SOURCE: Fujimura, Thomas H. “Rochester's ‘Satyr Against Mankind’: An Analysis.” Studies in Philology 55 (October, 1958): 576-90.

[In the essay below, Fujimura argues that A Satire Against Mankind is divided into two parts, that the first, which deals with epistemology, favors sensory-based “right reason” over speculation, and that the second part, which deals with moral satire, emphasizes the baseness and fear-driven nature of human conduct.]

The Earl of Rochester's Satyr Against Mankind is generally regarded as a powerful satire and an intimate revelation of a striking personality; but beyond this, there is little unanimity of opinion—either as to its originality or its meaning. Probably as a result of this disagreement, the poem has not received the attention it deserves.¹

One obstacle to the appreciation of the poem has been the question of its originality: here the opinions range from the verdict that everything in the poem is borrowed to the conclusion that the satire is quite original. One may read the opinion of Kenneth B. Murdock, for example, that the poem is a “skilful adaptation of Boileau's verses,” that is, of the eighth satire.² John F. Moore concludes, after comparing the ideas and structure of Rochester's poem with those of Boileau, that the Satyr Against Mankind is assuredly an original work.³ Again, we read a dogmatic assertion like S. F. Crocker's: “There is scarcely an idea of major or minor importance in Rochester that is not present in Montaigne,” and to some extent in La Rochefoucauld.⁴ W.J. Courthope, in 1903, expressed the commonly held notion that Rochester is heavily indebted to Thomas Hobbes for the bulk of the ideas in the poem: “He puts forward his principles, moral and religious, such as they are, with living force and pungency, showing in every line how eagerly he has imbibed the opinions of Hobbes.”⁵ But this has been refuted in part by Vivian de Sola Pinto: “They [the opening lines] are an attack on Man, but still more an attack on Reason, the idol of Hobbes and the freethinkers of the age.⁶

More serious than this disagreement about the originality and sources of Rochester's poem is the disagreement over its meaning. One reads, in Pinto, that the satire is an attack on man's “much-vaunted reason,” and in Crocker that it “is a terrible indictment of human reason.”⁷ Again, Pinto discovers a rich biographical significance in the poem and describes it as “a reasoned statement of the causes of that misery [Rochester's own] and an announcement of the discovery that reason divorced from morality was the chief cause.⁸ Elsewhere, Pinto speaks of the “nihilism” of the poem.⁹ Moore finds in the poem an attack “against the conception, whenever and by whomever held, that man is by nature intelligent and noble.”¹⁰ Less adequately, Harry Levin describes the poem as a “critique of pure wit”; and in an anthology of 17th century writings, the poem is said to express a “general, cold, if somewhat turgid, contempt of life as he had found and made it.”¹¹ Excerpted remarks of this sort are indubitably unfair to the critics concerned, but they do suggest the confusion about the intent of Rochester's satire.

Such differences of opinion point up the need for a precise analysis of the poem to determine what exactly Rochester does say. While the question of what sources he used is more difficult to answer, it might still be rewarding to consider his ideas in relation to those of Hobbes, since Rochester appears to have accepted the philosophy of Hobbes, according to the testimony of contemporaries like Robert Parsons, chaplain to Lady Rochester. Whether the indebtedness to Hobbes be proved or not, a comparison of their ideas may at least put the Satyr Against Mankind into clearer focus.

For an understanding of any satirical work, the first step is establishing the criteria on which the poet bases his criticism of human follies and vices. In Rochester's Satyr Against Mankind,¹² there is implicit, in the opening attack on man (“Who is so proud of being rational”), a rejection of a certain kind of reason, that is, speculative (or discursive) reason as distinguished from practical reason. This is not an attack on human reason in its totality, nor is it an attempt to base life on a voluntaristic or instinctual basis: Rochester is himself too rationalistic to deny reason completely. The kind of reason he approves is clearly set forth in the satire in the answer to the “formal Band, and Beard”:

Thus, whilst 'gainst false reas'ning I inveigh,
I own right Reason, which I wou'd obey:
That Reason that distingushes by sense,
And gives us Rules, of good, and ill from thence:
That bounds desires, with a reforming Will,
To keep 'em more in vigour, not to kill.
Your Reason hinders, mine helps t'enjoy,
Renewing Appetites, yours wou'd destroy.
My Reason is my Friend, yours is a Cheat,
Hunger call's out, my Reason bids me eat;
Perversely yours, your Appetite does mock,
This asks for food, that answers what's a Clock?
This plain distinction Sir your doubt secures,
'Tis not true Reason I despise but yours.
Thus I think Reason righted.

