courtiers and secured him the favour of royalty. Nor was the
young earl less distinguished by his wit and learning than by his
face and figure; the delicate beauty of his features and natural
grace of his person won him the love of many women, whom the
tenderness of his heart and generosity of his youth did not
permit him to leave unrequited.

Soon surfeited by his conquests in the drawing-room, he was
anxious to extend his triumphs in another direction; and,
selecting the sea as a scene of action, he volunteered to sail
under my Lord Sandwich in quest of the Dutch East Indian fleet.
At the engagements to which this led he exhibited a dauntless
courage that earned him renown abroad, and covered him with
honour on his return to court. From that time he, for many
years, surrendered himself to a career of dissipation, often
abandoning the paths of decency and decorum, pursuing vice in its
most daring and eccentric fashion, employing his genius in the
composition of lampoons which spared not even the king, and in
the writing of ribald verses, the very names of which are not
proper to indite. Lord Orford speaks of him as a man "whom the
muses were fond to inspire, and ashamed to avow; and who
practised, without the least reserve, that secret which can make
verses more read for their defects than for their merits." More
of my Lord Rochester and his poems anon.

Thomas Killigrew, another courtier, was a poet, dramatist, and
man of excellent wit. He had been page in the service of his
late majesty, and had shared exile with the present monarch, to
whose pleasures abroad and at home he was ever ready to pander.
At the restoration he was appointed a groom of the bedchamber,