TEN YEARS' SILENCE.
101
Tennyson retorted in some bitter lines, entitled "The New Timon and the Poets," and signed "Alcibiades," which appeared in "Punch,"[1] February 28, 1846.[2] In the following number there appeared some further stanzas, entitled "Afterthought," with the same signature, written in a gentler mood. This latter piece the Laureate has lately included in the collected edition of his writings; but he was too generous to perpetuate the earlier satire, and the offensive passage was removed from the third edition of "The New Timon."
- ↑ Already, on February 7, another writer had taken up his defence in a cutting epigram, entitled, "The New Timon and Alfred Tennyson's Pension."
- ↑ "Strong men shall presently take hold of his bâton, and lay about them with prodigious effect. Even Tennyson shall write some stinging satire here, and Tom Hood make thousands weep."—Life of Douglas Jerrold, by his son Blanchard Jerrold (London, 1859), p. 193.
"When Sir Bulwer Lytton, in his poem of 'The New Timon,' alluded to Mr. Tennyson in disparaging terms as "Miss Alfred, no one was surprised to read, in a few days, that terribly trenchant copy of verses in which Mr. Tennyson called Sir Bulwer a Bandbox, and showed that the true Timon was quite a different man from the Bandbox with his mane in curl-papers."—A. K. H. B., Good Words (1863), p. 593.
Aram", is made to speak of Tennyson as a "small poetic raver" ("A Midnight Meditation," by Sir E——— B——— L——— "Ballads," first edition, p. 37).
