Rochester’s "Artemisa to Chloe" is a hall of mirrors – Rochester imitates the bluestocking Chloe who tells her friend Artemisa about meeting the libertine lady, who in turn tells the story of Corinna and her seduction/destruction by the worst of them all, the "man of wit". A moral ladder is descended, except that, if we know Rochester’s other poetry, we will know that he is the "man of wit" and the "ill-natured jest" that ruins Corinna’s life is his poem "A Ramble in Saint James’ Park." At the bottom of the hierarchy the poem sets up we find the one who started the whole thing:

 

That wretched thing Corinna, who had run
Through all the several ways of being undone,
Cozened at first by love, and living then
By turning the too dear-bought trick on men -
Gay were the hours, and winged with joys they flew,
When first the town her early beauties knew;
Courted, admired, and loved, with presents fed;
Youth in her looks, and pleasure in her bed;
Till fate, or her ill angel, thought it fit
To make her dote upon a man of wit,
Who found 'twas dull to love above a day;
Made his ill-natured jest, and went away.
Now scorned by all, forsaken, and oppressed,
She's a momento mori to the rest;
Diseased, decayed, to take up half a crown
Must mortgage her long scarf and manteau gown.
Poor creature! who, unheard of as a fly,
In some dark hole must all the winter lie,
And want and dirt endure a while half year
That for one month she tawdry may appear.