Walpole's shorter pieces in prose include an essay on landscape gardening, which helped to define this branch of artistic activity, some periodical essays, and diverse journalism. Finally, Walpole served as a handmaiden to literature as editor, publisher, and printer.
In the "Brief Notes" on his own life which he compiled in 1779, he tells us, "I was born on Arlington Street near St. James's London Sept. 24, 1717, O[1d] S[tyle]." He mentions his godparents, but not his parents, perhaps assuming that everyone would be able to identify his father as the great Robert Walpole, who at this date was on the brink of his long period of power as Britain's longest-serving prime minister. Young Horatio's mother, née Catherine Shorter, was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and she had already borne her husband five children, of whom two sons and a daughter survived along with her youngest child, Horatio, who, from his earliest years, was usually called Horace.
Recent scholarship has found no substantial evidence to support an allegation deriving ultimately from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to the effect that Horace was the son not of Robert Walpole but of a member of the famous Hervey family.
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