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The Debt To PleasureJohn Wilmot - Earl of RochesterEdited by John Adlard10% off eBook (EPUB)
Categories: 17th Century, Erotic
Imprint: Fyfield Books Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. Oct 2012) 9781847776259 £9.95 £8.96 Paperback (144 pages) (Pub. Jan 1992) 9780856350924 £6.95 £6.25 To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions.
Some few, from wit, have this true maxim got,
That 'tis still better to be pleased than not, And therefore never their own torment plot; While the malicious critics still agree To loathe each play they come, and pay, to see. The first know 'tis a meaner part of sense To find fault than taste an excellence; Therefore they praise and strive to like, while these Are dully vain of being hard to please. Poets and women have an equal right To hate the dull, who, dead to all delight, Feel pain alone, and have no joy but spite. 'Twas impotence did first this vice begin: Fools censure wit as old men rail of sin, Who envy pleasure which they cannot taste And, good for nothing, would be wise at last Since therefore to the women it appears That all these enemies of wit are theirs, Our poet the dull herd no longer fears. Whate'er his fate shall prove, 'twill be his pride To stand or fall with beauty on his side. Epilogue to Circe
Rochester, incontestably the greatest of the Restoration poets and reprobates, is presented in The Debt to Pleasure both in his own words and the words of those who loved or loathed him. The book is a mosaic in which the poet's voice and the voice of his age sound with a startling, ribald and riotous clarity.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION 1 'Those Shining Parts...Began to Show Themselves' 2 'Many Wild and Unaccountable Things' 3 'The Imperfect Enjoyment' 4 'The Right Vein' 5 'A Man Half in the Grave 6 Epilogue (1685) NOTES
'Mr Andrew Marvell (who was a good Judge of Witt) was wont to say that [Rochester] was the best English Satyrist and had the right veine. Twas pitty Death tooke him off so soon.'
John Evelyn
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