The most accomplished men of those times have told us that there was scarcely any subject on which Somers was not competent to instruct and to delight.  He had never travelled; and, in that age, an Englishman who had not travelled was generally thought incompetent to give an opinion on works of art.  But connoisseurs familiar with the masterpieces of the Vatican and of the Florentine gallery allowed that the taste of Somers in painting and sculpture was exquisite.  Philology was one of his favourite pursuits.  He had traversed the whole vast range of polite literature, ancient and modern.  He was at once a munificent and severely judicious patron of genius and learning.  Locke owed opulence to Somers.  By Somers Addison was drawn forth from a cell in a college.  In distant countries the name of Somers was mentioned with respect and gratitude by great scholars and poets who had never seen his face.  He was the benefactor of Leclerc.  He was the friend of Filicaja.  Neither political nor religious differences prevented him from extending his powerful protection to merit.  Hickes, the fiercest and most intolerant of all the nonjurors, obtained, by the influence of Somers, permission to study Teutonic antiquities in freedom and safety.  Vertue, a strict Roman Catholic, was raised by the discriminating and liberal patronage of Somers from poverty and obscurity to the first rank among the engravers of the age.

The generosity with which Somers treated his opponents was the more honourable to him because he was no waverer in politics.  From the beginning to the end of his public life he was a steady Whig.  His voice was indeed always raised, when his party was dominant in the State, against violent and vindictive counsels; but he never forsook his friends, even when their perverse neglect of his advice had brought them to the verge of ruin.

His powers of mind and his acquirements were not denied, even by his detractors.  The most acrimonious Tories were forced to admit, with an ungracious snarl, which increased the value of their praise, that he had all the intellectual qualities of a great man, and that in him alone, among his contemporaries, brilliant eloquence and wit were to be found associated with the quiet and steady prudence which ensures success in life.  It is a remarkable fact, that, in the foulest of all the many libels that were published against him, he was slandered under the name of Cicero.  As his abilities could not be questioned, he was charged with irreligion and immorality.  That he was heterodox all the country vicars and foxhunting squires firmly believed; but as to the nature and extent of his heterodoxy there were many different opinions.  He seems to have been a Low Churchman of the school of Tillotson, whom he always loved and honoured; and he was, like Tillotson, called by bigots a Presbyterian, an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, and an Atheist.