Mary Russell Mitford to Elzabeth Barrett, 13 October 1836: 'I have just read your delightful ballad. My earliest book was "Percy's Reliques," the delight of my childhood; and after them came Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Borders," the favourite of my youth; so that I am prepared to love ballads [...] Are you a great reader of the old English drama? I am -- preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course admitting, and regretting, the grossness of the age; but that, from habit, one skips, without a thought just as I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew I could not comprehend. have you read Victor Hugo's Plays? (he also is one of my naughty pets), and his "Notre Dame?" I admit the bad taste of these, the excess; but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great. And then he has [...] made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by going back to the old fountains, Froissart, &c. Again, these old Chronicles are great books of mine.'