WALPOLE, UORACE, third son of sir Robert Walpole, first earl of Orford, was born in 1717. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. After finishing his education, he traveled abroad for some years, principally in Italy, where he seems to have acquired those tastes for which he afterward became so well known. In 1741 he returned to England, and took his seat in parliament. But he had no taste for politics, and never took any active part in public life. In 1747 he purchased a piece of ground near Twicken ham. Here he built his famous mansion—Strawberry Hill. Its erection and decoration may almost be said to have formed the principal occupation of his long life. In 1758 he published his Catalogue (o" Royal and Xoble Authors. • This was followed by The Castle of Otranto; The Mysterious Mother; and the Historic Doubts as the Life and Reign of Richard ILL The works, however, to which he owes the preservation of his name are his Letters. These will always be interesting as pictures and records of the society and fashionable gossip of his day. Their interest is, however, considerably marred by their palpable want of truthfulness. On the death of his nephew in 1791 he became fourth
earl of Orford. He died in his 80th year on March 2, 1797. "The faults of Horace Walpole's head and heart," says Macaulay, "are indeed sufficiently glaring. His writ ings, it is true, rank as high among the delicacies of intellectual epicures as the Stras burg pie among the dishes described in Almanach des Gourmands. But as the pate" do foie Bras owes its excellence to the diseases of the wretched animal which furnishes it, and would for nothing if it were not made of livers preternaturally swollen, so none but an unhealthy and disorganized mind could have produced such literary lux uries as the works of Walpole The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to hint little. Serious business was a trifle to him, and trifles were his serious business."—See Letters, edited by Mr. Peter Cunningham (8 vols. 1857); also Macaulay's Essay on Let lers of Horace Walpole.