James Spedding to W. H. Thompson, 1834: 'Wordsworth's eyes are better, but not so well [...] Reading inflames them, and so does composing. I believe it was a series of Highland sonnets that brought on the last attack [...] He read me several, that I had not seen or heard before, many of them admirably good: also a long romantic wizard and fairy poem, of the time of Merlin and king Arthur, very pretty but not of the first order: but I should not have expected anything so good from him which was so much out of his beat.'