Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious Creatures, Man),
A Spirit free, to choose for my own share,
What Case of Flesh, and Blood, I pleas’d to weare,
I’d be a Dog, a Monkey or a Bear,
Or any thing but that vain Animal,
Who is so proud of being Rational.
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER: A Satyr against Mankind’
Born in Ditchley, Oxfordshire, John Wilmot was the son of a Royalist father and a Parliamentarian mother. He became Earl of Rochester at the age of twelve and was one of the most dissolute of Charles II’s courtiers, and author of some of the most sexually explicit poems in the English language – ‘Signior Dildo’ (c.1673), ‘A Ramble in St. James’s Park’ (c.1672), ‘A Satyr on Charles II’ (c.1673), ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’ (1680) and ‘Upon Drinking in a Bowl’ (after 1673), printed below. According to Aubrey, Rochester’s ‘youthly spirit and oppulent fortune did sometimes make him doe extravagant actions, but in the country he was generally civill enough’. After leaving Oxford – he was a Master of Arts shortly after turning fourteen – he travelled abroad, and then on his return in 1664 joined the court of Charles II. At eighteen he abducted a much sought-after heiress, Elizabeth Malet, and married her after a delay of some eighteen months, during which he fought with typical bravery in the naval wars against the Dutch. In 1666 he was made a Gentleman of the King’s Bedchamber, and in 1674, as a special royal favour, was appointed Keeper of Woodstock Park. He led a divided existence: periods of domesticity with his wife, Elizabeth, were followed by weeks of profligacy in London, where he had several mistresses, including the celebrated actress Elizabeth Barry. His excesses caused him to be dismissed several times from court, but it seems that he was always taken back into favour. He confessed towards the end of his life that he had been under the influence of drink for five consecutive years – the reason, along with the venereal disease contracted early in his career, for his increasingly poor health in his early thirties. Though he had ‘blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness’ (Jonson), he became, according to Aubrey, ‘exceedingly paenitent’ in his final illness, ‘wrote a letter of repentance to Dr Burnet […] and sent for all his servants, even the piggard-boy [pig-yard boy], to come and hear his Palinode [repentance]’. Marvell described Rochester as ‘the best English satyrist’ (Aubrey: Brief Lives), and he was indeed admired by Swift and Pope; but he also wrote some wonderfully tender lyrics. Above all, his poetry expresses the immediacy of individual experience like that of no other poet before him.
VULCAN, contrive me such a Cup
As Nestor2 us’d of old;
Shew all thy Skill to trim it up,
Damask it round with Gold.
Make it so large, that, fill’d with Sack
Up to the swelling Brim,
Vast Toasts on the delicious Lake,
Like Ships at Sea, may swim.
[Engrave not Battel on his Cheek:
With War I’ve nought to do;
I’m none of those that took Mastrick;
Nor Yarmouth Leaguer knew.3
Let it no name of Planets tell,
Fix’d Stars, or Constellations:
For I am no Sir Sidrophel,4
Nor none of his Relations.]
But carve thereon a spreading Vine,
Then add two lovely Boys;
Their Limbs in amorous Folds intwine,
The Type of future Joys.
Cupid and Bacchus my Saints are;
May Drink and Love still reign:
With Wine I wash away my Cares,
And then to cunt again.
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 wou’d break,
Should we live one day asunder.