Southey was at that time (1807), and has continued ever since, the most industrious of all literary men on record. A certain task he prescribed to himself every morning before breakfast. This could not be a very long one, for he breakfasted at nine, or soon after, and _never_ rose before eight, though he went to bed duly at half-past ten; but, as I have many times heard him say, less than nine hours' sleep he found insufficient. From breakfast to a latish dinner (about half after five or six) was his main period of literary toil. After dinner, according to the accident of having or not having visitors in the house, he sat over his wine, or he retired to his library again, from which, about eight, he was summoned to tea. But, generally speaking, he closed his _literary_ toils at dinner; the whole of the hours after that meal being dedicated to his correspondence. This, it may be supposed, was unusually large, to occupy so much of his time, for his letters rarely extended to any length. At that period, the post, by way of Penrith, reached Keswick about six or seven in the evening. And so pointedly regular was Southey in all his habits that, short as the time was, all letters were answered on the same evening which brought them. At tea, he read the London papers. It was perfectly astonishing to men of less methodical habits to find how much he got through of elaborate business by his unvarying system of arrangement in the distribution of his time. We often hear it said, in accounts of pattern ladies and gentlemen (what Coleridge used contemptuously to style _goody_ people), that they found time for everything; that business never interrupted pleasure; that labours of love and charity never stood in the way of courtesy and personal enjoyment. This is easy to say--easy to put down as one feature of an imaginary portrait: but I must say that in actual life I have seen few such cases. Southey, however, _did_ find time for everything. It moved the sneers of some people, that even his poetry was composed according to a predetermined rule; that so many lines should be produced, by contract, as it were, before breakfast; so many at such another definite interval. And I acknowledge that so far I went along with the sneerers as to marvel exceedingly how that _could_ be possible. But, if _a priori_ one laughed and expected to see verses corresponding to this mechanic rule of construction, _a posteriori_ one was bound to judge of the verses as one found them. Supposing them good, they were entitled to honour, no matter for the previous reasons which made it possible that they would _not_ be good. And generally, however undoubtedly they _ought_ to have been bad, the world has pronounced them good. In fact, they _are_ good; and the sole objection to them is, that they are too intensely _objective_--too much reflect the mind, as spreading itself out upon external things--too little exhibit the mind as introverting itself upon its own thoughts and feelings.