his parliamentary duties; had made several bold attempts to earn an independent reputation as a poet, by the publication of several poems of considerable merit; and had devoted himself to politics as a pamphleteer, and to social topics as an essayist. It is not to be wondered at that his health broke, happily to be restored to him again after a time. The story of his cure is told in his 'Confessions of a Water Patient' (1845).
In 1846, his first great work in rhyme appeared anonymously. It was a satire called 'The New Timon.'
In writing a couple of years ago about it, a contemporary essayist drew attention to the attack on Tennyson contained in the poem, and to the retort of the Poet Laureate in the columns of 'Punch.'
This reply appeared almost before the present generation of readers were out of their pinafores; and as it furnishes rather a curious example of the amenities of literature—one poet calling the other 'school-miss Alfred,' and being called 'you bandbox' by his angry rival in return—we will quote the lines of both authors. Doubtless the feud has long since been healed, or at all events forgotten, by the parties to it.
In 'The New Timon,' which, though published anonymously, was well known to be the work of the author of 'Pelham,' these lines occur:
Not mine, not mine O Muse, forbid!—the boon
Of borrow'd notes, the mockbird's modish tune,
The jingling medley of purloin'd conceits,
Outbabying Wordsworth and outglittering Keats;
Where all the airs of patchwork pastoral chime,
To drown the ears in Tennysonian rhyme!
****Let school-miss Alfred vent her chaste delight
On 'darling little rooms, so warm and light;'
Chant 'I'm a-weary' in infectious strain,
And catch the 'blue fly singing i' the pane;'
Though praised by critics and adored by Blues,
Though Peel with pudding plump the puling Muse,
Though Theban taste the Saxon purse control's,
And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles.
Tennyson had had a pension of 200l. a-year granted to him—most
