HORACE WALPOLE's

REMINISCENCES.

CHAPTER I.

You were both so entertained with the old stories I told you one evening lately, of what I recollected to have seen and heard from my childhood of the courts of king George the first, and of his son the prince of Wales, afterwards George the second; and of the latter's princess, since queen Caroline ; and you expressed such wishes that I would commit those passages (for they are scarce worthy of the title even of anecdotes) to writing; that, having no greater pleasure than to please you both, nor any more important or laudable occupation, I will begin to satisfy the repetition of your curiosity.—But observe, I promise no more than to begin; for I not only cannot answer that I shall have patience to continue, but my memory is still so fresh, or rather so retentive of trifles which first made impression on it, that it is very possible my life, (turned of seventy-one) may be exhausted before my stock of remembrances; especially as I am sensible of the

garrulity of old age, and of its eagerness of relating whatever it recollects, whether of moment or not. Thus, while I fancy I am complying with you, I may only be indulging myself, and consequently may wander into many digressions for which you will not care a straw, and which may intercept the completion of my design. Patience, therefore, young ladies; and if you coin an old gentleman into narratives, you must expect a good deal of alloy. I engage for no method, no regularity, no polish. My narrative will probably resemble siege-pieces, which are struck of any promiscuous metals; and, though they bear the impress of some sovereign's name, only serve to quiet the garrison for the moment, and afterwards are merely hoarded by collectors and virtuosos, who think their series not complete, unless they have even the coins of base metal of every reign.

As I date from mỹ nonage, I must have laid up no state-secrets. Most of the facts I am going to tell you, though new to you and to most of the present age, were known perhaps at the time to my nurse and my tutors. Thus my stories will have nothing to do with history.

Luckily there have appeared within these three months two publications, that will serve as precedents for whatever I am going to say: I mean, Les fragmens of the correspondence of the duchess of Orleans, and those of the Mémoires of the duc de St. Simon. Nothing more decousu than both. They tell you what they please-or rather what their editors have pleased to let them tell.

In one respect I shall be less satisfactory. They

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knew and were well acquainted, or thought they were, with the characters of their personages. I' did not at ten years old penetrate characters; and as George I. died at the period where my Reminiscence begins, and was rather a good sort of man than a shining king; and as the duchess of Kendal was no genius, I heard very little of either when he and her power were no more: In fact, the reign of George I. was little more than the proem to the history of England under the house of Brunswic. That family was established here by surmounting a rebellion; to which settlement perhaps the phrensy of the South Sea scheme contributed, by diverting the national attention from the game of faction to the delirium of stock-jobbing; and even faction was split into fractions by the quarrel between the king and the heir apparent-another interlude which authorises me to call the reign of George I. a proem to the history of the reigning house of Brunswic, so successively agitated by parallel feuds.

Commençons.

As my first hero was going off the stage before I ought to have come upon it, it will be necessary to tell you, why the said two personages happened to meet just two nights before they were to part for ever; a rencounter that barely enables me to give you a general idea of the former's person and of his mistress's-or, as has been supposed, his wife's.

As I was the youngest by eleven years of sir Robert Walpole's children by his first wife, and was extremely weak and delicate, as you see me

still, though with no constitutional complaint till I had the gout after forty; and as my two sisters * were consumptive and died of consumptions; the supposed necessary care of me (and I have overheard persons saying, "That child cannot possibly live") so engrossed the attention of my mother, that compassion and tenderness soon became extreme fondness: and as the infinite good nature of my father never thwarted any of his children, he suffered me to be too much indulged, and permitted her to gratify the first vehement inclination that ever I expressed, and which, as I have never since felt any enthusiasm for royal persons, I must suppose that the female attendants in the family must have put into my head, to long to see the king. This childish caprice was so strong, that my mother solicited the duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the honour of kissing his majesty's hand before he set out for Hanover.--A favour so unusual to be asked for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to be refused to the wife of the first minister for her darling child: yet not being proper to be made a precedent, it was settled to be in private and at night.

Accordingly, the night but one before the king began his last journey, my mother carried me at ten at night to the apartment of the countess of Walsingham,+ on the ground-floor towards the garden at St. James's, which opened into that of her aunt the duchess of Kendal: apartments occu

*Katherine Walpole, and Mary viscountess Malpas. + Melusina Schulemberg, niece of the duchess of Kendal, created countess of Walsingham, and afterwards married to the famous Philip Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield.

pied by George II. after his queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth.

Notice being given that the king was come down to supper, lady Walsingham took me alone into the duchess's ante-room, where we found alone the king and her. I knelt down, and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother.

The person of the king is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark tie wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. So entirely was he my object, that I do not believe I once looked at the duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond his majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady; but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her dress was.

My childish loyalty, and the condescension in gratifying it, were, I suppose, causes that contributed very soon afterwards to make me shed a flood of tears for that sovereign's death, when with the other scholars at Eton college I walked in procession to the proclamation of the successor; and which (though I think they partly fell because I' imagined it became the son of a prime-minister to be more concerned than other boys), were no doubt imputed by many of the spectators who were poli