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:
xiii
But she tarries in her place
And I paint the beauteous face
Of the maiden, that I lost,
In my inner eyes again,
Lest my heart be overborne
By the thing I hold in scorn,
By a dull mechanic ghost
And a juggle of the brain.
xiv
I can shadow forth my bride
As I knew her fair and kind
As I woo'd her for my wife;
She is lovely by my side
In the silence of my life—
'Tis a phantom of the mind.
xv
'Tis a phantom fair and good
I can call it to my side.
So to guard my life from ill,
Tho' its ghastly sister glide
And be moved around me still
With the moving of the blood
That is moved not of the will.
xvi
Let it pass, the dreary brow,
Let the dismal face go by.
Will it lead me to the grave?
Then I lose it: it will fly:
Can it overlast the nerves?
Can it overlive the eye?
But the other, like a star.
Thro' the channel windeth far
Till it fade and fail and die,
To its Archetype that waits
Clad in light by golden gates,
Clad in light the Spirit waits
To embrace me in the sky.
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.
