RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty. M.DCCC.XLIV. 210. L.41. ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. In a late number of the Quarterly Review, in an article entitled "Horace Walpole," the Reviewer, in the course of an estimate which he makes of the character and talents of Walpole, takes the opportunity of indulging in some strictures on what he calls "his scandalous attempts at increasing his already enormous sinecure income;" observing, "so completely had this man, so shrewd and sharpsighted in detecting the follies of others, blinded himself, or fancied he had blinded the world to his real motives, that we find that during the long life in which he enjoyed five sinecure offices, producing him at least six thousand three hundred pounds a year, he was not ashamed to inveigh bitterly against the abuses of Ministerial patronage, and to profess with astonishing effrontery, that the one virtue which he possessed in a singular degree, was disinterestedness and contempt of money." How far this censure was merited, both as regards the number of places held and the amount of public money received by Horace Walpole (for the whole of which he was solely indebted to his father Sir Robert), and especially as VOL. III. a |