WHARTON, Marquis of. Two noblemen with this title, father and son, hold a certain place in English literary history as subjects of satiric portraiture.

Thomas Wharton (1640-1715), a prominent Whig politician at the Revolution, is reputed by Dr Percy to have been the author of the famous political ballad Lilliburlero, which “sang James II. out of three kingdoms.” Wharton was lord-lieutenant of Ireland in Anne’s reign, and incurred the wrath of Swift, who attacked him as Verres in the Examiner (No. 14), and drew a separate “character” of him, which is one of Swift’s masterpieces. He was a man of great wit and versatile cleverness, and cynically ostentatious in his immorality, having the reputation of being the greatest rake and the truest Whig of his time. Addison dedicated to him the fifth volume of the Spectator, giving him a very different “character” from Swift’s.

Philip Wharton (1699-1731), the son of Thomas, succeeded to title and fortune at the age of sixteen, and quickly earned for himself, by his wild and profligate frolics and reckless playing at politics, Pope’s satire of him as “the scorn and wonder of our days” (Moral Essays, i. 179). He spent his large estates in a few years, then went abroad and gave eccentric support to the Old Pretender. There is a lively picture of his appearance at Madrid in 1726 in a letter from the British consul, quoted in Stanhope’s History of England (ii. p. 140)....