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The Right Honourable
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester |
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| Born | 1 April 1647
Ditchley, Oxfordshire, England |
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| Died | 26 July 1680 (aged 33)
Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England |
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| Cause of death | Believed to be complications from syphilis[1] |
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| Resting place | Spelsbury, Oxfordshire, England |
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| Alma mater | Wadham College
University of Oxford |
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| Notable work | A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind
A Letter From Artemesia
An Allusion to Horace
A Ramble in St James' Park[2]
The Imperfect Enjoyment[3] |
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| Style | 2nd Earl of Rochester, 2nd Baron Wilmot of Adderbury, 3rd Viscount of Athlone (peerage of Ireland) |
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| Spouse(s) | Elizabeth Wilmot, Countess of Rochester |
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| Children | Charles Wilmot, 3rd Earl of Rochester, Lady Anne Wilmot, Lady Elizabeth Wilmot, Lady Malet Wilmot, one illegitimate daughter from Mrs Elizabeth Barry |
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| Parent(s) | Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester, Anne St. John |
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John Wilmot (1 April 1647 – 26 July 1680) was an English poet and
courtier of King
Charles II's
Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the "spiritual authoritarianism" of the
Puritan era.
[3] Lord Rochester was the embodiment of the new era, and he is as well known for his
rakish lifestyle as his poetry, although the two were often interlinked.
[3] He died at the age of 33 from
venereal disease.
- Greene, Graham (1974). Lord Rochester's Monkey, being the Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester. New York: The Bodley Head. ASIN B000J30NL4.
Lord Rochester's Monkey (1939) By Graham Greene
John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, was born on April 1st 1647. A poet and courtier, he was the favourite of Charles II whose wit, lasciviousness and serious intellectual interests he shared
John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, was born on this day in 1647
黃芳田
《小說家的人生》A Sort of Life 的譯文當然很可靠
缺撼是第220頁對
Lord Rochester's Monkey (1939) By Graham Greene 這本書，標點符號錯誤。
The Earl of Rochester
出版商是看
A Sort of Life 之後，才知道Graham Greene 1939年寫這奇(詩)人奇事。
我在2005年貼過一文:
Rochester's most famous verse concerned King Charles II, his great friend. In reply to his jest that:
- "He never said a foolish thing, nor ever did a wise one",
Charles is reputed to have said:
- "That is true -- for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers."
mien
- Bearing or manner, especially as it reveals an inner state of mind: "He was a Vietnam veteran with a haunted mien" (James Traub).
- An appearance or aspect.
[Alteration (influenced by French mine, appearance) of Middle English demeine, demeanor, from Old French, from demener , to behave. See demean1.]
━━ n.n. - 風采, 樣子, 態度日本語 (Japanese) 風采(ふうさい), 態度.
n. - 物腰, 態度, 風采
Français (French)mine, expression
Pepys' Diary: Wednesday 4 April 1660
The King: O,
prisca fides! What can these be?
Rochester: The love of wine and women.
The King: God bless your majesty!" new. Hhomeboy on Sun 6 Apr 2003,
...
Sober in govt….continued:
One of the better exchanges between Rochester and The King:
"Rochester:Were I in your Majesty's place I would not govern at all.
The King: How then?
Rochester: I would send for my good Lord Rochester and command him to govern.
The King: But the singular modesty of that nobleman-
Rochester: He would certainly conform himself to your Majesty's bright example. How gloriously would the two grand social virtues flourish under his auspices!
The King: O, prisca fides! What can these be?
Rochester: The love of wine and women.
The King: God bless your majesty!"
crest
The Family Motto is: "
PRISCA FIDES" this translates to "Ancient Trust" and can
be traced to John Glassford Tobacco Lord.
...
ip·so fac·to ( ĭp'sō făk'tō) 
adv.
By the fact itself; by that very fact: An alien, ipso facto, has no right to a U.S. passport.
[New Latin ipsō factō : Latin ipsō, ablative of ipse, itself + Latin factō, ablative of factum , fact.]
September 15, 1974
A Martyr to Sin
By WALTER CLEMONS
|
LORD ROCHESTER'S MONKEYBy Graham Greene.
|
n the best known portrait of John Wilmot, Second Earl of
Rochester, a pet monkey proffers a tattered page ripped from one of his master's books. The Earl, resplendent in silks, coolly awards the beast a laurel crown. "Were I...,"
Rochester wrote, "a spirit free, to choose for my own share/ what sort of flesh and blood I pleas'd to wear,/ I'd be a dog, a monkey or a bear,/ Or any thing but that vain animal/ Who is so proud of being rational."
