On this day in 1647 John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester and perhaps the most notorious of the Restoration rakes, was born. By poem and play, song and satire, maid and monkey -- some say he trained his monkey to excrete upon his guests, others say he merely encouraged it -- Rochester became the talk of town and Court. If, as Samuel Johnson said, he "blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness," he also wrote, said William Hazlitt, verses that "cut and sparkle like diamonds." The general view is that, were the diamonds not so dirty, Rochester might hold a place in Restoration poetry second only to Dryden ... FULL STORY »
