Word: wilkeses
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Author Quennell, who graphically explored the Age of Reason in Caroline of England, has returned to it in The Profane Virtues, a study of one man (Gibbon) who upheld the Age's ideals, and of three men (Boswell, Sterne, Wilkes) who more or less belied them. In his cool...
Cause Célèbre. Mr. Quennell's liveliest figure is his least known one: John Wilkes. This squint-eyed, witty, opportunistic M.P. had immense charm, justly boasting that he could "talk away" his ugly face in half an hour. He led a dazzlingly licentious existence-swilling, wenching...
But beyond all this, Wilkes was the center of the fiercest cause célèbre of 18th Century England-one that conceivably might have toppled George III from his throne. It began in 1763, at the conclusion of the Seven Years' War. Wilkes, in the 45th number...
Wilkes might have fomented revolt or even revolution. But he remained cool. Let time vindicate him, he murmured. Time sent him back to Parliament, made him Lord Mayor of London.
There was nothing noble about John Wilkes, who was turned into a patriot by his own rashness, and into a hero by his enemies' folly. As he confessed, he was not himself a "Wilkite," not a republican -though he grew, with time, into a true champion of liberty and...