: "But when you doe the inside seeYou'll find that things are but as they should beAnd that 'tis neither love nor passionBut only for your recreation."(A Ramble in St James' Park 13-16).These feelings of malcontent which reveal themselves in his lewd verse are further highlighted in Signior Dildo, where a good friend of Rochester, Henry Savile, was caught in the bedroom of the Countess of Northumberland, where he proceeded to offer her a stream of declarations of love. He also mentions this incident in Timon. This is an interesting insight into life in the Court, and is, apart from the coarse description, quite funny. Rochester attempts to write a penitential poem in To the Postboy, which shows that perhaps he is not the rakish cad that some of his poems make him out to be, as he apparently feels bad for having "outswilled Bacchus" and "swived more whores more ways than Sodom's walls...". And he now believes that "The readiest way to Hell...'s by Rochester." Rochester's use of licentiousness in the poems does not always have the desired effect on his satiric works. As mentioned earlier, sometimes he is perfectly capable of success with 'clean' lines, such as in 'Satyr'. See also Upon Nothing, which contains a frustrated open question to God. Rochester asks why inept people are allowed to govern the country:"But Nothing, why does something still permitThat sacred monarchs should in council sitWith persons highly thought at best for nothing fit,While weighty Something modestly abstainsFrom princes' coffers, and from statesman's brains,And nothing there like stately Nothing reigns?"(Upon Nothing (38-42) These poems contain questions that were being pondered by a few writers in this time, and they obviously also interested Rochester. In fact, A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind provoked a lot of responses from clergymen. It accuses them of being hypocrites who take bribes, and asks of them "Is there a churchman on who on God relies; Whose l...
