Thus, with a mind which, to the end, was so active and so happily constituted as to be able to take an interest in everything around him, and, even when more than seventy years old, to make new friends to replace those who had dropped off, he passed a long, a happy, and far from an useless life.  When he was seventy-four he succeeded to his father’s peerage, on the death of his elder brother; but he did not long enjoy the title, by which, indeed, he was not very careful to be distinguished, and in the spring of 1797 he died, within a few months of his eightieth birthday.

A great writer of the last generation, whose studies were of a severer cast, and who, conscious perhaps of his own unfitness to shine at the tea-table of fashionable ladies, was led by that feeling to undervalue the lighter social gifts which formed conspicuous ingredients in Walpole’s character, has denounced him not only as frivolous in his tastes, but scarcely above mediocrity in his abilities (a sentence to which Scott’s description of him as “a man of great genius” may be successfully opposed); and is especially severe on what he terms his affectation in disclaiming the compliments bestowed on his learning by some of his friends.  The expressed estimate of his acquirements and works which so offended Lord Macaulay was that “there is nobody so superficial, that, except a little history, a little poetry, a little painting, and some divinity, he knew nothing; he had always lived in the busy world; had always loved pleasure; played loo till two or three in the morning; haunted auctions—­in short, did not know so much astronomy as would carry him to Knightsbridge; not more physic than a physician; nor, in short, anything that is called science.  If it were not that he laid up a little provision in summer, like the ant, he should be as ignorant as the people he lived with."[1] In Lord Macaulay’s view, Walpole was never less sincere than when pronouncing such a judgement on his works.  He sees in it nothing but an affectation, fishing for further praises; and, fastening on his account of his ordinary occupations, he pronounces that a man of fifty should be ashamed of playing loo till after midnight.

[Footnote 1:  Letter to Mann, Feb. 6, 1760.]

In spite, however, of Lord Macaulay’s reproof, something may be said in favour of a man who, after giving his mornings to works which display no little industry as well as talent, unbent his bow in the evening at lively supper-parties, or even at the card-table with fair friends, where the play never degenerated into gambling.  And his disparagement of his learning, which Lord Macaulay ridicules as affectation, a more candid judgement may fairly ascribe to sincere modesty.  For it is plain from many other passages in his letters, that he really did undervalue his own writings; and that the feeling which he thus expressed was genuine is to a great extent proved by the patience, if not thankfulness, with which he allowed his friend Mann