The Customary Correspondent
mote from the gratitude of their correspondents. Take, for example, the case of Mr. Peter Bayne, journalist, and biographer of Martin Luther, who wrote to Tennyson,—with whom he was unacquainted,—protesting earnestly against a line in "Lady Clare":—
"'If I'm a beggar born,' she said."
It was Mr. Bayne's opinion that such an expression was not only exaggerated, inasmuch as the nurse was not, and never had been, a beggar; but, coming from a child to her mother, was harsh and unfilial. "The criticism of my heart," he wrote, "tells me that Lady Clare could never have said that."
Tennyson was perhaps the last man in Christendom to have accepted the testimony of Mr. Bayne's heart-throbs. He intimated with some asperity that he knew better than any one else what Lady Clare did say, and he pointed out that she had just cause for resentment against a
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