a meteor, South's humor was far from the genial, hearty, or impersonal type. An ominous undertone snarled through his playfulness. At times amiable and the best of comrades, his moods readily changed, the sweetness was easily jangled and put out of tune. "He tells the truth," said Cecil, "with the tongue of a viper." The grave Dr. Owens, his dean, thought that unquestionably he sat in the seat of the scornful. It struck some observers that he carried away from the Westminister school even more impudence and sauciness than learning. The memory of his enemies rarely slumbered. Curll naively remarks, in the innocence of his soul, that "notwtihstanding he could readily forgive [he] could not forget an ill turn." Now he rains a drift of merciless invective upon his opponents; now he deals them a sharp, parenthetical thrust, and then passes along; or his satire relents, and shades into a pungent grotesqueness, as when he asks, "Can anything be so vile and forlorn as an old, broken sensualist creeping, as it were, on all fours to the devil?”

Wit always appears in the pulpit with a protest on the part

1"At night, he [Dr. South] told me this was his birth-day, and that he was complete forty-two. We drank his health and put him into a very good temper and pleasantness."- Clarendon's Correspondence and Dairies. Vol. I, p. 590.

"Dr. South, I had forgot to say, upon the choice I gave him of going or not going [to visit the Turkish and Polish camps] had chosen the latter upon pretence of apprehending the inconveniences of the journey, which he said he had not a constitution to bear. ut when I returned, I found a visible alteration in the doctor's temper, whether it were that he was troubled he had not gone the journey when he saw us all come back alive, which, perhaps, he was afraid of; or whether he was dissatisfied the cook was not left behind to dress his victuals, or that another at least was not got, which I had not time to give order for, or whatever the hidden cause was-feeding upon his own ill-natured spleen for four days together. . . . And first, though he looked out of the window and saw me come in, I was above an hour in the house before he came down to me, and I sent at last to him. He came, but in much disorder, making short questions and sometimes as short answers, of all of which I endeavored to take as little notice as it was possible, making him excuses for not providing him a cook, but that I hoped he knew the difficulty of getting such a creature in this country, to which he answered well enough; but there was gall and bitterness round about, and I could not sweeten it and took no more pains. Quickly, after supper, he left me and I went to bed, my people telling me that both his man as well as he were mightily out of humor, and that when they were left alone, his man did usually beat him with some jealousy or tittle-tattle."— Ibid. Vol. I, p. 622.

While chaplain of the embassy to Poland, South could not be induced to read service according to the old style calendar of that country.

of many hearers.1 But we can see no propriety in this restriction unless it is desirable to give the devil his choice in weapons. It seems to us that the preacher should put all his forces into the field, wit among them, if he happens to find it in his arsenal. It carries a force and magnetism which, in some respects, belong to no other forth-putting of the human mind. There may be risk, but all real power is dangerous, dangerous in exact proportion to its intensity. Sometimes it led South astray; sometimes he was blinded by the flare of his tropes, and left a fanciful analogy or a dexterous play upon words to meet the full shock of undeniable objections; yet it leavened and popularized his preaching, sharpened the blade of his logic, gleaming while it smote, transfixing vices which laugh in the face of stately argument. If men are nervously sensitive to ridicule, why should not their sins be occasionally treated with it? Who will silence the mocking of Elijah as the priests of Baal call upon their god? 2

In point of theology South was decidedly orthodox. His doctrine is Calvinistic, though he detests the Calvinistic polity and stigmatizes it as "that quicksilver of Geneva." He gloried particularly in the dogma of a literal hell. It suited at

1 "I have lately read some of South's sermons. I can't say they delight me. They deserve an epithet very unsuitable to that sort of writing, which is that they are diverting. It is below the dignity of religion to have it treated in that witty way. But I will read more of Dr. South, and perhaps I may be reconciled to him."- Mrs. Delany, Autobiography. Vol. I, pp. 450, 451.

2 Several of South's orations, as "Terræ Filius" are still extant, in one of which he gives Dr. Thomas Fuller "a most uncomplimentary notice.". - See Bailey's, Life pp. 6:1-613.

"Dean Addison, when he was a young man at Queens, had his eye accidentally put out by a small bone flung at him in jest. He was Terræ Filius in the year 1657. Reflecting upon Dr. South in his speech, the doctor stood up and said, 'O monstrum, horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum !"- Reliquæ Hearniæ. Vol. I, p. 66.

"Having accepted an invitation to dine with a clerical friend, at whose house he had called for the purpose of paying a morning visit, his host, on stepping into an adjoining room, was severely upbraided by his wife for giving her the trouble of providing a repast for such a guest. An altercation ensued, which South overheard; and, at length the husband, in a violent passion, exclaimed, 'If the doctor were not so near at hand I would certainly give you a beating.' South immediately opened the door . . exclaiming, I beg pardon, but don't let my presence be any impediment.' The lady, it is added, at once retired, and served up an excellent dinner, but did not think fit to appear at the table."— Georgian Era. Vol. IV, p. 633.

least the rhetorical exigencies of a man who hated intensely, and had troops of enemies, to believe in the existence of a place where the "sinner will fry eternally under the flame and fire of a condemning sentence," and where no future restoration, no "general jail delivery of the spirits in prison," can break the grasp of his miseries. Indeed, the Englishman of two centuries ago found a satisfaction in the execution of penal justice which we have lost. Parents took their households to Tyburn to see the Jonathan Wilds and Jack Sheppards — dashing heroes of the "gray mare and black vizards" - hung for sake of the moral effect of the spectacle.

