On Not Being a Very Punctual Subject: Rochester and the Invention of Modernity

Summary

Rochester's slightly older contemporary, Antony à Wood, makes a distinctive claim about Rochester's commitment to study of the classics:

He was a person of most rare parts, and his natural talent was excellent, much improved by learning and industry, being thoroughly acquainted with the classic authors, both Greek and Latin; a thing very rare (if not peculiar to him) among those of his quality.

Samuel Johnson, coming across the claim in Wood's standard reference work and feeling obliged to do something with it, has recourse to sarcasm: ‘He read what is considered as polite learning so much, that he is mentioned by Wood as the greatest scholar of all the nobility’. It is instructive to assess the damage that would be done to Johnson's case against Rochester if Johnson were obliged to concede that, even in this one instance, Rochester might have been capable of defining and sustaining a valid intellectual project (Johnson characterizes Rochester's life as a series of moral and intellectual evasions). Nevertheless, the judgement of Rochester that Wood's testimony implies may be the more accurate of the two. As I shall try to show, Rochester engaged in—consistently and in all earnestness, if by unorthodox means—some of the more important debates of his time, and ones that have considerable modern resonance. His poetic writing, while not for the most part philosophical in the usual sense, is notable for its capacity to make intellectual ‘clearings’, or broach areas of perception where reflective thought is called into play.