O cook, we'll keep the innocents alive,
They're five, consider, and you've fingers five.
The illustration alluding to a girl who writes to her lover with the aid of "Tupper's poems and a Dictionary," acquires a peculiar point from the fact, recorded in Spurgeon's Life, that he proposed to the lady who became his wife by help of a passage from Tupper.
SHE "JESTS AT SCARS——."
Aunt: "And how's Louisa, my dear? Where is she?"
Sarcastic Younger Sister (fancy free): "Oh, pretty well, but she won't be on view these two hours. She's writing to her 'Dear Fred'; at least, I fancy I saw her come out of the library with Tupper's poems and a Dictionary!!"
Owing to heavy financial losses Tupper accepted a Civil List pension of £120 at the end of 1873, and Punch supported the grant on the ground that though philosophers might have learned little from Proverbial Philosophy, there could be no doubt that a work read by the million had either taught or entertained them a good deal. He also hailed it as an earnest of better times coming for authors in general; for if Tupper had received £120 a year, how many times that sum should be awarded to writers of really durable works? This mitigated approval prepares us for Punch's subsequent malice in publishing a burlesque poem, purporting to come from Tupper's pen, on a Royal wedding in January, 1874. But the bestowal of those pensions too often invited direct censure. The notorious "Poet Close" of Kirkby Stephen, Westmorland, who described himself as "Poet Laureate to the King of Bonny," was patronized by Lord Palmerston (who indirectly compared him with Burns) and had been put on the Civil List in 1861, though the pension was afterwards withdrawn. But when Punch learned in 1863 that the poet was poor in more senses than one, he promised him an immunity from ridicule, and wished success to his next work. The promise was hardly fulfilled in the following year when "English literature was enriched" by Poet Close's Grand Sensation Book and by Cithara—a selection from the Lyrics of Martin Tupper. Of the latter Punch cruelly remarks: "it contains some new pieces, in which Mr. Tupper has excelled himself: but Nemo repente fuit Tupperrimus." The two poets are bracketed (as in one of Gilbert's Bab Ballads) in some ironical stanzas, but the conjunction was hardly fair to Tupper, who at his worst was assuredly a cut above "Poet Close." A lower depth, however, was sounded by the poet Young, whose pension was a positive scandal. Tupper is very generously treated in the D.N.B.; "Poet Close" appears, though more as a curiosity than as a writer of any literary merit whatsoever, his verses being described as "metrical balderdash"; but for Young we have to go to Hansard or Punch, whose comment in 1867 runs as follows:—
We had some fun by way of ending an important week. Palmerston had his Close, and Derby has his Young, only the doggerel of the latter is not merely vulgar and foolish, but offensive. However, he is pensioned. Mr. Whalley (probably thinking that Young was author of the Night Thoughts) defended the grant, and said that Young's sentiments were truly Protestant. Mr. Disraeli said what he could, which was that Lord Derby had been hoaxed, and that it would be a warning to himself never to sign or believe in a Memorial.
The vigilance displayed by Punch in this matter no doubt helped to improve matters, but even as I write, in 1921, the world of letters has been staggered by the bestowal of a decoration on the strength of literary achievements of which no record could be discovered in any publisher's catalogue or library.