tion-marks. A somewhat similar antithesis may be found in Macaulay: "There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles II. But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen." Dr. Johnson quotes from Goldsmith a "fine passage" from the "Vicar of Wakefield," which "he was afterwards fool enough to expunge:" "When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over, for I found that generally what was new was false." (BoswELL's Life, vol. vii. ch. viii.) After all, this is a bald commonplace, which Goldsmith did well to cancel. New departure, a phrase made popular by Clement C. Vallandigham, one of the leaders of the Democrats, to express the policy which he first urged upon the party at a convention in Montgomery County, Ohio, May, 1871. Here he secured the adoption of his principles in the platform known in political history as the Dayton platform. Vallandigham's new departure was, in brief, an abandonment of the old policy of obstruction and opposition, the acceptance of the results of the war as final, including the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which the Democracy had hitherto opposed as revolutionary, and the commencement of a new policy of living and vital issues. The phrase "a new departure" is now in general use, and is applied to any radical reform or change of base, personal or political. Republicans of all shades of opinion have for a good while been urging on the Democrats the propriety and expediency of accepting accomplished facts,"-that is, of formally acknowledging in the public utterances of the party that the war and the amendments to the Constitution adopted since the war had settled certain questions beyond further dispute or cavil. These questions are the non-existence of the constitutional right of secession, the abolition and perpetual prohibition of slavery, and the equality of all men before the law. Republicans have further urged on them the propriety of acknowledging the validity of the public debt and the duty of the nation to discharge it in coin.. For six years the Democrats have resolutely refused to do any of these things. . . . A considerable portion of the party, headed by Mr. Vallandigham, seem to have learned wisdom at last, and propose to surrender all the principal points in their former creed, and to begin their opposition to the party in power on a new line. They offer to do what the Republican party has been doing, maintain the results of the war, and to do something which the Republican party has thus far neglected or failed to do,-correct and restrain the evils growing out of the war. They offer, for instance, while adhering to the three new constitutional amendments, to oppose the dangerous tendency which the Republican party has for some time been manifesting to treat the amendments as having practically abrogated the whole Constitution; or, in other words, as having constituted the majority in both houses as supreme judges of what is and what is not constitutional. They offer to treat the reconstruction measures as finalities,-that is, to put the Southern States on a footing of equality with the Northern States, and put further interference with their affairs on exactly the same level with interference in the affairs of New York and Massachusetts.-New York Nation, June 8, 1871. New Timon Quarrel. A curious chapter in any new volume on the "Quarrels of Authors" would be furnished by the passage at arms between Tennyson and Bulwer. The latter, in his early days, had an unfortunate faculty for exciting the antagonism of his fellow-authors. It was unfortunate, because he was extremely sensitive to attack, and his sensitiveness was increased by the fact that he was anxious to stand well with his brethren of the pen, and never said an unkind or discourteous word about them, save in the way of retort. No doubt he felt like a good fellow wronged,-a feeling that is gall and wormwood to a sensitive spirit. In his Autobiography he complains of the “ribald attacks" which Thackeray made upon him in the pages of Fraser's, and doubtless those attacks cut deep into his soul. Yet he wound up by making friends with Thackeray, who in one of his prefaces makes public profession of the regret with which he looked back upon his "Bulwig" caricatures, attributing them to an ebullition of animal spirits in a young and thoughtless writer, unconscious of the pain he was inflicting. Maginn, Lockhart, Jeffrey, all the wags and critics of the period, had their fling at Bulwer. Carlyle expressed a loathing for him. Even in America, Hawthorne, in one of his "Mosses from an Old Manse," says, "Bulwer I detest. He is the very pimple of the age's humbug." Disraeli and Dickens are almost the only men of any literary standing who always looked kindly upon the author of "Pelham." As to Tennyson, he showed his dislike as far back as 1830. His volume, "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," published in that year, contained a short poem called "A Character," which was recognized by every one as a satire on Bulwer. A CHARACTER. With a half-glance upon the sky He spake of beauty: that the dull Life in dead stones, or spirit in air; He smoothed his chin and sleeked his hair, He spake of virtue: not the gods More purely when they wish to charm Pallas and Juno sitting by; And with a sweeping of the arm, Most delicately hour by hour With lips depressed as he were meek, Upon himself himself did feed: Quiet, dispassionate, and cold, And other than his form of creed, With chiselled features clear and sleek. There is a cruel truth in this dissection of the vain, self-conscious, and selfworshipping Bulwer, his failure to accommodate his profession to his practices, his affectation of Byronic gloom, his utter want of literary sincerity. The victim writhed under the lash. But it was many years before he retaliated. In his "New Timon," a very dull and insipid romance in verse which he published anonymously in 1846, he made a savage onslaught on the young poet who had now taken a recognized place among the immortals. No doubt the fact of his foeman's success in the line of literature wherein he himself had failed, though wishing most ardently to succeed, added venom to the onslaught. But, though the shaft was tipped with poison, it was shot by an incompetent hand, and recoiled on the archer. