Walpole is now an English classic. It is striking, to see a man of talent thus vindicating his genius in the grave, making a posthumous defence of his character, and compelling posterity to acknowledge the distinctions of which he was defrauded by the petulance of his time. His example and his success administer a moral which ought not to be thrown away. There are many individuals in our own time, who might thus nobly avenge themselves on the injustice of their age. The Frenchman's maxim, _Il n'y a que bonheur, et malheur_, is unanswerably true; and not only men of the finest faculties are often ill used by fortune, but they are often the worst used. Their conscious superiority renders them fastidious of the lower arts of success; their sense of honour disqualifies them for all those services which require flexibility of conscience; and their sensibility to injustice makes them retort public injury, by disdainfully abandoning the struggle, and retiring from the vulgar bustle of the world.
Let such men, then, glance over the pages of Walpole, and see how productive may be made the hours of obscurity; how vigorously the oblivion of one generation may be redeemed by the honours of another; and how effectively the humble man of genius may survive the glaring favourites of an ephemeral good fortune.
Walpole, in his lifetime, was either pitied as a disappointed official, or laughed at as a collector of cracked china; but who either pities or laughs at him now? Posterity delights in the products of his study, while the prosperous tribe of his parliamentary day are forgotten, or remembered only through those products of his study. The Pulteneys, Granvilles, Lyttletons, and Wyndhams, are extinguished, and their chief interest now arises from Walpole's fixing their names in his works; as an architect uses the busts and masks of antiquity to decorate the gates, or crowns the buttresses of his temple.
Lord Holland's preface contains the following brief statement relative to the present publication.
Among the papers found at Strawberry Hill, after the death of Lord Orford, was the following memorandum, wrapped in an envelope, on which was written, "Not to be opened till after my will."