Page 304

Sir Robert Walpole. (1676–1745)

3277

The balance of power.

Speech, 1741.

3278

Flowery oratory he despised. He ascribed to the interested views of themselves or their relatives the declarations of pretended patriots, of whom he said, “All those men have their price.”1

Coxe: Memoirs of Walpole. Vol. iv. p. 369.

3279

Anything but history, for history must be false.

Walpoliana. No. 141.

3280

The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favours.2

Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke St. John. (1678–1751)

3281

I have read somewhere or other,—in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think,—that history is philosophy teaching by examples.3

On the Study and Use of History. Letter 2.

3282

The dignity of history.4

On the Study and Use of History. Letter v.

3283

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature’s God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.5

Letter to Mr. Pope.

Note 1.
”All men have their price” is commonly ascribed to Walpole. [back]

Note 2.
Hazlitt, in his “Wit and Humour,” says, “This is Walpole’s phrase.”

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.—Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld: Maxim 298. [back]

Note 3.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (quoting Thucydides), Ars Rhet. xi. 2, says: “The contact with manners then is education; and this Thucydides appears to assert when he says history is philosophy learned from examples.” [back]

Note 4.
Henry Fielding: Tom Jones, book xi. chap. ii. Horace Walpole: Advertisement to Letter to Sir Horace Mann. Thomas B. Macaulay: History of England, vol. i. chap. i. [back]

Note 5.
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.
Alexander Pope: Essay on Man, epistle iv. line 331. [back]