There are many reasons, drawn from style and other internal evidence,
which induce P.C.S.S. to entertain strong doubts as to the authenticity
of the letter attributed to Sir Robert Walpole (and reprinted from
Bankes) in No. 19. Among others it seems very unlikely that a prime
minister, confidentially addressing his sovereign (and that sovereign
George II.!) on a matter of the greatest import, would indulge in a
poetical quotation. And it is remarkable that neither the quotation in
question, not any thing at all resembling it, in thought or expression,
is to be found in any part of Fenton's printed works. P.C.S.S. has
carefully looked them over, in the editions of London, 1717, and of
1810 (Chalmer's _Collection_, vol. x.), and he cannot discover a trace
of it. He had at first imagined that it might be successfully sought
for in Fenton's admirable _Epistle to William Lamborde_ (the Kentish
antiquary), where there is a remarkably fine passage respecting flattery
and its influences; but nothing at all like the quotation cited in the
letter is to be found in that poem, which (_par parenthèse_) seems to
have met with much more neglect than it deserves.
P.C.S.S. would further notice the great improbability that Walpole would
committed himself _in writing_, even to his royal master, by such a
display of perilous frankness, in treating of the private character and
principles of his great rival. He must have been aware that the letter
would, most probably, at the decease of the king (then advanced in life)
have been found among his majesty's papers, and, with them, have passed
into the hands of his successor, by whom it would undoubtedly have been
communicated to the very individual with whom it so hardly dealt.