Literary Shenanigans: John Donne and John Wilmot, 2nd
Earl of Rochester
John Donne (1572-1631)
“The first thing to remember about Donne is that he was a Catholic; the second, that he betrayed his faith” (Carey 15)
“Some of [Donne’s] most persistent imaginative habits may be traced to this impatience with a fragmented state of being. It made
him hungry for absolutes and totalities…The more fluid and multifarious your mind, the harder it is to feel sure you exist as a
definable self. Donne seemed to be disturbed, or at least intrigued, but this sense of absence quite early in life, and to have
contemplated the steps he might take to counteract it” (Carey 169)
Brief Biography

1572, born into a Catholic family; mother’s side related to Thomas More, father dies when John is
four-years-old
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1583-1584, Uncle Jasper Heywood, head of a Jesuit mission, captured, imprisoned, and executed
1592-1593, begins studying law at Thavies Inn then transfers to Lincoln’s Inn; Satires and Songs and
Sonnets believed to be written sometime during this stay in London

1593, brother Henry dies of plague while imprisoned for harboring a Catholic priest
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1597, begins work as secretary for Sir Thomas Egerton
1601-1602, Donne secretly marries Egerton’s niece, Ann More; is briefly imprisoned after being
released from Egerton’s service
1607, Divine Poems thought to be published
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
1608, amidst poverty and the loss of four of his twelve children, Donne writes Biathanatos, a
justification of suicide
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1609-1610, when Holy Sonnets were written
1611, publishes The First Anniversary to commemorate Elizabeth Drury, daughter of his patron
1615, ordained deacon and priest
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1621, elected Dean of St. Paul’s
1624, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions published
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1631, Donne dies after obsessing over a sketch of himself tightly wrapped, facing the East; it is his
“hourly object till his death” (Walton 113)
Donne as a Metaphysical Poet

Donne is often thought to be the face of the metaphysical poets of the 17th century, though he is
the most unique, in method and form, of the group.

According to Helen Gardner, metaphysical poets are characterized by 1) concentration, or the
demand for attention, as seen through the poems’ brevity and simple, but variable verse form as to
compress the poem; and 2) “fondness for conceits…a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking
than its justness” (19)

This style of poetry, particularly pertaining to Donne’s, was not well received until the 20 th
century. Furthering Dryden’s quote, “He affects the metaphysics...perplexes the minds of the fair
sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts and entertain them
with the softness of love,”(Gardner 15) Samuel Johnson coined the term “metaphysical poet” in his
Life of Cowley, saying himself, “Heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.”

Ben Jonson, a metaphysical poet himself, claimed Donne’s best poetry was written at age 25,
however, his lack of form would make him be forgotten.
Donne was revived with the 20th-century modernists, particularly through T.S. Eliot and the critic
F.R. Leavis. Eliot said that Donne was the last great writer of the English tradition with a
dissatisfaction of English civility; his poems possessed an immediacy of thought. Leavis claimed, “At
last we read as we read the living.”


Other metaphysical poets include: George Herbert, Thomas Carew, and Andrew Marvell amongst
others.
Songs and Sonnets

Ironically only contains one formal sonnet. The collection was not consolidated and published until
the 1630s and was assumed to have been written before his ordainment and marriage, during a time
of more rakish behavior and religious uncertainty.

Donne fully embraced his place as a post-Petrarchan, experimenting with form and style.
Christopher Warley claims, “Donne stands for an association of sensibility in his own time against
the ‘mass production’ of the Elizabethans—the merely fashionable, merely transitory, ‘vogue’ for
sonneteering” (37).

Thematically, Donne still explores the Petrarchan notion of love, but he does so with a power, or
as Carey believes, a “dictatorial attitude… [that violently combines] objects of the sensed world in
his imagery” (117).

Suggested poems: “The Canonization,” “The Sun Rising,” “The Flea,” “A Valediction: forbidding
Mourning,” and “The Ecstasty.
The Holy Sonnets

Probably written between 1609 and 1610, Donne’s life at this point was plagued by death and
religious (and existential) uncertainty. The Holy Sonnets are concerned with Hell and Donne’s fear
that he is not worth of redemption. Though still metaphysical with his conceits, the adoption of the
strict sonnet form demonstrates somewhat of an inversion from Songs and Sonnets.

