ABSTRACT
Extract from ‘Shakespeare the Man’, contributed by Bagehot (1826–77) to the Prospective Review in 1853 and reprinted in Literary Studies (1879). Bagehot’s generally unflattering view of Southey, indicated in this passage, is somewhat modified in his later essay on Henry Crabb Robinson, where he refers briefly to Southey as ‘the great master’ of a prose style of ‘effectual simplicity’.
