He had, undoubtedly, great talents and great virtues.  He was not, indeed, like the leaders of the party which opposed his government, a brilliant orator.  He was not a profound scholar, like Carteret, or a wit and a fine gentleman, like Chesterfield.  In all these respects his deficiencies were remarkable.  His literature consisted of a scrap or two of Horace and an anecdote or two from the end of the Dictionary.  His knowledge of history was so limited that, in the great debate on the Excise Bill, he was forced to ask Attorney-General Yorke who Empson and Dudley were.  His manners were a little too coarse and boisterous even for that age of Westerns and Topehalls.  When he ceased to talk of politics, he could talk of nothing but women and he dilated on his favourite theme with a freedom which shocked even that plain-spoken generation, and which was quite unsuited to his age and station.  The noisy revelry of his summer festivities at Houghton gave much scandal to grave people, and annually drove his kinsman and colleague, Lord Townshend, from the neighbouring mansion of Rainham.

But, however ignorant Walpole might be of general history and of general literature, he was better acquainted than any man of his day with what it concerned him most to know, mankind, the English nation, the Court, the House of Commons, and the Treasury.  Of foreign affairs he knew little; but his judgment was so good that his little knowledge went very far.  He was an excellent parliamentary debater, an excellent parliamentary tactician, an excellent man of business.  No man ever brought more industry or more method to the transacting of affairs.  No minister in his time did so much; yet no minister had so much leisure.

He was a good-natured man who had during thirty years seen nothing but the worst parts of human nature in other men.  He was familiar with the malice of kind people, and the perfidy of honourable people.  Proud men had licked the dust before him.  Patriots had begged him to come up to the price of their puffed and advertised integrity.  He said after his fall that it was a dangerous thing to be a minister, that there were few minds which would not be injured by the constant spectacle of meanness and depravity.  To his honour it must be confessed that few minds have come out of such a trial so little damaged in the most important parts.  He retired, after more than twenty years of supreme power, with a temper not soured, with a heart not hardened, with simple tastes, with frank manners, and with a capacity for friendship.  No stain of treachery, of ingratitude, or of cruelty rests on his memory.  Factious hatred, while flinging on his name every other foul aspersion, was compelled to own that he was not a man of blood.  This would scarcely seem a high eulogium on a statesman of our times.  It was then a rare and honourable distinction.  The contests of parties in England had long been carried on with a ferocity unworthy of a civilised people.