Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/304

 collating the printed editions with manuscript copies at Stonyhurst, which are not in the poet's autograph, but occasionally contain corrections assumably in his handwriting. Much Latin verse by Southwell on sacred topics is also among the Stonyhurst manuscripts, and several of his Latin poems were printed for the first time in Dr. Grosart's edition. But neither Walter nor Turnbull nor Dr. Grosart reprinted the ‘Foure-fould Meditation.’

Six English prose tracts by Southwell have been printed: 1. ‘Mary Magdalens Teares,’ licensed to Gabriel Cawood, 8 Nov. 1591, was published in that year, but no copy seems known. A second edition has the title ‘Mary Magdalens Funerall Teares, Jeremiæ c. 6, ver. 26: Luctum unigeniti fac tibi planctum amarum, London, printed for A[bel] J[effes] G[abriel] C[awood], 1594,’ 8vo. Other separate editions are dated 1602 (Brit. Mus.), 1607, 1609, and 1630. It was also reprinted frequently from 1615 onwards with ‘St. Peter's Complaint’ (see supra). Later reprints are dated 1772 and 1827, and it formed vol. iv. of ‘Antiquarian Classics,’ 1823. A rough draft is among the Stonyhurst manuscripts.

2. ‘A Short Rule of Good Life: to direct the devout Christian in a regular and ordinary course,’ was licensed to John Wolfe on 25 Nov. 1598; but the extant copies (in 8vo at Lambeth and Bodleian) are without date or place or printer's name, and were probably published at Douay. The dedication, signed ‘R. S.,’ is addressed ‘to my deare affected friend M. D. S., Gentleman,’ and there are some prefatory verses by the author. It was reissued in the 1615 edition of Southwell's poems.

3. ‘The Triumphs ouer Death; or A Consolatorie Epistle for afflicted minds, in the affects of dying friends. First written for the consolation of one: but nowe published for the generall good of all by R. S., the Authour of S. Peters Complaint, and Mæoniæ his other Hymnes, London, printed by Valentine Simmes for John Busbie, and are to be Solde at Nicholas Lings shop,’ 1596, 4to. Fine copies are in the library of Jesus College, Oxford, and at Britwell. It is dedicated by ‘S. W.’ (doubtless Southwell himself) to the children of Margaret Sackville, countess of Dorset, and there are verses and an acrostic on Southwell's name by John Trussell [q. v.], and an elegy on the countess by Southwell. It was reprinted with the poems in 1615 and successive seventeenth-century editions, and in Brydges's ‘Archaica,’ 1815, vol. i.

4. ‘A Humble Supplication to Her Maiestie, printed anno 1595,’ written in 1591, edited by the jesuits Garnett and Blackwell, was printed at Douay or St. Omer, and was probably first issued in 1600; the dates 1595 on the title-page and ‘14 Dec. 1595’ at the end of the tract were doubtless inserted to deceive the English authorities. Two copies which were seized by the government as contraband are at Lambeth, and one is at the British Museum. A manuscript copy is in the Inner Temple Library.

5. ‘An Epistle of Comfort to the Reverend Priestes, and to the honorable, worshipful, and other of the lay sorte restrayned in durance for the Catholike faith,’ was first issued without date (1593?), with the words ‘Imprinted at Paris’ on the title-page (Brit. Mus. and Britwell). A later issue, ‘printed with license 1605,’ came doubtless from Douay (Brit. Mus.). Both these issues were without an author's name. A third edition ‘by R. S. of the Society of Jesus,’ appeared ‘permissu superiorum’ in 1616, probably at St. Omer.

6. ‘Hundred Meditations on the Love of God’ was first printed by Father Morris, from the original manuscript at Stonyhurst, in 1873; it is prefaced by a letter of the transcriber to Honora, wife of Edward Seymour, lord Beauchamp [see under ]. A collected edition of some of Southwell's prose works, edited by W. J. Walter, appeared in 1828. Many devotional Latin tracts remain in manuscript at Stonyhurst. A manuscript volume containing ‘Meditationes’ by Southwell on the divine attributes, with ‘Exercitia’ and ‘Devotiones’ by him, belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps; it bore the autograph of Alban Butler [q. v.]

Southwell was well acquainted with the poetic efforts of his contemporaries, and traces of the influence of Thomas Watson and Nicholas Breton are apparent in his verse. But his chief aim as a poet was, as he avows in the addresses to the reader both before his ‘St. Peter's Complaint’ and ‘Mary Magdalen's Tears,’ to prove that ‘vertue’ or ‘piety’ was as fit a subject for a poet's pen as the vain, worldly, or sensual topics of which poets conventionally treated. To illustrate how readily a poem on a profane theme might be converted to sacred purposes, he rewrote Sir Edward Dyer's ‘Fancy,’ in which the writer bewailed the torments of love. In Southwell's edifying version, which bore the title ‘Master Dyer's Fancy turned to a Sinner's Complaint,’ he caused his sinner to lament his lack of ‘grace’ (cf., Raleigh and other Courtly Poets, pp. 154–66; , ed. Grosart, p. 96). Southwell's