You may be sure he did not think he was, for was he
not made the subject of two papers in 'The Tatler,' and what more could
such a man desire?
His father was a Suffolk squire, claiming relationship with the Earls of
Denbigh, and therefore, with the Hapsburgs, from whom the Beau and the
Emperors of Austria had the common honour of being descended. Perhaps
neither of them had sufficient sense to be proud of the greatest
intellectual ornament of their race, the author of 'Tom Jones;' but as
our hero was dead before the humourist was born, it is not fair to
conjecture what he might have thought on the subject.
It does not appear that very much is known of this great gem of the race
of Hapsburg. He had the misfortune to be very handsome, and the folly to
think that his face would be his fortune: it certainly stood him in good
stead at times, but it also brought him into a lamentable dilemma.
His father was not rich, and sent his son to the Temple to study laws
which he was only fitted to break. The young Adonis had sense enough to
see that destiny did not beckon him to fame in the gloom of a musty law
court, and removed a little further up to the Thames, and the more
fashionable region of Scotland Yard.
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