For more than two centuries
Rochester's notoriety as the wildest of "the merry gang" of wits who converged at Charles II's court during the 1660's overshadowed his reputation as a poet. The poetry- skeptical, parodistic, obscene and scathing- was a rediscovery of the 1920's, though John Hayward's 1926 Nonesuch edition escaped prosecution only by being limited to 1,050 copies. A scholarly biography by Vivian de Sola Pinto (1935; revised as "Enthusiast in Wit," 1962) usefully related
Rochester's libertinism to Hobbesian materialism- specifically to Hobbes's doctrine that sensory experience was the only philosophical reality. Pinto pitched his claims high: "If Milton is the great poet of belief in the 17th century,
Rochester is the great poet of unbelief."
Professor Pinto's book hadn't yet appeared when Graham
Greene, an unsuccessful novelist in his twenties, wrote a biography of
Rochester 40 years ago. It was turned down "without hesitation" by his publisher,
Greene told us in his 1971 autobiography, "and I was too uncertain of myself to send it elsewhere." The typescript has now been retrieved from the University of Texas library, minimally revised and elaborately packaged by George Rainbird Ltd. of London in the format of Nancy Mitford's "The Sun King" and Angus Wilson's "The World of Charles Dickens."
"Lord
Rochester's Monkey," it turns out, is
Greene's best early work- a writer's book about a writer, with the vibrations of affinity we feel in Henry James's "Hawthorne" or John Berryman's "Stephen Crane."
Greene, who had drawn the title of his first novel from Sir Thomas Browne- "There's another man within me that's angry with me"- responded to the discord between Cavalier and Puritan in
Rochester's character, the extremities of debauchery and disgust, his personal elegance and appetite for squalor, the acrid blend of bawdry and moral fervor in his verses.
Rochester lived with extraordinary velocity. Son of a Cavalier general who had followed Charles II into exile, and of a strong willed Puritan mother, he presented himself at court at 17- "graceful, tho' tall and slender," according to an early account, "his mien and shape having something extremely engaging; and for his mind, it discovered charms not to be withstood." The next year he was in the Tower for having tried to abduct the heiress Elizabeth Mallet, whose guardians aimed to auction her in marriage to a higher bidder. Freed, he redeemed himself by bravery with the fleet against the Dutch, returned to be sworn a Gentleman of the King's Bedchamber and to elope with Elizabeth Mallet, this time successfully, when he was 19.
Of the tradition that he "was very barbarous to his own lady, tho' so very fine a woman,"
Greeneobserves that "infidelity was the full extent of his barbarity. A love story... may have lain hidden between these two young, witty and unhappy people." As he veered between country and court,
Rochester's inconstancy seems to have tormented him. More than one letter to his wife is filled with tender regret: "I myself have a sense of what the methods of my life seem so utterly to contradict..."
Rochester told the historian Gibert Burnet that "for five years together he was continually drunk; not all the while under the visible effect of it." He was repeatedly banished- and as often recalled- by the King he scurrilously lampooned. Drink made him "extravagantly pleasant"; it also led to disgraces like the smashing of the royal sundial and the brawl at Epsom in which his friend Mr. Downes was killed.
Greene plausibly links the most famous of
Rochester's masquerades to the aftermath of the Epsom affray: he vanished from London and a mysterious Dr. Alexander Bendo- astrologer, diviner of dreams, dispenser of beauty aids and cures for women's diseases- set up shop on Tower Hill. "Dr. Bendo's" advertisement is one of the most dazzling virtuoso pieces of 17th-century prose. In its impromptu rush of quackery and Biblical cadences, its promises of marvels and its teasing challenge to distinguish the counterfeit from the real.
Greene astutely notes "the cracks in the universe of Hobbes, the disturbing doubts in his disbelief, which may have been in
Rochester's mind even in the midst of his masquerade, so riddled is the broadsheet with half truths."
Dating his poems is a snare, but
Rochester's Songs and his best satires- "A Ramble in St. James's Park," the "Satyr Against Reason and Mankind," "A Letter from Artemisia in the Town to Chloe in the Country," "The Maim'd Debauchee"- all seem to have been written before he turned 29. Thereafter "an embittered and thoughtful man who would die in 1680 of old age at 33," he seldom appeared at court. In his last year he debated theology with the Anglican Gilbert Burnet and underwent a religious conversion, the authenticity of which was impugned when Burnet published his account of it but which
Greene, like Vivian de Sola Pinto, believes to have been genuine. "The hand of God touched him," Burnet wrote- "but,"
Greene characteristically adds, "it did not touch him through the rational arguments of a cleric. If God appeared at the end, it was the sudden secret appearance of a thief... without reason, an act of grace."
