the harmonious expression of his grandest thoughts metamorphosed into clownish barbarism."[1]
The occasion of the unprovoked attack upon Tennyson by the author of "Pelham," was the announcement in the newspapers, in the autumn of 1845, that the Government had conferred a pension on our poet, which we have heard was granted, not as a reward for literary merit, but as compensation for some claim his family had on the Crown.[2] Be this as it may, however, there appeared anonymously in the winter of that year a satire, entitled "The New Timon: a Romance of London," well-known to be the production of the eminent novelist alluded to, in which not only was Tennyson's poetry spoken of as "'a jingling medley of purloin'd conceits," "patchwork-pastoral," "tinsel," and the like—but he himself was stated in a footnote to be "quartered on the public purse in the prime of life, without either wife or family."[3]
- ↑ Remarks on Virgil Travesty, in a privately-printed essay ("The School of Pantagruel," Sunbury, 1862).
- ↑ "We understand that Mr. Alfred Tennyson, the poet, has been placed on the pension-list by Sir Robert Peel, for an annuity of £200."—Athenæum, October 18, 1845.
- ↑ The New Timon: a Romance of London" (Henry Colburn, 1846), pp. 51-53. It is curious that already, in the "Bon Gaultier Ballads" (1843), the author of "Eugene
