In a book called Why Do I Write?, published in 1948, Graham Greene and V.S. Pritchett exchanged views on the writer's relation to society, and came to the conclusion that there were no hard and fast rules to follow, beyond their own personal interpretations of a writer's social obligations. Greene came off a little more preachy in these letters than even a Catholic novelist can pretend to be. And in his new book, Greene betrays some of the very obligations he believes a writer owes to society.

Lord Rochester's Monkey is the biography of John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680). The book was finished in 1934, but Greene's publisher rejected his manuscript and he just forgot about it. With all due respect for Greene's talents as a novelist, he should have left the manuscript in the library at Texas University, or better yet, he should have burned it. It's an interesting biography, but only insofar as Rochester is an intriguing character; Greene's style and his organizing abilities aren't capable of sustaining a work that brings together Rochester's life and his poetry. The new biography certainly doesn't surpass V. Pinto s work, Enthusiast in Wit.

John Wilmot was one of the most clever Court poets during the reign of Charles II, and in many ways he represents the very nature of the Restoration: he was lewd, selfish, disdainful and he had no sense whatsoever of right and wrong. In that era Hobbes made it fashionable to have a rational disregard for religion, the only binding force for an otherwise criminal aristocracy. Any power Parliament had gained during Cromwell's Commonwealth dissipated with the return of Charles II, for whom Rochester saved some of the most vicious barbs--as in this epitaph:

Here lies a great and mighty king,

Whose promise none relies on;

He never said a foolish thing,

Nor ever did a wise one.

Apparently the greatest accomplishment of the Restoration was the first England-grown pineapple, a feat absurdly celebrated by this book in a two page color illustration of the royal gardener presenting Charles II with the fruits of his endeavors.

Rochester seems to have had the best of all possible worlds during his short life. His father, Henry Wilmot, was a royalist exiled to France during the Commonwealth, while his mother was the former wife to an important Parliamentary figure. Between the two, young John Wilmot was able to enjoy a relatively unscathed youth reading the classics, going to Oxford when he was only thirteen and graduating the following year with a Master of Arts. But whatever favors Rochester might have received because of his family's dual politics, his sharp wit and merciless opinions garnered him plenty of attention too.

Wilmot graduated from Oxford in 1661, travelled in Europe for a few years and was immediately received into the king's Court upon his return in 1664. By the following spring he had already begun to make an infamous name for himself: he kidnapped Elizabeth Mallet, an heiress whom he was courting. Charles II sent Rochester to the Tower for this, his earliest offense, although it took only three weeks to appease the king and set the prankster free until his trial came up. War broke out with the Dutch, Rochester volunteered, and soon released himself from further punishment by proving his courage in two sea-battles.

For the next year or so Rochester enjoyed what Greene calls "the most creditable period" of his life, when he was able to watch the frivolous Court without sharing its decadence. But after his marriage to Elizabeth Mallet in 1667, he fast became the hellish rake at Court--the king's jester who was banished at least three times for poems about the king and his mistresses, such as "The History of Insipids":

Restless he rolls form whore to whore,

A merry monarch, scandalous and poor.

Nor are his high desires above his strength;

His sceptre and his ---- are of a length.