Alfred Tennyson to 'Miss Holloway (of Spilsby)', 'about her cousin Miss Jean Ingelow's poems, A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings': 'I have only just returned to town, and found the Rhyming Chronicle. Your cousin must be worth knowing; there are some very charming things in her book, at least it seems so to me, tho' I do not pique myself on being much of a critic at first sight, and I really have only skimmed a few pages. Yet I think I may venture to pronounce that she need not be ashamed of publishing them. Certain things I saw which I count abominations, tho' I myself in younger days have been guilty of the same, and so was Keats. I would sooner lose a pretty thought than enshrine it in such rhymes as "Eudora" "before her," "vista" "sister." She will get to hate them herself before she gets older, and it would be a pity that she should let her book go forth with these cockneyisms. If the book were not so good I should not care for these specks, but the critics will pounce upon them, and excite a prejudice.'