It is not the Editor's business to trace Southerne's life, or poetical career. He was born in the county of Dublin, in 1659; and produced, in his twenty-third year, the tragedy of "The Loyal Brother," which Dryden honoured with a prologue. On this occasion, Southerne's acquaintance with our bard took place, under the whimsical circumstances mentioned Vol. X. p. 372. The aged bard furnished also a prologue to Southerne's "Disappointment, or Mother in Fashion;" and as he had repeatedly ushered him to success, he presented him with the following lines to console him under disappointment. The poets appear to have continued on the most friendly terms until Dryden's death. Southerne survived him many years, and lived to be praised by the rising generation of a second century, for mildness of manners, and that cheerful and amiable disposition, which rarely is found in old age, unless from the happy union of a body at ease, and a conscience void of offence. When this dramatist was sixty-five, his last play, called "Money the Mistress," was acted, with a prologue by Welsted, containing the following beautiful lines:[46] To you, ye fair, for patronage he sues; O last defend, who first inspired his muse! In your soft service he has past his days, And gloried to be born for woman's praise: Deprest at length, and in your cause decayed, The good old man to beauty bends for aid; That beauty, he has taught so oft to moan! } That ne'er let Imoinda weep alone, } And made his Isabella's griefs its own! } Ere you arose to life, ye blooming train; Ere time brought forth our pleasure and our pain; He melted hearts, to monarchs' vows denied, And softened to distress unconquered pride: O! then protect, in his declining years, The man, that filled your mother's eyes with tears! The last of Charles's bards! The living name, That rose, in that Augustan age, to fame! And you, his brother authors, bravely dare To join to-night the squadrons of the fair; With zeal protect your veteran writer's page, And save the drama's father, in his age: Nor let the wreath from his grey head be torn, For half a century with honour worn! His merits let your tribe to mind recal; Of some the patron, and the friend to all! In him the poets' Nestor ye defend! Great Otway's peer, and greater Dryden's friend. Southerne, on his eighty-first birth day, was complimented with a copy of verses by Pope; and on 26th May, 1746, he died at the advanced age of eighty-five and upwards. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 44: To the honourable Thomas Wharton, Esq. comptroller of his majesty's household.] [Footnote 45: See the introductory remarks on that play, Vol. VIII.]