611 



SOUTHCOTT, JOANNA. 



SOUTHEY, ROBERT. 



612 



preacher should in hia sermon or lecture deliver any other doctrine 

 concerning the Trinity than what was contained in the Holy Scrip- 

 tures, and was agreeable to the three Creeds and the Thirty-nine 

 Articles of Religion. A ballad, which was much circulated at the 

 time, beginning 



" A dean and prebendary 

 Had once a new vagary," &c. 



turned the two combatants into ridicule, together with Dr. Burnet, 

 master of the Charter- House, who, about the same time, published his 

 ' Archaeologia.' 



South lived till the 8th of July 1716. He was buried in West- 

 minster Abbey near the grave of his old master Busby. Neither 

 children nor wife are mentioned by his biographers. By his will he 

 disposed of a good deal of his property for charitable purposes, having 

 all through life been a most generous giver. The residue, after the 

 legacies and charities were satisfied, he gave to hia executrix Mrs. 

 Margaret Hammond, his housekeeper, who had lived with him above 

 five and thirty years. There is a Life of South in a volume of his 

 ' Posthumous Works,' London, 1717, which is the authority for what 

 has been stated. This volume also contains three of his sermons, his 

 will, and his Latin poems and orations delivered in his capacity of 

 public orator in the University of Oxford. 



Though South is only known by his sermons, he must be viewed 

 both as a political and a theological writer. He defended by argument 

 and by his example he enforced, passive obedience and the divine 

 right of kings. He says that the " absolute subjection " which men 

 yield to princes comes from "a secret work of the divine power." He 

 believed the Church of England to be perfect, and the express image 

 of the primitive ordinances. Many of his sermons are directed against 

 the Puritans, whom he attacks with the keenest wit and the bitterest 

 sarcasm. According as a man's affections are disposed, he will view 

 South as a furious bigot, or as an uncompromising defender of the 

 state and the church as established. 



As a writer he is conspicuous for sound practical good sense, for a 

 deep insight into human character, for liveliness of imagination, and 

 exuberant invention, and wit that knew not always the limits of pro- 

 priety. In perspicuity, copiousness, and force of expression he is 

 almost unrivalled among English writers ; and these great qualities 

 fully compensate for the " forced conceits, unnatural metaphors, 

 absurd similes, aud turgid and verbose language which occasionally 

 disfigure his pages.'' With all his faults he was a truly honest man, 

 a firm friend, and a generous benefactor. The sincerity of his prin- 

 ciples is shown in the purity of his life, and the vigour of his under- 

 standing is stamped on all that he wrote. 



SOUTHCuTT, JOANNA, was born in Devonshire about the year 

 1750, of humble parents. She was employed, chiefly at Exeter, as a 

 domestic servant, and up to the age of forty or thereabouts seems to 

 have aspired to no higher occupation; but having joined the Metho- 

 dists, and become acquainted with a- man of the name of Sanderson, 

 who laid claim to the spirit of prophecy, the notion of a like preten- 

 sion was gradually communicated to Joanna. She appears to have 

 first put forth her claims to the character of a prophetess iu 1792. 

 She wrote prophecies, and she dictated prophecies, sometimes in prose 

 and sometimes in rhymed doggrel ; her influence extended, and the 

 number of her followers increased ; she announced herself as the 

 woman spoken of in the 1 2th chapter of Revelations, and obtained 

 considerable sums by the sale of seals, or sealed packets, which were 

 to secure the salvation of those who purchased them. Her confidence 

 increased with her reputation, and she challenged the bishop and 

 clergy of Exeter to a public investigation of her miraculous powers, 

 but they treated her challenge with contemptuous neglect, which she 

 and her converts imputed to fear. By degrees Exeter became too narrow 

 a stage for her performances, and she came to London on the invita- 

 tion and at the expense of Sharp the engraver. [SHARP, WILLIAM.] 

 She was very illiterate, but wrote numerous letters and pamphlets, 

 and her prophecies, nearly unintelligible as they were, had a large 

 sale. In 1803 she published ' A Warning to the whole World, from 

 the sealed Prophecies of Joanna Southcott, and other Communications 

 given since the Writings were opened on the 12th of January 1803,' 

 8vo, London. In 1804 appeared 'Copies and Parts of Copies of 

 Letters and Communications written from Joanna Southcott, and 

 transmitted by Miss Townley to Mr. W. Sharp in London.' In 1813-14 

 she published ' The Book of Wonders, in Five Parts,' 8vo, London ; 

 and also, in 1814, ' Prophecies concerning the Birth of the Prince of 

 Peace, extracted from the works of Joanna Southcott/ 8vo, London. 

 Of the Prince of Peace she announced that she was to be delivered 

 on the 19th of October 1814, at midnight, being then upwards of sixty 

 years of age. There was indeed the external appearance of pregnancy, 

 and in consequence the enthusiasm of her followers, who are said to 

 have amounted at that time to not fewer than 100,000, was greatly 

 excited. An expensive cradle was made, and considerable sums were 

 contributed, in order to have other things prepared in a style worthy 

 of the expected ' Second Shiloh.' On the night of the 19th of October 

 a very large number of persons assembled in the street where she 

 lived, to hear the announcement of the looked-for advent ; but the 

 hour of midnight passed over, and the crowd were only induced to 

 disperse by being informed that Joanna had fallen into a trance. On 

 the 27th of December 1814, she died, having a short time previously 



declared that " if she was deceived, she was at all events misled by 

 some spirit, either good or evil.'' Her body was opened after her 

 decease, and the appearance which had deceived her followers, and 

 perhaps herself, was found to have arisen from dropsy. Dr. lleece, 

 one of the medical men by whom she had been examined, and who 

 had publicly expressed his belief in her pregnancy, published, ' A 

 correct Statement of the Circumstances that attended the last Illness 

 and Death of Mrs. Southcott ; by Richard Reece, M.D.,' London, 1815. 

