381 



SEDGWICK, EEV. ADAM, M.A. 



SEDULIUS, C^ELIUS. 



382 



sixty-five, admission to the Acaddmie Francaiae. He died on the 

 17th of May 1797. 



Gaiety, originality, truth of dialogue, and skill in raising and sus- 

 taining interest in his plots, are the merits ascribed to Sedaine as an 

 author. His style is censured for negligence, but it is forcible and 

 flowing, and well adapted to his usual melodramatic composition. He 

 himself maintained that what were called his faults really contributed 

 to his success. "They will have it," he said, "that I can't write 

 French ; and I say that none of them could write ' Rose et Colas.' " 

 This was said in mortification at having been left out of the Institut 

 National, when the pre-existing Academies were remodelled into that 

 body. The catalogue of his plays amounts to thirty-two. There is a 

 selection (' CEuvres Choisies de Sedaine') with a memoir, Paris, 1813. 



* SEDGWICK, REV. ADAM, M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S., Woodwardian 

 Professor of Geology in the University of Cambridge, one of the 

 most eminent living geologists, was born about 1786 at Dent, in 

 Yorkshire. He took his B.A. degree in 1808, and in the following year 

 became a fellow of Trinity College, of which he is now (1857) a senior 

 fellow, and also vice-master. In 1818 he succeeded Professor Hailstone 

 in the chair of geology founded at Cambridge by the celebrated Dr. 

 Woodward [WOODWARD, JOHN], and frequently termed the Wood- 

 wnrdian professorship. In the same year, on the 21st of February, he 

 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was one of the secre- 

 taries of the Cambridge Philosophical Society at its establishment in 

 1819, and has frequently been an office-bearer since, continuing of 

 course to be a leading member of that body, whose ' Transactions ' 

 have done so much honour, not only to the science of the university, 

 but to British science in general. Gradually becoming a leading Fellow 

 also of the Geological Society of London, and having filled several 

 offices in it, he was elected the president at the anniversary of 1829, 

 holding the office for the stated two years following. He is a pre- 

 bendary of Norwich cathedral, and is also university-secretary to his 

 Royal Highness Prince Albert as chancellor. In the fourth volume of 

 the ' Bibliographia Zoologia ' of Agassiz, Strickland, and Jardine, pub- 

 lished in 1854, thirty-two papers by Professor Sedgwick, including a 

 ' Syllabus of Lectures ' separately published, are enumerated ; ten by 

 him and Sir R. I. Murchison in conjunction, and two by him and Mr. 

 Williamson Peile. These papers are contained in the ' Transactions ' 

 of the Cambridge Philosophical Society ; the ' Transactions ' (second 

 series), ' Proceedings,' and ' Quarterly Journal ' of the Geological Society 

 of London ; the ' Reports ' of the British Association ; the first and 

 second series of the ' Annals of Philosophy ; ' the ' Philosophical 

 Magazine ; ' and the ' Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal.' They 

 relate exclusively to geology, and principally to that of the palseozic 

 and of the older metamorphic and the crystalline rocks. He has since 

 communicated several other papers to the Geological Society and the 

 'Philosophical Magazine.' He is reputed to be the author of an 

 elaborate and powerful article in the 'Edinburgh Review' on the 

 views advocated in the work entitled ' Vestiges of the Natural History 

 of Creation.' 



Professor Sedgwick has given more attention perhaps than any other 

 English geologist, except the late Sir H. T. De la Beche, to the study 

 of the crystalline rocks, which, in their actual position, are the bases 

 upon which the entire series of our sedimentary formations reposes. 

 While his numerous descriptive essays on English geology evince a 

 regard for mineralogical and chemical distinctions which have not been 

 duly regarded by some geological inquirers, he has not been misled, 

 as the late Dr. Macculloch was, by his mineralogical knowledge, to 

 undervalue those principles of the classification of rocks which are 

 derived from the organic remains they include, and which, as yet, are 

 principally zoological. He has been eminently successful in deter- 

 mining the relative position of the great masses constituting the 

 palaeozoic rocks of the north of England, especially where the original 

 stratification has been thrown into disorder by subsequent geological 

 operations, or where the original characters of the strata have been 

 changed or even obliterated by metamorphic action. His application 

 of general physical knowledge to this branch of the science has been 

 of inestimable advantage in the progress of geology in England. 



No member of his university has contributed in a higher degree to 

 elevate its character as a school of the natural sciences. To him it is 

 also indebted for his care of the continually augmenting collections 

 of the geological museum, the foundation of which was Dr. Wood- 

 ward's own collection. He has himself contributed to it a noble 

 series of many thousand rock-specimens, chiefly British, and a still 

 more valuable series of organic remains. For the arrangement of the 

 latter, and of all the palaeontological collections added to the museum 

 during the last thirty-eight years, he secured the services for four 

 years of a distinguished palaeontologist, Mr. McCoy, subsequently 

 professor of geology and mineralogy in Queen's college, Belfast, and 

 since appointed to the chair of natural history in the University of 

 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Professor McCoy's descriptive 

 catalogue of the ' British Palaeozoic Fossils,' contained in these collec- 

 tions, has been published by the university, introduced by an elabo- 

 rate dissertation by Professor Sedgwick, entitled ' A Synopsis of the 

 Classification of the British Palaeozoic Rocks,' and this is almost 

 the only separate work on geology which he has produced. In it he 

 has enunciated his matured views, and as it were final decision on the 

 subject of the classification and nomenclature of the older palaeozoic 



formations, on which he is at issue with his friend and former collabo- 

 rator, Sir R. I. Murchison, [MURCHISON, SIB RODERICK IMPEY], 

 giving to the Silurian system of strata of that geologist all the lower 

 palaeozoic formations above the Coniston grits, and claiming for his 

 own Cambrian system everything from the Coniston grits inclusive 

 down to the Skiddaw slate, and its equivalents the Bangor and 

 Longmynd group, the most ancient of British rocks. 



