Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/78

72 God thanks and make no boast. To write for people with prefixes to their names is to milk he-goats: there is neither honor nor profit."

Milnes was annoyed, and so expressed himself to Tennyson, who, in a penitent reply, agreed to contribute, and to so induce his brothers Frederick and Charles. The first twelve stanzas of "Oh that 'twere possible" now form the fourth section of the second part of "Maud," but the remaining four stanzas have never been republished. By themselves they are now, of course, incomplete, but they serve to illustrate the extraordinary wealth of the poet who could so lightly cast them aside:

During the nine years that intervened before Tennyson's next contribution to periodicals came the turning-point of his life. A unanimous chorus of praise greeted his volumes of 1842, and his long struggle with poverty was partly ended by the receipt in 1845 of a pension of £200 a year. The granting of this pension by Sir Robert Peel was considered a "job" by many, since Tennyson, though poor himself, was member of a family with several wealthy offshoots. In his Hudibrastic skit "The New Timon: a Romance of London," Bulwer-Lytton, unhappily for himself, vigorously voiced this feeling and savagely attacked Tennyson.

None less vigorous was Tennyson's retort. He has told how, wandering into the reading-room of the village where he was then resident, he found a newspaper folded and marked so as to bring this quotation from Lytton's poem inevitably under his notice. He sat down at once and wrote his reply, which John Forster sent, without his permission, to Punch, where it appeared on February 28, 1846. Of the eleven stanzas the most cruel in their biting personalities are:

We know him, out of Shakespeare's art.
 * And those fine curses which he spoke;

The old Timon, with his noble heart.
 * That, strongly loathing, greatly broke.

So died the Old: here comes the New:
 * Regard him: a familiar face:

I thought we knew him: What, it's you
 * The padded man—that wears the stays—

Who killed the girls and thrill'd the boys
 * With dandy pathos when you wrote,

A Lion, you, that made a noise,
 * And shook a mane en papillotes.

And once you tried the Muses too:
 * You fail'd, Sir: therefore now you turn,

You fall on those who are to you
 * As captain is to subaltern.

And what with spites and what with fears,
 * You cannot let a body be:

It's always ringing in your ears,
 * "They call this man as good as me."

What profits now to understand
 * The merits of a spotless shirt—

A dapper boot—a little hand—
 * If half the little soul is dirt?

You talk of tinsel! why we see
 * The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks.

You prate of Nature! you are he
 * That spilt his life about the cliques.