(99-112)

The notion of right reason, and the hierarchy of Reason, Will, and Desires, is common enough in the 17th century, particularly in the writings of Christian humanists like Richard Hooker. But in Rochester, the familiar terminology is used in a different sense: the morally suasive reason of the Christian humanist has been replaced by the purely pragmatic faculty of the naturalistic thinker. In thus diminishing the scope of reason, Rochester obviously strips it of any real moral potency.¹³

Further, in reducing the scope of reason and in emphasizing the role of sense, the poet opens the door to misinterpretation. Murdock, for example, concludes that, in the passage quoted above, Rochester speaks as a complete sensualist: “To trust the senses was reasonable, and to satisfy them. To sharpen desires, by brief restraint if need be, in order to make the pleasure of gratifying them more intense, was better than to be deluded by an airy moral principle.”¹⁴ “The senses were all; in them was the only ‘light of nature’—in them and in ‘Instinct’ the only certainty.”¹⁵ Crocker likewise suggests that Rochester erected a whole system of morality on the senses: “rules of conduct should be derived from the senses.”¹⁶ But this is to confuse with moral rules of conduct the merely pragmatic sanctions of the senses; this is, in fact, Rochester turned inside out.

Actually, in avowing his belief in right reason, Rochester is not at the moment concerned with questions of morality, he is concerned with the question of knowledge—though keenly aware at the same time of the evil consequences of confusion about what is true or false. In the first portion of the poem (to about line 112), Rochester is concerned primarily with epistemology, and not with ethics; the poet's criticism is directed to man's folly in placing so much faith in speculative reason to the neglect of right reason. The epistemological ideas in the poem are paralleled by those in Hobbes, and the similarity in ideas here must lead one to conclude, in disagreement with Pinto,¹⁷ that Rochester was probably influenced by Hobbes.

In The Leviathan, Hobbes bases knowledge on sensory experience; the result is a purely empirical epistemology which allows no validity to speculative ideas having no firm basis in the five senses. (This is pretty much the nominalism of the general semanticists today, as set forth in rather crude form in books like Stuart Chase's The Tyranny of Words.) Hobbes explains that all thoughts are “a representation or appearance, of some quality, or other accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object.” Further, “the original of them all, is that which we call SENSE, for there is no conception in a man's mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense.”¹⁸ “Also because, whatsoever … we conceive, has been perceived first by sense, either all at once, or by parts; a man can have no thought, representing any thing, not subject to sense.” Anything beyond this is nonsense, “absurd speeches, taken upon credit, without any signification at all, from deceiving schoolmen.”¹⁹

Nature can never err (and knowledge based on sense cannot be erroneous), but man is prone to error because of his ability to verbalize (that is, to give names to objects).²⁰ Among man's foolish activities in verbalizing is ascribing names to non-existent things, names which are learned by rote in schools, such as “hypostatical, transubstantiate, consubstantiate, eternal-now, and the like canting of schoolmen.”²¹ Clear terms that have their ultimate basis in sense-experience are a blessing, and contribute to science and the benefit of mankind. “And, on the contrary, metaphors, and senseless and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention and sedition, or contempt.”²² “And this is incident to none but those, that converse in questions of matters imcomprehensible, as the School-men; or in questions of abstruse philosophy,” among which are questions involving terms like Trinity, Deity, and free will.²³

The nominalistic and materialistic bias of Hobbes's epistemology is found in much the same form in Rochester's attack on man, who prides himself on his speculative reason:

                                                                                that vain Animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.
The senses are too gross, and he'll contrive
A Sixth, to contradict the other Five;
And before certain instinct, will preferr
Reason, which Fifty times for one does err.
Reason, an Ignis fatuus, in the Mind,
Which leaving light of Nature, sense behind;
Pathless and dang'rous wandring ways it takes,
Through errors, Fenny-Boggs, and Thorny Brakes;
Whilst the misguided follower, climbs with pain,
Mountains of Whimseys, heap'd in his own Brain:
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls head-long down,
Into doubts boundless Sea, where like to drown,
Books bear him up awhile, and makes him try,
To swim with Bladders of Philosophy.

