The copies of some of these letters lately published by Mr. Hepworth Dixon ... differ, I observe, very much from mine; most of them in the words and sense, more or less, and some in the name of the person writing, or the person written to, or both. But as mine are more intelligible, and were made with care and at leisure, and when my eyes were better than they are now, I do not suspect any material error in them, and have not thought it worth while to apply for leave to compare them again with the originals. "I am very glad," FitzGerald writes to Thompson, "to hear old Spedding is really getting _his_ share of Bacon into Print: I doubt if it will be half as good as the "Evenings," where Spedding was in the _Passion_ which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage." Some three years later, he says: Spedding's _Bacon_ seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at the little Interest, and less Conviction, that his two first volumes carried; Thompson told me they had convinced _him_ the other way; and that _Ellis_ had long given up Bacon's Defence before he died. And so it continued to the end. When the sixth volume appeared in 1872 FitzGerald wrote: And here is Spedding's vol. vi. which leaves me much where it found me about Bacon: but though I scarce care for him, I can read old Spedding's pleading for him for ever; that is old Spedding's simple statement of the case, as he sees it. The Ralegh business is quite delightful, better than Old Kensington. Carlyle alone of all the critics was unstinted, though rather patronizing, in his praise. Writing to FitzGerald, he says: Like yourself I have gone through _Spedding_, seven long long volumes, not skipping except when I had got the sense with me, and generally reading all of Bacon's own that was there: I confess to you I found it a most creditable and even surprising Book, offering the most perfect and complete image both of Bacon and of Spedding, and distinguished as the hugest and faithfullest bit of literary navvy-work I have ever met with in this generation. Bacon is washed down to the natural skin; and truly he is not, nor ever was, unlovely to me; a man of no culpability to speak of; of an opulent and even magnificent intellect, but all in the magnificent prose vein. Nothing or almost nothing of the "melodies eternal" to be traced in him. There is a grim strength in Spedding, quietly, very quietly invincible, which I did not quite know of till this Book; and in all ways I could congratulate this indefatigably patient, placidly invincible and victorious Spedding.