To Horace Mann he writes, on March 17, 1778, of the American war, and the threatened war with France:1 'However, every one must know that a French war is not exactly a compensation for the loss of America. We, the herd, the "Achivi," must take the beverage our rulers brew for us.' And again, on June 26 of the same year, he writes to William Mason: 'We, the Achivi, are to be the sufferers, and particularly we the Achivi of these islands.' On February 6, 1789, he is speaking to the Countess of Upper Ossory of his own writings and published works: How many monuments of my folly will survive me! One comfort is, that half the world seems to be as foolish as I have been, and eyes will not be born in plenty enough to read a thousandth part of what each year produces: "Nos numeri sumus," and I shall be no more distinguished than my spare form would be in a living multitude.' On March 20 of the same year he is explaining to Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry the impracticability of going through the crowds to see the illumination in honor of the King's recovery, and illustrates with the line:*

Quicquid delirant Reges, plectuntur Achivi.

For the rest, Walpole's use of Horace remains just as casual as the instances given have already shown. In his youthful letters there is some pretense at serious interest in the classics. In 1735, for the amusement of Thomas Gray, he pens a tour from London to Cambridge,3 in the style of Addison's Remarks on Italy, in which he quotes Horace. Upon his visit to the Grande Chartreuse in September, 1739, he expresses resentment in a letter to 1 Walpole's Letters 10. 208.

2 lbid. 10. 268.

3 Ibid. 14. 105.

4 Ibid. 14. 121.

5 Ibid. 1. 6.

2

Richard West' at the 'stupidity and brutality' of two of his countrymen in their use of mottos in the visitors' book. Both these mottos happen to be adaptations of Horace. In a later letter to him in the same year, he points out what he believes to be a resemblance in Virgil's second Georgic to some lines of Horace. But his interest in such matters wanes as he becomes absorbed in social life. Later in life he is drawn into several literary correspondences, in spite of his protests against a growing reputation for learning, evidently through the establishing of his printing press at Strawberry Hill, and the publication of some of his own writings. Letters to such correspondents as Henry Zouch, John Pinkerton, and especially William Mason, are apt to contain Horatian allusion or quotation. In one of his late letters to John Pinkerton, he, too, though such a spirit is not characteristic of him, echoes the melancholy note so familiar in Horace: 'It is "tempus abire" for me; "lusi satis."

1 Walpole's Letters 1. 38.

2 Ibid. 1. 46: Epd. 2. 39-48.

3 May 15, 1794 (Walpole's Letters 15. 291): E. 2. 2. 214-215.

APPENDIX

REFERENCES TO HORACE IN THE WORKS OF THOSE WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ALREADY CONSIDERED