(6-21)

The precise nature of this speculative activity is further indicated in the defense of speculative reason by the “formal Band, and Beard”:

Reason, by whose aspiring influence,
We take a flight beyond material sense,
Dive into Mysteries, then soaring pierce,
The flaming limits of the Universe.
Search Heav'n and Hell, find out what's acted there,
And give the World true grounds of hope and fear.

(66-71)

Like Hobbes, Rochester has nothing but contempt for vain speculations about matters that transcend sense; the works of such divines as Sibbs and Patrick only confound the mind with mere words. Like Hobbes, too, Rochester is impatient with Schoolmen and their speculations:

This busie, puzling, stirrer up of doubt,
That frames deep Mysteries, then finds 'em out;
Filling with Frantick Crowds of thinking Fools,
Those Reverend Bedlams, Colledges, and Schools
Borne on whose Wings, each heavy Sot can pierce,
The limits of the boundless Universe.

(80-85)

This contempt for speculative reason does not imply a complete rejection of reason by Rochester. And failure to distinguish between speculative reason and right reason in the poem has led to untenable generalizations like Pinto's about the opening lines of the satire and about Rochester himself: they “sum up his own realization that ‘the life of reason’ as conceived by his class and generation was an illusion. They make us feel what it was like, after the intoxication of youth had passed to face the fact that you were living in the soulless ‘universe of death’ of the new ‘scientific’ philosophy.” Further, that Rochester's use of the phrase “reas'ning Engine” (line 29) “is a bitterly ironic commentary on the mechanistic conception of humanity which was the logical outcome of the new science.”²⁴ Now, I can find no repudiation of materialism or of the “new, scientific philosophy” in the first part of the poem. Actually, Rochester's right reason is the conception accepted by “his class and generation,” such as the Duke of Buckingham, King Charles, and Sir Charles Sedley.

In attacking speculative reason but subscribing to right reason, Rochester is more or less in accord with Hobbes. In The Leviathan, Hobbes states that reason is intended for utilitarian purposes, and that reason is abused only when it is used for purely speculative thought which does not lead to benefits for mankind.²⁵ Rochester, in like manner, conceives of right reason as a faculty which leads to the attainment of ends that will produce happiness. Reason cooperates with sense, and “gives us Rules, of good, and ill from thence.” From the context of the poem, we can assume that these rules concern the proper indulgence of our appetites, but with that degree of moderation that neither satiety nor frustration will result. This wise tempering of the appetites, as of hunger, is necessary if we are to achieve happiness. As Hobbes says, “Nor can a man any more live, whose desires are at an end, than he, whose sense and imaginations are at a stand.”²⁶ This is a variant of Aristotle's view that happiness lies in action, whether physical or intellectual. The acceptance by Rochester of right reason

That bounds desires, with a reforming Will,
To keep 'em more in vigour, not to kill

(102-103)

is no more a sanctioning of gross sensuality than Aristotle's views.²⁷ This activity of right reason is properly confined to pragmatic ends such as the satisfaction of our appetites:

But thoughts, are giv'n for Actions government,
Where Action ceases, thoughts impertinent:
Our Sphere of Action, is lifes happiness,
And he who thinks Beyond, thinks like as Ass.

(94-97)

If we decry these ideas as hedonistic, we might remember that they are no more sensual than the views of Epicurus or of Hobbes.

This support of right reason (limited to practical concerns) and the attack on speculative reason (dealing with nonsense) constitute the first section of the poem. The main concern is epistemological, and the basic ideas are largely paralleled by those in Hobbes's Leviathan. Though vividly phrased and vigorous in tone, this section of the Satyr Against Mankind is hardly original in its strictures nor does it sound the passionately cynical and savage note that we associate with Rochester's satires. It is only when the satirical interest shifts from epistemology to ethics that the voice of the poet is clearly heard.

The section condemning man's moral depravity is prefaced by a denial of man's wisdom (114-123), and this short coda might properly be considered along with the first section of the poem. In a more contemptuous tone than earlier, Rochester declares that beasts, following instinct, achieve their goals more surely than man, and Jowler, who can find and kill his hares, is superior to a statesman:

Those Creatures, are the wisest who attain,
By surest means, the ends at which they aim.

