SOURCE: Paulson, Ronald. “Rochester: The Body Politic and the Body Private.” In The Author in His Work: Essays on a Problem in Criticism, edited by Louis L. Martz and Aubrey Williams, pp. 103-21. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978.

In the following essay, originally published in 1972, Paulson claims that obscenity, which is at the center of Rochester's best poems, is used as a analogy for private life.

A man could not write with life, unless he were heated by Revenge; for to make a Satyre without Resentments, upon the cold Notions of Phylosophy, was as if a man would in cold blood, cut men's throats who had never offended him.¹

In these words spoken by the Earl of Rochester to Gilbert Burnet during their conversion dialogues it is not difficult to detect the stereotype that underlies the satirist's apologia: it may take an evil man to detect evil...