'At the end of the year [1855] an unknown Nottingham artizan [sic] came to call. My father asked him to dinner and at his request read "Maud." It appears that the poor man had sent his poems beforehand. They had been acknowledged, but had not been returned, and had been forgotten. He was informed that the poems, thus sent, were always looked at, although my father and mother had not time to pass judgement on them. A most pathetic incident of this kind, my father told me, happened to him at Twickenham, when a Waterloo soldier brought twelve large cantos on the battle of Waterloo. The veteran had actually taught himself in his old age to read and write that he might thus commemorate Wellington's great victory. The epic lay for some time under the sofa in my father's study, and was a source of much anxiety to him. How could he go through such a vast poem? One day he mustered up courage and took a portion out. It opened on the head of a canto: "The Angels encamped above the field of Waterloo." On that day, at least, he "read no more." He gave the author, when he called for his manuscript, this criticism: "Though great images loom here and there, your poem could not be published as a whole." The old man answered nothing, wrapt up each of the twelve cantos carefully, placed them in a strong oak case and carried them off. He was asked to come again but he never came.'