your writings and your reputation. As to the first, you have
somewhere said, in one of your letters, that the final judgment on
your merits as a poet is in the hands of posterity, and that you
fear the verdict will be "Guilty," and the sentence "Death." Such
apprehensions cannot have been fixed or frequent in the mind of one
whose genius burned always with a clearer and steadier flame to the
last. The jury of which you spoke has met: a mixed jury and a
merciful. The verdict is "Well done," and the sentence Immortality
of Fame. There have been, there are, dissenters; yet probably they
will be less and less heard as the years go on.

One judge, or juryman, has made up his mind that prose was your true
province, and that your letters will out-live your lays. I know not
whether it was the same or an equally well-inspired critic, who
spoke of your most perfect lyrics (so Beau Brummell spoke of his
ill-tied cravats) as "a gallery of your failures." But the general
voice does not echo these utterances of a too subtle intellect. At
a famous University (not your own) once existed a band of men known
as "The Trinity Sniffers." Perhaps the spirit of the sniffer may
still inspire some of the jurors who from time to time make
themselves heard in your case. The "Quarterly Review," I fear, is
still unreconciled. It regards your attempts as tainted by the
spirit of "The Liberal Movement in English Literature;" and it is
impossible, alas! to maintain with any success that you were a
Throne and Altar Tory. At Oxford you are forgiven; and the old
rooms where you let the oysters burn (was not your founder, King
Alfred, once guilty of similar negligence?) are now shown to pious
pilgrims.

But Conservatives, 'tis rumoured, are still averse to your opinions,