When that good old man, Grandfather Hatchard, more than an octogenarian, first saw me, he placed his hand on my dark hair and said with tears in his eyes, "You will thank God for this book when your head comes to be as white as mine." Let me gratefully acknowledge that he was a true prophet.

When I was writing the concluding essay of the first series, my father (not quite such a prophet as old Hatchard) exhorted me to burn it, as his ambition was to make a lawyer of me, the Church idea having failed from my stammering, and he had very little confidence, as a man of the world, in poetry bringing fortune.

However, it did not get burnt, though I had some difficulty in persuading him to let me get it printed instead.

The dear good man lived to bless me for it, especially for my essay on Immortality, which I know affected him seriously, and he gave me L2000 as a gift in consequence.
As I may have been only too faithfully frank in mentioning this curious literary anecdote,--which, as known to others, I could scarcely have suppressed,--it is only fair to the memory of my dear and honoured father that I should here produce one of his very few letters to me, just found among my archives and bearing upon this same subject.

It was written to me at Brighton, and is dated Laura House, Southampton, October 16, 1842:-- "My dearest Martin,--Anything that I could say, or any praise that I could give respecting your last volume would, in my estimation, fall very far short indeed of its merits.