 In 1924 Ernest Hemingway wrote into a short story a comparison of G K Chesterton and Walpole , concluding that the former was the better man , the latter a better writer and both were classics . Walpole could be sensitive about his literary reputation and often took adverse criticism badly . When Hilaire Belloc praised P G Wodehouse as the best English writer of their day , Walpole took it amiss , to the amusement of Wodehouse who regarded Belloc 's plaudit as " a gag , to get a rise out of serious @-@ minded authors whom he disliked " . Wodehouse was not a great admirer of Walpole ; his own scrupulous craftsmanship , with drafts polished over and over again , was the opposite of Walpole 's hastily written and seldom @-@ revised prose . He also viewed Walpole 's sensitivity to criticism as absurd . Walpole was not always as oversensitive as Wodehouse supposed . The critic James Agate was a friend despite his regular rude remarks about Walpole 's prose , and when Walpole discovered that Agate had written a spoof of the Herries " Lakeland " style , he made him promise to print it in the next published volume of his diaries . 
