'
At the siege of Gibraltar, where he took up arms against his own king
and country, he is said to have gone alone one night to the very walls
of the town, and challenged the outpost. They asked him who he was, and
when he replied, openly enough, 'The Duke of Wharton,' they actually
allowed him to return without either firing on or capturing him. The
story seems somewhat apocryphal, but it is quite possible that the
English soldiers may have refrained from violence to a well-known
mad-cap nobleman of their own nation.
Philip, son of the Marquis of Wharton, at that time only a baron, was
born in the last year but one of the seventeenth century, and came into
the world endowed with every quality which might have made a great man,
if he had only added wisdom to them. His father wished to make him a
brilliant statesman, and, to have a better chance of doing so, kept him
at home, and had him educated under his own eye. He seems to have easily
and rapidly acquired a knowledge of classical languages; and his memory
was so good that when a boy of thirteen he could repeat the greater part
of the 'AEneid' and of Horace by heart. His father's keen perception did
not allow him to stop at classics; and he wisely prepared him for the
career to which he was destined by the study of history, ancient and
modern, and of English literature, and by teaching him, even at that
early age, the art of thinking and writing on any given subject, by
proposing themes for essays.
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