specified in the article on Muggleton. Reeve, however, retained, while Muggleton rejected, the doctrine of the divine notice of human affairs, and accessibility to prayer. His writings are not without passages of considerable beauty; their tone is much more subdued and suasive than that of Muggleton. The contrast between their respective addresses to Isaac Penington the younger [q. v.] is very marked; Reeve sympathises with quaker tendencies, which Muggleton flouts and scorns. There have always been followers of Reeve (known as Reevites and Reevonians) who have held aloof from the thoroughgoing Muggletonians.
The following works are by Reeve and Muggleton, but chiefly by Reeve. The dates of first editions are given, all quarto, and all except No. 7 without publisher's or printer's name: 1. ‘A transcendent Spirituall Treatise,’ &c., 1652. 2. ‘A General Epistle from the Holy Ghost,’ &c., 1653. 3. ‘A Letter presented unto Alderman Fouke,’ &c., 1653. 4. ‘A Divine Looking-Glass,’ &c., 1656. Posthumous publications, containing letters and papers by Reeve, are: 5. ‘A Volume of Spiritual Epistles,’ &c., 1755. 6. ‘A Stream from the Tree of Life,’ &c., 1758. 7. ‘A Supplement to the Book of Letters,’ &c., 1831. The following are by Reeve alone: 8. ‘Joyful News from Heaven, or the Soul's Mortality proved,’ &c., 1658; and a posthumous collection of papers, 9. ‘Sacred Remains, or a Divine Appendix,’ &c., 1706 (written in 1652–7); another edition 1751.
Another John Reeve, author of ‘Spiritual Hymns upon Solomon's Song,’ 1693, 12mo, was a general baptist minister at Bessel's Green, Kent.
[Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses, 1699; The Origin of the Muggletonians, and Ancient and Modern Muggletonians, in Transactions of Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, 1869 and 1870; Reeve's Works; manuscript records of the Muggletonian body. For the bibliography of Reeve's writings, see Smith's Bibliotheca Anti-Quakeriana, 1873.]
REEVE, JOHN (1799–1838), actor, son of Thomas Reeve, hosier and common councillor, was born at his father's shop on Ludgate Hill, on 2 Feb. 1799. William Reeve the musical composer, and Alderman Robert Waithman, M.P., were his uncles. At a school at Winchmore Hill, near Enfield, kept by a Mr. Thompson, he had for companion Frederick Yates [q. v.], a sharer with him in some juvenile escapades and consequent suffering. Placed, at the age of fourteen, behind his father's counter, he remained there two years, when, on his father's retirement, he was placed with a firm of wholesale hosiers named Nevill or Neville in Maiden Lane, Wood Street, Cheapside. After staying there three years, he left, in consequence of complaints on the part of neighbours of nocturnal declamations and singing on the leads of the premises. Placed as a clerk in Gosling's Bank, Fleet Street, Reeve subscribed with other clerks 3s. 6d. a week each in order to hire once a fortnight Pym's theatre, Wilson Street, Gray's Inn Road. His first appearance was as the waiter at a gambling house in ‘Town and Country;’ in this he had to speak the monosyllable ‘No,’ for which, in nervousness, he substituted ‘Yes.’ Once, in the off-season at the Haymarket, he played the First Gravedigger to the ‘Hamlet’ of a Mr. Grove, who advertised that he would wager 100l. on playing Hamlet better than any actor, alive or dead. Finding himself condemned to obscure parts by his companions at Pym's theatre, he took the house on his own account for 10l., printed his own bills, and, it is to be supposed, selected his own company. On this occasion he played Othello (his friend George Herbert Bonaparte Rodwell [q. v.], the composer, being Roderigo), and Sylvester Daggerwood (an actor) in a farce so named extracted from the younger Colman's ‘New Hay at the Old Market.’ In the latter character he gave imitations of actors, which met with such success that he repeated ‘Sylvester Daggerwood’ on 8 June 1819 at Drury Lane, for the benefit of Mr. Rodwell, senior, the box-keeper at the theatre, and again the following night for the benefit of Lanza; and then played it for a few nights at the Haymarket. He was now offered an engagement by Arnold at the Lyceum, and he appeared there on 17 July 1819 as Mr. * * * * * in a piece called ‘One, Two, Three, Four, Five by Advertisement.’ In this he played Harry Alias, a lover who, in order to obtain his mistress, personates Dr. Endall (Harley), Sam Dabbs (Munden), Sir Peter Teazle (W. Farren), and Mr. M. (Charles Mathews). He now resigned his situation in the bank, and adopted the stage as his occupation.
At the Lyceum he played, for his benefit, two other characters—Pedrillo and Crack—without winning from the press any recognition except as a mimic. His friend Rodwell, in conjunction with a Mr. Willis Jones, took the Sans-Pareil Theatre in the Strand, and opened it on 18 Oct. 1819 as the Adelphi. Reeve appeared as Squire Rattlepate in Moncrieff's burletta, ‘The Green Dragon, or I've quite forgot,’ and Lord Grizzle in the burlesque of ‘Tom Thumb.’ But feeling himself deficient in experience, he joined the elder Macready's company in Bristol, where, or at
