John Wilmot, Duke of Rochester

John Wilmot, born in 1647, becomes the 2nd Duke of Rochester in 1658, on his father's death. Charles II, faithful to the memory of Rochester's father who had helped him escape in 1651, takes charge of his education. Therefore the young Rochester studies at Oxford with a physicist, Sir Andrew Balfour, as his tutor. After a journey they undertake together during three years, he becomes, upon his return to London, one of the most famous intellects of the Court. However, his reputation is made as much by his writing as by his notorious debauchery. For the nobles of the Restoration he represents the personage that Valmont will later embody in the Liaisons dangereuses : a libertine, a refined and spiritual aristocrat but incorrigibly licentious. Intimate companion of Charles II, he involves him in his various follies and the King laughs at his salacious pronouncements, allowing him liberties that border on disrespect. The aristocrats of the time delight in pleasure with a rare indecency, taking their revenge on the sad and stern puritanical years. When Rochester marries in 1667 John Dryden dedicates his play Mariage-à-la-mode to him so fashionable is he, and not solely for his ostentatious lifestyle. He is also a writer of talent alternating lyric poems and satires intended for circulation at Court, genres in which he equally excels. If he is first considered the greatest poet of the Restoration, his political satires are a model of spiritual cynicism and cold civility.
His bitter and blasé feeling for life inspires in him an original literature remarkable by its strong accents of truth. With an elegant and skilful pen, he displays a straightforward scepticism with regard to the ambitious expectations of rationalism. In Satyr against Mankind in 1675, he produces a free and personal imitation of Boileau, highlighting the madness and the perfidy of men in comparison to the instinctive wisdom of the animal world. He is one of those educated, brilliant and distinguished minds that an intense and free life soon ruins, while endowing them with a sharp and fine sense of observation. In 1675, he leaves London, appointed Keeper of the Forest of Woodstock from where he writes all his poetry until the end of his life.
The regular correspondence that he maintains with philosophers, men of the church, his wife and friends, also reveals his admirable and easy mastery of prose.