Note 35 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS:

Walpole’s characters are not often to be relied on, witness his injustice to Hogarth as a painter, and his insolent calumny of Charles I. His literary opinions of James I. and of Sidney might have been written without any acquaintance with the works he has so maliciously criticised. In his account of Sidney he had silently passed over the “Defence of Poetry;” and in his second edition has written this avowal, that “he had forgotten it; a proof that I at least did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he acquired.” How heartless was the polished cynicism which could dare to hazard this false criticism! Nothing can be more imposing than his volatile and caustic criticisms on the works of James I., yet he had probably never opened that folio he so poignantly ridicules. He doubts whether two pieces, “The Prince’s Cabala,” and “The Duty of a King in his Royal Office,” were genuine productions of James I. The truth is that both these works are nothing more than extracts printed with those separate titles and drawn from the king’s “Basilicon Doron.” He had probably neither read the extracts nor the original.