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of anything more puerile, more unfair, more manifestly dictated by personal spite, than the following lines: I seek no purfled prettiness of phrase; A soul in earnest scorns the tricks for praise. No tawdry grace shall womanize my pen! Outbabying Wordsworth and outglittering Keates [sic], If to old laws my Spartan tastes adhere, If the old vigorous music charms my ear, Where sense with sound and ease with weight combine In the pure silver of Pope's ringing line; Or where the pulse of man beats loud and strong In the frank flow of Dryden's lusty song? And flaunt, admired, the Rag Fair of the Nine ! In a note to this precious rubbish the author says, "I have no blind enthusiasm for Mr. Knowles, and I allow both the grave faults of his diction and the somewhat narrow limits within which is contracted his knowledge of character and life, but no one can deny that he has nobly supported the British Drama; that he has moved the laughter and tears of thousands; that he forms an actual, living, and imperishable feature in the loftier literature of his time; that the history of the English stage can never be rewritten hereafter without long and honorable mention of the author of 'Virginius' and 'The Hunchback.' The most that can be said of Mr. Tennyson is that he is the favorite 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 labored out no deathless truths, nor enlarged our knowledge of the human heart by the delineation of various and deathless passions; he has lent a stout shoulder to no sinking but manly cause, dear to the Nation and to Art; yet if the uncontradicted statements in the journals be true, this gentleman has been quartered on the public purse; he is 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 thank-and starve !" The most noticeable thing about both the lines and the note to them is their arrogant and uneasy egotism. In the verse the poet expressly claims, "I am virile, strong, original; this Tennyson whom you critics put above me is effeminate, tawdry, and a plagiarist." In his note you might read between the lines some such affirmation as this: "Mr. Knowles is not my equal, to be sure; he has not certain virtues which I possess; nevertheless he is far superior to Tennyson, who has moved no thousands, etc., etc.,-all of which I have done." Both in his praise and in his blame you feel instinctively that Bulwer is measuring everybody by his own standard, and awkwardly striving to conceal his anger that the critics do not see how far the others fall below it. Punch, which had always befriended Tennyson, came to the rescue of its friend. In the number for February 7, 1846, appeared the following verses,― rather lame, indeed, but well intended: THE "NEW TIMON" AND ALFRED TENNYSON'S PENSION. You've seen a burly mastiff's port, So stands the bard of Locksley Hall, Tipp'd with what Timon takes for venom; "School-miss Alfred" then took up the cudgels for himself in very masculine fashion. The number of Punch for February 28, 1846, came out with some lines entitled "The New Timon and the Poets." They were signed ‘Alcibiades,” but were universally recognized as Tennyson's. They are well known, but we will quote them in full : THE "NEW TIMON" AND THE POETS. We know him out of Shakespeare's art, So died the Old: here comes the New. I thought we knew him. What, it's you, Who killed the girls and thrilled the boys And shook a mane en papillotes. And once you tried the Muses too: You failed, sir; therefore now you turn, As Captain is to Subaltern. But men of long-enduring hopes, And careless what this hour may bring, Can pardon little would-be Popes And Brummels, when they try to sting. An Artist, sir, should rest in Art, But you, sir, you are hard to please: 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: 'Tis 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. A Timon, you? Nay, nay, for shame! The fierce old man,-to take his name, You bandbox! Off, and let him rest! It is evident that "Alcibiades" had penetrated the anonymous authorship of the "New Timon." Indeed, the secret was an open one from the first. Though the poem has few of the virtues of Bulwer's prose, it has all its vices, and the critics at once laid the foundling at his door. A week later (March 7) "Alcibiades" followed his first return shot with another, which only indirectly alludes to the "New Timon" controversy. LITERARY SQUABBLES. Ah, God! the petty fools of rhyme That shriek and sweat in pygmy wars And looked at by the silent stars ; That hate each other for a song, And do their little best to bite; That pinch their brothers in the throng, And strive to make an inch of room For their sweet selves, and cannot hear On them and theirs, and all things here ; When one small touch of Charity Could lift them nearer Godlike state Like those that cried Diana great. And I too talk, and lose the touch Is kindly silence when they bawl. Tennyson has never publicly acknowledged these "Alcibiades" poems. He included them in no edition of his works. Nevertheless, their authorship is undeniable and undenied. They served their purpose. The victim was demolished. The public was with Tennyson. In the third edition of the "New Timon" the obnoxious lines and the note were withdrawn. Bulwer made no answer to " Alcibiades." But to Tennyson he seems to have written a private letter, whose contents we can only guess at from the following poem by Tennyson, written apparently in December, 1846: ON A SPITEFful Letter. Here, it is here,-the close of the year, My fame in song has done him much wrong, For himself has done much better. O foolish bard! is your lot so hard If men neglect your pages? I think not much of yours or of mine; I hear the roll of the ages. This fallen leaf, isn't fame as brief? My rhymes may have been the stronger, I last but a moment longer. O faded leaf, isn't fame as brief? What room is here for a hater? Yet the yellow leaf hates the greener leaf, |