PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. PUBLIC Opinion has been so unanimous in its commendation of these Letters, that a critical examination of them on this occasion must be superfluous. Whatever difference may exist as to the literary rank of Horace Walpole, his distinguished talent as a letter-writer has not been questioned; and indeed all the excellences that letters can pretend to, his birth, rank, situation, and peculiar talent, well enabled him to impress on them. He delighted in anecdote, and this correspondence approaches as nearly to his favourite Grammont, as letters and memoirs can be expected to assimilate; and "the son of old Sir Robert" had this advantage, that he came prepared, not with the bare historical knowledge of the preceding age, which must usually satisfy others, but with a minute and private history, both of men and things, that made it almost equally familiar to him with his own times This was the knowledge Walpole himself |