A JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER, MAN whom the muses were fond to inspire, and ashamed to avow; and who practised, without the least reserve, that secret which can make verses more read for their defects than for their merits: the art is neither commendable nor difficult. Moralists proclaim loudly that there is no wit in indecency: it is very true. Indecency is far from conferring wit; but it does not destroy it neither. Lord Rochester's poems have much more obscenity than wit, more wit than poetry, more poetry than politeness. One is amazed at hearing the age of Charles the second called polite. Because the Presbyterians and religionists had affected to call every thing by a scripture name, the new court affected to call every thing by its own name. That court had no pretensions to politeness, but by its resemblance to another 2 2 [Butler says, very observantly, of Rochester and the professors of lewd vice in his age, "It is not what they do, that's now the sin, But what they lewdly affect and glory in ; As if, preposterously, they would profess A forc'd hypocrisy of wickedness." Satire on the Age of Cha. II. in Remains i. 72° age, which called its own grossness polite; the age of Aristophanes. Would a Scythian have been civilized by the Athenian stage, or a Hottentot by the drawing-room of Charles the second? The characters and anecdotes being forgot, the state-poems of that time are a heap of senseless ribaldry, scarcely in rhyme, and more seldom in metre. When Satyrs were brought to court, no wonder the Graces would not trust themselves there. The writings of this noble and beautiful count, as Anthony Wood' calls him (for his lordship's vices were among the fruits of the Restoration, and consequently not unlovely in that biographer's eyes), in the order they were published, at least as they are ranged by that author, were "A Satire against Mankind;' printed in one sheet in folio, June 1679: it is more than an imitation of Boileau. One Griffith, a minister, wrote against it. We are told that Andrew Marvel used to say, "that Rochester was the only man in England who 2 Athen. Oxon. vol. ii. p. 655. 3 ["Whatever giant Boileau may be in his own country," says the publisher's preface of 1710, "he seems little more than a man of straw with my lord Rochester: he gives us a strength, a spirit, and manly vigour, which the French are utter strangers to."] had the true vein of satire: " judgment; indelicacy does not more than it does satire. "On Nothing, a Poem." 4 a very wrong spoil flattery Printed on one side of a sheet of paper in two columns. "Poems on several Occasions." Antwerp, (Lond.) 1680, 8vo. 5 Among his poems are some by other hands, falsely imputed to him. The Ramble in St. James's Park, was claimed by one Alexander Radcliffe of Gray's Inn. It seems his lordship, when dying, had ordered all his immoral writings to be burned: but the age was not without its Curls to preserve such treasures! 6 "A Letter" on his death-bed, to Dr. Burnet." Lond. 1680, one sheet folio. [This poem is characterised by Dr. Johnson as the strongest effort of his lordship's muse: Dr. Anderson adds, that it displays an admirable fertility of invention on a barren topic.] ["This first edition was published in the year of his death, with an air of concealment," says Dr. Johnson, "professing in the title-page to be printed at Antwerp." It was reprinted at London, in 1685, and the author was adumbrated as of honour."] tr a late person • [Who printed it in 1682, with other metrical levities, and inscribed the volume to James, lord Annesly.] 7 [This palinodia, says Aubrey, he sent for all his servants into his room to come and hear. MSS. in Mus. Ashm.] • [Bishop Burnet published 'Some Passages of the Life and Death of John Earl of Rochester;' "a book," says Dr. Johnson, |