has gone out. Lytton had suffered many things (not in verse) from
Jeames Yellowplush: I do not know that he hit back at Thackeray, but
he "passed it on" to Thackeray's old college companion. Tennyson,
for once, replied (in Punch: the verses were sent thither by John
Forster); the answer was one of magnificent contempt. But he soon
decided that


"The noblest answer unto such
Is perfect stillness when they brawl."


Long afterwards the poet dedicated a work to the son of Lord Lytton.
He replied to no more satirists. {5} Our difficulty, of course, is
to conceive such an attack coming from a man of Lytton's position and
genius. He was no hungry hack, and could, and did, do infinitely
better things than "stand in a false following" of Pope. Probably
Lytton had a false idea that Tennyson was a rich man, a branch of his
family being affluent, and so resented the little pension. The poet
was so far from rich in 1846, and even after the publication of The
Princess, that his marriage had still to be deferred for four years.

On reading The Princess afresh one is impressed, despite old
familiarity, with the extraordinary influence of its beauty. Here
are, indeed, the best words best placed, and that curious felicity of
style which makes every line a marvel, and an eternal possession. It
is as if Tennyson had taken the advice which Keats gave to Shelley,
"Load every rift with ore." To choose but one or two examples, how
the purest and freshest impression of nature is re-created in mind
and memory by the picture of Melissa with