As he excelled in that noify and licentious merriment which wine incites, his companions eagerly encouraged him in excefs, and he willingly indulged it; till, as he confeffed to Dr. Burnet, he was for five years together continually drunk, or fo much inflamed by frequent ebriety, as in no interval to be master of himself.

In this ftate he played many frolicks, which it is not for his honour that we should remember, and which are not now diftinctly known. He often pursued low amours in mean difguifes, and always acted with great exactness and dexterity the characters which he affumed.

He once erected a ftage on Tower-hill, and harangued the populace as a mountebank; and, having made phyfick part of his study, is faid to have practifed it fuccessfully.

He was fo much in favour with King Charles, that he was made one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and comptroller of Woodstock Park.

Having an active and inquifitive mind, he never, except in his paroxyfms of intemperance, was wholly negligent of study: he read what is confidered as polite learning fo much, that he is mentioned by Wood as the greatest scholar of all the nobility. Sometimes he retired into the country, and amused himself with writing libels, in which he did not pretend to confine himself to truth.

His favourite author in French was Boileau, and in English Cowley.

Thus in a course of drunken gaiety, and grofs fenfuality, with intervals of study perhaps yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all decency and order, a total difregard to every moral, and a refolute denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthlefs and useless, and blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness; till, at the age of one-and-thirty, he had exhausted the fund of life, and reduced himself to a state of weakness and decay.

At

with

At this time he was led to an acquaintance with Dr. Burnet, to whom he laid open great freedom the tenour of his opinions, and the courfe of his life, and from whom he received fuch conviction of the reasonablenefs of moral duty, and the truth of Christianity, as produced a total change both of his manners and opinions. The account of those falutary confequences is given by Burnet in a book, intituled, Some Paffages of the Life and Death of John Earl of Rochester, which the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philofopher for its arguments, and the faint for its piety. It were an injury to the reader to offer him an abridgement.

He died July 26, 1680, before he had completed his thirty-fourth year; and was fo worn away by a long illness, that life went out without a struggle.

Lord Rochester was eminent for the vigour of his colloquial wit, and remarkable for many wild pranks and fallies of extravagance. The glare of his general character diffused itself upon his writings; the compositions of

a man

a man whofe name.was heard fo often wer certain of attention, and from many reader certain of applaufe. This blaze of reputation

not yet quite extinguished; and his poetry fill retains some splendour beyond that which genius has bestowed.

Wood and Burnet give us reafon to believe, that much was imputed to him which he did not write. I know not by whom the original collection was made, or by what au thority its genuineness was afcertained. The first edition was published in the year of his death, with an air of concealment, profeffing in the title-page to be printed at Antwerp.

Of fome of the pieces, however, there is no doubt. The Imitation of Horace's Satire, the Verfes to Lord Mulgrave, the Satire against Man, the Verfes upon Nothing, and perhaps fome others, are I believe genuine, and perhaps most of those which this collection exhibits.

As he cannot be fuppofed to have found leifure for any courfe of continued study, his

pieces are commonly fhort, fuch as one fit of refolution would produce.

His fongs have no particular character; they tell, like other fongs, in fmooth and eafy language, of fcorn and kindness, difmiffion and desertion, abfence and inconftancy, with the common places of artificial courtship. They are commonly smooth and easy; but have little nature, and little fentiment.

His imitation of Horace on Lucilius is not inelegant or unhappy. In the reign of Charles the Second began that adaptation, which has fince been very frequent, of ancient poetry to prefent times; and perhaps few will be found where the parallelism is better preserved than in this. The verfification is indeed fometimes carelefs, but it is fometimes vigorous and weighty.

The strongest effort of his Mufe is his poem upon Nothing. He is not the first who has chosen this barren topick for the boast of his fertility. There is a poem called Nihil in Latin by Passerat, a poet and critick of the fixteenth century in France; who, in his

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