Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/311

 S O U S U 289 one of Ribault's men, was fitted out, but on landing at Port Boyal it found no traces of the former. This colony likewise met with disaster, being massacred by the Spaniards from Florida. It was not until a century later that a permanent settlement was made by the English, who, after the Restoration, began to recognize their claim to a large territory in the southern district of North America. In 1662 a grant was obtained from Charles II., and in 1667 an expedition sailed under command of Capt. "William Sayle. They reached Port Royal, where they made a settlement, but a few years after removed to the west bank of the Ashley, and built a town which they called, after the English monarch, Charlestown. Subsequently they again removed to Oyster Point, the present site of Charleston. (W. SI.) SOUTHCOTT, JOANNA (1750-1814), was born in Devonshire about 1750, and was for a considerable time a domestic servant. She was originally an adherent of the Methodists, but, becoming persuaded she possessed supernatural gifts, she wrote and dictated prophecies in rhyme, and announced herself as the woman spoken of in the Apocalypse (ch. xii.), affirming, when beyond the age of sixty, that she would be delivered of Shiloh on the 19th October 1814. For some days previous tc this she was attended by her followers night and day, but Shiloh failed to appear, and it was given out that she was in a trance. She died of dropsy on the 29th of the same month. Her followers are said to have numbered over 100,000, and so late as 1860 they were not extinct. Among her publications, which number over sixty, and are all equally incoherent in thought and grammar, may be mentioned Strange Effects of Faith, 1801-2 ; Free Exposition of the Bible, 1804 ; The Book of Wonders, 1813-14 ; and Prophecies announcing the Birth of the Prince of Peace, 1814. A lady named Essam left large sums of money for printing and publishing the Sacred Writings of Joanna Southcott. The will was disputed by a niece on the ground that the writings were blasphemous, but the Court of Chancery sustained it. Sec Roberts, Observations on the Divine Mission of Joanna Southcott, 1807 ; Recce, Correct Statement of the Circumstances attending the Death of Joanna Southcott, 1815. SOUTHEND, a watering-place of Essex, is situated on the north bank of the Thames, 5 miles west of Shoeburyness, and by the London, Tilbury, and South end Railway, 42 miles east of London, with which it is also connected by steamer. It first sprang into notice from a visit of Queen Caroline in 1804, and, as it is the nearest watering-place to London, it is much frequented by excursionists, espe- cially by the poorer classes. It is clean and well built, and at Cliff Town there are a number of large villas. Opposite Cliff Town there is a public garden called the Shrubbery. The bathing is good, but the tide recedes with great rapidity and for nearly a mile. The pier, which is 1 miles in length, and on which there is a tram- way, permits the approach of steamers at all tides. The public hall was erected in 1872 at a cost of 3000, and a mechanics' institution dates from 1881. The Rochford county court is held every alternate month in the public hall. A local board of health was established in 1866. The population of the urban sanitary district (area 3441 acres) in 1871 was 4561, and in 1881 it was 7979. SOUTHERNE, THOMAS (1660-1746) "Honest Tom Southerne," to give the author of The Fatal Marriage the name by which his contemporaries usually called him was a clever craftsman for tho stage, according to the degenerate tradition of the Restoration dramatists, with the eye of a born opportunist for the popular interests of the hour in so far as they could be turned to histrionic account, but without deeper seeing of the functions of the drama. Born in Dublin in 1660, he came to London and entered the Middle Temple in 1678, but only to desert law very speedily for dramatic authorship. His first play, The Persian Prince, or the Loyal Brother, is a good example, in its diplomatic reference to passing events and its veiled compliment to James, duke of York, of his ready tact as a playwright. The most important practical result of the play, which was remarkably successful on the stage, was an ensign's commission, noteworthy in that it supplied Southerne with materials for later dramatization. After an interval of active service more plays followed, and were produced with equal success ; of these The Fatal Marriage (1694), known also by the name of its heroine, Isabella, has the best claim to remembrance. Its strain of pathetic quality echoes the later Elizabethans in a way that con- trasts suggestively with the shallow, if spirited, indecencies of Southerne's comedies, which, although their author was commended by Dry den for his purity as a playwright, are certainly not overweighted with delicacy. Sir Anthony Love, or the Rambling Lady, in which the hero assumes female disguise without accession of modesty, is a good example of the rest; one utterance of its hero, "Every day a new mistress and a new quarrel," might indeed serve as a good motto of Restoration comedy in general. Except to the student, Southerne's work, however, is hardly of permanent interest. The Southerne of whom Pope, who ranked him as friend and praised him for his sterling qualities, remarked in some lines that " Heaven sent down to raise The price of prologues and of plays " exemplifies what business tact and dramatic ingenuity can accomplish, for of real artistic faculty he had little. His plays resulted, through ingenious management, in a pecun- iary return which dazzled Dryden and made their author a wealthy citizen, but they have not the quality of work which endures. He died in 1746. SOUTHEY, CAROLINE (1786-1854), the second wife of Robert Southey, was born at Lymington, Hants, on December 6th, 1786. As a girl Caroline Ann Bowles showed a certain literary and artistic aptitude, the more remarkable perhaps from the loneliness of her early life and the morbidly delicate condition of her health, an aptitude, however, of no real distinction. When money difficulties came upon her in middle age she determined to turn her talents to account in literature. Her first venture was the sending anonymously of a narrative poem called Ellen Fitzarthur to Southey, and this led to the acquaintanceship and lifelong friendship which in 1839 culminated in their marriage. Ellen Fitzarthur (1820) may be taken as typical, in its prosy simplicity, of the rest of its author's work, which reproduced the studied unadornment of certain portions of Southey's and Words- worth's poetry without that glamour which, especially with the second of these writers, so often redeemed simplicity from mere baldness. Mrs Southey's poems were published in a collected edition in 1867. Her prose is on the whole more interesting than her verse, though with rare exceptions infected with like dulness. Among her prose writings may be mentioned Chapters on Church- yards (1829), _ her best work; Tales of the Moors (1828); and Selwyn in Search of a DaugMer (1835). Her most interesting memorial is her correspondence with Southey, which, somewhat unfairly overlooked in the edition of the poet's Life and Letters edited by his son, has been pub- lished by Prof. Dowden in the Dublin University Press Series. It was soon after her marriage that her husband's mental state became hopeless, and from this time till his death in 1843, and indeed till her own, her life was one of much suffering. Mrs Southey died at Buckland Cot- tage, Lymington, on July 20th 1854, two years after the queen had granted her an annual pension of 200. Besides the works already mentioned, she wrote The Widow's Tale, and other Poems, 1822; Solitary Hours (prose and verse), 1826; Tales of the Factories, 1833; The Birthday, 1836; EoUn Hood, written in conjunction with Southey, at whose death this metrical production was incomplete. SOUTHEY, ROBERT (1774-1843), was born in Bristol on the 12th of August 1774. His father, a native of Somerset, was an unsuccessful draper. To his mother, XXII. - 37