JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
We hear of the Spirit of Evil on one occasion entering into swine, but, if possible, a stranger sight is that of the Spirit of Poesy finding a similar incarnation. Certainly the connexion of genius in the Earl of Rochester with a life of the most degrading and desperate debauchery is one of the chief marvels of this marvellous world.
John Wilmot was the son of Henry, Lord Rochester, and was born April 10, 1647, at Ditchley in Oxfordshire. He was taught grammar at the school of Burford. He then 'entered a nobleman' into Wadham College, when twelve years old, and at 1661, when only fourteen, he was, in conjunction with some others of rank, made M.A. by Lord Clarendon in person. Pursuing his travels in France and Italy, he went in 1665 to sea with the Earl of Sandwich, and distinguished himself at Bergen in an attack on the Dutch fleet. Next year, while serving under Sir Edward Spragge, his commander sent him in the heat of an engagement with a reproof to one of his captains—a duty which Wilmot gallantly accomplished amidst a storm of shot. With this early courage some of his biographers have contrasted his subsequent reputation for cowardice, his slinking away out of street-quarrels, his refusing to fight the Duke of Buckingham, &c. This diversity at different periods may perhaps be accounted for on the ground of the nervousness which continued dissipation produces, and perhaps from his poetical temperament. A poet, we are persuaded, is often the bravest, and often the most pusillanimous of men. Byron was unquestionably in general a brave, almost a pugnacious man; and yet he confesses that at certain times, had one proceeded to horsewhip him, he would not have had the hardihood to resist. Shelley, who, in a tremendous storm, behaved with dauntless heroism, and who would at any time have acted on the example of his own character in 'Prometheus,' who, in a shipwreck,
'gave an enemy His plank, then plunged aside to die,'
was yet subject to paroxysms of nervous horror, which made him perspire and tremble like a spirit-seeing steed. Rochester had the same temperament, and a similar creed, with these men, although inferior to them both in morale and in genius.
His character was certainly very depraved. He told Burnet on his deathbed that for five years he had not known the sensation of sobriety, having been all that time either totally drunk, or mad through the dregs of drunkenness. He on one occasion, while in this state, erected a stage on Tower Hill, and addressed the mob as a naked mountebank. Even after he became more temperate, he continued and even increased his licentiousness—one devil went out, and seven entered in. He pursued low amours in disguise; he practised occasionally as a quack doctor; and at other times he retired to the country, and, like Byron, amused himself by libelling all his acquaintances—every line in each libel being a lie. Notwithstanding all this, he was a favourite with Charles II., who made him one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and comptroller of Woodstock Park. In his lucid intervals he recurred to his studies, wrote occasional verses, read in French Boileau and in English Cowley, and is called by Wood the best scholar among all the nobility.
At last, ere he was thirty-one, the 'dreary old sort of feel,' and the 'rigid fibre and stiffening limbs,' of which Byron and Burns, when scarcely older, complained, began to assail Rochester. He had exhausted his capacity of enjoyment by excess, and had deprived himself of the consolations of religion by infidelity. His unbelief was not like Shelley's—the growth of his own mind, and the fruit of unbridled, though earnest, speculation;—it was merely a drug which he snatched from the laboratories of others to deaden his remorse, and enable him to look with desperate calmness to the blotted Past and the lowering Future. At this stage of his career, he became acquainted with Bishop Burnet, who has recorded his conversion and edifying end in a book which, says Johnson, 'the critic ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.' To this, after Johnson's example, we refer our readers. Eochester died July 26, 1680, before he had completed his thirty-fourth year. He was married, and left three daughters and a son named Charles, who did not long survive his father. With him the male line ceased, and the title was conferred on a younger son of Lord Clarendon. His poems appeared in the year of his death, professing on the title-page to be printed at Antwerp. They contain much that is spurious, but some productions that are undoubtedly Rochester's. They are at the best, poor fragmentary exhibitions of a vigorous, but undisciplined mind. His songs are rather easy than lively. His imitations are distinguished by grace and spirit. His 'Nothing' is a tissue of clever conceits, like gaudy weeds growing on a sterile soil, but here and there contains a grand and gloomy image, such as—
'And rebel Light obscured thy reverend dusky face.'
His 'Satire against Man' might be praised for its vigorous misanthropy, but is chiefly copied from Boileau.
Rochester may be signalised as the first thoroughly depraved and vicious person, so far as we remember, who assumed the office of the satirist, —the first, although not, alas! the last human imitator of 'Satan accusing Sin.' Some satirists before him had been faulty characters, while rather inconsistently assailing the faults of others; but here, for the first time, was a man of no virtue, or belief in virtue whatever, (his tenderness to his family, revealed in his letters, is just that of the tiger fondling his cubs, and seeming, perhaps, to them a 'much- misrepresented character,') and whose life was one mass of wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores,—a naked satyr who gloried in his shame, —becoming a severe castigator of public morals and of private character. Surely there was a gross anomaly implied in this, which far greater genius than Rochester's could never have redeemed.
SONG.
1 Too late, alas! I must confess,
You need not arts to move me;
Such charms by nature you possess,
'Twere madness not to love ye.
2 Then spare a heart you may surprise,
And give my tongue the glory
To boast, though my unfaithful eyes
Betray a tender story.
SONG.
1 My dear mistress has a heart
Soft as those kind looks she gave me,
When with love's resistless art,
And her eyes, she did enslave me.
But her constancy's so weak,
She's so wild and apt to wander,
That my jealous heart would break
Should we live one day asunder.
2 Melting joys about her move,
Killing pleasures, wounding blisses:
She can dress her eyes in love,
And her lips can warm with kisses.
Angels listen when she speaks,
She's my delight, all mankind's wonder;
But my jealous heart would break,
Should we live one day asunder.