I only speak for myself, and from a very limited experience.

As to the story, I don't the least object to it on The Spectator's ground.

I think it could not have been done in prose.

Verse was wanted to give it dignity.
But if we find it trivial, the fault is in our own varnished selves.
We have been polished up so bright that we forget the stuff we are made of." Clough was in politics a Republican, and sympathised ardently with the French Revolution of 1848.

So did Charles Kingsley, a Cambridge man, who was at that time on a visit to Exeter.