2 Or on that bank feel the west wind
Breathe health and plenty: please my mind
To see sweet dew-drops kiss these flowers,
And then washed off by April showers!
Here hear my Kenna sing a song,
There see a blackbird feed her young,
3 Or a leverock build her nest:
Here give my weary spirits rest,
And raise my low-pitched thoughts above
Earth, or what poor mortals love;
Or, with my Bryan[1] and my book,
Loiter long days near Shawford brook:
4 There sit by him and eat my meat,
There see the sun both rise and set,
There bid good morning to next day,
There meditate my time away,
And angle on, and beg to have
A quiet passage to the grave.
[1] Probably his dog.
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.