Politically South was an extreme Royalist, and that bias tinged and flooded all his preaching. Whatever oscillations may have marked his early career,—whether his Latin ode in honor of Cromwell was simply an assigned exercise or spoke the verdict of a passing inclination; whether or not he seriously leaned for a time toward the dissidents and was an applicant for Baxter's curateship' at Kidderminster, - he finally settled into a most unqualified champion of the establishment. His savage enthusiasm never flags in panegyrics of the church and clergy. "One brazen wall, one diocesan bishop," he exclaims, "will better defend this enclosed garden of the church than five hundred shrubs, than all the quicksets of Geneva, than all the thorns and brambles of presbytery." He was an enthusiastic admirer of Laud, an undiscriminating eulogist of Charles I and his son.

This headstrong, resolute, imperious man, who would have gone to the Tower or laid his head upon the block in defence of his opinions; who would scarcely have hesitated to twist his official robes into halters for Dissenters, offers to royalty an absolute submission. To him the king was God's earthly regent. His theories of passive obedience were scarcely less positive than those of Dr. Mainwaring, who preached before Charles that resistance to his will would draw eternal damnation upon the offender. In all this infatuation of loyalty we do not question South's sincerity. He never wore a mask

1 Orne's "Life and Times of Baxter." Vol. II, pp. 397, 398. Note.

1

with any success; there was a hopeless transparency in his stratagems; he could not run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Vehemently outspoken and partisan, whatever he espoused, he espoused with his whole soul, moving altogether, like the cloud of the poet, if he moved at all. For the violence of South's language, we have no apology; but after having had occasion to read most that his enemics have left on record, we have reached the conclusion that the evidence spells out a summary of utter though uncomfortable honesty. With him love transfigured its objects, as the village is glorified by the dust that rises from its streets when the afternoon sun falls aslant upon it.

Great as was South's success and popularity, he encountered occasional mortifications, one of which his not very cordial friend, Mr. Anthony à. Wood, has related with ill-disguised satisfaction: "Before or about the time he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts," Wood writes, "he was appointed to do some exercise in the public and spacious refectory of that house [Christ's Church], viz., to speak a speech upon some great and signal occasion. When he had prepared it, and made it proportionable to the transcendency of his parts and abilities, he gave out to several of his acquaintance that he intended in that speech severely to lash the sectaries of his house and of the university. This being known abroad, and the day whereon he was to perform what he had prepared being come, it occasioned a great concourse in the said refectory of the younger students, who were the greatest wits, but esteemed by the sectaries to be

1" After this, Dr. South had a great discourse with me of his unwillingness to return to Nemeguen, upon pretence of being out of clothes; but, in truth, the bottom was that he had a mind to be at home. I told him he should have my consent to do what he would, but I thought it not very decent to run away by himself, while it was yet very uncertain how little a while I might stay behind; at last I convinced him, but he would spend the time in seeing Holland, to which I was very free." Clarendon's Correspondence and Diaries. Vol. I, p. 630.

2 See "Notes and Queries," Vol. VI, where the matter is pretty thoroughly argued.

"Athen. Oxon." Vol. IV, p. 632.

Wood calls South "a false fellow" in his diary ("Lives of Lealand, Hearne, and Wood." Vol. II, p. 261). The cause of this hostility is said to have been one of South's sufficiently broad jests when Wood was detailing to him some of his physical ailments. Wood was very angry, and went home and wrote South's Life! See The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, p. 222.

of the most profligate principles, both in that house and in other houses of the university. To satisfy all their expectations, our author South came forth and addressed himself, with a sufficient measure of confidence (whereof there was no want in him), to speak to this ingenious auditory. And, indeed, the whole scope of his oration was, if you will believe a rank fanatic, 'little other than the most blasphemous invective against godliness and the most serious and conscientious professors of it.' But before he had proceeded far in it, my author tells me that 'the hand of the Lord was stretched out against him, and he was suddenly surprised by such a qualm as did disturb him afterward at Whitehall.' Wherefore, being constrained abruptly to break off, it was so great a discomfort to him that he was scarce able to bear it, because that, first, he esteemed himself a person of great fame in the university, and, secondly, that it would be a great disparagement to him among the wits of his acquaintance. However, this influence it had upon him, as was observed by some persons then living in the university, that 'from that time he lay under some conviction of the evil of abusing those good parts which God had given him in defaming those persons and things which the Lord doth testify His greatest approbation of'; and so from thenceforth he seemed to be much more serious than before."

Wood says that South passed his old age in "a discontented and clamorous condition for want of preferment," but there was no lack of propositions looking in that direction. The mischief sprang largely from the clashing of his tempestuous, unharmonized powers. It is a common experience with men of his stamp, humorists, satirists, wits. In the nature of the case, he could never have been very contented or happy. What he calls the "great evangelical virtue of patience," the milder, sunnier traits of passive excellence, were never pronounced in his career. His long life was one continuous struggle, with infrequent lulls, when the tumult ceased and the cowering birds, creeping forth from their coverts, broke into song. With all its wickedness, the age was alive with reformation and hope, but he had no part in the one and caught no inspiration from the