SOURCE: "In Edinburgh," in The Early Years of Alexander Smith, Hodder & Stoughton, 1869, pp. 177-203.

In the following excerpt, Brisbane recounts the effects that criticism—particularly W. E. Aytoun's satire Firmilian—had on Smith both professionally and personally.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Smith, in an 1853 Letter to Mr. Westwood:

Alexander Smith I know by copious extracts in reviews, and by some MSS. once sent to us by friends and readers. Judging from those he must be set down as a true poet in opulence of imagery, but defective, so far (he is said to be very young) in the intellectual part of poetry. His images are flowers thrown to him by the gods, beautiful and fragrant, but having no root either in Enna or Olympus. There's no unity and holding together, no reality properly so called, no thinking of any kind. I hear that Alfred Tennyson says of him...