20 Life and Letters of Francis Gallon 



(see Plate XIV), does not support the view that she was entirely 

 lacking in beauty. It is not wholly unlike Wright's portrait of Elizabeth 

 Collier (see Plate XVI), and we think in the youthful Violetta Darwin 

 and in other members of the stock descended from Elizabeth Collier 

 and Erasmus Darwin we may find traces of Catherine Sedley. 



And if we are to judge a royal mistress, we must turn to her time 

 and parentage ! Her father was one of the lewdest men at Charles II's 

 court, and even Pepys, by no means himself an ascetic, was shocked at his 

 profligacy. Yet he was a man with real literary power, his prose style 

 is " clear and facile," and his plays and poems had such a contemporary 

 reputation that Charles II said of him that " his style, either in writing 

 or discourse, would be the standard of the English tongue." Later in 

 life Sedley somewhat redeemed himself by parliamentary activity and 

 his advocacy of William III 1 . He will ever be remembered by his 



lyrics : 



" Love still has something of the sea, 



From whence his mother rose"; 

 or : 



" Phillis is my only Joy, 

 Faithless as the Winds or Seas, 

 Sometimes coming, sometimes coy, 

 Yet she never fails to please"; 



and these at least settle that he knew how to handle his mother tongue. 

 His portrait from a print in the British Museum is given in Plate XXI. 

 Sir Charles Sedley's wife was Elizabeth Savage, who came of a 

 distinguished line, and his mother was the Elizabeth Savile, of whom 

 Waller wrote : 



" Here lies the learned Savile's heir, 

 So early wise and lasting fair, 

 That none, except her years they told, 

 Thought her a child or thought her old." 



Thus we link up with Sir Henry Savile (see Plate XV), the most 

 scholarly Englishman of his date, the founder of the Savilian professor- 

 ships of geometry and astronomy at Oxford, tutor to Queen Elizabeth, 

 Warden of Merton and Provost of Eton. On the other hand Sir William 

 Sedley', Sir Charles' paternal grandfather, founded the Sedleian 



He is reported to have said that if King James made his (Sedley's) daughter a 

 countess, he had been even with him in courtesy by making James' daughter a queen ! 

 ' I have not been able to discover in Oxford any portrait of Sir William Sedley. 



