To claim for him that, even at his best, he is a profound observer of character, or that he gives any consistent account of his greatest contemporaries, would be too much. He is full of whims, and moreover, full of spite. He cannot be decently fair to anyone who deserted his father, or stood in Conway's light. He reflects at all times the irreverent gossip current behind the scenes. To know the best and the worst that can be said of any great man, the best plan is to read the leading article of his party newspaper, and then to converse in private with its writer. The eulogy and the sarcasm may both be sincere enough; only it is pleasant, after puffing one's wares to the public, to glance at their seamy side in private. Walpole has a decided taste for that last point of view. The littleness of the great, the hypocrisy of the virtuous, and the selfishness of statesmen in general, is his ruling theme, illustrated by an infinite variety of brilliant caricatures struck off at the moment with a quick eye and a sure hand. Though he elaborates no grand historical portrait, like Burke or Clarendon, he has a whole gallery of telling vignettes which are often as significant as far more pretentious works. Nowhere, for example, can we find more graphic sketches of the great man who stands a head and shoulders above the whole generation of dealers in power and place. Most of Chatham's contemporaries repaid his contempt with intense dislike. Some of them pronounced him mad, and others thought him a knave. Walpole, who at times calls him a mountebank and an impostor, does not go further than Burke, who, in a curious comment, speaks of him as the 'grand artificer of fraud,' who never conversed but with 'a parcel of low toad-eaters;' and asks whether all this 'theatrical stuffing' and these 'raised heels' could be necessary to the character of a great man. Walpole, of course, has a keen eye to the theatrical stuffing. He takes the least complimentary view of the grand problem, which still puzzles some historians, as to the genuineness of Chatham's gout. He smiles complacently when the great actor forgets that his right arm ought to be lying helpless in a sling and flourishes it with his accustomed vigour. But Walpole, in spite of his sneers and sarcasms, can recognise the genuine power of the man. He is the describer of the striking scene which occurred when the House of Commons was giggling over some delicious story of bribery and corruption--the House of Commons was frivolous in those benighted days; he tells how Pitt suddenly stalked down from the gallery and administered his thundering reproof; how Murray, then Attorney-General, 'crouched, silent and terrified,' and the Chancellor of the Exchequer faltered out an humble apology for the unseemly levity. It is Walpole who best describes the great debate when Pitt, 'haughty, defiant, conscious of injury and supreme abilities,' burst out in that tremendous speech--tremendous if we may believe the