John Ruskin to Alfred Tennyson, from Strasburg (1860): 'I have had the "Idylls" in my travelling desk ever since I could get them across the water, and have only not written about them because I could not quite make up my mind about that increased quietness of style [...] 'The four songs seem to me the jewels of the crown, and bits come every here and there, the fright of the maid for instance, and the "In the darkness o'er her fallen head," which seem to me finer than almost all you have done yet. Nevertheless I am not sure but I feel the art and finish in these poems a little more than I like to feel it [...] 'As a description of various nobleness and tenderness the book is without price: but I shall always wish it had been nobleness independent of a romantic condition of externals in general.'