became more and more affected, and for a considerable time before his
death on 21st March 1843 he had been mentally incapable.

Many morals have been drawn from this melancholy end as to the wisdom of
too prolonged literary labour, which in Southey's case had certainly
been prodigious, and had been carried so far that he actually read while
he was taking constitutional walks. It is fair to say, however, that,
just as in the case of Scott the terrible shock of the downfall of his
fortunes has to be considered, so in that of Southey the successive
trials to which he, a man of exceptionally strong domestic affections,
was exposed, must be taken into account. At the same time it must be
admitted that Southey's production was enormous. His complete works
never have been, and are never likely to be collected; and, from the
scattered and irregular form in which they appeared, it is difficult if
not impossible to make even a guess at the total. The list of books and
articles (the latter for the most part written for the _Quarterly
Review_, and of very great length) at the end of his son's _Life_ fills
nearly six closely printed pages. Two of these entries--_the Histories
of Brazil_ and of the _Peninsular War_--alone represent six large
volumes. The Poems by themselves occupy a royal octavo in double columns
of small print running to eight hundred pages; the correspondence, very
closely printed in the six volumes of the _Life_, and the four more of
_Letters_ edited by the Rev. J. W. Warter, some five thousand pages in
all; while a good deal of his early periodical work has never been
identified, and there are large stores of additional letters--some
printed, more in MS. Nor was Southey by any means a careless or an easy
writer. He always founded his work on immense reading, some of the
results of which, showing the laborious fashion in which he performed
it, were published after his death in his _Commonplace Book_. He did not
write very rapidly; and he corrected, both in MS. and in proof, with the
utmost sedulity. Of the nearly 14,000 books which he possessed at his
death, it is safe to say that all had been methodically read, and most
read many times; while his almost mediaeval diligence did not hesitate at
working through a set of folios to obtain the information or the
corrections necessary for a single article.

It is here impossible to mention more than the chief items of this
portentous list. They are in verse--_Poems_, b