Woe to Lady Rochester--woe to the mother who trusted her son's innocence
in that vitiated court! Lord Rochester forms one of the many instances
we daily behold, that it is those most tenderly cared for, who often
fall most deeply, as well as most early, into temptation. He soon lost
every trace of virtue--of principle, even of deference to received
notions of propriety. For a while there seemed hopes that he would not
wholly fall: courage was his inheritance, and he distinguished himself
in 1665, when as a volunteer, he went in quest of the Dutch East India
fleet, and served with heroic gallantry under Lord Sandwich. And when he
returned to court, there was a partial improvement in his conduct. He
even looked back upon his former indiscretions with horror: he had now
shared in the realities of life: he had grasped a high and honourable
ambition; but he soon fell away--soon became almost a castaway. 'For
five years,' he told Bishop Burnet, when on his death-bed, 'I was never
sober.' His reputation as a wit must rest, in the present day, chiefly
upon productions which have long since been condemned as unreadable.
Strange to say, when not under the influence of wine, he was a constant
student of classical authors, perhaps the worst reading for a man of his
tendency: all that was satirical and impure attracting him most.
Boileau, among French writers, and Cowley among the English, were his
favourite authors. He also read many books of physic; for long before
thirty his constitution was so broken by his life, that he turned his
attention to remedies, and to medical treatment; and it is remarkable
how many men of dissolute lives take up the same sort of reading, in the
vain hope of repairing a course of dissolute living. As a writer, his
style was at once forcible and lively; as a companion, he was wildly
vivacious: madly, perilously, did he outrage decency, insult virtue,
profane religion. Charles II. liked him on first acquaintance, for
Rochester was a man of the most finished and fascinating manners; but at