John Wilmot, the notorious Earl of Rochester, was the darling of the polished, profligate court of Charles II. One of the finest poets of the Restoration, patron to important playwrights, model for countless witty young rakes in Restoration comedies, he lived a full but short life, dying in 1680 (with a dramatic deathbed renunciation of his atheism) at the age of thirty-three. This edition of Rochester's poetry, brilliantly annotated and introduced by David M. Vieth, has been a classic work for decades. Rochester had many admirers: Graham Greene wrote Lord Rochester's Monkey; Daniel Defoe quoted him often; Tennyson recited his poems; Voltaire admired his satire for 'energy and fire'; Goethe could quote him in English; and Hazlitt said that 'his verses cut and sparkle like diamonds' and that 'his contempt for everything that others respect almost amounts to sublimity'. Book jacket.

Reproduction of the original: The Works of Ophra Behn by Montague Summers

This volume contains the poems of Dryden extending from 1693 to 1696. Mostly these are translations of Roman poetry, specifically the satires of Juvenal and Persius, sections of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Amours, and Art of Love, passages from Homer and Virgil--as well as some elegies of contemporaries composed in his later years. Also included is Dryden's influential essay on the nature of satire entitled "A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire."