the
Restoration. The deterioration of men and of humour in the last reign is
marked by the fact that ridicule was mostly directed not against vice as
in Roman satire, but against undeserved misfortunes. Even virtue and
learning did not afford immunity; Bishop Warburton writes: "This weapon
(in the dissolute times of Charles II.) completed the ruin of the best
minister of that age. The historians tell us that Chancellor Hyde was
brought into his Majesty's contempt by this court argument. They
mimicked his walk and gesture with a fire-shovel and bellows for the
mace and purse."

The indelicacy of which Charles and his companions was guilty, was not
of a primitive and ignorant kind, but always of an amatory character,
and at the expense of the fair sex; jests formerly so common as to
obtain the name of "japes." The writers of that day are objectionable
not merely for coarseness of this kind, but for the large amount of it,
as one artiste in complimentary attire might be tolerated where a crowd
of seminude performers could not. The poems of Sedley and Rochester are
as abundant in indelicacy as they are deficient in humour. The epigram
of Sedley to "Julius" gives a more correct idea of his character than of
his usual dullness.

"Thou swearest thou'll drink no more; kind Heaven send Me such a
cook or coachman, but no friend."

Rochester might have produced something good. His verses have more
traces of poetry and humour than we should expect from a man who out of
the thirty-four years of his life, was for five of them continually
drunk. He nearly always attunes his harp to the old subject, so as to
become hopelessly monotonous. Inconstancy has great charms for him, and
he consequently imputes it also to the ladies--

"Womankind more joy discovers
Making fools, than keeping lovers."

Again:

"Love like other little boys,
Cries for hearts as they for toys,
Which when gained, in childish play,
Wantonly are thrown away."

He seems to have been oppressed by a disbelief in any kind of good in
the world. His philosophy, whenever he ventured upon any, was sceptical
and irreverent. His best attempt in this direction was a poem "Upon
Nothing," which commences:

"Nothing! thou elder brother ev'n to shade,
That had'st a being 'ere the world was made,
And (well fixt) art alone of ending not afraid.
Ere Time and Place were, Time and Place were not,
When primitive Nothing, Something str