may be appreciated, and thus the exertions of each performer be successively analyzed. On the other hand, a writer may trace the progress of the art of painting by its effects upon the spectator. He must here appeal to his individual feelings, which form but an uncertain criterion: that which may affect him in one way may prove to affect another differently; and a collection of such experience would, after all, give a very vague and unimpressive notion of the progress of the art, or its actual state at any particular period. These difficulties have been seldom overcome; and in the history of painting, most writers have converted their task into the much easier undertaking of a history of painters. The world is glad to hear of the incidents that have befallen men who are eminent in any thing, and has in this instance, as in others, mistaken the natural feelings of humanity for the love of a particular art. The mistake is an innocent one. A genuine history of painting would interest painters alone: while anecdotes of both the art, its professors, and their productions, are easily understood; are of a character to rouse the attention, and, in the minds of the intelligent, actually subside into a virtual history, of which they are in truth the real materials. Horace Walpole was too clear-sighted a man to mistake the substance for the essence; and too little of a quack to attempt to deceive others. Perhaps he wanted the industry to put that crust of phraseology about his facts which is alone sufficient to give the world assurance of history. A little more form, and his Anecdotes might have assumed a more imposing title: for in truth they are not wanting in the distinguishing traits which mark the works of a true historian. There is no want of philosophical remark; no want of general deduction from particular premises; no dulness in discriminating between the characteristics of different men and different periods; neither is there any deficiency of enlarged knowledge, or marks of a taste which has not been cultivated by the study of the best examples; and we are, in every page, convinced of the presence of the enlivening power of the imagination, by the cheerful rapidity with which the mind receives and retains the contents of his pages.

We conceive the world has not done justice to the reputation of Horace Walpole. The publication of his Letters forced it to read, to laugh, and admire: and the respect which the public always entertains, virtually if not nominally, for its entertainers, has lately raised him to a high level in one character. But his serious claims as a writer of judgment, of originality, and perspicacity, still remain unsettled or lowly estimated: while accusations of meanness, of pride, and affectation, mixed up with depreciatory notions of his pursuits, have altogether served, not to blacken, but to fritter away a well-merited reputation. If,

indeed, a man may be said to merit that which he does not seek, or hold in much estimation, Horace Walpole wrote to satisfy himself, without labouring for the good opinion of his contemporaries, or even of posterity. Had not severe motives. urged on the genius of others, much of what now attracts the admiration of mankind would remain uncreated. The pain of labour soon balances the pleasure of production in those cases where a man simply writes from the satisfaction of registering his experience. Where, indeed, the faculties are uncommonly vigorous, and the senses peculiarly lively, this pleasure rises into a motive of great force; and great deeds may prove the result. Walpole was, however, somewhat phlegmatic, and very fastidious, by constitution; so that it required the sterner excitements of necessity to rouse him to the performance of acts, the capability for which, we have no doubt, was formed by nature. But born to the enjoyment of rank, and wealth, and consideration, he must remain content for the present with the reputation he has acquired: a dilettante, a lover of virtu, and an amateur of literature.

The materials of the Anecdotes of Painters and Painting in England were supplied by the memoranda of Vertue, who had long been employed upon collecting the facts for a history of painting in this country. Walpole acknowledges and explains the extent of his obligations to these papers with more than candour. We know not what spirit Vertue might have infused into his dry collections; but we cannot be mistaken in pronouncing that all the mind and taste now perceivable in this work is manifestly Walpole's.

The original work, as published by Walpole, is now become, not scarce, but rare; and as the reading world has so extended, a demand for a work deserving of the honour of being accounted classical was felt by all lovers of the arts. A mere reprint would have been acceptable; but we are now presented with an edition so sumptuous, so splendid, and so complete in every respect, that the author himself, had it had the charm of being privately printed, would have considered it as one of the choicest ornaments of his cabinet. But so much better a patron is the public than an amateur, and so much more powerful is a publisher who merely lends his money to a work, sometimes but on slender security, than a private lover of the arts and literature who sinks his fortune in a hobby, that the stepfather of this work, a plain bookseller in Fleet-street, is able to do ten times more for the child of his adoption than the Hon. Horace Walpole, with a purse and a life dedicated to the pursuit of virtu. Beautiful printing and exquisite paper are in the present age to be procured merely by willingness to go to the expense: it is not so with plates; they do

not only require a great outlay, but a publisher who wishes to excel in works like the one before us must possess something more than capital; he must have taste to choose his engravers, he must have experience to judge of their efforts, he must have industry and vigilance to collect information respecting the best authorities, and a good connexion to enable him to act upon it: all these qualities, and more, must be combined by a quiet enthusiasm, which keeps him always advancing towards his point without bustle or offence, and which burns in his mind like a slow fever in the body, until the last stroke is given to his work, and all is declared complete.

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The portraits of the painters, and the other subjects of engraving in Mr. Walpole's original edition, were but scratchy performances; the higher efforts of the art were not only not common, but book-plates were considered as requiring no great excellence then, as Mr. Walpole's views were any thing but those of gain, and as every sum was disbursed without expectation of return, it is scarcely generous in the editor of the present edition to remark, that, those engravings rather displayed his parsimony than his patronage of the arts. Collections, too, in those times were not so commonly made, nor so well known; neither was that communication kept up, nor those exhibitions and publications presented to the world, which now enable a connoisseur to take a much larger view of his authorities. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the present edition Mr. Walpole's intentions are more effectually carried into execution than in the work which was produced entirely and immediately under his own inspection.

