soon as I came of age, I took possession of two other little patent-places in the Exchequer, called Controller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats. They had been held for me by Mr. Fane.

My father's second wife, Mrs. Maria Skerret, died June, 1738.

I had continued at Cambridge, though with long intervals, till towards the end of 1738, and did not leave it in form till 1739, in which year, March 10th, I set out on my travels with my friend Mr. Thomas Gray, and went to Paris. From thence, after a stay of about two months, we went, with my cousin Henry Conway, to Rheims, in Champagne, staid there three months; and passing by Geneva, where we left Mr. Conway, Mr. Gray and I went by Lyons to Turin, over the Alps, and from thence to Genoa, Parma, Placentia, Modena, Bologna, and Florence. There we staid three months, chiefly for the sake of Mr. Horace Mann, the English Minister. Clement the Twelfth dying while we were in Italy, we went to Rome in the end of March, 1740, to see the election of the new Pope; but the Conclave continuing, and the heats coming on, we (after an excursion to Naples) returned in June to Florence, where we continued in the house of Mr. Horace Mann till May of the following year, 1741, when we went to the fair of Reggio. There Mr. Gray left me, going to Venice with Mr. Francis Whithed and Mr. John Chute, for the festival of the Ascension. I fell ill at Reggio of a kind of quinzy, and was given over for five hours, escaping with great difficulty.

I went to Venice with Henry Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, and Mr. Joseph Spence, Professor of Poetry, and after a month's stay there, returned with them by sea from Genoa, landing at Antibes, and by the way of Toulon, Marseilles, Aix, and through Languedoc to Montpellier, Toulouse, and Orleans, arrived at Paris, where I left the Earl and Mr. Spence, and landed at Dover, September 12th, 1741, O. S., having been chosen Member of Parliament for Kellington, in Cornwall, at the preceding General Election, which Parliament put a period to my father's administration, which had continued above twenty years.

February 9th, 1742, my father resigned, and was created Earl of Orford. He left the House in Downing-street belonging to the Exchequer, and retired to one in Arlington-street, opposite to that in which I was born, and which stood where the additional building to Mr. Pelham's house now stands.

March 23rd, 1742, I spoke in the House of Commons for the first time, against the motion for a Secret Committee on my father. This speech was published in the magazines, but was entirely false, and had not one paragraph of my real speech in it.

July 14th, I wrote the Lesson for the Day, in a letter to Mr. Mann; and Mr. Coke, son of Lord Lovell, coming in while I was writing

it, took a copy, and dispersed it till it got into print, but with many additions, and was the original of a great number of things of that

sort.

In the summer of 1742 I wrote a Sermon on Painting, for the amusement of my father in his retirement. It was preached before him by his chaplain ; again, before my eldest brother at Stanno, near Houghton; and was afterwards published in the Edes Walpolianæ.

June 18th, 1743, was printed, in a weekly paper called Old England, or the Constitutional Journal, my Parody on some Scenes of Macbeth, called The Dear Witches. It was a ridicule of the new Ministry.

The same summer, I wrote Patapan, or the Little White Dog, a tale, imitated from Fontaine; it was never printed.

October 22nd, 1743, was published No. 38 of the Old England Journal, written by me to ridicule Lord Bath. It was reprinted with three other particular numbers.

In the summer of 1744 I wrote a Parody of a Scene in Corneille's Cinna; the interlocutors, Mr. Pelham, Mr. Arundel, and Mr. Selwyn.

My father died March 28th, 1745. He left me the house in Arlington-street in which he died, 5000l. in money, and 1000l. a-year from the Collector's place in the Custom-House, and the surplus to bedivided between my brother Edward and me.

April 12th, 1746, was published, in a magazine called The Mu-seum, my Scheme for a tax on Message Cards and Notes; and soon after, an Advertisement of a pretended new book, which I had written in Florence in 1741..

In July of the same year, I wrote The Beauties, which was handed about till it got into print, very incorrectly..

In August I took a house within the precincts of the Castle at Windsor.

November 4th and 5th, Mrs. Pritchard spoke my Epilogue to Tamerlane, on the suppression of the Rebellion, at the theatre in Covent Garden; it was printed by Dodsley the next day.

About the same time, I paraphrased some lines of the first book of Lucan; but they have not been printed.

In 1747 I printed my account of the collection at Houghton, under the title of Ædes Walpolianæ. It had been drawn up in the year 1743. I printed but two hundred copies, to give away. It was very incorrectly printed; another, edition, more accurate, enlarged, was published March 10th, 1752..

In May 1747 I took a small house near Twickenham, for seven years. I afterwards bought it, by Act of Parliament, it belonging to minors; and have made great additions and improvements to it. In one of the deeds I found it was called Strawberry Hill.

In this year (1747) and the next, and in 1749, I wrote thirteen numbers in a weekly paper, called Old England, or the Broad-bottom Journal, but being sent to the printer without a name, they were pub..