Joseph Sortain (1809–1860) was a British nonconformist minister, an evangelical Independent, philosophy tutor at Cheshunt College, and biographer of Francis Bacon.[1] A reputed preacher of his time, he was called "the Dickens of the pulpit" by John Ross Dix.[2]
Sortain attended the Bristol Baptist Academy when still young (around 1824); at this period he won an essay prize, in a competition for which Lucy was his sponsor, on the topic Christ's Mission.[5][8] Reading Micaiah Towgood dissuaded him from going to the University of Cambridge. He then studied at Cheshunt College, and Trinity College, Dublin. He returned to Cheshunt College as a tutor, from 1838 to 1850. Under the initial arrangement he taught mathematics, logic, and belles lettres, for two periods of six weeks in a year.[9][10]
From 1832 Sortain was the Countess of Huntingdon's preacher at her North Street Chapel in Brighton, where he was admired as an orator, and noted for not exceeding 30 minutes.[11][12] He held to the dissenting position of his family, though he was known not to differ much from Anglican theological positions.[13]Henry Crabb Robinson appreciated Sortain as a preacher, while thinking Frederick William Robertson ("Robertson of Brighton") would rival him.[14]
The North Street Chapel in Brighton
Sortain died on 16 July 1860. His funeral sermon was given by his friend Richard Alliott at the North Street Chapel.[9] His reputation lapsed, and he could be called a "forgotten Bristol celebrity" by 1907.[15]
Sortain was a reviewer during the mid-1830s. He obtained work for the High Church British Critic, through contacts with the Rev. Richard Harvey of Hornsey, and James Shergold Boone. He wrote also for the Edinburgh Review, at the suggestion of William Empson.[13][16] These articles of the mid-1830s were anonymous, but attributions to Sortain have been made, for topics such as Brougham on natural theology, Coleridge, Charles Lyell on geology, and Mary Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences in the British Critic.[17][18][19] In the Edinburgh Review topics were Richard Baxter, Thomas Lathbury's History of English Episcopacy, and Jeremy Bentham's Deontology (he thought Bentham's works brought on "mental nausea").[19][20][21] Harvey, however, seemed to find Sortain's oratory incomprehensible.[22]
Sortain wrote A Lecture Introductory to the Study of Philosophy (1839) as a Cheshunt College tutor.[23] He published Romanism and Anglo-Catholicism (1841); at this time he was preaching on Antichrist.[9][24] The Eclectic Review noticed this work with one by Charles Pettit McIlvaine, as anti-Tractarian, though giving it little space, and regretting the "declamatory" style, while praising the content.[25] His Life of Francis, Lord Bacon was published by the Religious Tract Society in 1851.[26]
Sortain wrote novels, as well as theological and philosophical works:
Hildebrand and the Excommunicated Emperor (1852)[27]
Count Arensberg; or, The days of Martin Luther (1853).[28]
