Eric Gillett
Scott considered Horace Walpole 'the best letter-writer in the English language', Byron spoke of his letters as ' incomparable ', and Austin Dobson wrote that 'for diversity of interest and perpetual entertainment, for the constant surprises of an unique species of wit, for happy and unexpected turns of phrase, for graphic characterisation and clever anecdote, for playfulness, pungency, irony, persiflage, there is nothing in English like his correspondence'.
'If the charm of Walpole's letters must be expressed in a single phrase, it is this: their author was the most delightful of gossips. Like a good many other very intelligent men, he had plenty of time for trivialities and gossiped as readably to his correspondents about a dinner or a piece of scandal as about a war or an earthquake.
Walpole himself was quite conscious of the worth of a good letter. 'Nothing', he wrote, 'would give so just an idea of an age as genuine letters; nay, history waits for its last seal from them '.