(117-118)

This should not be interpreted as a repudiation of right reason, which the poet has just finished defending; and there is no real ground for believing that Rochester would set up instinct (as Murdock states²⁸) in place of reason. Rochester would distinguish between instinct and right reason, and accord the latter a higher place. His criticism is directed against man with “all his Pride, and his Philosophy” (114), that is, once again, the creature of speculative reason. There are simply degrees of wisdom. At one extreme is Jowler, who lives by instinct; at the other extreme is the man, or statesman, who lives by speculative reason. There are also the “Men of sense” (referred to in line 196), who live by right reason. From the point of view of attaining immediate ends, instinct may be swifter than even right reason; but in the attainment of ends that conduce to happiness (“Our Sphere of Action”), right reason is equally, or probably more, important. Hobbes, too, makes some distinctions in the kinds of wisdom that men possess: men who have no science (that is, a system of rules to govern the attainment of ends) “are in better, and nobler condition, with their natural prudence; than men, that by mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd general rules.”²⁹ But wisest of all are those that govern their conduct by right reason.

Rochester follows his disparagement of man's wisdom with a savage indictment of man's moral baseness:

Look next, if humane Nature makes amends;
Whose Principles, most gen'rous are, and just,
And to whose Moralls, you wou'd sooner trust.
Be Judge your self, I'le bring it to the test,
Which is the basest Creature Man, or Beast?

(124-128)

Whereas beasts kill out of necessity, and live according to nature, man destroys out of sheer wantonness and fear and under the guise of friendship:

For hunger, or for Love, they fight, or tear,
Whilst wretched Man, is still in Arms for fear;
For fear he armes, and is of Armes afraid,
By fear, to fear, successively betray'd.

(139-142)

The good he acts, the ill he does endure,
'Tis all for fear, to make himself secure.
Meerly for safety, after Fame we thirst,
For all Men, wou'd be Cowards if they durst.

(155-158)

Now, both beasts and man are motivated by passion (as Hobbes states in The Leviathan), and in some instances by the same passions, such as hunger or love. The distinction, for Rochester, lies in the difference in the dominant passion: beasts are motivated by positive and aggressive and natural passions like love and hunger; man by a negative and defensive passion like fear. The baseness of human conduct stems, then, from the baseness of his original motivation.

Further, what appears best and noblest in man is founded upon this base passion of fear; so the whole structure of civilization is false and hollow. For man, a debased creature enslaved by fear, every seeming virtue is a cheap and artificial bauble put on to impress one's equally wretched fellows:

Base fear, the source whence his best passion[s] came,
His boasted Honor, and his dear bought Fame.
That lust of Pow'r, to which he's such a Slave,
And for the which alone he dares be brave:
To which his various Projects are design'd,
Which makes him gen'rous, affable, and kind.
For which he takes such pains to be thought wise,
And screws his actions, in a forc'd disguise:

(143-150)

Look to the bottom, of his vast design,
Wherein Mans Wisdom, Pow'r, and Glory joyn;
The good he acts, the ill he does endure,
'Tis all for fear, to make himself secure.

(153-156)

W J. Courthope attributes this emphasis on fear to Rochester's reading of The Leviathan.³⁰ Moore likewise speaks of the “highly rhetorical presentation of the Hobbesian conception of the role of fear in human existence. …”³¹ The emphasis on fear in the poem is, however, a basic departure from Hobbes, and on precisely this fact rests the mordancy of Rochester's satire. Hence, it is necessary to distinguish very clearly between the views of Hobbes and those of the poet.

First of all, man's egoism receives a different emphasis in the two. According to Hobbes, man is motivated by a desire for power: “Competition of riches, honour, command, or other power, inclineth to contention, enmity, and war: because the way of one competitor, to the attaining of his desire, is to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other.”³² This “vainglory” is one of the strongest motives in human behavior. In Rochester's satire, by contrast, this motive is considerably de-emphasized, if not denied. As a result, man is depicted, not as an aggressive, predatory creature with strength and will as in Hobbes, but as a wretched, miserable creature eternally on the defensive for fear of other men. The desire for power itself stems from fear. In fact, man is so cowardly that he lacks the courage to be openly a coward.

Second, in Hobbes, fear is a secondary motive. Because of the vaingloriousness of some men and their “hope for precedency and superiority above their fellows,” “those men who are moderate, and look for no more but equality of nature, shall be obnoxious to the force of others, that will attempt to subdue them. And from hence shall proceed a general diffidence in mankind, and mutual fear of one another.”³³ It is clear, too, that, as Hobbes pictures humanity in its natural state, not all men will be equally motivated by fear, since the most vainglorious must, if they be possessed of power, feel considerable confidence of success in their aggression against their weaker neighbors.

