Among them all, Colley kept his own to the last. A short time before that last hour arrived, Horace Walpole hailed him, on his birthday, with a good morrow, and "I am glad, sir, to see you looking so well." "Egad, sir," replied the old gentleman--all diamonded, and powdered, and dandified, "at eighty-four, it's well for a man that he can look at all." Therein lay one point of Cibber's character,--the making the best of circumstances. And now he crosses Piccadilly, and passes through Albemarle Street, slowly, but cheerfully, with an eye and a salutation for any pretty woman of his acquaintance, and a word for any "good fellow" whose purse he has lightened or who has lightened his, at dice or whist. And so he turns into the adjacent square, and as his servant closes the door, after admitting him, neither of them wots that the master has passed over the threshold for the last time a living man. In December 1757 I read in contemporary publications that there "died at his house at Berkeley Square, Colley Cibber, Esq., Poet Laureate." The year of his death was as eventful as that of his birth. In its course Byng was shot, and Calmet died; the Duke of Newcastle became Prime Minister, Clive won the battle of Plassy, and the Duke of Cumberland surrendered Hanover and a confederate army to the French by the treaty of Closter-seven. Within Cibber's era the Stuart had gone, Nassau had been, and the House of Brunswick had succeeded. This house was never more unpopular than at the time of Cibber's death, for one of its sons had permanently tarnished his military fame; but great as the public indignation was at the convention of Closter-seven, there was a large fraction of the London population, at least, who ceased to think of it, while Colley Cibber was carried to sleep with kings and heroes in Westminster Abbey. The general conclusion arrived at seems to have been that he was a well-abused man, who would speedily be forgotten. To this, it may be replied, that in spite of the abuse, often little merited, he was an eminently successful man throughout life; and accomplished a career, achieved (and scattered) a fortune, and built up a fame which will always render him an object of interest. A little too careless, perhaps; rather too much given to gambling and philandering; somewhat more than might be of the young beau about him, even in his old days, when, however, he was happy and resigned under a burthen of years which few men bear with content or resignation.