Horace Walpole. 187 



readers as a writer of Memoirs and Letters, 

 presents himself to our notice as an authority 

 on the present subject, but as an authority 

 not less different in value from Bacon than 

 the characters and intellects of the two men 

 differed. In fact, when we look at the 

 lapse of time between them, it dwindles into 

 secondary consequence before the immense 

 disparity and contrast between Elizabeth's 

 "young Lord Keeper" and the master of 

 Strawberry Hill. Both were men of genius ; 

 but their gifts were of a totally different order. 

 Bacon could not have written Walpole's 

 Letters, nor could Walpole have given us 

 the Novum Organum. Nay, he could not 

 have produced the Sylva Sylvarum. 



Walpole's Essay on Modern Gardening was 

 finished in 1770, but was not printed till 

 1785, when it came from the Strawberry Hill 

 press with a French translation by the Due 

 de Nivernois. We have only to turn over 

 the pages of this production to arrive at 

 the conclusion that the author, if we had 

 happened to possess no independent or 

 collateral knowledge of him, was a member 



