They merely attacked a detail here and there, which the author discussed in two or three replies, with a patience that showed how confident he was in his position.
He had the good word of some of the best judges of literature.

"Modern Painters" lay on Rogers' table; and Tennyson, who a few years before had beaten young Ruskin out of the field of poetry, was so taken with it that he wrote to his publisher to borrow it for him, "as he longed very much to see it," but could not afford to buy it.

Sir Henry Taylor wrote to Aubrey de Vere, the poet, begging him to read: "A book which seems to me to be far more deeply founded in its criticism of art than any other that I have met with ...

written with great power and eloquence, and a spirit of the most diligent investigation....

I am told that the author's name is Ruskin, and that he was considered at college as an odd sort of man who would never do anything." A second edition appeared within 12 months.