Born Too Soon : #2 - John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

Poetry is Life  is having a Suggest Poetry Day. This fits quite nicely with the second in our series of  "Great /b/tards from History", the notorious poet and rake, John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester.

Régime de Vivre

I rise at eleven, I dine about two,
I get drunk before seven; and the next thing I do,
I send for my whore, when for fear of a clap,
I spend in her hand, and I spew in her lap.
Then we quarrel and scold, 'till I fall fast asleep,
When the bitch, growing bold, to my pocket does creep;
Then slyly she leaves me, and, to revenge the affront,
At once she bereaves me of money and c**t.
If by chance then I wake, hot-headed and drunk,
What a coil do I make for the loss of my punk!
I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage,
And missing my whore, I bugger my page.
Then, crop-sick all morning, I rail at my men,
And in bed I lie yawning 'till eleven again.

Rochester is the very model of the hard-drinking, sexually degenerate libertine. Born in 1647, he graduated from Oxford University at the age of 14 (his uncle was Chancellor). His courage in a sea battle against the Dutch in 1665 made the 18 year old Rochester a hero at the Restoration Court.

The next 15 years were spent in what Dr Johnson described as : "a course of drunken gaiety and gross sensuality, with intervals of study perhaps yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of decency and order, a total disregard to every moral, and a resolute denial of every religious observation, he lived worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness".

This career of drunken debauchery included incidents such as the abduction of an heiress to be his wife, murderous scuffles with the night watch, and posing as a gynæcologist and (quite successful) "fertility specialist".

He died at the age of 33 of  a variety of "social diseases", leaving behind (like Beardsley) a famous death-bed conversion and a request that his work should be burned.

Unlike Beardsley, it's hard to see that Rochester would have gained much from the internet age. Living in his mother's basement fapping to loli on <a certain image board> would be unlikely to satisfy him.

He might benefit from advances in modern medicine - particularly Penicilin - but would probably keep pushing the epidemiological envelope until he managed to contract something untreatable. 

To learn more, you could do worse than to read Jeremy Lamb's biography, or watch "The Libertine" with Johnny Depp in the title rôle.


A selection of his more colorful verses can be found here.