THOMAS SOUTHERNE.

BORN 1660- DIED 1746.

criticism can desire," and he points out several passages in it which he considers "eminently beautiful." In 1700 his Siege of Capua was produced, and in 1713 a complete edition of his then works appeared in two volumes, including The Spartan Dame, which was not acted till 1719. Finally, in 1726 appeared the last of his plays, Money is the Mistress, and an edition of his works, including this last play, was published some time after in three vols. 12mo.

As we have indicated, Southerne's career as a dramatist was a successful one. In his preface to The Spartan Dame he acknowledges having received £150 for it from the booksellers, a price then thought very extraordinary. To Dryden he once owned that he had made £700 altogether by one of his plays, but it must be confessed he had a business faculty for pushing his wares that Dryden did not possess, and might have thought it beneath him to exercise. Pope speaks of him in his kindly Epistle in 1742 as

[Thomas Southerne, whom one of his bio- | says that "as a poem it is nearly all that graphers calls "the great founder of our modern school of dramatic production," was born at Oxmanstown near Dublin, in, according to Cibber, the year 1660. He was educated for a short time at the university in that city, and in his eighteenth year quitted Ireland and went to Oxford. From Oxford he removed to Middle Temple, London, where, instead of law, he studied poetry, and devoted himself to the Muses. Soon after this he made the acquaintance of Dryden, and in 1682, when in his twenty-third year, his first play, The Persian Prince, or Loyal Brothers, appeared, with a prologue by the mighty John. It was highly successful, and so pleased the Duke of York, that on his accession to the throne he gave Southerne a commission as captain under himself. On James's abdication the poet retired to his studies, and commenced anew a successful career of play-writing. Before this, however, he had in 1684 produced The Disappointment, which was, like his first play, a great success. His first work now to appear was The Rambling Lady, or Sir Anthony Love, produced in 1690, and favoured by the public like the others. In 1692 appeared The Wives' Excuse, generally reckoned a better play than any of the three previous ones, yet it was badly received. On this Southerne immediately printed the play with a copy of commendatory verses by Dryden prefixed to it. In these verses Dryden attributes the failure of the play to the bad taste of the audience and not to any defect in Southerne's work; and Southerne in his remarks stated that Dryden, in speaking of it, had said that "the public had been kind to Sir Anthony Love and were only required to be just to this."

"Tom, whom Heaven sent down to raise The price of prologues and of plays."

Southerne's position as a writer is a pretty safe one, notwithstanding the fact that he is little heard of just now. In his own time and afterwards he was ranked very highly by competent critics. Dryden thought him "such another poet as Otway;" Gray "thought highly of his pathetic powers;" a writer in the General Biographical Dictionary says of Oroonoko that "besides the tender and delicate strokes of passion in this play there are many shining and manly sentiments; and some have gone so far beyond the truth as to say, that the most celebrated even of Shakspere's plays However, Southerne was not to be dis- cannot furnish so many striking thoughts and heartened, but rather learned a lesson by the such a glow of animated poetry." The editor comparative failure of The Wives' Excuse, and of Cumberland's Theatre, whom we have in 1693 appeared The Maid's Last Prayer. already quoted, says, in speaking of this same In 1694 he produced his Isabella, or the Fatal play, "To his style belong many of the pathetic Marriage, a play which to this day keeps the graces of the old age-he employs the most stage, and which, with his Oroonoko, must be obvious thoughts and clothes them in the ranked among the first-class plays in our lan- simplest language: his approaches to the guage. Oroonoko appeared in 1696, and is heart are by truth and nature-hence, the said by some to be the very best of his plays. impression he makes is powerful and lasting." The editor of Cumberland's British Theatre | In his "Remarks” on Isabella the same writer