version, which made even greater sensation than Parsons's sermon, was published by Burnet under the title ‘Some Passages of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester,’ 1680, 8vo. Like Parsons's volume, it was constantly reissued. A modern reprint, with a preface by Lord Ronald Gower, appeared in 1875. Of the episode of his visit to Rochester's deathbed Burnet wrote: ‘Nor was the king displeased with my being sent for by Wilmot, earl of Rochester, when he died. He fancied that he had told me many things of which I might make an ill use; yet he had read the book that I writ concerning him, and spoke well of it’ (Burnet, Own Times, 1823, ii. 288).
Rochester's widow survived him about thirteen months, dying suddenly of apoplexy, and being buried at Spelsbury on 20 Aug. 1681 (cf. Hatton Correspondence, ii. 6). By her he left a son and three daughters. The son, Charles, third and last earl of Rochester of the Wilmot family, baptised at Adderbury on 2 Jan. 1670–1, survived his father scarcely two years, dying on 12 Nov. and being buried on 7 Dec. 1681 by his father's side. The earldom thus became extinct, but it was recreated in favour of Lawrence Hyde [q. v.] on 29 Nov. 1682. Rochester's eldest daughter and heiress, Anne, married, first, Henry Bayntun of Bromham, Wiltshire; and, secondly, Francis Greville, leaving issue by both husbands, and being ancestress by her second husband of the Grevilles, earls of Warwick. Elizabeth, Rochester's second daughter, who is said to have inherited much of her father's wit, married Edward Montagu, third earl of Sandwich, and died at Paris on 2 July 1757. Rochester's third daughter, Malet, married John Vaughan, second viscount Lisburne.
The best portrait of Rochester is that by Sir Peter Lely at Hinchinbrooke, the seat of the Earl of Sandwich. In a portrait at Warwick Castle he is represented crowning a monkey with laurel. A third portrait, by Wissing, is in the National Portrait Gallery. A fourth portrait of Rochester in youth belonged in 1866 to Col. Sir E. S. Prideaux, bart. (Cat. National Portraits at South Kensington, 1866). Two engravings of him were made by R. White—one in large size dated 1681, and the other on a smaller scale, which was prefixed to the first edition of Burnet's ‘Some Passages,’ 1680. There is also an engraved miniature signed ‘D[avid] L[oggan] 1671.’
Rochester had as sprightly a lyric gift as any writer of the Restoration. As a satirist he showed much insight and vigour, and, according to Aubrey, Marvell regarded him as the best satirist of his time. But he was something of a plagiarist. His ‘Satire against Mankind’ owes much to Boileau, and to Cowley his lyrics were often deeply indebted. His literary work was disfigured by his incorrigibly licentious temper. The sentiment in his love songs is transparently artificial whenever it is not offensively obscene. Numerous verses of gross indecency which have been put to his credit in contemporary miscellanies of verse may be from other pens. But there is enough foulness in his fully authenticated poems to give him a title to be remembered as the writer of the filthiest verse in the language. His muse has been compared to a well-favoured child which wilfully and wantonly rolls itself in the mud, and is so besmeared with dirt that the ordinary wayfarer prefers rather to rush hastily by than pause to discover its native charms (Mr. Edmund Gosse in Ward's English Poets, ii. 425).
It is said that on his deathbed Rochester directed all his licentious writings to be destroyed, and that after his death his mother ordered a scandalous history of contemporary court intrigues to be burnt (Cibber). Of that work nothing is known, and the order may have been carried out, but much else survives. The bibliography of Rochester's poems is difficult owing to the number of poems that are attributed to him in miscellaneous collections of verse of which he was probably not the author (cf. Poems on Affairs of State, passim; Examen Miscellaneum, 1702). No complete critical collection of his works has been attempted. His ‘Satires against Mankind,’ his poem on ‘Nothing,’ and others of ‘his lewd and profane poems’ and libels appeared as penny broadsides in single folio sheets at the close of his life—in 1679 and 1680—doubtless surreptitiously. According to the advertisement to Parsons's sermon, ‘they were cry'd about the street.’ The letter in which he summoned Burnet to his deathbed also appeared as a broadside in 1680.
Within a few months of his death a short series of ‘Poems on several Occasions by the Right Honourable the E. of R——’ was issued, professedly at ‘Antwerpen,’ but really in London (1680, 8vo). The volume was reprinted in London in 1685, with some omissions and modifications, as ‘Poems on several Occasions, written by a late Person of Honour.’ Some additions were made to another issue of 1691, in which are to be found all his authenticated lyrics. This was reissued in 1696.
Meanwhile there appeared an adaptation by Rochester, in poor taste, of Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy of ‘Valentinian,’ under the title ‘Valentinian: a Tragedy.
