SOUTH, ROBERT, D.D., the son of a London merchant, was b. at Hackney in 1623. his earlier c duration lie received at Westminster school, of which Dr. Busby was then master; and in 1651 he became a student at Christ Church, Oxford. In 16b5 and 1657 successively he took his degrees of bachelor and master of arts; he was ordain( d in 1658; and in 1660 he was appointed university orator. In this function be was fortu nate enough to please the lord chancellor Clarendon on his installation as chancellor of Oxford, and, in reward of his complimentary periods, South was made his domestic chaplain. In 1663 he took his degree as doctor of divinity; the same year saw him pro moted to a prebendary stall at Westminster; and in 1670 he became a canon of Christ Church, Oxford. In 1677 LaurenCe Hyde, son of the chancellor, being sent to Poland as ambassador, he was accompanied thither by South, who had been his tutor, and was the object of his warm regard. Shortly after his return, the rectory of Islip, in Oxfordshire, was conferred upon him, and lie was made chaplain-in-ordinary to Charles II. He might readily now have become a bishop, but through this and the succeeding reign he steadily continued to decline the offers of higher preferment pressed upon him. The designs of James II., tending to a Roman Catholic revival, lie regarded with deep disapproval and alarm; but so strong was his sense of the duty of submission to the reigning monarch that he declined all share in the conspiracy to oust him in favor of the prince and prin cess of Orange. When, however, the revolution was accomplished, he gave in his adhe•
tion to it. But, to his honor, he refused to profit in the way of preferment, by the deprivation of such of the higher dignitaries of the church as could not conscientiously go along with him in recognition of the new order of things. A stanch and even bigoted adherent of the church of England, he continued to unsparing war from the pul pit, and with his pen, against Puritanism and every other form of dissent, occasionally occupying himself with discussions more strictly theological, till in 1716, death came to conclude his controversies. He is now chiefly remembered by his sermons; they are saasterpieces of vigorous sense and sound English, and abound in lively and witty twat - not always in severely decorous consonance with the seriousness of the subject matter. As a man, South seems to have been of sound and estimable character; of pure life and unblemished integrity. His entire works were sent from the Clarendon prcss in 7 vols. (13), 5 vols. (1843). An edition in 2 vols. appeared iu London in 1850.