"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,
penetrated me with a visionary longing to be a monk in it. Though
my life has been passed in turbulent scenes, in pleasures or other
pastimes, and in much fashionable dissipation, still, books,
antiquity, and virtue kept hold of a corner of my heart: and since
necessity has forced me of late years to be a man of business, my
disposition tends to be a recluse for what remains--but it will
not be my lot; and though there is some excuse for the young doing
what they like, I doubt an old man should do nothing but what he
ought, and I hope doing one's duty is the best preparation for
death. Sitting with one's arms folded to think about it, is a very
long way for preparing for it. If Charles V. had resolved to make
some amends for his abominable ambition by doing good (his duty
as a king), there would have been infinitely more merit than going
to doze in a convent. One may avoid actual guilt in a sequestered
life, but the virtue of it is merely negative; the innocence is
beautiful."
There had been moments when Horace Walpole even expressed the
tenderest feelings for fame; and the following passage, written prior
to the preceding ones, gives no indication of that contempt for
literary fame, of which the close of this character will exhibit an
extraordinary instance.
This letter relates an affecting event--he had just returned from
seeing General Conway attacked by a paralytic stroke. Shocked by his
appearance, he writes--
"It is, perhaps, to vent my concern that I write. It has operated
such a revolution on my mind, as no time, at _my age_, can efface.
It has at once damped every pursuit which my spirits had even now
prevented me from being weaned from, I mean of virtu. It is like a
mortal distemper in myself; for can amusements amuse, if there is
but a glimpse, a vision of outliving one's friends? _I have had
dreams in which I thought I wished for fame--it was not certainly
posthumous fame at any distance; I feel, I feel it was confined to
the memory of those I love._ It seems to me impossible for a man
who has no friends to do anything for fame--and to me the first
position in friendship is, to intend one's friends should survive
one--but it is not reasonable to oppress you, who are suffering
gout, with my melancholy ideas. What I have said will tell you,
what I hope so many years have told you, that I am very constant
and sincere to friends of above forty years."
In a letter of a later date there is a remarkable confession, which
harmonises with those already given.
"My pursuits have always been light, trifling, and tended to
nothing but my casual amusement. I will not say, without a little
vain ambition of showing some parts, but never with industry
sufficient to make me apply to anything solid. My studies, if they
could be called so, and my productions, were alike desultory. In
my latter age I discovered the futility both of my objects and
writings--I felt how insignificant is the reputation of an author
of mediocrity; and that, being no genius, I only added one name
more to a list of writers; but had told the world nothing but what
it could as well be without. These reflections were the best
proofs of my sense; and when I could see through my own vanity,
there is less wonder in my discovering that such talents as I
might have had are impaired at seventy-two."
Thus humbled was Horace Walpole to himself!--there is an intellectual
dignity, which this man of wit and sense was incapable of reaching--and
it seems a retribution that the scorner of true greatness should at
length feel the poisoned chalice return to his own lips. He who had
contemned the eminent men of former times, and quarrelled with and
ridiculed every contemporary genius; who had affected to laugh at
the literary fame he could not obtain,--at length came to scorn himself!
and endured "the penal fires" of an author's hell, in undervaluing his
own works, the productions of a long life!
The chagrin and disappointment of such an author were never less
carelessly concealed than in the following extraordinary letter:--