ntrols,
And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles."

_Punch_ (p. 64, Vol. X.) had rushed in to the rescue with the clever
retort:--

_"The New Timon" and Alfred Tennyson's Pension._

"You've seen a lordly mastiff's port,
Bearing in calm, contemptuous sort
The snarls of some o'erpetted pup
Who grudges him his 'bit and sup:'
So stands the bard of Locksley Hall,
While puny darts around him fall,
Tipp'd with what TIMON takes for venom;
He is the mastiff, TIM the Blenheim."

But Tennyson's was not by any means "the lordly mastiff's port." He was
stung by the contemptuous reference to the pension, and proved the truth
of Johnson's aphorism--

"Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,
Sure the most bitter is the scornful jest"--

and he straightway wrote the ten verses that appeared under the title of
"The New Timon, and the Poets" (p. 103, Vol. X.), signing them
"ALCIBIADES":--

"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--

* * * * *

"What profits now to understand
The merits of a spotless shirt--
A dapper boot--a little hand--
If half the little soul is dirt?

* * * * *

"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."

This crushing rejoinder was cordially welcomed by Thackeray and the
rest of the Staff, who loved to castigate the fopperies of the conceited
poetaster, and Lytton, it is said, was not a little astonished at the
virility of "school-miss Alfred." But Tennyson's anger soon cooled;
perhaps his conscience smote him; for the very next week he toned down
the savagery of his first verses in an "Afterthought," in which he said:

"And _I_ too talk, and lose the touch
I talk of. Surely, after all,
The noblest answer unto such
Is kindly silence when they brawl."

The first set of verses are not to be found in the poet's collected
poems; but the second are included, only "kindly silence" is replaced by
"perfect stillness." After that Tennyson broke silence no more; and
Lytton subsequently made what was put forwar