I did Rochester’s poetry for a bit this term and quite enjoyed it, and saw the movie which was all right, and felt that since I needed Restoration context I might as well read an entertaining biography.

Lamb writes from the very specific angle that Rochester was an alcoholic, and that’s probably entirely correct. It just bugs me that the language is so unacademic. “The young earl felt…”, well, sorry Jeremy, but you don’t know what the young earl felt. I get the feeling that a lot of the time it’s about what the young Jeremy or an alcoholic close to him felt. This is complicated by the way Lamb uses the poetry to prove his point – he clearly knows (and usually indicates) when he’s stretching the context, but then someone who’s new to the poet would probably not pick up on that.

Honest books about alcoholism are totally important, but I was kind of reading this for entertaning accounts of drunken rampage and sexual inadequacy.

It’s 1300 pages. Even with the introductions and glossaries excepted it’s something like 1000 pages. I HAVE read chunks of it, but not enough. I do quite like it, and my Middle English is all right, but the fact that I have to read it kinda rains on my parade a little bit.

My target for tonight is to read lines 750-777 of Book 1 for Troilus and Criseyde. (I’m writing a commentary on them tomo morning). That’ll take about 10 minutes even if I take notes. Afterwards I get to read something I genuinely feel like until I fall asleep!