Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.
It is an observation founded on experience, that the poets have, of all other men, been most addicted to the gratifications of appetite, and have pursued pleasure with more unwearied application than men of other characters. In this respect they are indeed unhappy, and have ever been more subject to pity than envy. A violent love of pleasure, if it does not destroy, yet, in a great measure, enervates all other good qualities with which a man may be endowed; and as no men have ever enjoyed higher parts from nature, than the poets, so few, from this unhappy attachment to pleasure, have effected so little good by those amazing powers. Of the truth of this observation, the nobleman, whose memoirs we are now to present to the reader, is a strong and indelible instance, for few ever had more ability, and more frequent opportunities, for promoting the interests of society, and none ever prostituted the gifts of Heaven to a more inglorious purpose. Lord Rochester was not more remarkable for the superiority of his parts, than the extraordinary debauchery of his life, and with his dissipations of pleasure, he suffered sometimes malevolent principles to govern him, and was equally odious for malice and envy, as for the boundless gratifications of his appetites.
This is, no doubt, the character of his lordship, confirmed by all who have transmitted any [270] account of him: but if his life was supremely wicked, his death was exemplarily pious; before he approached to the conclusion of his days, he saw the follies of his former pleasures, he lived to repent with the severest contrition, and charity obliges all men to believe that he was as sincere in his protestations of penitence, as he had been before in libertine indulgence. The apparent sorrow he felt, arising from the stings and compunctions of conscience, entitle him to the reader's compassion, and has determined us to represent his errors with all imaginable tenderness; which, as it is agreeable to every benevolent man, so his lordship has a right to this indulgence, since he obliterated his faults by his penitence, and became so conspicuous an evidence on the side of virtue, by his important declarations against the charms of vice.
Lord Rochester was son of the gallant Henry lord Wilmot, who engaged with great zeal in the service of King Charles I. during the civil wars, and was so much in favour with Charles II. that he entrusted his person to him, after the unfortunate battle of Worcester, which trust he discharged with so much fidelity and address, that the young King was conveyed out of England into France, chiefly by his care, application and vigilance. The mother of our author was of the ancient family of the St. Johns in Wiltshire, and has been celebrated both for her beauty and parts.
In the year 1648, distinguished to posterity, by the fall of Charles I. who suffered on a scaffold erected before the window of his own palace, our author was born at Dichley, near Woodstock, in the same county, the scene of many of his pleasures, and of his death. His lordship's father had the misfortune to reap none of the rewards of suffering loyalty, for he died in 1660, immediately before the restoration, leaving his son as the [271] principal part of his inheritance, his titles, honours, and the merit of those extraordinary services he had done the crown; but though lord Wilmot left his son but a small estate, yet he did not suffer in his education by these means, for the oeconomy of his mother supplied that deficiency, and he was educated suitable to his quality. When he was at school (it is agreed by all his biographers) he gave early instances of a readiness of wit; and those shining parts which have since appeared with so much lustre, began then to shew themselves: he acquired the Latin to such perfection, that, to his dying day, he retained a great relish for the masculine firmness, as well as more elegant beauties of that language, and was, says Dr. Burnet, 'exactly versed in those authors who were the ornaments of the court of Augustus, which he read often with the peculiar delight which the greatest wits have often found in those studies.' When he went to the university, the general joy which over-ran the nation upon his Majesty's return, amounted to something like distraction, and soon spread a very malignant influence through all ranks of life. His lordship tasted the pleasures of libertinism, which then broke out in a full tide, with too acute a relish, and was almost overwhelmed in the abyss of wantonness. His tutor was Dr. Blandford, afterwards promoted to the sees of Oxford and Worcester, and under his inspection he was committed to the more immediate care of Phinehas Berry, fellow of Wadham College, a man of learning and probity, whom his lordship afterwards treated with much respect, and rewarded as became a great man; but notwithstanding the care of his tutor, he had so deeply engaged in the dissipations of the general jubilee, that he could not be prevailed upon to renew his studies, which were totally lost in [272] the joys more agreeable to his inclination. He never thought of resuming again the pursuit of knowledge, 'till the fine address of his governor, Dr. Balfour, won him in his travels, by degrees, to those charms of study, which he had through youthful levity forsaken, and being seconded by reason, now more strong, and a more mature taste of the pleasure of learning, which the Dr. took care to place in the most agreeable and advantageous light, he became enamoured of knowledge, in the pursuit of which he often spent those hours he sometimes stole from the witty, and the fair. He returned from his travels in the 18th year of his age, and appeared at court with as great advantage as any young nobleman ever did. He had a graceful and well proportioned person, was master of the most refined breeding, and possessed a very obliging and easy manner. He had a vast vivacity of thought, and a happy flow of expression, and all who conversed with him entertained the highest opinion of his understanding; and 'tis indeed no wonder he was so much caressed at a court which abounded with men of wit, countenanced by a merry prince, who relished nothing so much as brilliant conversation.
Soon after his lordship's return from his travels, he took the first occasion that offered, to hazard his life in the service of his country.
In the winter of the year 1665 he went to sea, with the earl of Sandwich, when he was sent out against the Dutch East India fleet, and was in the ship called the Revenge, commanded by Sir Thomas Tiddiman, when the attack was made on the port of Bergen in Norway, the Dutch Ships having got into that port. It was, says Burnet, 'as desperate an attempt as ever was made, and during the whole action, the earl of Rochester shewed as brave and resolute a courage as possible. A person of honour told me he heard the [273] lord Clifford, who was in the same ship, often magnify his courage at that time very highly; nor did the rigour of the season, the hardness of the voyage, and the extreme danger he had been in, deter him from running the like the very next occasion; for the summer following he went to sea again, without communicating his design to his nearest relations. He went aboard the ship commanded by Sir Edward Spragge, the day before the great sea-fight of that year; almost all the volunteers that went in that ship were killed. During the action, Sir Edward Spragge not being satisfied with the behaviour of one of the captains, could not easily find a person that would undertake to venture through so much danger to carry his command to the captain; this lord offered himself to the service, and went in a little boat, through all the shot, and delivered his message, and returned back to Sir Edward, which was much commended by all that saw it.' These are the early instances of courage, which can be produced in favour of lord Rochester, which was afterwards impeached, and very justly, for in many private broils, he discovered a timid pusillanimous spirit, very unsuitable to those noble instances of the contrary, which have just been mentioned.
The author of his life prefixed to his works, which goes under the name of M. St. Evremond, addressed to the Duchess of Mazarine, but which M. Maizeau asserts not to be his, accounts for it, upon the general observation of that disparity between a man and himself, upon different occasions. Let it suffice, says he, 'to observe, that we differ not from one another, more than we do from ourselves at different times.' But we imagine another, and a stronger reason may be given, for the cowardice which Rochester afterwards [274] discovered in private broils, particularly in the affair between him and the earl of Mulgrave, in which he behaved very meanly[1]. The courage which lord Rochester shewed in a naval engagement, was in the early part of his life, before he had been immersed in those labyrinths of excess and luxury, into which he afterwards sunk. It is certainly a true observation, that guilt makes cowards; a man who is continually subjected to the reproaches of conscience, who is afraid to examine his heart, lest it should appear too horrible, cannot have much courage: for while he is conscious of so many errors to be repented of, of so many vices he has committed, he naturally starts at danger, and flies from it as his greatest enemy. It is true, courage is sometimes constitutional, and there have been instances of men, guilty of every enormity, who have discovered a large share of it, but these have been wretches who have overcome all sense of honour, been lost to every consideration of virtue, and whose courage is like that of the lion of the desart, a kind of ferocious impulse unconnected with reason. Lord Rochester had certainly never overcome the reproaches of his conscience, whose alarming voice at last struck terror into his heart, and chilled the fire of the spirits.
Since his travels, and naval expeditions, he seemed to have contracted a habit of temperance, in which had he been so happy as to persevere, he must have escaped that fatal rock, on which he afterwards split, upon his return to court, where love and pleasure kept their perpetual rounds, under the smiles of a prince, whom nature had fitted for all the enjoyments of the most luxurious desires. In times so dissolute as these, it is no wonder if a man of so warm a constitution as Rochester, could not resist the [275] too flattering temptations, which were heightened by the participation of the court in general. The uncommon charms of Rochester's conversation, induced all men to court him as a companion, tho' they often paid too dear for their curiosity, by being made the subject of his lampoons, if they happened to have any oddities in their temper, by the exposing of which he could humour his propensity to scandal. His pleasant extravagancies soon became the subject of general conversation, by which his vanity was at once flattered, and his turn of satire rendered more keen, by the success it met with.
Rochester had certainly a true talent for satire, and he spared neither friends nor foes, but let it loose on all without discrimination. Majesty itself was not secure from it; he more than once lampooned the King, whose weakness and attachment to some of his mistresses, he endeavoured to cure by several means, that is, either by winning them from him, in spite of the indulgence and liberality they felt from a royal gallant, or by severely lampooning them and him on various occasions; which the King, who was a man of wit and pleasure, as well as his lordship, took for the natural sallies of his genius, and meant rather as the amusements of his fancy, than as the efforts of malice; yet, either by a too frequent repetition, or a too close and poignant virulence, the King banished him from the court for a satire made directly on him; this satire consists of 28 stanzas, and is entitled The Restoration, or the History of the Insipids; and as it contains the keenest reflexions against the political conduct, and private character of that Prince, and having produced the banishment of this noble lord, we shall here give it a place, by which his lordship's genius for this kind of writing will appear.