Emerson, who greatly admired Bacon, and who was sceptical of her claim, wrote that she would need 'enchanted instruments, nay alchemy itself, to melt into one identity these two reputations', and retrospectively remarked that America had only two "producers" during the 1850s, "Our wild Whitman, with real inspiration but checked by titanic abdomen; and Delia Bacon, with genius, but mad and clinging like a tortoise to English soil." Though he was intrigued by her insights into the plays, he grew skeptical of the 'magical cipher' of which Bacon wrote without ever producing evidence for it.