Among his prose works must be mentioned The Chronicle of the Cid, The History of Brazil, The Life of Nelson, and The History of the Peninsular War.  A little work called The Doctor has been greatly liked in America.

Southey wrote innumerable reviews and magazine articles; and, indeed, tried his pen at every sort of literary work.  His diction—­in prose, at least—­is almost perfect, and his poetical style not unpleasing.  His industry, his learning, and his care in production must be acknowledged; but his poems are very little read, and, in spite of his own prophecies, are doomed to the shelf rather than retained upon the table.  Like Wordsworth, he was one of the most egotistical of men; he had no greater admirer than Robert Southey; and had his exertions not been equal to his self-laudation, he would have been intolerable.

The most singular instance of perverted taste and unmerited eulogy is to be found in his Vision of Judgment, which, as poet-laureate, he produced to the memory of George the Third.  The severest criticism upon it is Lord Byron’s Vision of Judgment—­reckless, but clever and trenchant.  The consistency and industry of Southey’s life caused him to be appointed poet-laureate upon the death of Pye; and in 1835, having declined a baronetcy, he received an annual pension of L300.  Having lost his first wife in 1837, he married Miss Bowles, the poetess, in 1839; but soon after his mind began to fail, and he had reached a state of imbecility which ended in death on the 21st of March, 1843.  In 1837, at the age of sixty-three, he collected and edited his complete poetical works, with copious and valuable historical notes.

HISTORICAL VALUE.—­It is easy to see in what manner Southey, as a literary man, has reflected the spirit of the age.  Politically, he exhibits partisanship from Radical to Tory, which may be clearly discerned by comparing his Wat Tyler with his Vision of Judgment and his Odes.  As to literary and poetic canons, his varied metre, and his stories in the style of Wordsworth, show that he had abandoned all former schools.  In his histories and biographies he is professedly historical; and in his epics he shows that greater range of learned investigation which is so characteristic of that age.  The Curse of Kehama and Thalaba would have been impossible in a former age.  He himself objected to be ranked with the Lakers; but Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge have too much in common, notwithstanding much individual difference, not to be classed together as innovators and asserters, whether we call them Lakers or something else.