His translations of romantic fiction, while faithful to their sources, aim less at literal exactitude than at giving the English reader the same pleasure which the Spaniard receives from the originals. From the destruction of Don Quixote’s library Master Nicholas and the curate spared _Amadis of Gaul_ and _Palmerin of England_. Second to Malory’s grouping of the Arthur cycle _Amadis_ may well take its place. Its chivalric spirit, its wildness, its tenderness and beauty, are carefully preserved by the translator. But Southey’s chief gift in this kind to English readers is _The Cid_. The poem he supposed, indeed, to be a metrical chronicle instead of a metrical romance—no fatal error; weaving together the best of the poem, the ballads and the chronicle, he produced more than a mere compilation. “I know no work of the kind in our language,” wrote Coleridge, “none which, uniting the charms of romance and history, keeps the imagination so constantly on the wing, and yet leaves so much for after-reflection.” Of Southey’s political writings something has been said in a former chapter. Among works which can be brought under no general head, one that pleased the public was _Espriella’s Letters_, sketches of English landscape, life, and manners, by a supposed Spanish traveller. The letters, giving as they do a lively view of England at the beginning of the present century, still possess an interest. Apart from Southey’s other works stands _The Doctor_; nowhere else can one find so much of his varied erudition, his genial spirits, his meditative wisdom. It asks for a leisurely reader content to ramble everywhere and no whither, and still pleased to take another turn because his companion has not yet come to an end of learning, mirth, or meditation. That the author of a book so characteristic was not instantly recognized, is strange. “The wit and humour of _The Doctor_,” says Edgar Poe, a keen critic, “have seldom been equalled. We cannot think Southey wrote it.” Gratitude is due to Dr. Daniel Dove from innumerable “good little women and men,” who have been delighted with his story of _The Three Bears_. To know that he had added a classic to the nursery would have been the pride of Southey’s heart. Wide eyes entranced and peals of young laughter still make a triumph for one whose spirit, grave with a man’s wisdom, was pure as the spirit of a little child. THE END. FOOTNOTES [1] Recollections of Corston, somewhat in the manner of Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_, will be found in Southey’s early poem, _The Retrospect_. [2] Carmen Nuptiale: Proem, 18.