He took his son to reside with him at the rectory, but he soon found that
his disorders rendered him an intolerable inmate. And as the young men of
his own rank would not endure the purse-proud insolence of the Creole, he
fell into that taste for low society, which is worse than "pressing to
death, whipping, or hanging." His father sent him abroad, but he only
returned wilder and more desperate than before. It is true, this unhappy
youth was not without his good qualities. He had lively wit, good temper,
reckless generosity, and manners, which, while he was under restraint,
might pass well in society. But all these availed him nothing. He was so
well acquainted with the turf, the gaming-table, the cock-pit, and every
worse rendezvous of folly and dissipation, that his mother's fortune was
spent before he was twenty-one, and he was soon in debt and in distress.
His early history may be concluded in the words of our British Juvenal,
when describing a similar character:--
Headstrong, determined in his own career,
He thought reproof unjust, and truth severe.
The soul's disease was to its crisis come,
He first abused, and then abjured, his home;
And when he chose a vagabond to be,
He made his shame his glory, "I'll be free!"*
[Crabbe's _Borough,_ Letter xii.
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