Poets of the Times: Rochester, Oldham, and Restoration Literary Culture

Abstract

Although a poet himself, John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, agreed with Frank Osbaldistone’s father about the triviality and profanity of seventeenth-century English verse. Yet for Rochester and other court wits, these characteristics carried no pejorative resonance; rather, the playful, licentious quality of poetry identified it as a pastime suitable for aristocratic males, whose indulgence in this kind of writing displayed their social power (they were above the restraints of decency imposed upon their inferiors) and status (they had leisure for composing poetic “trifles”). “[I] never Rhym’d, but for my Pintles sake,”¹ declares one of Rochester’s rakish speakers, and although a dissenting merchant like Osbaldistone might abhor the motives that brought forth such rhymes, Rochester viewed them as the only ones appropriate for men of his class. Rochester, too, “looked upon the labour of poets with contempt”: for him, a poet’s need to work at writing revealed his deficiency in wit and suggested that, whatever his rank, his character was suited to the drudgery engaged in by the lower classes. By contrast, the “easy’ poetry of Rochester and his coterie was invoked as evidence of their cultural dominance and sexual prowess alike, and thus was used to support their authority within the period’s interconnecting systems of class, gender, and literature.

“What’s all this? —verses!— By Heaven, Frank, you are a greater blockhead than I supposed you!” My father, you must recollect, as a man of business, looked upon the labor of poets with contempt; and as a religious man, and of the dissenting persuasion, he considered all such pursuits as equally trivial and profane. Before you condemn him, you must recall to remembrance how too many of the poets in the end of the seventeenth century had led their lives and employed their talents.

Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy (1817)