Tho' Theban taste the Saxon purse controls,

And pensions Tennyson, while starves a Knowles,
Rather, be thou, my poor Pierian Maid,
Decent at least, in Hayley's weeds arrayed,

Than patch with frippery every tinsel line,

And flaunt, admired, the Rag Fair of the Nine."

In a most insolent note the author says, "the utmost that can be said of Mr. Tennyson is, that he is a favourite of a small circle; to the mass of the public little more than his name is known; he has moved no thousands; he has created no world of characters; he has laboured out no deathless truths, nor enlarged our knowledge of the human heart by the delineation of various and elevating passions; he has lent a stout shoulder to no sinking but manly cause dear to the nation and art; yet if the uncontradicted statement in the journals be true, this gentleman has been quartered on the public purse; he in the prime of life, belonging to a wealthy family, without, I believe, wife or children; at the very time that Mr. Knowles was lecturing for bread in foreign lands, verging towards old age, unfriended even by the public he has charmed! Such is the justice of our ministers; such the national gratitude to those whom we praise and starve.”

Speedily came a reply from "Miss Alfred," which appeared first in "Punch;" and such a crushing answer we should say never before was known to proceed from any young lady, however much wronged. It is infinitely the finest personal satire to be found in the literature of this generation.

THE NEW TIMON, AND THE POETS.

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 thrilled the boys,
With dandy pathos when you wrote.
O Lion, you, that made a noise,

And shook a mane en papillotes.

And once you tried the muses too,

You failed, Sir, therefore now you turn, You fall on those who are to you, As Captain is to Subaltern.

But men of long enduring hopes,

And careless what the hour may bring,

Can pardon little would-be Popes,

And Brummels, when they try to sting.

An artist, sir, should rest in art,

And waive a little of his claim;

To have the great poetic heart

Is more than all poetic fame.

But you, Sir, you are hard to please,

You never look but half content:

Nor like a gentleman at ease,

With moral breadth of temperament,

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 great 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 marks of rouge upon your cheeks.

You prate of Nature! you are he

That spilt his life upon the cliques.

A Timon you! Nay, nay, for shame;

It looks too arrogant a jest

The fierce old man-to take his name

You bandbox. Off, and let him rest.

The only blemish of this little gem is one of grammar, which of course the reader winced under a few seconds since.

But, as we remarked before, it is not difficult to assign to Bulwer Lytton his proper place amongst novelists. He is not equal to Thackeray and Dickens (two such writers of fiction no previous age produced), but he is high above most of the others of his art. It is true that in 1835 he was made a baronet, nominally in consideration of his literary merits, and the authors of "Vanity Fair," and "Pickwick," have not been rendered illustrious by any such mark of royal favour; but the literary service which won for Bulwer Lytton this questionable dignity, was his political pamphlet entitled "The Crisis." His baronetcy was simply an acknowledgment of his political services to Sir Robert Peel, and since he had set his heart on it, it would have been conferred on him, if he had never penned a line, as a mere member of the house, and the owner of a considerable landed estate. The red hand is not in truth one of his literary honours; it is merely the ensign of his enviable position in respect of wealth, just as the Prince Consort's Field Marshal's baton is not an emblem of his military capacity and prowess but of his exalted social rank.

CHAPTER XII.

RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI.

THOUGH men may differ much as to the merits of Mr. Disraeli, no one will question that he is one of the most prominent men of our time. Those who grudge him the honourable title of "celebrated" will allow that he is "notorious." At least, to use Johnson's happy expression, he has made himself "public." There are few persons who are more talked about. He is a stock topic with idle men at clubs, and with ladies during morning calls. If the daily journals are dull and the town generally void of excitement, Mr. Disraeli is brought upon the carpet, and old stories about him are told with new variations. And very amiable, good-natured stories some of them are, and doubtless without exception, quite as truthful as the anecdotes about distinguished living individuals are on examination usually found to be. From the long-legged stool in the Attorney's office to his seat as leader of the House of Commons, all his many positions in his brave and triumphant struggle are touched upon. By the many he is represented as an unprincipled charlatan, by the few as a singularly disinterested, profound, and far-seeing statesman; and in these estimates the many and the few are both equally far from a correct judgment.

His career, like any one of his best novels, is a collection of startling paradoxes, fascinating inconsistencies, brilliant contradictions. The acts of his life are such that they may be so arranged as fully to justify the common charge that he is the embodiment of intellect without morality; and it

is equally easy to draw from them strong evidence of his sincerity and lofty sense of duty. A Jew, glorying in his descent, he devotes all his energies to the service of those whose ancestors have ever abhorred his race, and who themselves never omit an opportunity to do insult and injury to his people. A plebeian, educated to a plebeian vocation, he is the associate and darling of patricians. By turns indebted to each of the great sections of society, he has laboured enthusiastically to make them all alike the objects of distrust and contempt. For years he directed his cruel satire against those noble houses which he so felicitously nicknamed "the Venetian Aristocracy," and yet it was by the Venetian interest that he was mainly raised to his present elevation. He is the leader of the country party, the mouthpiece of the county aristocracy, and yet no writer, so successfully as he, has striven to lower the members of that party in popular esteem. The mushroom date of their rank, their questionable origin, the absurdity of their heraldic pretensions, the ignoble nature of the greatest achievements of their families, have been by him exposed to general ridicule. Sprung himself from a family who had from time immemorial been traders, he has in nothing been so consistent as in hostility to the trading classes of the community. He proclaimed (and still proclaims himself) the veritable benefactor and well-wisher of the very poor; at a period when the Chartists were the objects of almost universal condemnation he was their champion; and yet when all statesmen of character had at length agreed that the corn laws must be abrogated without delay, he stood forth the defender of the bread-tax which he knew was reducing the multitudes by famine, and would goad the survivors to rebellion. His hand has been against every one. If there is any exception to the universality of the warfare he has carried on, it is to be found in those very few houses of the aristocracy which have better claims to the éclat of ancient