the short years of thoughtless youth, he was adored by the high-bred
triflers of the day, nor least by the youthful sovereign, who escaped from
the intrigues of party, and the arduous duties of kingly business, to find
never-failing amusement and exhilaration of spirit in his society. My
father's impulses, never under his own controul, perpetually led him into
difficulties from which his ingenuity alone could extricate him; and the
accumulating pile of debts of honour and of trade, which would have bent to
earth any other, was supported by him with a light spirit and tameless
hilarity; while his company was so necessary at the tables and assemblies
of the rich, that his derelictions were considered venial, and he himself
received with intoxicating flattery.

This kind of popularity, like every other, is evanescent: and the
difficulties of every kind with which he had to contend, increased in a
frightful ratio compared with his small means of extricating himself. At
such times the king, in his enthusiasm for him, would come to his relief,
and then kindly take his friend to task; my father gave the best promises
for amendment, but his social disposition, his craving for the usual diet
of admiration, and more than all, the fiend of gambling, which fully
possessed him, made his good resolutions transient, his promises vain. With
the quick sensibility peculiar to his temperament, he perceived his power
in the brilliant circle to be on the wane. The king married; and the
haughty princess of Austria, who became, as queen of England, the head of
fashion, looked with harsh eyes on his defects, and with contempt on the
affection her royal husband entertained for him. My father felt that his
fall was near; but so far from profiting by this last calm before the storm
to save himself, he sought to forget anticipated evil by making still
greater sacrifices to the deity of pleasure, deceitful and cruel arbiter of
his destiny.