During the reign of Charles II, Sir Charles Sedley was known for his participation in the wild activities of the king's drinking companions, the "ministry of pleasure"--an irregular but influential group of men consisting of wits such as Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst; George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham; John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester; Sir George Etherege, and Henry Saville. Charles II was said to have delighted in Sedley's wit, and Sedley was affectionately known among his brother rakes as "Little Sid." Nearly all of these men participated in important ways in the literary and political life of their time, but, owing to an aristocratic prejudice against publishing poetry under their names, much of their verse circulated chiefly in manuscript or in unauthorized publications; as a consequence modern editors have only with great difficulty achieved fairly reliable texts of their work, and even then the authorship of...