The most finished, and the most pathetic of Mr. Southern’s plays, in the opinion of the critics, is his Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave.  This drama is built upon a true story, related by Mrs. Behn, in a Novel; and has so much the greater influence on the audience, as they are sensible that the representation is no fiction.  In this piece, Mr. Southern has touched the tender passions with so much skill, that it will perhaps be injurious to his memory to say of him, that he is second to Otway.  Besides the tender and delicate strokes of passion, there are many shining and manly sentiments in Oroonoko; and one of the greatest genius’s of the present age, has often observed, that in the most celebrated play of Shakespear, so many striking thoughts, and such a glow of animated poetry cannot be furnished.  This play is so often acted, and admired, that any illustration of its beauties here, would be entirely superfluous.  His play of The Fatal Marriage, or The Innocent Adultery, met with deserved success; the affecting incidents, and interesting tale in the tragic part, sufficiently compensate for the low, trifling, comic part; and when the character of Isabella is acted, as we have seen it, by Mrs. Porter, and Mrs. Woffington, the ladies seldom fail to sympathise in grief.

Mr. Southern died on the 26th of May, in the year 1746, in the 86th year of his age; the latter part of which he spent in a peaceful serenity, having by his commission as a soldier, and the profits of his dramatic works, acquired a handsome fortune; and being an exact oeconomist, he improved what fortune he gained, to the best advantage:  He enjoyed the longest life of all our poets, and died the richest of them, a very few excepted.

A gentleman whose authority we have already quoted, had likewise informed us, that Mr. Southern lived for the last ten years of his life in Westminster, and attended very constant at divine service in the Abbey, being particularly fond of church music.  He never staid within doors while in health, two days together, having such a circle of acquaintance of the best rank, that he constantly dined with one or other, by a kind of rotation.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Jacob.

[2] From the information of a gentleman personally acquainted with Mr. Southern, who desires to have his name conceal’d.

* * * * *

The Revd.  Mr. JAMES MILLER.

This gentleman was born in the year 1703.  He was the son of a clergyman, who possessed two considerable livings in Dorsetshire[1].  He received his education at Wadham-College in Oxford, and while he was resident in that university he composed part of his famous Comedy called the Humours of Oxford, acted in the year 1729, by the particular recommendation of Mrs. Oldfield.

This piece, as it was a lively representation of the follies and vices of the students of that place, procured the author many enemies.