Rochester is thus the earliest of Graham
Greene's black sheep heroes, far more powerfully drawn than the protagonists of the novels
Greene was writing at this time ("The Man Within," "Rumour at Nightfall," "The Name of Action"). Facets of
Rochester's character will reappear in the dangerous Pinky in "Brighton Rock," the whisky priest, the remorseful husband in "The Heart of the Matter," the God-thwarted amorist in "The End of the Affair." At
Rochester's funeral the chaplain preached an unusual sermon: "He seemed to affect something singular and paradoxical in his impieties, as well as in his writings, above the reach and thought of other men... Nay, so confirmed was he in sin, that he oftentimes almost died a martyr for it."
"Lord
Rochester's Monkey," with a bibliography containing no item more recent than 1931, is going to catch hell from some scholars.
Greene gracefully acknowledges Pinto's work ("I have no wish to rewrite my biography at Professor Pinto's expense") and sideswipes David M. Vieth's 1968 "The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of
Rochester" (Yale University Press): "As Mr. Vieth admits the attribution to a great many poems depends on subjective judgment, and out ears often differ...
Rochester's poems from his death on became more indecent with every year, and I have the impression that Mr. Vieth is inclined to prefer the hotter versions." But 40 years' work on the dating and ascription of
Rochester's writings (by Pinto, John Harold Wilson, James Thorpe, Frank H. Ellis, Vieth and others) has left
Greene in a number of unprotected positions.
Four out of five verse citations on a single page, during a discussion of
Rochester's marriage, are now pretty reliably believed not to be
Rochester's. Misdating a letter blunts its fine edge of sarcasm: when
Rochester wrote, "My passion for living is so increased that I omit no care of myself... The King, who knows me to be a very ill-natured man, will not think it an easy matter for me to die, now I live chiefly out of spite," it now appears he was not referring to the false report of his death in 1678 but to the King's premature appointment, three years earlier, of
Rochester's successor to the lifetime post of the Ranger of Woodstock Park. When
Rochester wonders at the enmity of the Duchess of Portsmouth,
Greene remarks, "He had forgotten 'Portsmouth's Mirror'" -a poem containing allusions to events after his death.
These lapses disfigure the book but cannot wreck it.
Greene's intuition of character yields insights that academic caution might prohibit. He is at his keenest in a chapter on Elizabeth Barry, the London actress who bore
Rochester a daughter remembered in his will. Her fellow players despaired of her; she had "not a musical ear" and could not master the declamatory tragedy-queen style. Undertaking her training on a bet,
Rochester "caused her to enter into the meaning of every sentiment... and adapt her whole behavior to the situations of the characters." (Professor Pinto loses his head and tells us "we can see here the beginnings of a new art of the theatre that was to culminate in the naturalistic drama of Ibsen, Shaw and Chekov.")
Mrs. Barry became one of the great actresses of her time, unequalled in the art of exciting pity, Colley Cibber said. And notorious offstage,
Greene adds, for her combination of immorality and coldness. Thirty-four undated letters to "slattern Betty Barry" exist in print, though not in manuscript.
Greeneshifts these into a pattern of his own, speculating that she inspired the famous lyric "An age in her embraces past/ Would seem a winter's day"- with its piercing observation that while pleasure may be mistaken for true love, "pain can ne'er deceive." It is a convincing feat of historical imagination.
Greene's claim for his
Rochester is justified: "So complex a character can be 'dramatized' (in James's sense) in more ways than one. The longer I worked on his life the more living he became to me."
Walter Clemons is an editor of Newsweek.
"Naked she lay, claspt in my longing Arms,
I fill'd with Love, and she all over Charms,
Both equally inspir'd with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire;
With Arms, Legs, Lips, close clinging to embrace,
She clips me to her Breast, and sucks me to her Face.
The nimble Tongue (Love's lesser Lightning) plaid
Within my Mouth, and to my thoughts convey'd
Swift Orders, that I should prepare to throw
The All dissolving Thunderbolt below.
My flutt'ring Soul, sprung with the pointed Kiss,
Hangs hov'ring o're her Balmy Lips of Bliss."
