with him ‘in pleasant and for the most part instructive discourse.’
When the literary remains of Sedley are examined, they are found very imperfectly to warrant their contemporary reputation. His prose writings consist, besides the pieces already mentioned, of a commonplace ‘Essay on Entertainments,’ and a prose version of Cicero's oration ‘pro M. Marcello.’ The burlesque ‘Speech and Last Will and Testament’ of the Earl of Pembroke may be his, but it has also been attributed to Butler. Sedley's non-dramatic verse comprises little that is noticeable, and is not to be regarded as equal in merit even to his friend Dorset's. He has, however, occasionally very felicitous turns of diction, the effect of which is enhanced by the unstudied simplicity of his manner. Among his amorous lyrics, while various tributes to Aurelia or Aminta are forgotten, the pretty song ‘Phillis is my only Joy’ (to which he wrote the companion ‘Song à la mode’) survives chiefly because of its setting as a madrigal. Another lyric of merit is ‘Love still has something of the Sea.’ In his non-dramatic productions Sedley, although a licentious, is not as a rule an obscene writer. He has also left a series of translations and adaptations, including versions in heroic couplets of Virgil's ‘Fourth Georgic’ and ‘Eclogues,’ and an adaptation, under the sub-title of ‘Court Characters,’ of a series of epigrams from Martial.
The plays of Sir Charles Sedley consist of two tragedies and three comedies. ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ (1677, reprinted 1702, under the title of ‘Beauty the Conqueror, or the Death of Marc Antony’) was extolled by Shadwell (dedication of A True Widow) as ‘the only tragedy, except two of Johnson's and one of Shakespeare's, wherein Romans are made to speak and do like Romans.’ It would be more appropriately compared with Dryden's ‘All for Love’ (1678), but is too frigid and uninteresting a composition, especially in its earlier portions, to sustain the comparison. It is in heroic couplets, largely interspersed with triplets, to which Sedley was particularly addicted. ‘The Tyrant King of Crete,’ which seems never to have been acted, is merely an adaptation of Henry Killigrew's ‘The Conspiracy’ (printed 1638), or, more probably, of its revised edition, ‘Pallantus and Eudora,’ printed 1653 (see Genest, x. 150). This romantic drama is in blank verse, which the printer terribly confused.
The comedy of ‘The Mulberry-garden’ (1668), partly founded on Molière's ‘École des Maris,’ is an example, composed partly in easy prose, partly in rhymed couplets, of what may be called the ‘rambling’ comedy of the age. This worthless piece is supposed to play just about the time of Monck's declaration in favour of the Restoration. ‘Bellamira, or the Mistress’ (1687), founded on the ‘Eunuchus’ of Terence, is the single one of Sedley's plays which may both for better and for worse be said to come near to his reputation; it is both the grossest and, from a literary point of view, the best executed of his plays. The character of the heroine was said to be intended as an exposure of the Duchess of Cleveland (cf. Genest, i. 455). The author, in his prologue, need hardly have asked:
Is it not strange to see, in such an age,
The pulpit get the better of the stage?
Sedley also adapted a French original which has not been identified under the title of ‘The Grumbler.’ This piece appears to have remained unacted till 1754, when it was brought out as a farce at Drury Lane, and this or the original was again adapted by Goldsmith in 1773 for Quick's benefit (Genest, iv. 391–2, v. 373; Biographia Dramatica, ii. 274).
Sedley's poems, together with those of Dorset, were collected in ‘A New Miscellany,’ 1701, and in a ‘Collection of Poems’ of the same date. They were published separately, together with his speeches, in 1707, London, 8vo; subsequent editions, 1722 and 1776.
[The Works of the Hon. Sir Charles Sedley, Bart., in Prose and Verse, with Memoirs of the Author's Life, written by an Eminent Hand, 2 vols. 1776 (the Memoirs are nugatory; vol. ii. contains the preface prefixed by Captain Ayloffe, who claims affinity with Sedley, to the Miscellaneous Works, with the Death of Marc Antony, 1702); Collins's Baronetage of England, 1720, i. 327–9; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. xii. 344; Pepys's Diary; Langbaine's English Dramatic Poets, 1691, pp. 485–8; Genest's English Stage.]
SEDULIUS (d. 828), commentator on the Scriptures, has often been confounded by mediæval writers with Cœlius Sedulius the poet, who was the author of the ‘Carmen seculare,’ and of the hymns in the Roman Breviary, ‘A Solis ortus Cardine’ and ‘Hostis Herodes impie.’ Both writers are said to have been Irishmen, and their works have a religious purpose; but Ussher has shown that Cœlius Sedulius the poet flourished in the fifth century, and must be differentiated from the commentator who even quotes the poet, and is sometimes termed junior, in allusion to his later date.
Ware identified the later Sedulius with a British bishop of Irish birth, who is said to
