‘Works, comprising the Poems, Correspondence, and Translations’ (London, 1833–7, 15 vols. 8vo, 1853–4, 8 vols. Bohn); the other, ‘The Lives of the Admirals’ (or ‘Naval History of England,’ 1833–40, 5 vols. 12mo), in Lardner's ‘Cabinet Cyclopædia,’ which was useful, but not exempt from the general dulness of that arid series. When in 1835 Sir Robert Peel did himself honour by bestowing a pension of 300l. a year upon Southey, accompanied by the offer of a baronetcy, which was declined, Southey declared that he would devote the remainder of his life to his histories of Portugal and the monastic orders, and to a continuation of Warton's ‘History of English Poetry.’
But the time for such undertakings was past. For years he had been tried by the failure of his wife's mind, terminating in lunacy, from which she was released by death in November 1837. His own apparent apathy provoked comment. ‘Better,’ said Miss Fenwick, in speaking of the comfort for which he was indebted to the devotion and contrivance of his daughters, ‘better the storms which sometimes visit Rydal Mount than a calm like this.’ In truth, his apparent indifference was incipient softening of the brain. ‘It is painful to see,’ said Wordsworth to Crabb Robinson, ‘how completely dead Southey has become to all but books. He is amiable and obliging, but when he gets away from his books he seems restless, and, as it were, out of his element.’ Carlyle about this time thought him ‘the most excitable but the most methodic man I have ever seen.’ In the helplessness of his failing faculties Southey took a step most natural, but in his state of health most unfortunate: he contracted a second marriage. For twenty years he had maintained a close correspondence with Caroline Bowles [see Southey, Caroline Anne], and he married her on 4 June 1839. He returned from his wedding tour in a condition of utter mental exhaustion, which gradually passed into one of insensibility to external things. The last year of his life was a mere trance. He died from the effects of a fever on 21 March 1843. He was buried in Crosthwaite churchyard, and a beautiful recumbent statue, provided by public subscription, was dedicated to his memory in the church. Other memorials were placed in Westminster Abbey and Bristol Cathedral. Southey lost three children in his lifetime: Herbert; Isabel, who also died young; and Margaret, an infant. Four remained—Charles Cuthbert (1819–1888), a graduate of Queen's College, Oxford, who took orders and died vicar of Askham, Westmoreland, on 22 Dec. 1888; Edith May, who married the Rev. John Wood Warter [q. v.]; Bertha, who married her cousin, the Rev. Herbert Hill; and Kate.
Southey was an heroic man of letters, displaying an indomitable sense of duty and an anchorite's renunciation in pursuit of his honourable resolve to be absolutely independent. Without effort he performed acts of magnanimity and self-denial, such as providing for Coleridge's family; while to young aspirants like Kirke White and Herbert Knowles he manifested boundless kindness. Yet his essential dignity of character was obscured by his foibles—by his self-appreciation and intolerance of every action and opinion that did not commend itself to him, by his blindness to the significance of much contemporary literary work, and by his habit of predicting national ruin on the smallest provocation. Of his valuable library, the excellence of which he celebrates in the well-known verses of ‘The Scholar,’ a portion was catalogued and sold by Kerslake at Bristol in 1845, but the greater part was sold by auction in London (see Fraser's Mag. xxx. 87).
Poetical criticism, whether of his own writings or of those of others, was one of Southey's weakest points. But while egregiously deceived as to the absolute worth of his epics, he obeyed a happy instinct in selecting epic as his principal field in poetry. The gifts which he possessed—ornate description, stately diction, invention on a large scale—required an ample canvas for their display. Although the concise humour and simplicity of his lines on ‘The Battle of Blenheim’ ensure it a place among the best known short poems in the language, there are not half a dozen of his lyrical pieces, some of his racy ballads excepted, that have any claim to poetic distinction. The ‘English Eclogues,’ however, have an important place in literature as prototypes of Tennyson's more finished performances, but are hardly poetry.
As a writer of prose Southey is entitled to very high praise, although, as De Quincey justly points out, the universally commended elegance and perspicuity of his style do not make him a fine writer. But within his own limits he is a model of lucid, masculine English—‘sinewy and flexible, easy and melodious.’ Sir Humphry Davy called his ‘Life of Nelson’ ‘an immortal monument raised by genius to valour.’ Although his forte was biography, not one of his prose works, except his ‘History of the Peninsular War’ and his ‘Colloquies,’ and this merely from initial defects of plan, proved other than a success. His correspondence exhibits him as a master of easy, familiar composition, and
