John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), is principally known to posterity by his vices and his repentance. The latter has helped to preserve the memory of the former, which have also left abiding traces in a number of poems not included in his works, and some of which, it may be hoped, are wrongly attributed to him. For a number of years Rochester obtained notoriety as, after Buckingham, the most dissolute character of a dissolute age; but at the same time a critic and a wit, potent to make or mar the fortunes of men of letters. 'Sure,' says Mr. Saintsbury, 'to play some monkey trick or other on those who were unfortunate enough to be his intimates.' Many a literary cabal was instigated by him, many a libel and lampoon flowed from his pen, among others, _The Session of the Poets_, correctly characterized by Johnson as 'merciless insolence.' Worn out by a life of excess, he died at thirty-three, and his penitence, largely due to the arguments and exhortations of Burnet, afforded the latter material for a narrative which Johnson, entirely opposed as he was to the author's political and ecclesiastical principles, declares that 'the critic ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.' Rochester's acknowledged poems fall into two divisions of unequal merit. The lyrical and amatory are in general very insipid. The more serious pieces, especially when expressing the discomfort of a sated votary of pleasure, frequently want neither force nor weight. Four particularly fine lines, quoted without indication of authorship in Goethe's _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, have frequently occasioned speculation as to their origin. They come from Rochester's _Satyr against Mankind_, and read: 'Then Old Age and Experience, hand in hand, Lead him to Death, and make him understand, After a search so painful and so long, That all his life he has been in the wrong.' Goldsmith's 'best-natured man, with the worst-natured muse,' is purloined from Rochester, who is also the propounder of the paradox, 'All men would be cowards if they durst.' Some of his songs are not devoid of merit. After all, however, nothing of his is so well known as the anticipatory epitaph on Charles II., ascribed sometimes to him, sometimes to Buckingham, and very likely due to neither: 'Here lies our mutton-eating king, Whose word no man relies on; Who never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one.' Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon (1633?-1684), was a very different character, both as a man and as a poet. He is accused of no fault but a love of gaming, and the purity of his Muse merited the well-known eulogium: 'In all Charles's days Roscommon only boasts unsullied bays.'