DA 447 .86 39 ADVERTISEMENT. BISHOP BURNET's Narrative of the most remarkable Passages in the Life of the celebrated John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, has ever been greatly valued, not only as an elegant composition, but as a lesson of instruction to mankind. A young nobleman, conversant in a most licentious court, whence regularity of behaviour and sound morality were banished for the more tempting allurements of vicious plersures and sensual gratifications, was unhappily drawn into the commission of the most unjustifiable and profligate actions. A fit of sickness roused him into a sense of his abandoned course of life; he called for the assistance of an eminent divine, to whom he trusted his most secret actions; and with all the candour A candour of conviction and the sincerity of penitence, earnestly requested him, on his death-bed, to communicate them freely and undisguised to the world. Burnet has faithfully fulfilled the intentions of his penitent; but, at the same time, has related the best as well as the worst part of Lord Rochester's life. The very high encomium bestowed upon this book by Dr Samuel Johnson, the greatest name in literature, in his Lives of the English Poets, has induced the bookseller to reprint it, with the addition of the same great Author's Account of the Life and Writings of the Earl of Rochester. (5) The following Account of the Earl of ROCHESTER's Life and Writings is abstracted from Dr JOHNSON'S Preface to the Works of that Nobleman. OHN WILMOT, afterwards Earl of Rochester, the son of Henry Earl of Rochester, better known by the title of Lord Wilmot, so often mentioned in Clarendon's History, was born April 10, 1647, at Ditchley in Oxfordshire. After a grammatical education at the school of Burford, he entered a nobleman into Wadham College in 1659, only twelve years old; and in 1661, at fourteen, was with some other persons of high rank, made master of arts by Lord Clarendon in person. He travelled afterwards into France and Italy; and, at his return, devoted himself to the court. In 1665 he went to sea with Sandwich, and distinguished himself at Bergen by uncommon intrepidity; and the next summer served again on board Sir Edward Spragge, who in the heat of the engagement, having a message of reproof to send to one of his captains, could find no man ready to carry it but Wilmot, who in an open boat went and returned amidst the storm of shot. But his reputation for bravery was not lasting he was reproached with slinking A 2 away (6) away in street quarrels, and leaving his companions to shift as they could without him; and Sheffield Duke of Buckingham has left a story of his refusal to fight him. He had very early an inclination to intemperance, which he totally subdued in his travels; but, when he became a courtier, he unhappily addicted himself to dissolute and vitious company, by which his principles were corrupted, and his manners depraved. He lost all sense of religious restraint; and, finding it not convenient to admit the authority of laws which he was resolved not to obey, sheltered his wickedness behind infidelity. As he excelled in that noisy and licentious merriment which wine incites, his companions eagerly encouraged him in excess, and he willingly indulged it; till, as he confessed to Dr Burnet, he was for five years together continually drunk, or so much inflamed by frequent ebriety, as in no interval to be master of himself. In this state he played many frolics, which it is not for his honour that we should remember, and which are not now distinctly known, He often pursued low amours in mean disguises, and always acted with great exactness and dexterity the characters which he assumed. He once erected a stage on Tower-hill, and harangued the populace as a mountebank; and, |