The extraordinary pains taken by Lord Orford to correct and improve his Memoirs, and prepare them for publication, afford no less convincing proof of his intentions in the legacy of his work. The whole of the Memoirs now published have been written over twice, and the early part three times. The first sketches or foul copies of the work are in his own hand-writing; then follows what he calls the corrected and transcribed copy, which is also written by himself; and this third or last copy, extending to the end of 1755, is written by his secretary or amanuensis, Mr. Kirkgate, with some corrections by himself, and the notes on the blank pages, opposite to the fair copy, entirely in his own hand. This last copy was bound into two regular volumes, with etchings from designs furnished by Bentley and Muntz, to serve as a frontispiece to the whole work, and as head-pieces for each chapter, explanations of which were subjoined at the end.
So much for the authenticity of the present work, and obvious intention of the Author that after a sufficient lapse of years it should be published. Of the Author himself, so well known by his numerous publications, little need be said, except to give the dates of his entrance into Parliament, and of his retirement from public life, with some few observations on his political character and connexions.
Horace Walpole, afterwards Earl of Orford, was third son of the celebrated Sir Robert Walpole. He was born on the 5th of October, 1717, and brought into Parliament in 1741, for the borough of Callington. At the general election in 1747, he was returned a second time for the same borough; and in 1754 he came into Parliament for Castle Rising. On the death of his uncle, Lord Walpole, of Wolterton, in 1757, he accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, in order to succeed his cousin, become Lord Walpole, in the representation of Lynn Regis, “the Corporation of which had such reverence for his father’s memory, that they would not bear distant relations while he had sons living.”[4] At the general election for 1761, he was again returned for Lynn without opposition; but being threatened with a contested election, and heartily tired of politics, from which he had in a great measure withdrawn after the accession of his friends to office in 1765, he voluntarily retired from Parliament in 1768. In 1791 he succeeded his nephew as Earl of Orford, and died on the 2nd of March, 1797, in the eightieth year of his age.