THE SPITEFUL LETTER.
Of course, it is here, all snarl and sneer,
A letter from my Tutor.
He said it was wrong, not to read in the "Long,"
For he was far acuter.
O little don, in the days bygone,
Did you never prefer the pages
Of those gay books—a woman's looks—
To the lore of Eastern sages?
Were there not times when College Rhymes
Relieved your mind dejected?
And were they not a sorry lot
Of things you had rejected?
The time is brief from the fresh green leaf
Of the callow moderator;
From the greener leaf to the yellow leaf,
The age of perambulator.
Silly, am I? Is that your cry?
And, I shall live to see it?
Exactly so; but yours said "No,"
And mine said "Yes, so be it."
And he would know who 'twas that so
Had filled my thoughts with folly,
And, oh! the name was the very same,
The name of our love was Molly.
From The Shotover Papers, Oxford 1874.
In Fun of February 1, 1868, it was asked, "Who sent The Spiteful Letter to Alfred Tennyson?"
"If anybody did—and nobody doubts that it really was somebody—everybody ought to know about it. Fun has, therefore, addressed a circular to everybody who is anybody in the round of rhyme, putting the direct question—'Was it you, you, or you?' Down to the latest moment answers had been received from George Macdonald, the Poet Close, Algernon Swinburne, and Walt Whitman."
As the two last-named parodies are the best they are quoted, although it will be seen that they give not the slightest explanation of the origin of The Spiteful Letter:—