Third, in Hobbes, warfare among men, in which condition fear becomes a strong motive, is a state prior to the establishment of a commonwealth; a second motive, as strong as that for power, leads to the setting up of a civilized society. “The final cause, end, or design of men, who naturally love liberty, and dominion over others, in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war, which is necessarily consequent … to the natural passions of men, when there is no visible power to keep them in awe.” So, in accordance with another strong motive, that of self-preservation, men agree by social contract to give over those aggressive actions which will prove mutually destructive, and set up a king who shall, by vested power, preserve peace within the commonwealth. Such desirable ends as justice, mercy, the Golden Rule, are thus established; and security will supplant fear.³⁴

In Rochester's satire, by contrast, the commonwealth of men has not achieved the peace and security that Hobbes depicts. Despite the existence of a human society, the state of war is maintained, though now through subterfuge; instead of open acts of aggression, men hypocritically undermine and destroy other men, through “smiles, embraces, Friendship, praise.” Man has created a wretched society where “Men must be Knaves, 'tis in their own defence” (160). In place of Hobbes's more complex analysis of human motivation, Rochester offers just one dominant motive, the base passion of fear. With bitter misanthropy he lashes out at the baseness of man, who, instead of using right reason to achieve happiness within the proper “Sphere of Action,” has perverted even right reason to the base motive of fear. Every deed stems from fear of one's kind, and there is no hope of escaping the maze of hypocrisy and treachery:

Nor can weak truth, your reputation save,
The Knaves, will all agree to call you Knave.
Wrong'd shall he live, insulted o're, opprest,
Who dares be less a Villain, than the rest.

(164-167)

Truth does exist, but it is weak; the only refuge is knavery, for no one is strong or courageous enough to withstand the knaves who dominate society.

The sharp contempt of Rochester cuts deeper than Swift's itself. The ridicule of mankind for his folly, his irrationality, and his baseness in Gulliver's Travels is here concentrated into one, fierce indictment of man's pusillanimity. Base coward, Rochester cries in his fury; man is a coward so base that he is trapped by his own cowardice. Here we find no suprahuman Houyhnhnms dedicated to a life of reason; there is not even a common-sensical Gulliver, to learn the lesson that experience and the wise horses teach him. There are only Yahoos, wretched, miserable, and in a state of war. Men are deluded by the will-o'-the-wisp of speculative reason and fancy themselves wiser than beasts; the “formal Band, and Beard” who protests against the poet's paradox is as absurd as the inhabitants of Laputa. The poet himself is a bitter, disillusioned observer of man's baseness. Hence, there is no hope, no escape from a wretched society at war with itself, where men must keep their hearts and doors locked for fear of their neighbors, every man must betray in order to survive, and most men stumble about in a bog of illusion.

The tone of the satire, in its bitterness, also differs sharply from Hobbes's calm, common-sensical approach. For Hobbes, honor and fame are distinct values, and so is power; for these contribute in some ways to the satisfaction of man's basic passions and the attainment of pragmatic ends. For Rochester, man's “boasted Honor, and his dear bought Fame” are hollow mockeries, and merely additional evidence of man's baseness.

Further, in Rochester's satire is implicit a moral standard of some sort. Hypocrisy, treachery, cowardice, and living contrary to nature are condemned. By implication, honesty and truth are absolute values, and desirable, though unattainable in our corrupt society. By contrast, in Hobbes's philosophy, virtues are merely relative: “Every man by nature hath right to all things, that is to say, to do whatsoever he listeth to whom he listeth, to possess, use, and enjoy all things he will and can. For seeing all things he willeth, must therefore be good unto him in his own judgment, because he willeth them, and may tend to his preservation some time or other, or he may judge so, and we have made him judge thereof … that all things may rightly also be done by him.”³⁵ For an ethical relativist like Hobbes, good and evil are merely names given by a particular individual to particular things insofar as they affect him favorably or adversely; and virtues are names given to certain pragmatically desirable modes of behavior after the establishment of a commonwealth. On such a shifting basis, one can hardly produce a moral satire like Rochester's on the baseness of mankind.

