TEARS, IDLE TEARS.
(The Right Hon. Spencer Walpole, Home Secretary, shed tears when he heard that the Hyde Park Railings had been pulled down by the people to whom he had denied access to the Park).
TEARS, idle tears—a sweet sensation scene—
Tears at the thought of that Hyde Park affair
Rise in the eye, and trickle down the nose,
In looking on the haughty EDMOND BEALES,
And thinking of the shrubs that are no more.
(Three verses omitted).
Punch, August 25, 1866.
In one of the early Christmas numbers of Fun there appeared a parody entitled "The Dream of Unfair Women." It concluded thus:—
"A MAID, blue-stockinged, broke the silence drear,
And flashing forth a winning smile, said she:
'Tis long since I have seen a man, come here,
Play croquet now with me!'"
"She spooned, and cheated, and had ancles thick.
I let her win, the game was such a bore,
Her bright ball quivered at the coloured stick,
Touched—and—we played no more."
The trick of Tennyson's blank verse, as displayed in some of his early and lighter poems, was admirably imitated by Bayard Taylor in the "Diversions of the Echo Club," (now published by Messrs. Chatto and Windus). The parody is entitled "Eustace Green; or, the Medicine Bottle."
In the second volume of "Echoes from the Clubs" several instances are given of plagiarisms committed by Tennyson; whilst in "The Figaro" of October 27, 1875, whole passages from his tragedy of Queen Mary are shown to have been borrowed.
Long extracts from the second scene, of the second act, are printed side by side with similar passages taken from the twenty-eighth chapter of Ainsworth's old novel, "The Tower of London," showing conclusively that Tennyson had either appropriated from Ainsworth without acknowledgment, or that both authors had gone to the same source for inspiration. Again, the beauties of "The Idylls of the King" are generally insisted on without any mention being made of the fact that in all the main incidents the poems simply retell the old "History of King Arthur, and of the Knights of the Round Table," as compiled by Sir Thomas Malory more than four centuries ago. Indeed, some of the most pathetic passages of the old original have been utterly marred; their simple charm and quaint pathos being lost in the over elaboration of detail affected by the Laureate. The beauty of his blank verse is admitted, and the Idylls have been frequently parodied. Unfortunately, most of the parodies are too long to quote in full in this Part.