Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/274

 attended his deathbed. Wordsworth wrote to Rogers of his grief at the death of ‘the veteran Sotheby’ (, Rogers and his Contemporaries, ii. 87). Sotheby's widow, Mary Isted, who was born on 28 Dec. 1759, died on 14 Oct. 1834.

Sotheby's portrait was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and the picture was engraved by F. C. Lewis. An unfinished drawing in crayons, also by Lawrence, was executed in 1814. Both painting and drawing are now at Ecton, the property of Major-general F. E. Sotheby.

Sotheby, wrote Byron, ‘has imitated everybody, and occasionally surpassed his models.’ Although his poems and plays were held in high esteem by his friends, his translations of Virgil and Wieland alone deserve posthumous consideration. They are faithful to their originals and betray much literary taste, if they are not of the stuff of which classics are made. As a translator of Homer, Sotheby, who owed much to Pope, failed to reproduce Homer's directness of style and diction. The translation, although eminently readable, was a work of supererogation (cf., On Translating Homer, 1896, pp. 10–11). Sotheby's intimate relations with men of high distinction in literature give his career its chief interest. His literary correspondence is preserved at Ecton.

Of Sotheby's seven children, the eldest, William, died in 1815, a lieutenant-colonel in the foot-guards; George (1787–1817) entered the East India Company's service, and was killed in defending the residency at Nagpoore during the Mahratta war, on 27 Nov. 1817; Hans, also in the East India Company's service, died on 27 April 1827; Frederick (d. 1870) was colonel in the Bengal artillery, and C.B.

Sotheby's grandson, Hans William Sotheby (1827–1874), son of his third son, Hans, was a man of literary taste and knowledge. He was fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, from 1851 to 1864, and contributed to ‘Fraser's Magazine’ (December 1860 and January 1861) an article on ‘Life and Times of Thomas de Quincey,’ and to the ‘Quarterly Review’ (July 1875) a notice of Comparetti's ‘Virgilio nel medio evo’ (, Reg. Exeter College, p. 189; cf., Recollections, i. 152, 189).

(d. 1854), the second and eldest surviving son, who succeeded to Sewardstone Manor, entered the navy; was present as a midshipman at the battle of the Nile in 1798, took part in the operations in Egypt in 1801, and against the Turks in 1807. He was appointed to the Seringapatam in 1824, and in her was active in suppressing piracy in the Mediterranean. He attained flag-rank on 20 March 1848, and died rear-admiral of the red at his residence in Lowndes Square on 20 Jan. 1854 (Gent. Mag. 1854, i. 191). His eldest son (by his first wife, Jane, daughter of William Hamilton, seventh lord Belhaven), Charles William Hamilton Sotheby (1820–1871), high sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1881, succeeded to the Ecton estates in that year on the death of his cousin, Ambrose Isted, and sold Sewardstone in 1884; his half-brother, Major-general Frederick Edward Sotheby, succeeded to Ecton on his death in 1887.

[Memoir prefixed to Lines suggested by the third meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science … by the late William Sotheby, Esq., F.R.S., London, 1834; Crabb Robinson's Diary; Clayden's S. Rogers and his Contemporaries; Lockhart's Life of Scott; Moore's Memoirs, ed. Lord John Russell; Southey's Correspondence; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 411; Nichols's Lit. Illustrations, viii. 324–5.]

 SOTHEL, SETH (d. 1697), colonial governor, became one of the proprietors of South Carolina by purchasing Lord Clarendon's share. In September 1681 Sothel, in the capacity of senior proprietor, succeeded to the governorship of the settlement at Albemarle, which afterwards became North Carolina, but on his way out he was captured by Algerine pirates. He, however, escaped or was ransomed, and reached the colony in 1683. His misgovernment irritated the colonists into rebellion, and he was by them deposed and banished. He then went to South Carolina, where he fared better. Finding the colony in a state of rebellion against the government collector, he succeeded in getting himself recognised as governor by the colonists. This, however, was disallowed by the proprietors, and in 1691 he was definitely superseded by the appointment of Philip Ludwell. Sothel appears to have died in 1697, since on 20 Dec. of that year a letter from the proprietors refers to the vacancy caused by his death.

[Ryve's Historical Sketches of South Carolina; Winsor's Hist. of America, v. 296, 313; Publications of South Carolina Historical Society.]  SOTHEREY, SIMON (fl. 1396), Benedictine. [See .]

SOTHERN, EDWARD ASKEW (1826–1881), actor, the son of a merchant, colliery proprietor, and shipowner, was born in Liverpool, 1 April 1826. After some experience on the amateur stage he made an appearance in 1849 at the theatre in St.