[401]. In a poem, entitled “An Allusion to the Bishop of Cambray’s Supplement to Homer.”
[402]. Collins’s Baronage, vol. i. p. 118.
[403]. Dalrymple, b. x. p. 130.
[404]. Cunningham, b. ii. p. 259.
[405]. See Cunningham.
[406]. His infamous example was renewed in that singular, gifted, and most profligate nobleman, his son, Philip Duke of Wharton. Modern times scarcely furnish a parallel to the character of this peer.
“Like Buckingham and Rochester,” says one who understood him well, “he comforted all the grave and dull, by throwing away the brightest profusion of parts on witty fooleries, which may mix graces with a great character, but can never compose one. If Julius Cæsar had only rioted with citizens, he had never been the emperor of the world.” The courage of this bad, wild, singular man was not equal to his assurance. Abuse sometimes displays cowardice; it is the cool and temperate who are usually courageous. Lord Wharton, with the levity of a man who really loved nothing but pleasure, and really prized nothing but self-interest, could jest at his own want of heroism. When seized by the guard in St. James’s Park for singing the Jacobite air, “The King shall have his Own again,” as he has himself recorded in his ballad,
“The duke he drew out half his sword,
The guard drew out the rest.”
The worst attribute of Philip Duke of Wharton, as a citizen of the world, was his indifference to reputation. Men of pleasure are not generally indifferent to a character for honour and consistency; but Lord Wharton cared merely for ephemeral applause. Attached, in reality, to no party, and having no actual motives but those of expediency, there was not the slightest dependence to be placed upon those visionary things, his opinions, beyond the moment when he was haranguing a popular assembly, or debating in the House of Lords. It is well known that at a later period, in 1723, upon the third reading of a Bill of Pains and Penalties against Atterbury Bishop of Rochester, Lord Wharton accomplished a brilliant display by a most dishonourable artifice. He went to Chelsea, where the minister resided, and professing his resolution to effect a reconciliation with the court by speaking against the Bishop, requested some suggestions upon the case. Thus enticed, the minister went over the whole argument with his lordship. Wharton returned to town, passed the night in drinking, (his libraries being, as Horace Walpole observes, made taverns,) went to the House of Lords, without going to bed, and made a most eloquent speech in favour of the Bishop, showing all the weak points of the arguments which he had thus surmounted, in the most able and masterly manner.