SOURCE: Robinson, K. E. “Rochester's Dilemma.” Durham University Journal 40 (June, 1979): 223–31.

In the essay below, Robinson discusses the oppositions in Rochester's poetry, noting, for example, that A Satire Against Mankind starts out advocating appetitive values and ends by espousing more traditional ideas, and that Upon Nothing can be seen as a struggle between reason and intuition.

Dr. Johnson once remarked to Topham Beauclerk (great-grandson of Charles II and Nell Gwynne): ‘Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue’.¹ He might equally well have been talking of that well-known associate of Beauclerk's great-grandfather, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, companion, yet sternly moral critic of Charles II. There is in Rochester an extraordinary opposition of venal life-style and moral capacity. The opposition is more than merely historically or psychologically compelling: if we dig down to its intellectual foundations we shall reveal an ambivalence of pressing modernity. For Rochester's mature...