" Algernon Charles Swinburne made so few formal presentations to any kind of audience that only a single public one, so far as I know, is recorded- his reply to a toast at the Royal Literary Fund Dinner of May 2, 1866.' Scholars have thought they had no access to the speech, for, although Edmund Gosse prints a part of it in his biography of Swinburne (along with a slightly distorted account of its presentation) and other biographers include other bits and pieces, it has, to all intents and purposes, dropped from sight; only those able to see the papers of the Royal Literary Fund, Gosse implies, might glimpse the text of what Swinburne said. Surprisingly, however, the full text is available, as is enough other information that one can reconstruct the poet's presentation more completely than heretofore and see the speech as a rather more complex document than has been assumed..."