Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/363

 Dictionary of English Literature 351

with his life. Thalaba had appeared in 1801, and there followed Madoc (1805), The Curse of Kehama (1810), Roderic, the Last of the Goths (1814), and A Vision of Judgment (1821) ; and in prose a His tory of Brazil, Lives of Nelson (1813), Wesley (1820), and Bunyan (1830), The Book of the Church (1824), History of the Peninsular War (1823-32), Naval History, and The Doctor (1834-37). In addition to this vast amount of work he had been from 1808 a constant contri butor to the Quarterly Review. In 1839 when he was failing both in body and mind he m., as his second wife, Miss Caroline Ann Bowles, /ho had for 20 years been his intimate friend, and by whom his few remaining years were soothed. Though the name of S. still bulks somewhat largely in the history of our literature, his works, with a few exceptions, are now little read, and those of them (his longer poems, Thalaba and Kehama) on which he himself based his hopes of lasting fame, least of all. To this result their length, remoteness from living interests, and the impression that their often splendid diction is rather eloquence than true poetry, have contributed. Some of his shorter poems, e.g., " The Holly Tree," and " The Battle of Blenheim " still live, but his fame now rests on his vigorous prose and especially on his classic Life of Nelson. Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, S. began life as a democratic visionary, and was strongly influenced by the French Revolution, but gradually cooled down into a pronounced Tory. He was himself greater and better than any of his works, his life being a noble record of devotion to duty and unsel fish benevolence. He held the office of Poet Laureate from 1813, and had a pension from Government. He declined a baronetcy.

Life and Correspondence (6 vols., 1849-50) by his younger son, Rev. C. Southey. Life by Dowden in Men of Letters (1880).

SOUTHWELL, ROBERT (1561 P-I595). Poet, b. at Horsham

St. Faith's, Norfolk, of good Roman Catholic family, and ed. at Douay, Paris, and Rome, he became a Jesuit, and showed such earning and ability as to be appointed Prefect of the English Coll. [n 1586 he came to England with Garnett, the superior of the English province, and became chaplain to the Countess of Arundel. ffis being in England for more than 40 days then rendered him iable to the punishment of death and disembowelment, and in 1592 ae was apprehended and imprisoned in the Tower for three years, during which he was tortured 13 times. He was then put on trial and executed, February 22, 1595. He was the author of St. Peter's Complaint and The Burning Babe, a short poem of great imaginative power, and of several prose religious works, including St. Mary Magdalene's Teares, A Short Rule of Good Life, The Triumphs over Death, etc.

SPEDDING, JAMES (1808-1881). Editor of Bacon's works,

s. of a Cumberland squire, and ed. at Bury St. Edmunds and Camb., was for some years in the Colonial Office. He devoted himself to the ed. of Bacon's works, and the endeavour to clear his character against the aspersions of Macaulay and others. The former was done in conjunction with Ellis and Heath, his own being much the largest share in their great ed. (1861-74); and the latter, so far as possible, in The Life and Letters, entirely his own. In 1878 he