Wharton's Ancestors.--His Early Years.--Marriage at
Sixteen.--Wharton takes leave of his Tutor.--The Young Marquis
and the Old Pretender.--Frolics at Paris.--Zeal for the Orange
Cause.--A Jacobite Hero.--The Trial of Atterbury.--Wharton's
Defence of the Bishop.--Hypocritical Signs of Penitence.--Sir
Robert Walpole duped.--Very Trying.--The Duke of Wharton's
'Whens.'--Military Glory at Gibraltar.--'Uncle
Horace.'--Wharton to 'Uncle Horace.'--The Duke's
Impudence.--High Treason.--Wharton's Ready Wit.--Last
Extremities.--Sad Days in Paris.--His Last Journey to
Spain.--His Death in a Bernardine Convent.
If an illustration were wanted of that character unstable as water which
shall not excel, this duke would at once supply it: if we had to warn
genius against self-indulgence--some clever boy against
extravagance--some poet against the bottle--this is the 'shocking
example' we should select: if we wished to show how the most splendid
talents, the greatest wealth, the most careful education, the most
unusual advantages, may all prove useless to a man who is too vain or
too frivolous to use them properly, it is enough to cite that nobleman,
whose acts gained for him the name of the _infamous_ Duke of Wharton.
Never was character more mercurial, or life more unsettled than his;
never, perhaps, were more changes crowded into a fewer number of years,
more fame and infamy gathered into so short a space. Suffice it to say
that when Pope wanted a man to hold up to the scorn of the world, as a
sample of wasted abilities, it was Wharton that he chose, and his lines
rise in grandeur in proportion to the vileness of the theme:
'Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling passion was a love of praise.
Born with whate'er could win it from the wise,
Women and fools must like him or he dies;
Though raptured senates hung on all he spoke,
The club must hail him master of the joke.
Shall parts so various aim at nothing new?
He'll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too.
* * * * *
Thus with each gift of nature and of art,
And wanting nothing but an honest heart;
Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt,
And most contemptible, to shun contempt;
His passion still, to covet general praise,
His life to forfeit it a thousand ways;
A constant bounty which no friend has made;
An angel tongue which no man can persuade;
A fool with more of wit than all mankind;
Too rash for thought, for action too refined.'