Gary Kuchar claims, “The fundamental drama of the Holy Sonnets is characterized by the speaker’s
terrifying recognition that repentance requires him to experience his lack of autonomy—to
undergo a physically violent process in which he comes to realize…that in himself he is nothing”
(537). Whereas Donne wanted ownership of his mistresses in Songs and Sonnets, he almost
masochistically demands God to control and ravage him in the Holy Sonnets.

Suggested poems (because the numbering is different from volume to volume, I will go by the first
words of the poem): “Batter my heart,” “Oh my black soul!,”
The First Anniversary and Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

The First Anniversary was written upon the death of Elizabeth Drury, the daughter of his patron Sir
Robert Drury, in 1611. Because Sir Robert Drury was his patron, and Donne never actually met
Elizabeth, many have cast this poem aside as insincere and self-serving.

The First Anniversary is “divided an introduction, a conclusion, and five distinct sections which form
the body of the work. Each of these sections is subdivided into three sections: first, a meditation on
some aspect of ‘the frailty and the decay of this whole world;’ second, a eulogy of Elizabeth Drury
as the ‘Idea’ of human perfection and the source of hope, now lost, for the world; third, a refrain
introducing a moral” (Martz 2).

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, published in 1624, studies Donne’s illness (probably typhus) in its
developing stages through 23 devotions, each broken up into three parts: a meditation, an
expostulation, and a prayer. He investigates the relationship between his body and soul, paralleling
his physical sickness to the inherent sin within him.
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680)
“None of all our libertines understood better than he the secret mysteries of sin, [he] had studied everything that could support a man
in it” (Bishop Burnet 84)
“Knowledge and power became most dangerous…[they] seemed to affect something singular and paradoxical in his impieties, as well
as in his writings, above the reach of thought of other men” (Reverend Parsons 12).
Brief Biography

1647, born to Henry, a Royalist under Charles I whom John never got to know, and Anne, of a
prominent Puritan family, shrewd and sober

1659-1660, educated at Oxford under Robert Whitehall who was said to plant the seed of the
libertine in young John
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1661, granted monetary allowance by Charles II (because of his father Henry’s loyalty) and sent on
Grand Tour

1665, attempts to abduct Elizabeth Malet, whose family disapproved of their marriage because of
John’s financial situation. He was subsequently, and briefly, imprisoned, yet he eventually married
Elizabeth in 1667. Despite his libertine life, the two were said to be happily married.

1674-1675, the period in which he writes his best poetry, during which he writes “A Satyr against
Reason and Mankind” and, according to Bishop Burnet, was continually drunk

1675-1677, reportedly trains and has an illegitimate child with the subsequently famous actress
Elizabeth Barry
1676, the beginning of his downfall after he nearly beats a constable to death after being denied a
whore he thought to be in his house; forced into hiding
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1676-1680, falls into illness and depression (probably syphilis, among other things). In 1679 until
his death, Bishop Burnet holds dialogue with him at his deathbed at which, according to Burnet,
Rochester converted to Christianity. It was this account, not his poetry, that made Rochester
famous with the contemporary audience.
“A Satyr against Reason and Mankind”

The most famous of his poems, written in two parts, this offers a microcosm of his poetry and life,
demonstrating his “Skepticism” philosophy, his libertine lifestyle, his sharp wit, and a longing
(though not a belief in) for absolutes and good in the world.

The first of the two portions represents the more common perception of Rochester. Here he
postulates the superiority of the tangible and real “That reason which distinguishes by sense” (line
100), over the ideal of a reason based upon fear and arbitrary order. The tone with which
Rochester writes this first portion reflects the skeptic, libertine side of him in its freedom,
sharpness, and irony. Senses should dictate understanding, but not on the abstract level: “Thus, sir,
you see what human nature craves,/Most men are cowards, all men should be knaves” (lines 168169).

The second portion (or addition) beginning at line 174, was more than likely a response to a
Stillingfleet sermon in which he criticizes the libertines and their arrogant and false sense of
confidence.

