CHAPTER V.

HORACE WALPOLE AT CAMBRIDGE. 1735 TO 1738.

SIR ROBERT WALPOLE, when a youth, possessing but the moderate expectations of the younger son of a Norfolk squire, was fain to be satisfied with being placed on the foundation at Eton, with which King's College, Cambridge, is in connection; but Horace, though also a younger son, enjoyed prospects much too favourable to render the same assistance necessary, and therefore his College might be left to his own or his friends' selection. Judging of the means and dignity of the Walpole family at this period, it might be supposed that the choice would have fallen upon Trinity. This noble establishment was then under the mastership of that incomparable critic, Dr. Bentley. Science had placed here one of her very ablest representatives, in the immortal Newton-and poetry had found delegates scarcely less worthy of honour, in the persons of Cowley and Dryden.* But all the im

* Among the poets who studied at this college, was old Tusser, and he thus quaintly and gratefully records his residence

here:

posing recommendations of Trinity were overlooked in favour of King's College.

Horace Walpole therefore went to the same College in which his father had preceded him.

This had

been a nursing mother of Bishops and Statesmen, Judges, and Ambassadors. The list is too numerous to transcribe, but among them we find Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir William Temple, Sir Robert Morton, and Judge Hall. To the heart of Horace it was still more endeared, as the College of his favourite, Waller.

We have very little information respecting young Walpole's course of study at the University. He did study, undoubtedly; for as he was not to be made a mere

"To London hence, to Cambridge thence,
With thanks to thee, O Trinity,

That to thy hall, so passing all,
I got at last.

There joy I felt, there trim I dwelt,

There, heaven from hell, I shifted well,

With learned men, a number then,

The time I past."

And again, when he fled from the plague of 1574–5, he states that he found refuge and solace in the same noble institution :— "When gains were gone, and years grew on,

And Death did cry From London fly!'
In Cambridge then I found again

school-boy at Eton, it was not likely that he should become more eager for the boisterous sports then prevailing at Cambridge. The routine of daily life at College had altered considerably since the days of Edward VI., at which time it is thus described :

"There be divers there, which rise daily betwixt four and five of the clock in the morning, and from five until six of the clock use common prayer, with an exhortation of God's Word, in a common chapel, and from six unto ten of the clock use ever either private study or common lectures. At ten of the clock they go to dinner, where as they be content with a penny piece of beefe amongst four, having a few (little) porridge made of the broth of the same beef with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else. After this slender dinner, they go either teaching or learning untill five of the clock in the evening; when, as they have a supper not much better than their dinner, immediately after the which they go either to reasoning in problems, or into some other study, untill it be nine or ten of the clock, and there being without fire, are fain to walk, or run up and down half an hour to get a heat on their feet, when they go to bed."*

This sort of diet and discipline may have been endured by the rising generation of the sixteenth century, but the youth of the eighteenth would not easily have submitted to it. For them the "penny piece of beefe amongst four" would have been quite as little to their taste, as the running to and fro in fireless rooms to circulate the blood in their feet, pre viously to going to bed. The scholar of Edward VI.'s day, could he return to this lower world, would marvel greatly at the luxurious indulgences allowed to his successor of the present; and, although a hundred years ago, the march of collegiate civilization had not

* Baker.

made such rapid strides as it has in this period of ultra refinement, the mode of life allowed to a student of Horace Walpole's position, possessed few features in common with that of his predecessor.

There were amusements of various kinds accessible to the collegians which were eagerly embraced by the majority. Every species of pleasure was at hand to attract the idler; his only difficulty was to make a selection. There was cock-fighting and badger-baiting, cricket and skittles-boating, racing, and every other sport then recognized as manly. But at college as at school, young Walpole found no gratification in the rude pleasures of his associates. It is much to his credit that the attractions of the finest main of cocks ever known were lost upon him; and his delicate health, had his taste been even less refined than it was, would have kept him from sharing in the rough pleasures of his contemporaries. He pursued his studies he attended lectures-he proceeded sedately in a quiet routine of life; and either his conduct was so satisfactory, or his name so recommendatory of him to the authorities, that he was often quoted by them with unqualified admiration.

But it must not be thought that he was always studious. The boy who had strolled through the pleasant places of Eton, with his thoughts on Waller's poetry, and his eyes on the bright landscape upon which that charming poet had loved to gaze, was not when older and wiser grown, likely to shut his eyes and his heart to the poetical associations which were

everywhere awakened at Cambridge. There were places-there were scenes around and about him wherever he moved, that were sacred to song, to literature, or to science. Milton had been a scholar of Christ's College. The mulberry tree, planted by his honoured hand, flourished bravely in the college garden—the neighbouring walks were hallowed by his tread. He who had traced with curious interest the footsteps of the Court poet of the Restoration in his school grounds, must have lingered with feelings much more intense, about the haunts of the poet of the Commonwealth.

It is a singular fact, that though in after years the mind of Horace Walpole exhibited a marked preference towards courts and courtiers, it showed both at this period and much later, a bias equally conspicuous towards Republicanism. There can be little doubt that these antagonistic impressions were caused by his two great sources of poetic study, Waller and Milton.* His sentiments respecting the copy of Magna Charta and the warrant for the execution of Charles I., which

* Walpole's admiration of Milton he has recorded in one of his letters, written as late as the year 1785, in which he says: "Milton had such superior merit, that I will only say, that if his angels, his Satan, and his Adam, have as much dignity as the Apollo Belvidere, his Eve has all the delicacy and graces of the Venus of Medicis; as his description of Eden has the colouring of Albano. Milton's tenderness imprints ideas as graceful as Guido's Madonnas, and the Allegro,'Penseroso,' and Comus,' might be denominated from the three Graces, as the Italians gave similar ideas to two or three of Petrarch's best sonnets."- "Walpole Letters." Vol. 6, p. 249.

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