eldest son. From his own account his abilities were not remarkable. ‘I was a blockhead, and pushed up above my parts,’ he wrote to Conway (Corresp. i. 307). But there are other evidences that his powers were by no means contemptible. Among his schoolmates were his cousins, the two Conways—Henry Seymour (afterwards Marshal Conway) [q. v.], and his elder brother Francis Seymour Conway, lord Hertford [q. v.] —Charles Hanbury-Williams [q. v.], and George Augustus Selwyn (1719–1791) [q. v.] Another contemporary and associate was William Cole (1714–1782) [q. v.], the antiquary. But his closest allies were George and Charles Montagu, the sons of Brigadier-general Edward Montagu, and these formed with Walpole what was known as the ‘Triumvirate.’ A still more important group, which consisted of Walpole, Thomas Gray (afterwards the poet), Richard West, and Thomas Ashton (1716–1775) [q. v.], was styled the ‘Quadruple Alliance;’ and this, which was a combination of a more literary and poetical character than the other, had not a little to do with Walpole's future character. The influence of Gray in particular, both upon his point of view and his method of expression, has never yet been sufficiently traced out. While at Eton (27 May 1731) he was entered at Lincoln's Inn, but he never went thither. He left Eton on 23 Sept. 1734, proceeding, after an interval of residence in London, to his father's college at Cambridge (King's), where he began in March 1735. At Cambridge he found several of the Eton set, including Cole and the Conways. West had gone to Oxford, but Gray and Ashton were at Cambridge, the one as a fellow-commoner at Peterhouse, the other at King's. Of Walpole's university studies we know little but the names of his tutors. In civil law and anatomy he attended the lectures of Francis Dickins and William Battie [q. v.] respectively; his drawing-master was Bernard Lens [q. v.], and his mathematical professor the blind Professor Saunderson [q. v.], who appears to have told him frankly that he could never learn what he was trying to teach him (Corresp. ix. 467). In the classics his success was greater, but not remarkable, and he confessed to Pinkerton (Walpoliana, i. 105) that he never was a good Greek scholar. In French and Italian he was, however, fairly proficient, and already at Cambridge had made some literary essays, one being a copy of verses in the ‘Gratulatio Academiæ Cantabrigiensis’ of 1736 addressed to Frederick, prince of Wales, on his marriage with Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha.
On 20 Aug. 1737 Lady Walpole died, and was buried in Westminster Abbey under a eulogistic epitaph composed by her youngest son. Soon after this his father appointed him inspector of imports and exports in the custom-house, a post which he subsequently resigned, in January 1738, on receiving that of usher of the exchequer. Later in the year he came into ‘two other little patent-places,’ a comptrollership of the pipe and clerkship of the estreats, which had been held for him by a substitute. These three offices must have then been worth about 1,200l. a year, and were due of course to his father's interest as prime minister. He quitted King's College in 1739, and at the end of March in that year left England in company with Gray on the regulation grand tour. Walpole was to be paymaster, but Gray was to be independent. They made a short stay in Paris and then went to Rheims, where they remained three months to improve themselves in the language. From Rheims they went to Dijon and Lyons, where, after an excursion to Geneva, Walpole found letters from his father telling him to go on to Italy. Accordingly they crossed the Alps, travelling from Turin to Genoa, and ultimately, in the Christmas of 1739, entered Florence. Here they were welcomed by the English residents, and particularly by Mr. (afterwards Sir Horace) Mann [q. v.], the British minister-plenipotentiary, a distant relative of Walpole, and subsequently one of his most favoured correspondents. With a brief interval they resided in the Casa Ambrosio, Mann's villa on the Arno, for fifteen months. Walpole, when his first passion for antiquities had cooled, gave himself up to the pleasures of the place; Gray continued to take notes of statues and galleries and to copy music. They paid a flying visit to Rome, but they remained at Florence until May 1741, when they began their homeward journey. At Reggio a misunderstanding arose, of which the cause is obscure, and they separated. On Gray's side this was never explained; but after his death Walpole took all the blame on himself (Corresp. v. 441; Walpoliana, i. 95). Shortly afterwards he fell ill of quinsy, which might have ended seriously but for the timely advent of Joseph Spence [q. v.], who summoned a doctor from Florence. Upon his recovery Walpole returned to England, reaching Dover on 12 Sept. 1741 (O.S.) In his absence he had been returned member for Callington in Cornwall (14 May 1741).
During his stay in Italy he had addressed to his friend Ashton, now tutor to the Earl of Plymouth, an ‘Epistle from Florence’ in Dryden's manner; and he soon began to
