Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.

While not referring to Byron by name this was clearly directed at Byron. Given his departure from radicalism and his attempts to have former fellow travellers prosecuted it is unsurprising that less successful contemporaries who kept the faith attacked Southey. Moreover Southey was a prolific letter writer literary scholar essay writer historian and biographer.

Although his fame has been long eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge Southey's verse still enjoys some popularity. Robert Southey (/ˈsaʊði/ or /ˈsʌði/; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school one of the so-called "Lake Poets" and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843.