 His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson.The last has rarely been out of print since its publication in 1813 and was adapted as the 1926 British film "Nelson".He was also a renowned scholar of Portuguese and Spanish literature and history, translating a number of works from those two languages into English and writing a "History of Brazil" (part of his planned "History of Portugal", which he never completed) and a "History of the Peninsular War".