But this strange creature, Horace Walpole, is {85} known best of all by his letters[17]--nine solid volumes of them, big octavo--covering nearly the whole of his life and addressed to a half score or so of men and women on all possible topics except any serious one; and all made ready, with curious care, for publication when his death should come. On that one point he did have serious belief--he believed he should die. This great budget of his letters is one of the most extraordinary products--if we may call it so--of literature. It is hard to say what is not touched upon in them; if he is robbed, you hear how a voice out of the night said "stop"--how he slipped his watch under his waistband--how he gave up his purse with nine guineas in it--how Lady Browne was frightened and gave up _her_ watch; if the king has gout in his toe you hear of that; if he goes to the palace he tells you who was in the ante-room and how two fellows were sweeping the floor, dancing about in sabots; how the Duc of Richelieu was pale except his nose, "which is red and wrinkled." Great hoops with brocade dresses come sailing into {86} his letters; so do all the scandals about my lady _this_, or the duchess _that_; so do the votes in Parliament and reports about the last battle, if a war is in progress; and the French news, and new things at Strawberry Hill--over and over. And he does not think much of Gibbon, and does not think much of Dr. Johnson--who "has no judgment and no taste;" and why doesn't his friend Mason[18] (a third-rate poet) "show up the doctor and make an end of him?"--which is much like saying that Mr. Wardle's fat boy should make an end of Mr. Pickwick. Yet do not think there is no art in all this, and that you would not like them: there is art of the highest gossipy kind; and I can readily understand how his correspondents all relished immensely his letters whenever they came. There is humor and sparkle, and there are delicate touches; he approaches his lighter topics as a humming-bird approaches flowers--a swift dart {87} at them--a sniff, a whirl of wings, and away again. Then he has that rare literary instinct of knowing just what each correspondent would like best to hear of--that's the secret of writing letters that will be welcome. You cannot interchange his letters. He tickles Lady Ossory's ear with sheerest gossip, and Lady Suffolk with talk of dress and of the last great Paris ball, and the poet Mason with bookish platitudes, and Conway with the leakings of political talk, and Cole with twaddle on art or science. You want to turn your back on him again and again for his arrant snobbish pretensions or some weak and violent prejudice; yet you want to listen again and again. It is such a pretty, lively, brisk, frolicsome, _pétillant_ small-beerish talk, that engages and does not fatigue, and piques appetite yet feeds you with nothings.