This author, who must be so often mentioned in the following pages, was John Wilkes, member of Parliament for Ailesbury. He was of a plebeian family,[233] but inherited a tolerable fortune in Buckinghamshire, and had been bred at Oxford, where he distinguished himself by humorous attacks on whatever was esteemed most holy and respectable. Unrestrained either in his conduct or conversation, he was allowed to have more wit than in truth he possessed; and, living with rakes and second-rate authors, he had acquired fame such as it was, in the middling sphere of life, before his name was so much as known to the public. His appearance as an orator had by no means conspired to make him more noticed. He spoke coldly and insipidly, though with impertinence; his manner was poor, and his countenance horrid. When his pen, which possessed an easy impudent style, had drawn the attention of mankind towards him, and it was asked, who this saucy writer was? Fame, that had adopted him, could furnish but scurvy anecdotes of his private life. He had married a woman of fortune, used her ill, and at last cruelly, to extort from her the provision he had made for her separate maintenance; he had debauched a maiden of family by an informal promise of marriage, and had been guilty of other frauds and breaches of trust. Yet the man, bitter as he was in his political writings, was commonly not ill-natured or acrimonious. Wantonness, rather than ambition or vengeance, guided his hand; and, though he became the martyr of the best cause, there was nothing in his principles or morals that led him to care under what government he lived. To laugh and riot and scatter firebrands, with him was liberty. Despotism will for ever reproach Freedom with the profligacy of such a saint!