Horace Walpole

Walpole had by nature a propensity, and by constitution a plea, for being captious and querulential, for he was a martyr to the gout. He wrote prose and published it; he composed verses and circulated them, and was an author, who seemed to play at hide-and-seek with the public. There was a mysterious air of consequence in his private establishment of a domestic printing press, that seemed to augur great things, but performed little.