In the second portion of the poem Rochester departs markedly from Hobbes. Implicit in his criticism is some standard of good and evil; and since no relativistic standard is suggested, the criterion must be more or less absolute (I shall not try to explain why Rochester is not relativistic like Hobbes). As Rochester implicitly rejects Christian supernaturalism and the kind of moral sanction that only speculative reason can supply, the foundation of his moral satire can only be nature, that is, naturalistic. To be sure, the metaphysical background of the poem is never clearly worked out, so that we may have to infer the relationship between his epistemological first portion and the moral satire of the second part. Rochester apparently believes that man ought to base his conduct on knowledge supplied by the senses; that man should follow right reason, and satisfy his appetites moderately; that man should (though this is impossible in the present state of society) avoid hypocrisy and cowardice. The implicit approval of truth and virtue would be grounded on the belief that truth and virtue have a pragmatic value in contributing to happiness in the daily activities of man—in human intercourse and in the satisfaction of human appetites.³⁶ If this is only implied and never fully stated, at least there is enough evidence in the poem to suggest a naturalistic creed; and it is on this basis that Rochester lashes man for being foolish and cowardly.

In the light of these assumption, we can also re-interpret the epilogue often found at the end of the poem (174-224). This epilogue can hardly be described, in the way Pinto does, as “a sort of conditional recantation,”³⁷ nor can we agree with him that “the nihilism of the Satyr against Mankind is slightly mitigated in a curious epilogue. …”³⁸ On the contrary, the epilogue is an underlining of Rochester's pessimistic denial that honesty exists anywhere among mankind, and it re-enforces his contemptuous reference to Diogenes, the searcher after an honest man (in lines 90-91).

The epilogue begins with a series of hypothetical suppositions that are impossible and incredible for Rochester: that there might be a just man at Court, an upright statesman, a godly churchman, a truly pious pastor. In proposing the first impossibility, Rochester immediately denies it, to preclude any misundertanding of his position:

But if in Court, so just a Man there be,
(In Court, a just Man, yet unknown to me.)

(179-180)

The irony of this can hardly be lost on the reader familiar with Rochester's career; as a frequenter of the small circle that constituted Whitehall, Rochester was intimately acquainted with everyone from the cynical and dissembling Charles down to the sycophantic servants, and estimate of the Court is etched in the acid lines of a satire like “The History of Insipids.”

The hypothetical impossibilities being concluded, Rochester ironically offers his recantation, for which he, of course, sees no likelihood:

If upon Earth there dwell such God-like Men,
I'le here recant my Paradox to them.
Adore those Shrines of Virtue, Homage pay,
And with the Rabble World, their Laws obey.

(219-222)

The promise to recant is hedged around with such reservations that no one is ever likely to hear a recantation from Rochester: such a recantation will be made to the “God-like Men,” who, of course, do not exist; he further offers to be so extravagant in his behavior as to obey the conventional “laws” of the “rabble world,” an unlikely action from a skeptical aristocrat like the poet. Since there are no such God-like men (but only “some formal Band, and Beard”), there is no likelihood of Rochester ever recanting his paradox, that he would rather be “a Dog, a Monkey, or a Bear” than that vain animal man.

Finally, granting the possibility of a recantation (though this has been illustrated to be quite unlikely), Rochester ironically makes one last reservation:

If such there are, yet grant me this at least,
Man differs more from man, than Man from Beast.

(223-224)

This is the last impregnable stronghold of Rochester's pessimism: that man is a beast. The furious contempt for mankind is re-enforced by the irony of the epilogue, and to the very end, Rochester remits no portion of his savage satire on man's stupidity and baseness. The unity of the poem is maintained, then, through the epilogue, and there is no recantation.

The analysis of the poem has, I hope, achieved its primary end of clearing up the meaning of the satire. It has not been my intention to argue the perhaps insoluble question of Rochester's indebtedness to Hobbes or anyone else. In considering the poem in three parts, and particularly in distinguishing between the epistemological first portion and the moral satire of the second part, and further, in showing the parallels to Hobbes and the departures from his views in each of these sections, I have tried to clarify the basic ideas in the poem, and the precise objects of satire. Whether this has a bearing on an understanding of Rochester's personal life is a secondary matter. What concerns us chiefly is that an analysis should contribute to our appreciation of the poem: first, by indicating the pattern and the relationship of the parts, and second, by suggesting the ingredients that are Rochester's.

What stands out in the poem is the consistent and biting attack on man's enslavement to speculative reason and fear. For men of sense (among whom one might perhaps number the poet) there may be a faint hope; but for the bulk of mankind, a life of wretchedness worse than a beast's is the only prospect. Whether Rochester considers himself a knave or not, his perspicacious grasp of man's state engenders a furious hate in his heart which finds vent in fierce ridicule. The saeva indignatio of the true satirist, but permeated with the irony and bitterness of Rochester, breathes its vitality through the Satyr Against Mankind.

