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Article: Rochester's honesty.(Selected Works)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- April 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1974, Viking Press issued Lord Rochester's Monkey, Graham Greene's biography of the Restoration poet John Wilmot. Greene actually wrote the book forty-four years earlier, but was unable to publish it for fear of the scandal its salacious details might cause: copies of a contemporaneous edition of Rochester's poems had been incinerated by the New York Customs Authority. That lurid history gave the biography an immediate cachet, and helped to revive the poet's reputation. Greene certainly had precedent. Voltaire called the poet a "man of genius." Dr. Johnson, despite firm disapproval of the Earl's personal comportment, praised him for "the vigor of his colloquial wit." ...
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