Walpole, HORACE, fourth Earl of Orford, author and virtuoso, was born 24th September 1717 (o.s.) in Arlington Street, London. He was the third son of Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards first Lord Orford, by his wife Catharine Shorter. In April 1727 he went to Eton, where he had for schoolfellows the future poets Thomas Gray and Richard West. In 1735 he passed to King's College, Cambridge, Gray being already established there as a fellow-commoner of Peterhouse. In 1737 his mother died, and while he was still at the university he was appointed by his provident father to one or two patent places. Quitting college in 1739, he shortly afterwards, with Gray for companion, started on the orthodox grand tour. They visited France and Italy, making a prolonged stay at Florence. At Reggio a growing incompatibility of tastes ripened into a quarrel (of which Walpole in later years accepted the blame), and the companions separated. Then Walpole fell seriously ill at Reggio, and had it not been for the prompt intervention of Joseph Spence, professor of Poetry at Oxford, might have died. He however recovered, and returned to England to take his seat for Callington in Cornwall, to which, in his absence, he had been elected. At this time (1741) his father was tottering to his fall. But there is no reason for supposing that, had Sir Robert continued in power, his son would ever have become an ardent politician. As it was, he spoke but rarely, and only respectably; and although he seems occasionally to have interested himself genuinely in cases like the Byng trial of 1757, his function in politics is that of the chronicling spectator rather than the earnest actor. With the record that he exchanged his Cornish seat in 1744 for the family borough of Castle Rising, which he vacated in turn for the other family borough of King's Lynn, the account of his public life may be closed. In 1745 his father died, leaving him a house in Arlington Street (No. 5), with sufficient, if not excessive means. He continued to live the life he had already commenced as a collector and connoisseur, dabbling lightly in familiar verse and jeux d'esprit, trifling with history and art criticism, and corresponding voluminously with his friends, especially with Horace (afterwards Sir Horace) Mann, the British minister plenipotentiary at Florence, whose acquaintance he had made when on the grand tour. In 1747, after temporary trial of a summer residence at Windsor, he purchased, near Twickenham, the cottage which he gradually, by alterations and additions, elaborated into the well-known 'Gothic Castle' and 'curiosity shop' of Strawberry Hill. The transformation thus slowly effected, alternating with authorship, visits to Paris, the establishment of a private press at Twickenham, and the maintenance of an ever-growing correspondence, constituted the chief remaining occupations of his life, which was prolonged until March 1797, when he died in the house in Berkeley Square (the present No. 11) to which he had moved in 1779 from Arlington Street. In 1791, by the death of his eldest brother's son, he had become fourth Earl of Orford, but he was never married. He was buried at the family seat of Houghton in Norfolk.
Walpole's literary efforts are more various than distinguished. His essays in Moore's World exhibit a light hand, and he had gifts as a verse-writer. In such squibs as the Letter from Xo Ho to his friend Lien Chi at Pekin (1757), in which he anticipates Goldsmith's Citizen of the World by three years, he is at his best. In the romance of the Castle of Otranto (1764), which may be said to be the offspring of Gothic Strawberry, he not only had a happy idea, but was fortunate enough to inaugurate a new era of supernatural romance. His tragedy of The Mysterious Mother (1768), though in capable verse and extremely powerful, is too horrible in its subject for any but the strongest stomachs, and it is a curious contradiction of literature that a work so sombre and impassioned should have proceeded from the pen of so fastidious a personage as its author. Of his remaining books the Anecdotes of Painting in England (1761-71) [1780] and Catalogue of Engravers (1763), in which he systematised and made intelligible the voluminous data collected by George Vertue the engraver, are perhaps the most valuable, as they contain much which would not otherwise have been preserved. His memoirs of parts of the reigns of George II. and III., published posthumously in 1822 and 1845 respectively, although warped by personal and political prejudice, contain many facts and particulars which the writer's special opportunities of obtaining information render unusually interesting. He also compiled a Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors (1758), Fugitive Pieces in Verse and Prose (1758), Historic Doubts on Richard III. (1768), an Essay on Modern Gardening (1785), &c. Some of the above were printed at his private press at Twickenham, from which, among other and very miscellaneous issues, he put forth editions of Grammont's Memoirs (1772); of the Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1764); of
Lucan's Pharsalia, with Bentley's notes (1760); and (for the Dodseys) of the Pindaric Odes of Gray (1757), to whom at this date he had become reconciled. The books printed at the Strawberry Hill Press are the favourite toys of the collector.
Walpole's literary reputation, however, now rests chiefly upon his letters, of which those to Mann, continued assiduously for forty years—a correspondence not to be paralleled in the annals of the post-office—form the staple. His letters in the Cunningham edition extend to 2665; and it is known that there are others still unprinted. Yet, notwithstanding their voluminous character, their interest never flags. Croker, Walpole's persistent critic, reiterating Byron's opinion that they are incomparable, goes on to say that they are 'a perfect encyclopædia of information from the very best sources—politics from the fountain-head of parties, debates by the best of reporters, foreign affairs from an habitué of diplomatic society, sketches of public characters by their intimate acquaintance or associate, the gossip of fashionable life from a man of fashion, literature from a man of letters, the arts from a man of taste, the news of the town from a member of every club in St James's Street; and all this retailed, day by day, and hour by hour, to a variety of correspondents—reddendo singula singulis—according to their various stations, characters, and tastes, by a pen whose vivacity and graphic power is equalled by nothing but the wonderful industry and perseverance with which it was plied through so long a series of years.' To this may be added the verdict of another writer by no means favourable to Walpole personally: 'We expect,' says Lord Macanlay, 'to see fresh Hunnes and fresh Burkes before we again fall in with that peculiar combination of moral and intellectual qualities to which the writings of Walpole owe their extraordinary popularity.'
Walpole's life was that of a man of the world with a leaning to letters; and it has no great occurrences. In politics he was an aristocrat by instinct, and a republican by caprice. The former feeling was probably more genuine than the latter, but he was a wit and virtuoso above all. His truest sympathies were with his own class and circle; outside this they were imperfect. To those he liked he was a firm friend; but with many men of his age he reserved his closest confidence for the other sex (Madame du Delfand, Lady Ossory, the Misses Berry). Lord Macaulay made it the fashion to despise him as frivolous and selfish; but he has left us such a legacy of unfailing amusement that at this date the defects of his character need not greatly occupy us.
The Letters of Horace Walpole were collected into nine volumes in 1857-59 by Mr Peter Cunningham (Bentley). See also Memoirs of Horace Walpole, edited by Eliot Warburton (1852); and Horace Walpole, a memoir, by the author of this paper (1890).