The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XI. The Period of the French Revolution.
§ 7. Madoc
There can, however, be no doubt that Madoc greatly raised Southey’s position as a poet; for Scott was only beginning, the world would not have anything of Wordsworth’s, Coleridge was silent and the greater, younger poets had not begun. In the next seven or eight years before his appointment to the laureateship in 1813, he produced his very best works, in verse and prose respectively, The Curse of Kehama and The Life of Nelson; he joined (1809) The Quarterly Review, which was almost his main source of income for the rest of his life (though, for a very few years, he drew considerable sums from Ballantyne’s Annual Register); he began the mightiest of all his works, The History of Brazil (1810–19), originally planned as merely a part of a still huger History of Portugal, and (besides revising the old translations of Amadis and Palmerin and executing the charming one of The Chronicle of the Cid) he wrote two popular miscellanies, as they may be termed, The Letters of Espriella (1807) and Omniana (1812).