Boileau, among French writers, and Cowley among the English, were his
favourite authors. He also read many books of physic; for long before
thirty his constitution was so broken by his life, that he turned his
attention to remedies, and to medical treatment; and it is remarkable
how many men of dissolute lives take up the same sort of reading, in the
vain hope of repairing a course of dissolute living. As a writer, his
style was at once forcible and lively; as a companion, he was wildly
vivacious: madly, perilously, did he outrage decency, insult virtue,
profane religion. Charles II. liked him on first acquaintance, for
Rochester was a man of the most finished and fascinating manners; but at
length there came a coolness, and the witty courtier was banished from
Whitehall. Unhappily for himself, he was recalled, and commanded to wait
in London until his majesty should choose to readmit him into his
presence.
Disguises and practical jokes were the fashion of the day. The use of
the mask, which was put down by proclamation soon after the accession of
Queen Anne, favoured a series of pranks with which Lord Rochester,
during the period of his living concealed in London, diverted himself.
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