--from "The Imperfect Enjoyment" (1680) by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647 - 1680)
戦闘では非常に勇敢にふるまい、周囲の賞賛を得ると共に、魂の不滅について深刻な疑念を抱いたといわれる。9月に帰国し、
10月31日に国王から海戦での勇敢な行動に対する褒賞として750ポンドを賜る。
1666年3月に国王の寝室係侍従に任命、6月に
英仏海峡の海戦に参加し、11月に帰国する。
1667年1月29日にエリザベス・マレットと結婚、
10月5日に
上院に召還され議員になると共に、11月には
下院による「クラレンドン弾劾決議を支持せよ」という抗議文に署名している。
その後の13年間では、ロンドンに出ては大酒と放蕩に身を持ち崩し、田舎にある領地に戻り妻子と団欒を過ごすという生活の繰り返しであった。主な出来事は次のとおり。
- 女優のエリザベス・バリー、ボウテル夫人、国王の愛妾ロバーツ夫人と恋をし、特にバリーとは一人娘をもうけている（1677年）。
- 1669年11月末、マルグレイヴ伯爵と決闘をするところだったが、ロチェスターからの「身体が弱っているために馬に乗らずには戦えない」という申し出で中止になった。
- 1675年、酔っぱらったあげく、御苑の中央に立ち、ヨーロッパ随一の貴重品とされていた日時計を抱えて引き倒した。
- 1676年6月、エプソムの治安官と喧嘩をし、仲間のダウンズが夜警に殺された。翌7月の間中、医者と占星術師に変装してタワーヒルで開業していたという。
- 1678年末、ヨーク公ジェームズ（後のジェームズ2世）の王位継承を認めないという下院からの王位排除法案について、上院で反対演説を行った。
- 1679年12月12日に起こった、詩人で批評家のジョン・ドライデンがローズ小路で襲撃され重傷を負うという事件に関与していたという。
1669年から治療を始めていた
梅毒が
1677年から悪化、それに従って公的な事柄に関心を向け始め、外国で官職に就きたいとも考えていた。1679年10月にバーネット博士(
Gilbert Burnet)の『宗教改革史』を読み、キリスト教信仰に心ひかれ、バーネットと神の本性・理性・奇跡について対話を始めた。
1680年の春、母の礼拝堂牧師が読む「
イザヤ書」第53章を聴いて不意に改心し、5月の末から6月の初めに正式に改悛し、
秘蹟を授かった。
6月19日には「自分が悪しき手本を示して罪を犯させたかも知れないすべての人」に対し、「末期の忠告」を書き署名し、1月後の7月26日に33歳で亡くなった。息子のチャールズがロチェスター伯位を継いだが、翌
1681年に10歳で亡くなりウィルモット家は断絶、ヨーク公の義弟でクラレンドン伯の次男
ローレンス・ハイドが新たにロチェスター伯となった。
詩人として[編集]
- グレアム・グリーン『ロチェスター卿の猿』（Lord Rochester's Monkey, being the Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, 1974年） ASIN B000J30NL4. ISBN 978-4-12-001447-5
- Jeremy Lamb " So Idle a Rogue: The Life and Death of Lord Rochester." (2005年) ISBN 0-7509-3913-3.
- James William Johnson "A Profane Wit: The Life of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Rochester", (2004年) ISBN 1-58046-170-0.
- "The Works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester." Harold Love編. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-818367-4.
- "The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester." David M. Vieth編 (2002年) Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-09713-1.
| 1有誰會相信我們的報道呢？上主的手臂又向誰顯示了呢？ |
| 2他在上主前生長如嫩芽，又像出自旱地中的根苗；他沒有俊美，也沒有華麗，可使我們瞻仰；他沒有儀容，可使我們戀慕。 |
| 3他受盡了侮辱，被人遺棄；他真是個苦人，熟悉病苦；他好像一個人們掩面不顧的人；他受盡了侮辱，因而我們都以他不算什麼。 |
| 4然而他所背負的，是我們的疾苦；擔負的，是我們的疼痛；我們還以為他受了懲罰，為天主所擊傷，和受貶抑的人。 |
| 5可是他被刺透，是因了我們的悖逆；他被打傷，是因了我們的罪惡，因他受了懲罰，我們便得了安全；因他受了創傷，我們便得了痊癒。 |
| 6我們都像羊一樣迷了路，各走各自的路；上主卻把我們眾人的罪過歸到他身上。 |
| 7他受虐待，仍然謙遜忍受，總不開口，如同被牽去待宰的羔羊；又像母羊在剪毛的人前不出聲，他也同樣不開口。 |
| 8他受了不義的審判而被除掉，有誰懷念他的命運？其實他從活人的地上被剪除，受難至死，是為了我人民的罪過。 |
| 9雖然他從未行過強暴，他口中也從未出過謊言，人們仍把他與歹徒同埋，使他同作惡的人同葬。 |
| 10上主的旨意是要用苦難折磨他，當他犧牲了自己的性命，作了贖過祭時，他要看見他的後輩延年益壽，上主的旨意也藉他的手得以實現。 |
| 11在他受盡了痛苦之後，他要看見光明，並因自己的經歷而滿足；我正義的僕人要使多人成義，因為他承擔了他們的罪過。 |
| 12為此，我把大眾賜與他作報酬，他獲得了無數的人作為獵物；因為他為了承擔大眾的罪過，作罪犯的中保，犧牲了自己的性命，至於死亡，被列於罪犯之中。 |
