JOHN WILMOT, Earl of Rochester, British poet, born (d: 1680); was an English libertine, a friend of King Charles II, and the writer of satirical and bawdy poetry. He was the toast of the Restoration court and a patron of the arts. If you’ve never read the poetry of Rochester, run, don’t walk, to the nearest library and, after leafing through the pages, order a copy of your very own. He is easy to read, witty, very funny, and delightfully obscene.

He’s also proof positive that the world didn’t begin with Queen Victoria, his age being almost as unzipped as he. Rochester was an incomparably dissolute rake whose sexual philosophy was clearly “any port in a storm.” Consequently his poetry extols the joys of every possible type of human coupling.

One poem, possibly unique in the language, is about two men entering a woman fore and aft, but obviously making love to each other. Other poems are about the pleasures of boys: “If by chance then I wake, hot-headed and drunk, / What coyle do I make for the loss of my Punck? / I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage, / And missing my Whore, I bugger my Page.”

Rochester was once banished from the court of Charles II for smashing the king’s clocks and dials when they refused to answer his drunken question, “Dost thou fuck?” He was like that; he was also burned out at age 33. The film "The Libertine", based on Stephen Jeffreys's play, was shown at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival and was released in the UK in 2005. While taking some artistic liberties, it chronicles Rochester's life, with Johnny Depp as Rochester, Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry, John Malcovich as King Charles II, and Rosamund Pike as Elizabeth Malet.

On this date the eccentric English author and clergyman AUGUSTUS MONTAGUE SUMMERS was born (d. 1948). Known primarily for scholarly work on the English drama of the 17^th century, as well as for idiosyncratic studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe. He was responsible for the first English translation, published in 1928, of the medieval witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum.

Despite his conservative religiosity, Summers was an active member of both the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, to which he contributed an essay on the Marquis de Sade, and of the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society which cultivated a homosexual ethos. Summers' gay interests also show in his edition of the poems of the sixteenth century poet Richard Barnfield, which partly are openly homosexual.

EVELYN WAUGH, English writer, died (b. 1903); an English writer best known for such satirical novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust and The Loved One, as well as for broader and more personal works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy, that are influenced by his own experiences and his conservative and Roman Catholic viewpoints.

Many of Waugh's novels depict British aristocracy and high society, which he satirizes but to which, paradoxically, he was also strongly attracted. In addition, he wrote short stories, three biographies, and the first volume of an unfinished autobiography. His travel writings and his extensive diaries and correspondence have also been published.