The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XI. The Period of the French Revolution.
§ 12. Roderick the last of the Goths
To complete the notice of his poetry: in 1814, he had published another long poem which, as was usual with him, had been on the stocks for a great while, had been much altered and more than once renamed. It appeared, finally, as Roderick the last of the Goths and is probably the best of his blank verse epics, but does not quite escape the curse above mentioned. The Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo is not in blank verse; but here, also, especially after reading his pleasant letters on the journey and the home-coming, the old question may be asked. He was, even at this time, beginning two other pieces of some length—A tale of Paraguay, which appeared ten years later, in 1825, and which is of good quality, and Oliver Newman, which was only posthumously published, and adds little to his fame. Had he, in fact, produced much great poetry in the hardly existing intervals of his task-work in prose, he would have been unlike any poet of whom time leaves record. But a few of his smaller pieces, especially that admirable one noticed above and written (1818) in his library, are poetry still. The last independent volume of verse which he issued was All for Love (1829); but he collected the whole of his poems published earlier, in ten volumes (1837–8), almost at the close of his working life.