But when she goes out
To a ball or a rout
Her stomacher’s all covered with di’monds.
Or, for elder taste,
In the romantic little town of Highbury,
My father kept a Succulating Libary.
He followed in his youth the Man immortal who
Conquered the Frenchman on the plains of Waterloo
—with similar fooling. Some men at Cambridge had the gift of this fooling—in Tennyson’s day, too—and not the least of them was Edward Lear, incomparable melodist of nonsense—nursery Mozart of the Magic Flute—to whom, on his Travels in Greece, Tennyson dedicated those very lovely stanzas beginning:
Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls