CHAPTER VIII.
MAUD AND OTHER POEMS, 1855.[1]
A portion of the poem of "Maud" having appeared, as we have already seen, in a Miscellany, as far back as 1837, it seems highly probable that the original draught of the work is of much earlier date than its first publication. In that case the passages relating to the Crimean War must have been an afterthought made to fit into the poem, perhaps hardly to its advantage. However that may be, "Maud" excited no small amount of animadversion on its appearance; the critics joined in a chorus of dispraise,[2] and one
