Argyll, the Master of Balliol, and Clough, while Ruskin showed some
reserve. The letter from Thackeray I cannot deny myself the pleasure
of citing from the Biography: it was written "in an ardour of claret
and gratitude," but posted some six weeks later:-


FOLKESTONE, September.
36 ONSLOW SQUARE, October.

My Dear Old Alfred,--I owe you a letter of happiness and thanks.
Sir, about three weeks ago, when I was ill in bed, I read the Idylls
of the King, and I thought, "Oh, I must write to him now, for this
pleasure, this delight, this splendour of happiness which I have been
enjoying." But I should have blotted the sheets, 'tis ill writing on
one's back. The letter full of gratitude never went as far as the
post-office, and how comes it now?

D'abord, a bottle of claret. (The landlord of the hotel asked me
down to the cellar and treated me.) Then afterwards sitting here, an
old magazine, Fraser's Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of
The Princess which says, "I hear the horns of Elfland blowing,
blowing,"--no, it's "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing" (I have
been into my bedroom to fetch my pen and it has made that blot), and,
reading the lines, which only one man in the world could write, I
thought about the other horns of Elfland blowing in full strength,
and Arthur in gold armour, and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those
knights and heroes and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray
lakes in which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me,
since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was it?) when I
read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I don't like, somehow,