MEMOIRS OF HORACE WALPOLE. CHAPTER I. THE WALPOLES AND THE MARLBOROUGHS. THE great historical families of England, are a class apart. They can afford to be independent of genealogical pretensions, and indifferent to the honours of Norman descent; for it can be no distinction to the inheritors of the name of an eminent statesman, a a famous commander, or a literary genius, to trace their ancestry back to the middle ages, through a wearying succession of the obscure illustrious. Men who have made themselves honourably celebrated, may be said to create their family. The greatest name ever inserted in the Herald's books, was that of the Stratford wool-stapler. The VOL. I. B Libro d'Oro of mind, if such a work existed, would be a book of reference of far higher interest than the ordinary aristocratic dictionaries, and the compiler might put forth the claims of noble intellect, in terms as lofty as are commonly devoted to the claims of noble blood. Some writers have taken the trouble to prove that the Walpoles have been settled in Norfolk since that fashionable epoch, the Norman invasion. This is of the less moment, as from the time of Reginald de Walpole, the companion of the Conqueror, they seem to have done nothing worthy of remembrance. The Rev. William Cole, who may be known to the reader by his manuscript collections in the British Museum, diligently employed himself in exploring traces of the early Walpoles: one only he discovered worth preserving; it was found in Italy, where an English gentleman, styled "Signor Walpole," filled the office of President of an academy called the Apathists, existing in Florence in the sixteenth century.* This connection with literature is at least curious, and we cannot but think it more creditable to an Englishman in those cut-and-thrust times, to have been selected by an intellectual people as the chief of one of their literary institutions, than, like many of his countrymen, to have sought distinction in the ordinary path of mercenary soldiering. A second instance of an association with literature occurs in the patronage *MS. letter from Cole to Horace Walpole, formerly at Strawberry Hill. |