Not content with writing and collecting books, Horace in 1757 established a printing press in the grounds of Strawberry Hill. The first printer employed by him was William Robinson; the last, Thomas Kirgate, whose name will often be found in the following extracts. The first work printed at this press was Gray’s “Odes,” with Bentley’s Illustrations. Its other productions include Walpole’s own Royal and Noble Authors, Anecdotes of Painting, Engravers, and Tragedy; his “Description of Strawberry Hill,” and “Fugitive Pieces;” besides several works by other authors, such as Bentley’s “Lucan,” Lord Herbert’s Life, a translation of Hentzner’s “Travels,” and Lord Whitworth’s “Account of Russia;” as well as small collections of verses by sundry friends. These “Strawberry Hill” editions are now scarce, and command high prices. The rest of our author’s career may be summed up in a few words. His eldest brother had died early, and had been succeeded by an only son, whose profligacy and occasional fits of insanity caused much trouble. In December, 1791, when seventy-four years of age, Horace became, by the death of this nephew, Earl of Orford, which made little addition to his income, the family estate being heavily incumbered. The inheritance was far from welcome. In a letter to a friend, he says he does not understand the management of such an estate, and is too old to learn. “A source of lawsuits among my near relations, endless conversations with lawyers, and packets of letters to read every day and answer--all this weight of new business is too much for the rag of life that yet hangs about me.”[8] He never took his seat in the House of Lords. He lived for upwards of five years longer, in the full possession of all his faculties, though suffering great bodily infirmity from the effects of gout, to which he was long a martyr. He died at his house, No. 11, Berkeley Square, on the 2nd of March, 1797, in his eightieth year, and was buried at the family seat of Houghton. With him the male line of Sir Robert Walpole and the title of Orford became extinct. The estate of Houghton descended to the fourth Earl of Cholmondeley, grandson of Horace Walpole’s younger sister Mary, who married the third earl of that ilk. Strawberry Hill was at its founder’s absolute disposal, and he left it, as already mentioned, to Mrs. Damer, Conway’s daughter, but for life only, with limitations over in strict settlement. “It is somewhat curious,” says his biographer, “as a proof of the inconsistency of the human mind, that, having built his Castle with so little view to durability, Walpole entailed the perishable possession with a degree of strictness which would have been more fitting for a baronial estate. And that, too, after having written a fable entitled ‘The Entail,’ in consequence of some one having asked him whether he did not intend to entail Strawberry Hill, and in ridicule of such a proceeding.”