 The number of her followers continued to be very great for many 

 years after her death ; they believed that there would be a resurrec- 

 tion of her body, and that she was still to be the mother of the 

 promised Shiloh. There are still (1857) believers in Joanna South- 

 cott. At the census of 1851 there were in England four congregations 

 of persons holding this belief : the attendance at their four places of 

 worship on the census Sunday (March 30, 1851) was in the morning 

 68, and in the evening 198 persons. 



SOUTHERN, THOMAS, an English dramatist, was born at Oxman- 

 town, in the county of Dublin, in 16CO. He was admitted a student 

 of Trinity College, Dublin, in his seventeenth year, March 13, 1676, 

 and in 1G78 entered the Middle Temple, London. Preferring poetry 

 to law, he became a popular writer of plays, the first of which was 

 the 'Persian Prince,' acted in 1682: in the character of the Loyal 

 Brother in this drama, a compliment to the Duke of York was 

 intended, according to the biographer of Southern, in the Life pre- 

 fixed to his works, 1774. At the time of the Duke of Monmouth's 

 landing Southern served in the king's army as ensign in Lord Ferrers's 

 regiment, and was afterwards presented with a company by the Duke 

 of Berwick, to whom he had been recommended by Colonel Sarsfield. 

 At the duke's request he wrote the ' Spartan Dame,' which however 

 was not acted till 1721. For the copyright of this play he received 

 120/. a large sum in those days. After quitting the army Southern 

 continued to write plays, enjoying great popularity as an author, and 

 living on terms of intimacy with those of his contemporaries most 

 distinguished for wit or rank. Dryden, for whom he finished tho 

 play of ' Cleomenes,' and afterwards Pope, were among his friends. 

 Southern died on the 26th of May 1746, at a very advanced age. 



In the delineation of character, the conduct of plots, and all the 

 niceties of dramatic art, Southern shows but little skill; he is neither 

 imaginative, as were the elder English dramatists, nor witty in his 

 comic dialogues, like Congreve and others, his contemporaries. But 

 his language is pure, and free from affectation ; his verse has a pleasant 

 fluency, and he has been successful in the expression of simple and 

 natural pathos, particularly in the last scenes of the ' Fatal Marriage,' 

 a tragedy which Las been much and deservedly admired, and which 

 was popular on the stage in the last century, under the title of 

 ' Isabella.' Some of his plays were published by Tonson, 12mo, 1721, 

 a complete edition of his works in 1774 ; they consist of comedies, and 

 of tragedies with an infelicitous mixture of comic scenes. There is a 

 short account of Southern prefixed to this edition, and in the prefaces 

 to the plays are a few particulars of his life, stated by himself. He is 

 wrongly inserted in the ' Athenaa Oxonienses' by Wood. See his Life 

 in that work, ed. Bliss, where will be found a letter from Southern to 

 Dr. Rawlinson, denying that he ever was at Oxford. See also Malone, 

 ' Life of Dryden,' i. 176. 



SOUTHEY, ROBERT, was the second but eldest surviving son of 

 a linendraper in Wine-street, Bristol, where he was born on the 12th 

 of August 1774; but from his second year he lived chiefly at Bath, 

 in the house of an aunt, Miss Tyler a lady of very eccentric habits, 

 and possessed with a perfect passion for the theatre, of whom he has 

 given an amusing description in his autobiographic sketch. His first 

 teacher was a Baptist minister named Foote, to whose school at Bristol 

 he was sent when he was six years old, and who treated him with 

 much cruelty. He was next sent to a Mr. Flower, at Corston, near 

 Newton St. Loe, where, he says, " one year of my life was spent with 

 little profit, and with a good deal of suffering. There could not be a 

 worse school in all respects ; '' though Flower himself he describes as 

 "a remarkable man, worthy of a better station in life, but utterly 

 unfit for that in which he was placed." He then went to another 

 Bristol school, kept by a Mr. William Williams, a Welshman. At last, 

 in 1788, he proceeded to Westminster School (having first been placed 

 for preparation with Mr. Lewis, a clergyman in Bristol, for a brief 

 space), the expense of his education from this time being borne by 

 the Rev. Herbert Hill, chaplaiu to the British Factory at Lisbon, a 

 brother of his mother. From Westminster School he was dismissed 

 however in 1792. A periodical called the ' Flagellant ' had been 

 started by Southey and some of the other youths in the upper classes 

 of the school, and in the ninth number was printed a sarcastic attack 

 upon corporal punishment, then practised with great severity in the 

 school. The head-master, Dr. Vincent, immediately commenced a 

 prosecution for libel against the publisher, upon which Southey 

 avowed himself the author, and offered an apology ; but the master 

 was implacable, and Southey, though he had made a distinguished 

 reputation in the school, was ignominiously dismissed. About the 

 same time his father's affairs became hopelessly embarrassed, and the 

 old man died broken iu spirit a few months later. Southey's uncle 

 did not however desert him : in January 1793 he went up to Oxford, 

 but the Dean of Christchurch (Cyril Jackson) refused to admit him, 

 on account of his dismissal from Westuiiuster, and he was entered of 



