Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/22

8 profligate abbot, who knew nothing of the soldier. Yet this man we find immediately made a colonel of a regiment of horse, and lieutenant general, with a pension, as it is said, from Holland, as well as from us. To do all this for one wholly ignorant of a camp, was foolish as well as scandalous.

Nor had adversity made any impression upon his manners. His behaviour here was expensive, luxurious, vicious; lavishing at play, and upon women, what was given him for his own support. Beside his continual good fortune with other ladies, he kept two in constant pay, upon whom he made a profuse and regular expense: one of those creatures was married; whom that he might possess with the greater ease, he procured her husband to be pressed; and sent away into the service: a transcript of that state cunning sometimes practised by great politicians (when they would disencumber themselves of an incommode) in affairs of the like emergency.

At first there was none more caressed than our foreign favourite. A late minister seldom saw a levee without him; though we admit that is not always a proof of being a favourite of those to whom they make their court. There are who crowd themselves where they have done the most sensible injuries, and against whom they have been guilty of the highest offence: but want of shame is one part of an ill man's character: as another branch is, that he can submit to the meanest things.

Monsieur de Guiscard had the misfortune to sink under his character, even to those great men who at first had most indulged him. His parts were too mean to balance or uphold him against a just contempt: be was found a useless villain, whose riour