Any conclusion about Southey's character, as was held by Byron, must be tempered by the fact that Robert Southey was a popular person and had many friends. He was to be admired because of his devotion to his work, his family (much extended) and his country; and, maybe just simply, as Hazlitt was to write, because Southey was an "industrious and calligraphic man."

"The variety and piquancy of his writings form a striking contrast to the mode in which they are produced. He rises early, and writes or reads till bedtime ... Study serves him for business, exercise, recreation. He passes from verse to prose, from history to poetry, from reading to writing, by a stop-watch. He writes a fair hand without blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off when he comes to the bottom of the page, and changes the subject for another, as opposite as the Antipodes. His mind is after all rather the recipient and transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly grasp of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His passions do not amount to more than irritability. With some gall in his pen and coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness in his heart. Rash in his opinions, he is steady in his attachments, and is a man, in many particulars admirable, in all respectable -- his political inconsistency alone excepted!"21