The tone of the “Addition” differs from that of the original portion of “Satyr”. Where Rochester
writes with a more assured, comedic, and ironic style in the first part, he now finishes with a
vulnerability and desperate request (that he knows cannot be satisfied) for a good man, humble,
just, and chaste.

The two portions of the poem disparage one another. The man of the first portion is of “that sensual
tribe, whose talents lie/ In avarice, pride, sloth, and gluttony” (lines 202-203) that the man of the
second portion despises. Yet the man of the second portion, a man whose “wisdom did happiness
destroy” (line 33), is one that the rake of the first portion would hate.

Griffin claims that, “The ‘Satyr’ as a whole, then, is a demonstrably ambiguous poem, stylistically
and thematically. Although we may extract from one part of the poem a sensationalist ethic, in
other parts we find that such an ethic does not produce good or happy men…[he is] a man for
whom an unbridgeable gap existed between the ideal and the realizable, both in his own experience
and in his poems.” (243-244)

Suggested poems: “The Fall,” “The Disabled Debauchee,” “Upon Nothing,” “To the Postboy,” “A
Satyr on Charles II,” and “Signor Dildo.”
Donne Sources
Carey, John. John Donne: Life, Mind and Art. New York: Oxford UP, 1981. Print.
Donne, John. John Donne: Selected Poetry. Ed. John Carey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
Gross, Kenneth. "John Donne's Lyric Skepticism: In a Strange Way." Modern Philology: A Journal Devoted to Research in
Medieval and Modern Literature 101.3 (2004): 371-99. Print.
Guss, Donald L. John Donne, Petrarchist. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1966. Print.
Kuchar, Gary. "Petrarchism and Repentance in John Donne's Holy Sonnets." Modern Philology: Critical and Historical Studies
in Literature, Medieval Through Contemporary 105.3 (2008): 535-69. Print.
Martz, Louis L. John Donne in Meditation: The Anniversaries. New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1970. Print.
Oliver, P. M. Donne's Religious Writing: A Discourse of Feigned Devotion. New York: Longman, 1997. Print.
Spiller, Michael. Early Modern Sonneteers: From Wyatt to Milton. Horndon: Northcote House, 2001. Print.
Walton, Izaak. "The life of John Donne, Dr. in divinity, and late dean of Saint Pauls Church." EEBO. ProQuest LLC. Web. 24
Nov. 2009.
Warley, Christopher. Sonnet Sequences and Social Distinction in Renaissance England. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.
Rochester Sources
Burnet, Gilbert. "Some passages in the life and death of John Earl of Rochester, written by Gilbert Burnet, ... With a sermon,
preached at the funeral of the said ..." Ed. Samuel Johnson. ECCO. Gale Cenage Learning, 01 Nov. 2004. Web. 11
Oct. 2009.
Fisher, Nicholas. "The Contemporary Reception of Rochester's "A Satyr Against Mankind"" The Review of English
Studies 57.229 (2006): 185-220. Print.
Griffin, Dustin H. Satires Against Man: The Poems of Rochester. Berkley: University of California, 1973. Print.
Johnson, James William. A Profane Wit: The Life of John WIlmot, Earl of Rochester. Rochester: The University of Rochester,
2004. Print.
Parsons, Robert. "Sermon Preach'd at the Funeral of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester." ECCO. Gale Cenage
Learning, 01 Nov. 2004. Web. 07 Nov. 2009.
Stillingfleet, Edward. "Fifty sermons preached upon several occasions. By the Right Reverend Father in God, Edward
Stillingfleet, ..." ECCO. Gale Cenage Learning, 01 Nov. 2004. Web. 27 Nov. 2009.
The Libertine. Dir. Stephen Jeffries. Perf. Johnny Depp and John Malkovich. The Weinstein Company, 2005. DVD.
Thormahalen, Marianne. "Rochester and the Fall: The Roots of Discontent." A Journal of English Language and
Literature 32.1 (1988): 369-409. Print.
Vieth, David M., ed. The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. New Haven: Yale UP, 1968. Print.
Wilcoxon, Reba. "Rochester's Philosophical Premises: A Case for Consistency." Eighteenth-Century Studies 8.2 (1974-1975):
183-201. Print.