John Wilmot, was the second earl of (1647-80), lyric poet, satirist, and a leading member of the group of 'court wits' surrounding Charles II. He fought with conspicuous gallantry in the naval wars against the Dutch. He married the heiress, Elizabeth Malet; he also had several mistresses, including Elizabeth Barry , and moved in fashionable London circles. Although Dr Johnson dismissed Rochester's lyrics, their wit and emotional complexity give him some claim to be considered one of the last important metaphysical poets and he was one of the first of the Augustans , with his social and literary verse satires.( Andrew Marvell) He wrote scurrilous lampoons, dramatic prologues and epilogues, 'imitations' and translations of classical authors, and several other brilliant poems such as his tough self-dramatization 'The Maimed Debauchee' and the grimly funny 'Upon Nothing'. Although his output was small he produced an important body of poems. Marvell admired him, Dryden , Swift , and Pope were all influenced by him (he was Dryden's patron for a time), and he has made an impression on many subsequent poets. Rochester is famous for having, in Johnson's words, 'blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness'. He became very ill in his early thirties and G. Burnet superintended and subsequently wrote up the poet's death-bed conversion.( Andrew Marvell)
It is quite something to live in an age of riotous immorality, and yet to be accounted the most dissolute individual of the time. That is the achievement of the notorious John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, who lived very fast and died very young in the reign of Charles II. Rochester was a poet of great talent, a brave naval officer, a rampantly intemperate bisexual, a harvester of maidenheads, a pimp and bawd for his King, a Hooray Henry repeatedly involved in duels and brawls (at least one of which resulted in the murder of a citizen of London) " and he died a victim in 1680, aged just 33, of accumulated doses of both gonorrhoea and syphilis.( Elsie Duncan-Jones)
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