More by Sedley

To Gaurus
That thou dost shorten thy long Nights with Wine,
We all forgive thee, for so Cato did;
That thou writ'st Poems without one good Line,
Tully's Example may that Weakness hide;
Thou art a Cuckold, so great Caesar was;
Eat'st till thou spew'st, Antonius did the same;
That thou lovst Whores, Jove loves a bucksom Lass;
But that th'art whipt, is thy peculiar Shame.

To Sergius
Thou'lt fight, if any Man call Thebe Whore;
That she is thine, what can proclaim it more.


Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701) was one of Charles II's infamous "court wits," as renowned for his obscenity as for his epigrams. In 1663, he was arrested for appearing naked on a balcony and throwing bottles of his own urine onto the crowd gathered below, a gimmick that didn't take a Voltaire to contrive (or perform, for that matter). Five years later, Sedley hired thugs to beat up the actor Edward Kynaston for impersonating him in a play. This episode appears in Richard Eyre's hilarious Stage Beauty (2004), though Richard Griffiths, inexplicably, plays Sedley as a dirty old man.

So far as we know, he never became a dirty old man. In fact, he reformed with age. In 1687, he inspired the best description of impotence ever written, in a letter from Etherege to Dryden:

"I am apt to think that you have 'bated something of your mettle since you and I were Rivalls in other matters, tho' I hope you have not yet attain'd the perfection I have heard Sir Charles Sydlie brag of, which is that when a short youth runs quick through every veine and puts him in minde of his ancient prowesse, he thinks it not worth while to bestow motion on his et cetera muscle."