Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/73

 As 'tis Alter'd by the late Earl of Rochester and Acted at the Theatre Royal. Together with a Preface concerning the Author and his Writings. By one of his Friends’ (i.e. Robert Wolseley, eldest son of Sir Charles Wolseley [q. v.]), London, 1685. When the play was produced in 1685, Betterton played Aecius with much success, and Mrs. Barry appeared as Lucina (, Roscius, p. 55). Three prologues were printed, one being by Mrs. Behn.

A second play (in heroic couplets) of intolerable foulness has been put to Rochester's discredit. It is entitled ‘Sodom,’ and was published at Antwerp in 1684 as ‘by the E. of R.;’ no copy of this edition is known; one is said to have been burnt by Richard Heber. Two manuscripts are extant; one is in the British Museum (Harl. MS. 7312, pp. 118–45, a volume containing many of Rochester's authentic compositions), and the other is in the town library of Hamburg. The piece is improbably said to have been acted at court; it was doubtless designed as a scurrilous attack on Charles II. In a short poem purporting to be addressed to the author of the play (in Rochester's collected poems), he mockingly disclaimed all responsibility for it, and it has been attributed to a young barrister named John Fishbourne, of whom nothing is practically known (, Biogr. Dram.) Internal evidence unhappily suggests that Rochester had the chief hand in the production. French adaptations are dated 1744, 1752, and 1767 (cf., Centuria Librorum Absconditorum, London, privately printed, 1879).

An edition of Rochester's ‘Works’ which was issued by Tonson in 1714, 12mo, included his letters to Savile and Mrs. * * *, the tragedy of ‘Valentinian,’ a preface by Rymer, and a pastoral elegy by Oldham. There was a portrait by Van der Gucht. The fourth edition of this is dated 1732. Rochester's ‘Remains,’ including his ‘Satyres,’ followed in 1718. Probably the completest edition is the ‘Poetical Works of the Earl of Rochester,’ 1731–2, 2 vols.

A less perfect collection of his ‘Works’ included the poems of the Earl of Roscommon. The first edition appeared before 1702. An obscene appendix was called ‘The Delights of Venus, now first published.’ The second edition is dated 1702; others appeared in 1707 (and in 1714) with Saint-Évremond's memoir of Rochester and an additional poem of outrageous grossness called ‘The Discovery.’

A volume containing not only Rochester's poems, but also those of the Earls of Roscommon and Dorset and the Dukes of Devonshire and Buckingham, first appeared in 1731, and was frequently reissued, often with an obscene appendix by various hands, entitled ‘The Cabinet of Love,’ London, 1739, 2 vols. 12mo; 1757, 1777. A privately printed reissue of excerpts from the 1757 edition appeared in 1884. Rochester's poems, expurgated by George Steevens [q. v.], appeared in Johnson's collection, and were reprinted in the collections of Anderson, Chalmers, and Park.

Rochester's letters to Savile and to Mrs. Barry were published, with a varied correspondence collected by Tom Brown, in ‘Familiar Letters,’ 1685, 1697, and 1699, and seven letters—two to his son, four to his wife, and one to the Earl of Lichfield—are in ‘Whartoniana,’ 1727, ii. 161–8. A few more are appended to ‘A New Miscellany of Original Poems,’ 1720 (with preface by Anthony Hammond [q. v.])

[Saint-Évremond's Memoir, prefixed to Rochester's Miscellaneous Works, 1707; Savile Correspondence (Camden Soc.); Cibber's Lives, ii. 269–300; Gramont's Memoirs; Burnet's Own Times; Aubrey's Lives, ed. Andrew Clark; Poems on Affairs of State, passim; Marshall's Woodstock, with Supplement, 1873–4; Hunter's Chorus Vatum in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 24491; Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage. Rochester's death is described for edificatory purposes not only in Parsons's Sermon, 1680, and Burnet's Some Passages, 1680, but also in The Libertine Overthrown, 1680, and in The Two Noble Converts, 1680. His career is depicted in an intentionally unedifying light in J. G. M. Rutherford's Adventures of the Duke of Buckingham, Charles II, and the Earl of Rochester, 1857, and in Singular Life … of the renowned Earl of Rochester, 1864?] 

WILMOT, JOHN EARDLEY (1709–1792), chief justice of the common pleas, second son of Robert Wilmot of Osmaston, Derbyshire, by Ursula, daughter of Sir Samuel Marow, bart., of Berkswell, Warwickshire, was born at Derby on 16 Aug. 1709. Sir Robert Wilmot, bart. (so created on 19 Sept. 1772 in recognition of long service as secretary to successive lords-lieutenant of Ireland) was his elder brother. The brothers were grandsons of Robert Wilmot, M.P. for Derby 1690–5, who married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Eardley of Eardley, Staffordshire. Their great-grandfather was Sir Nicholas Wilmot, serjeant-at-law (knighted at Hampton Court on 20 July 1674), whose elder brother Edward was grandfather of the eminent physician Sir Edward Wilmot [q. v.]

The future chief justice received his earlier education at the free school, Derby, and, like