I have spoken of the association of Walpole with Gray; it was not an intimate one after the two had outgrown their youth-age; indeed Walpole's association with nobody was intimate; nor was he a man whose literary reputation ever was, or ever can be great. He was son[15] of that famous British Minister of State, Sir Robert Walpole, who for many long years held the fate of England in his hand. But his son Horace cared little for politics. He was unmarried, and kept so always; had money in plenty (coming largely from Government sinecures) and a fat place at Twickenham--called Strawberry Hill; which by his vagaries in architecture and his enormous collection of bric-à-brac, he made the show place of all that region. He established a private press at this country home, and printed, among a {84} multitude of other books, a catalogue of royal and noble authors--not reckoning others so worthy of his regard; indeed, he had a well-bred contempt for ordinary literary avocations; but he wrote and published (privately at first) a romance called _The Castle of Otranto_.[16] It was "a slight thing," he told his friends, which he had dashed off in an idle hour, and which he "had not put his name to; but which succeeded so well that he did not any longer entirely keep the secret." It is a tale, quite ingenious, of mingled mystery and chivalry; there are castles in it, and huge helmets, that only giants could wear; and there are dungeons, and forlorn maidens; ghosts, and sighing lovers; mysterious sounds, and pictures that come out of their frames and walk about in the moonlight--it is a pattern book to read at night in an old country house which has long corridors and deserted rooms, where the bats fly in and out, and the doors clang and clash.