For the rest he began to withdraw from his seclusion, to mix freely in society, to "live and like earth's way." He talked openly among his literary friends of the poem and its progress, rumour and speculation busied themselves with it as never before with work of his, and the literary world at large looked for its publication with eager and curious interest.

At length, in November 1868, the first instalment was published.

It was received by the most authoritative part of the press with outspoken, even dithyrambic eulogies, in which the severely judicial _Athenaeum_ took the lead.

Confirmed sceptics or deriders, like Edward FitzGerald, rubbed their eyes and tried once again, in vain, to make the old barbarian's verses construe and scan.

To critics trained in classical traditions the original structure of the poem was extremely disturbing; and most of FitzGerald's friends shared, according to him, the opinion of Carlyle, who roundly pronounced it "without _Backbone_ or basis of Common-sense," and "among the absurdest books ever written by a gifted Man." Tennyson, however, admitted (to FitzGerald) that he "found greatness" in it,[47] and Mr Swinburne was in the forefront of the chorus of praise.