Horace Walpole. 189 



These pages have to do with a very frac- 

 tional portion of the labours of either. But 

 one has only to turn from the Section where 

 I afforded some select specimens of the 

 Sylva Sylvarum, to the present, where I deal 

 with Walpole, to see at a glance how 

 differently the earlier and later writer set 

 about their work. The whole thought of 

 Bacon was of his subject and of the best 

 mode of rendering his experiments ser- 

 viceable and his meaning clear. In the 

 book of which I am now going to give a 

 short account, there seems throughout to 

 be an anxiety to crowd into his canvas (as 

 it were) glimpses of the country seats of all 

 the great ladies and gentlemen who had 

 the good fortune to be known by him. 

 It almost sounds in our ears like a 

 concession, where he places a person of 

 quality like Sir William Temple below 

 Milton ; but it is hard to resist a smile 

 where he tells us that 



" the description of Eden [by Milton] is a warmer 

 or more just picture of the present style than Claud 

 Lorrain could have painted from Hagley or Stour- 



