Bishop Burnet was a welcome visitor to the bedside of the dying Earl, who told him, at intervals, for he was in too feeble a condition to hold any prolonged speech, of the remorse with which he looked back upon his misspent life and its wasted opportunities,―of his deep contrition for having so offended his Maker and dishonoured his Redeemer, and of the longing with which he turned to his God and crucified Saviour. He hoped to obtain the Divine mercy, for he knew and felt that he had sincerely repented; and after the storm and stress in which his mind had been tossed for weeks, he now enjoyed a heavenly calm. At one time he asked Burnet what he thought of the efficacy of a death-bed repentance. At another, he declared that, as for himself, he freely forgave all who had done him wrong; he bore ill will to no man, he had made arrangements for the payment of his debts, and suffered pain with cheerfulness. He was content to live or die, as God pleased; and though it was a foolish thing for a man to pretend to choose whether he would live or die, yet, so far as wishes went, he was fain to die and be at rest. He knew that he could never again recover his health so far that life would leave any comfort for him; and while he was confident he should be happy if he died, he feared that if he lived he might relapse. To his friends he sent affectionate messages, reminding them of the uncertain tenure of life, and enjoining them to publish to the world any circumstances connected with his own life and death which might possibly prove of benefit to others. It was his prayer, he said, that as by his life he had inflicted injury upon religion, he might at least do it some service by his death.

At the Bishop's hands he received the bread and wine

of the Holy Eucharist, his wife, for whom he expressed the most tender affection, participating with him. His children were brought to his bedside; he took leave of them lovingly, and bestowed upon them his solemn blessing. He sent, too, for all his servants, and while they surrounded his bed, declared to them in strong and simple words his regret for his dissolute life and pernicious opinions. At last, the slow decay came to an end; the flickering lamp of life went out; and this man of brilliant parts and rare gifts expired, in the thirty-third year of his age, on the 26th of July, 1680. He was interred by the side of his father in the north aisle of Spilsbury Church, Oxfordshire.

By his Countess, Rochester left four children; Charles, the third Earl, who died on the 12th of November, 1686, and with whom the title became extinct; Anne, whose second husband was Francis, the son of Fulke Greville, Lord Broke; Elizabeth, afterwards wife of Edward Montague, Earl of Sandwich; and Mallet, who married John Vaughan, first Viscount Lisburne.

M. Taine's portrait of Rochester is painted in the darkest colours. Byron allows his Corsair "one virtue" as a set-off against his "thousand crimes," but Taine deals less mercifully with the dissolute Earl. Here is his incisive sketch:

"His manners were those of a lawless and wretched mountebank; his delight was to haunt the stews, to debauch women, to write filthy songs and lewd pamphlets; he spent his time between gossipping with the maids of honour, broils with men of letters, the receiving of insults, the giving of blows. By way of playing the gallant he eloped with his wife before he married her. Out of a

spirit of bravado, he declined fighting a duel, and gained the name of a coward. For five years together he was said to be drunk. The spirit within him failing of a worthy outlet, plunged him into adventures more befitting a clown. Once with the Duke of Buckingham he rented an inn on the Newmarket road, and turned innkeeper, supplying the husbands with drink and defiling their wives. He introduced himself, disguised as an old woman, into the house of a miser, robbed him of his wife, and passed her on to Buckingham. The husband hanged himself; they made very merry over the affair. At another time he disguised himself as a chairman, then as a beggar, and paid court to the gutter-girls. He ended by turning a quack astrologer, and vendor of drugs for procuring abortion, in the suburbs. It was the licentiousness of a fervid imagination, which fouled itself as another would have adorned it, which forced its way into lewdness and folly as another would have done into sense and beauty."

All this may be, and, indeed, is true; but on the other side it is only fair to remember that this profligate wit was capable of generous actions, and had the grace, in his soberer moments, to be ashamed of the life he led, and of the waste of powers of which he was guilty. There is this excuse we do not put it forward as altogether satisfactory-to be made for Rochester and his roistering companions; that with superabundant vitality, and all the energy and ripe vigour of their race, they had absolutely no fitting field of action open to them. Beyond the seas no such outlets for a spirit of adventure were open then as are open now; no great war braced up their manhood, and awakened their loftier impulses. Parliamentary

life offered no generous and elevating career; no healthy public opinion held in check their riotous and exuberant animalism. So they went into the streets and the stews, and there exhausted the gifts and graces which, under happier circumstances, might have done so much for their country and themselves. They were unfortunate in the age into which they were born. A century earlier, and they would have shone among the daring spirits who adorned the times of great Elizabeth. A century later, and their pulses would have been stirred by that inspiration of freedom and humanity which breathed a new life into the dry bones of the European nations. As it was, they came into an atmosphere of corruption and luxurious apathy, and sensual indulgence, the evil influence of which not even a Sidney or a Russell could wholly escape. We may and must condemn them, and yet something of pity may rightly mingle with our

anger.

On the literary work of Rochester we are not prepared to say that M. Taine's criticism is wholly just. He makes no attempt to separate the golden grain from the worthless chaff, while he evidently accepts as Rochester's very much which belongs to other and even filthier writers.

"We cannot copy," he says, "even the titles of his poems; they were written only for the haunts of vice. Stendhal said that love is like a dried-up bough cast into a mine; the crystals cover it, spread out into filigree work, and end by converting the worthless stick into a sparkling tuft of the purest diamonds. Rochester begins by depriving love of all its adornment, and to make sure of grasping it, converts it into a stick. Every refined

VOL. II.

sentiment, every fancy; the enchantment, the serene, sublime glow which transforms in a moment this wretched world of ours; the illusion which, uniting all the powers of our being, shows as perfection in a finite creature, and eternal bliss in a transient emotion, all has vanished; there remain but satiated appetites and palled senses. The worst of it is, that he writes without spirit, and methodically enough. He has no natural ardour, no picturesque sensuality; his satires prove him a disciple of Boileau. Nothing is more disgusting than obscenity in cold blood. We can endure the obscene works of Giulio Romano, and his Venetian voluptuousness, because in them genius sets off sensuality, and the loveliness of the splendid coloured draperies transforms an orgie into a work of art.* We pardon Rabelais, when we have entered into the deep current of manly joy and vigour, with which his feasts abound. We can hold our nose and have done with it, while we follow with admiration, and even sympathy, the torrent of ideas and fancies which flows through his mire. But to see a man trying to be elegant and remaining obscene, endeavouring to paint the sentiments of a navvy in the language of a man of the world, who tries to find a suitable metaphor for every kind of filth, who plays the blackguard studiously and deliberately, who, excused neither by genuine feeling, nor the glow of fancy, nor knowledge, nor genius, degrades a good style of writing to such work; it is like a rascal who sets himself to sully a set of gems in a gutter. The

* But Giulio Romano, and the writers who write as Romano painted, are infinitely more dangerous than Rochester. Evelyn saw that the insinuated sensuality of "gentle Etherege " and Sedley was more corrupting than Rochester's open lewdness. As for Rabelais, he descends into depths into which even Rochester would hardly have followed him.