The literary duties of an editor of the Anecdotes of the Painters and Painting in England were evident enough, but the chance of their being well performed was small; for they demanded a similarity of pursuit, the devotion of a part of many years to the task of collection and illustration, and, above all, a modest ambition of doing all that was necessary, and not too much. Art is no more stationary than science, and the productions of art are proverbially fluctuating and changing. It was particularly desirable that we should know what changes had taken place in the works of art described by Mr. Walpole; that we should have the additional information which has been brought to light since his time by the researches of others; and that his mistakes should be corrected. All this has been excellently done by Mr. Dallaway; but he has done more: he has gone beyond the point where he should have stopped. Commentaries are, in their nature, an evil; and when a necessary one, should be kept down within the smallest possible compass. The distraction caused by frequent references from the text to the notes destroys much of the pleasure of perusal,

and also a great deal of the profit; for it enfeebles the impression, and holds down the mind from a free consideration of the author to an unhappy see-saw between assertion and denial, proposition and corollary, text and illustration. We acknowledge the accuracy, the extent and appropriateness of Mr. Dallaway's information, yet we could have spared much of it. His additional facts respecting the biography of different painters are generally necessary and desirable; so also is his supplementary account of pictures and buildings; but while we should be glad to read his observations elsewhere, many of them are here out of place. His supplements to the chapters, and his dissertation on the controversy respecting taste in gardening and landscape, are altogether superfluous, and serve to throw, if we may be allowed the expression, a farraginous complexion over the work. With this sole censure, namely, that of being somewhat too complete, we must conclude our notice of a book that reflects credit on all concerned in its preparation.

An additional line cannot be better occupied than in pointing out the exquisiteness of the wood-cuts which, in addition to the copper-plates, adorn this edition. The character of ancient architecture, and the effects of picturesque buildings, were never represented with more force and brilliancy than in such cuts as those of Wollaton in Nottinghamshire, and Woolterton Manorhouse in Norfolk, nor were they ever drawn out with greater truth and splendour.

A Collection of State Papers relating to Affairs in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, from the Year 1570 to 1596, transcribed from original Papers, and other authentic Memorials, never before published, left by William Cecill, Lord Burghley, and reposited in the Library at Hatfield House. By William Murdin, B. D. Rector of Merrow, and Vicar of Shalford, in Surrey. Folio, London, 1759, pp. 813.

As this collection is a continuation of the series generally known by the title of " Haynes's Burghley Papers," which were reviewed in our last number, we have thought it best to notice it, before we invite the attention of our readers to any other similar publication, since the two volumes, though edited by different persons, and printed at the interval of nineteen years, form in fact but one work. It embraces the official correspondence of Lord Burghley from the year 1542 to 1596; half a century which was, perhaps, more chequered by a variety of political events than any similar period in British history.

However valuable the volume before us may be to the

historian, it affords but few letters which will interest any other reader than one who is engaged in the laborious task of sifting the motives of the transactions of the times. To him its pages are of great importance, but to others they are far less interesting than the collection of Haynes; for instead of those amusing descriptions of eminent personages with which it abounds, we are here, with very few exceptions, only presented with state papers of the driest description, relating either to Mary Queen of Scots, or to the political relations between this and other countries. We have already said, that the conduct and fate of that unfortunate Princess is a subject upon which it is impossible for us to enter; and we shall consequently take no other notice of the papers to which we allude than thus to refer to them. The editor has very justly remarked in his preface, that

"The lovers of history, who have not patience or leisure to go through these voluminous collections of the Materia Historica, in which it is difficult to weigh the exact value of each single paper, would yet find their account in promoting the publication of them; since it is from the variety and copiousness of such genuine sources, that the lively writer of memoirs (if he is not contemporary with the events which he relates) must derive his most entertaining anecdotes, and the grave historian his most important and authentic facts, and be enabled to join the fulness of information to the strength and elegance of composition."

The first hundred pages are wholly filled with the correspondence of John Lesley, Bishop of Ross, and Morgan, and Charles Baillie, who was then a prisoner in the Tower, on charges of high treason, with the examinations of the said prelate, of Barker, Ileyford, and others, who were suspected of plotting in favour of the Queen of Scots. From this mass of materials for a history of Mary, we shall only extract a few passages. The frequent use of torture' to extort confessions is nowhere better proved than in some of these documents, and a knowledge of which may perhaps undeceive the ignorant admirers of the golden days of Queen Elizabeth." Sir Thomas Smyth, in a letter to Burghley, dated at St. Katherines, 17th Sept. 1571, says,

" I suppose we have gotten so mych as at this tyme is like to be had; yet to-morrow do we intend to bryng a couple of them to the rack, not in eny hope to get eny thyng worthy that payne or feare, but because it is so earnestly commandid unto us."-P. 95.

1 The warrant from the Queen, dated 15th Sept. 1571, for putting these persons to the rack has been printed by Mr. Ellis in his " Original Letters," First Series, vol. ii. p. 261. A description of the kind of torture used on those occasions is given by Dr. Lingard, in a note to his History of the reign of Elizabeth.