he behaved very meanly[1].  The courage which lord Rochester shewed in a naval engagement, was in the early part of his life, before he had been immersed in those labyrinths of excess and luxury, into which he afterwards sunk.  It is certainly a true observation, that guilt makes cowards; a man who is continually subjected to the reproaches of conscience, who is afraid to examine his heart, lest it should appear too horrible, cannot have much courage:  for while he is conscious of so many errors to be repented of, of so many vices he has committed, he naturally starts at danger, and flies from it as his greatest enemy.  It is true, courage is sometimes constitutional, and there have been instances of men, guilty of every enormity, who have discovered a large share of it, but these have been wretches who have overcome all sense of honour, been lost to every consideration of virtue, and whose courage is like that of the lion of the desart, a kind of ferocious impulse unconnected with reason.  Lord Rochester had certainly never overcome the reproaches of his conscience, whose alarming voice at last struck terror into his heart, and chilled the fire of the spirits.

Since his travels, and naval expeditions, he seemed to have contracted a habit of temperance, in which had he been so happy as to persevere, he must have escaped that fatal rock, on which he afterwards split, upon his return to court, where love and pleasure kept their perpetual rounds, under the smiles of a prince, whom nature had fitted for all the enjoyments of the most luxurious desires.  In times so dissolute as these, it is no wonder if a man of so warm a constitution as Rochester, could not resist the too flattering temptations, which were heightened by the participation of the court in general.  The uncommon charms of Rochester’s conversation, induced all men to court him as a companion, tho’ they often paid too dear for their curiosity, by being made the subject of his lampoons, if they happened to have any oddities in their temper, by the exposing of which he could humour his propensity to scandal.  His pleasant extravagancies soon became the subject of general conversation, by which his vanity was at once flattered, and his turn of satire rendered more keen, by the success it met with.

Rochester had certainly a true talent for satire, and he spared neither friends nor foes, but let it loose on all without discrimination.  Majesty itself was not secure from it; he more than once lampooned the King, whose weakness and attachment to some of his mistresses, he endeavoured to cure by several means, that is, either by winning them from him, in spite of the indulgence and liberality they felt from a royal gallant, or by severely lampooning them and him on various occasions; which the King, who was a man of wit and pleasure, as well as his lordship, took for the natural sallies of his genius, and meant rather as the amusements of his fancy, than as the efforts of malice; yet, either by a too frequent repetition,