A more general work of considerable importance has also been pro- 

 duced by Professor Sedgwick. This is ' A Discourse on the Studies of 

 the University of Cambridge,' first published as a pamphlet, but the 

 fifth edition of which, published in 1850, is a volume of 764 pages, 

 of which the expanded preface occupies 442. Thig work may be 

 said to present a comprehensive enunciation of the author's views on 

 physical philosophy and natural theology, and their relations to the 

 Christian religion. It expresses them in an especial manner on 

 what may be termed the philosophy of geology and palaeontology. To 

 it all may be referred who desire to learn the sentiments of Professor 

 Sedgwick, acquired by a life of application to the acquisition and 

 extension of knowledge, upon any of the great questions of science, 

 and its bearings on revelation, which the progress of discovery for 

 nearly a century past has evoked, and upon the authority of the men 

 by whom they have been raised. It was originally delivered as a 

 sermon in the chapel of Trinity College, (at an annual commemo- 

 ration), directed against what has been termed by some writers 

 " the utilitarian theory of morals as being not merely false in reason- 

 ing, but as producing a degrading effect on the temper and conduct of 

 those who adopt it." " In this line," it has been remarked, " he had 

 been preceded by the present master of Trinity (Dr. Whewell), in Four 

 Sermons on the Foundation of Morals, and by the late Archdeacon 

 Hare, [HARE, JULIUS CHARLES], in various sermons preached before 

 the University of Cambridge. These three great men (who had a most 

 noble and tender friendship for each other), had and have long been 

 seeking to counteract the influence which they think Paley, in his 

 Moral Philosophy,' has injuriously exercised on the studies of their 

 Alma Mater." 



SEDLEY, SIR CHARLES, an English poet, the son of Sir John 

 Sedley of Aylesford in Kent, was born in 1639. His mother was 

 Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Henry Saville, warden of Merton College, 

 Oxford. At the age of seventeen, in the year 1655-56, he became a 

 fellow-commoner of Wadham College, and taking no degree, retired to 

 his own county, where he lived till the restoration of Charles II. 

 After this event he came to London, and, to use the words of Antony 

 Ji Wood, set up for a satirical wit, a comedian, poet, and courtier of 

 ladies. A thorough debauchee he in 1663 was fined very heavily for a 

 most disgusting drunken frolic in which he had been engaged, the par- 

 ticulars of which are told by Wood. (' Athense Oxon.') Shortly after 

 this be represented the borough of New Romney in Kent. Several of 

 his speeches in parliament are printed among his works. During the 

 reign of James II., Sedley, whose daughter was one of the mistresses 

 of that monarch, appears to have retired from the court, which he 

 had much frequented in the lifetime of Charles. At the Revolution 

 he joined the party of William. He died August 20, 1701. 



Sedley's works, with a short memoir prefixed, were published in 

 1722. They consist of various short amatory poems, a few speeches 

 in parliament, translations from the classics, and the following plays : 

 ' The Mulberry Garden,' a comedy ; ' Antony and Cleopatra,' a tragedy ; 

 ' Bellamira, or the Mistress,' a comedy. (' Tunbridge Wells, or a Day's 

 Courtship,' a comedy ; ' The Tyrant King of Crete,' a tragedy j ' The 

 Grumbler,' a comedy, are also attributed to him.) 



As a poet Sedley is in simplicity and ease of expression, in spright- 

 linese of fancy, in the skilful treatment of common and trivial subjects, 

 surpassed by none of his contemporaries. He is extremely licentious, 

 but his licentiousness is of a refined kind, and his pages are not dis- 

 figured by the grossness of language so common in his time. The best 

 of his short poems are printed in Ellis's ' Early English Poets.' His 

 plays have little merit, and he is one of those writers whose works 

 might pass into oblivion without real loss either to taste or morality. 



SEDU'LIUS, C^ELIUS, a Christian Roman poet, is generally sup- 

 posed to have lived during the first half of the 5th century of our 

 era ; but who he was and where he lived is unknown. Some writers 

 call him a presbyter, others an antistes, and others again call him a 

 bishop. A few very late writers state that he was a disciple of Hilde- 

 bert, archbishop of the Scots, and that he came from Scotland or 

 Ireland to France, and thence to Italy. But these statements are 

 either entirely groundless, or arise from the circumstance that the old 

 Christian poet Sedulius was confounded with another Sedulius who 

 lived in the 8th or 9th century of our era. 



There are four poems which are usually ascribed to Sedulius : 1, 

 ' Mirabilium Divinorum, sive Operis Paschalis Libri (quatuor) Quin- 

 quo : ' it is preceded by a prose letter to an abbot Macedonius, from 

 which we learn that the poet treated of the same subject in prose also, 

 and that he himself divided the poem into four books, though in all 

 our editions it is divided into five books. Whether the fifth book was 

 added by Sedulius himself at a later period of his life, or whether _ifc 

 was added by some one else, is uncertain. _ The poem, which is in 

 tolerably good hexameters, contains some portions of .the history of the 

 Old Testament and the life of Christ. The language is purer than that 

 of many of his contemporaries, and in some passages it is really poetical. 