Notes

1. Cf. Ian Jack, Augustan Satire: 1660-1750 (Oxford, 1952), which makes only a passing reference to Rochester and none to the Satyr Against Mankind.

2. Kenneth B. Murdock, “A Very Profane Wit,” in The Sun at Noon (New York, 1939), p. 284.

3. John F. Moore, “The Originality of Rochester's Satyr Against Mankind,” PMLA, LVIII (June 1943), 393-401.

4. S. F. Crocker, “Rochester's Satire Against Mankind,” West Virginia University Studies: III. Philological Papers, II (May 1937), 73. J.F Moore summarily dismisses Crocker's views (PMLA). Crocker's point, however, is taken up by Charles Norman in his slapdash Rake Rochester (New York, 1954), p. 136: “[it is a] poem which owes less to Boileau than has been supposed, more to La Rochefoucauld and Montaigne.”

   In weighing an assertion like Crocker's, one might note the complete difference in tone and purpose between Montaigne's skepticism, in “The Apology of Raimond Sebond,” which is but one step to fideism, and the savage cynicism of Rochester's poem; or one might question the verbal parallelisms that Crocker cites: is Rochester's attack on wit (35-45) and his remark that “Men of Wit, are dang'rous Tools, / And ever fatal to admiring Fools” “paralleled after a fashion in La Rochefoucauld: ‘Un homme d'esprit seroit souvent bien embarrassé sans la compagnie des sots.’”?—Crocker, p. 62.

5. W. J. Courthope, A History of English Poetry, III (London, 1903), 465.

6. Vivian de Sola Pinto, Rochester: Portrait of a Restoration Poet (London, 1935), p. 175.

7. Poems by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto (London, 1953), p. xxix; Crocker, p. 57.

8. Pinto, Rochester, p. 174.

9. Vivian de Sola Pinto, “John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and the Right Veine of Satire,” Essays and Studies: 1953, Vol. VI, n.s., The English Association (London, 1953), p. 69.

10. Moore, p. 399.

11. Earl of Rochester, A Satire Against Mankind and Other Poems, ed. Harry Levin (Norfolk, Conn., 1942), p. 5; Seventeenth-Century Verse and Prose, Vol. II: 1660-1700, ed. Helen C. White, Ruth C. Wallerstein, Ricardo Quintana (New York, 1952), p. 451.

12. All references to the poem are to the version in Poems by Rochester, ed. Pinto, pp. 118-124.

13. Cf. Pinto's remark that the poet regarded the alienation of reason and morality as the chief cause of his own misery—Rochester, p. 174. This makes no sense unless the terms “reason” and “morality” are precisely defined, and even then, it is hardly tenable.

14. Murdock, p. 285.

15. Ibid., p. 284.

16. Crocker, p. 57.

17. See Pinto, Rochester, p. 175.

18. Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan, Part I, Ch. 1, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London, 1839), III, 1.

19. Ibid., I, 3, in Works, III, 17.

20. Ibid., I, 4, in Works, III, 25.

21. Ibid., I, 5, in Works, III, 35.

22. Ibid., in Works, III, 37.

23. Ibid., I, 8, in Works, III, 69.

24. Pinto, Essays and Studies, p. 68.

25. Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 5, in Works, III, 36-37.

26. Ibid., I, 11, in Works, III, 85.

27. Cf. Murdock, p. 285.

28. Ibid., p. 284.

29. Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 5, in Works, III, 36.

30. Courthope, p. 466: “ultimately traceable to the Leviathan.”

31. Moore, p. 397.

32. Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 11, in Works, III, 86.

33. Hobbes, De Corpore Politico, or the Elements of Law, Part I, Ch. 1, in Works, IV, 82.

34. Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 17, in Works, III, 153.

35. Hobbes, De Corpore Politico, I, 1, in Works, IV, 84.

36. Cf. Rochester's remarks to Burnet in Gilbert Burnet, Some Passages of the Life and Death of John Earl of Rochester (London, 1860), p. 35: “For Morality, he confessed, He saw the necessity of it, both for the government of the World, and for the preservation of Health, Life and Friendship.”

37. Pinto, Rochester, p. 181.

38. Pinto, Essays and Studies, p. 69.