III. Search, then, the ruling passion: there, alone, The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here. This clue once found, unravels all the rest, The prospect clears, and Wharton stands confess'd. Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, 180 Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise: Born with whate'er could win it from the wise, Women and fools must like him or he dies; Though wondering 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[8] too. Then turns repentant, and his God adores With the same spirit that he drinks and whores; Enough if all around him but admire, 190 And now the punk applaud, and now the friar. 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 half mankind, 200 Too rash for thought, for action too refined; A tyrant to the wife his heart approves; A rebel to the very king he loves; He dies, sad outcast of each church and state, And, harder still! flagitious, yet not great. Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule 'Twas all for fear the knaves should call him fool. Nature well known, no prodigies remain, Comets are regular, and Wharton plain. Yet, in this search, the wisest may mistake, 210 If second qualities for first they take. When Catiline by rapine swell'd his store; When Caesar made a noble dame a whore;[9] In this the lust, in that the avarice Were means, not ends; ambition was the vice. That very Caesar, born in Scipio's days, Had aim'd, like him, by chastity at praise. Lucullus, when frugality could charm, Had roasted turnips in the Sabine farm. In vain the observer eyes the builder's toil, 220 But quite mistakes the scaffold for the pile. In this one passion man can strength enjoy, As fits give vigour, just when they destroy. Time, that on all things lays his lenient hand, Yet tames not this; it sticks to our last sand. Consistent in our follies and our sins, Here honest Nature ends as she begins. Old politicians chew on wisdom past, And totter on in business to the last; As weak, as earnest, and as gravely out, 230 As sober Lanesborough[10] dancing in the gout. Behold a reverend sire, whom want of grace Has made the father of a nameless race, Shoved from the wall perhaps, or rudely press'd By his own son, that passes by unbless'd: Still to his wench he crawls on knocking knees, And envies every sparrow that he sees.