The Scots were rebels a’, man;
But let that end—for weel ’tis kenn’d
His use and wont to lee, man,
The league is nought, he never fought
When he had room to flee, man.”
Immediately on the satire and its source of emanation being communicated to the heroic (?) Lieutenant Smith, he despatched a junior officer to Skirving, with a challenge to the poet to meet him in single combat.
The bard’s reply was of a piece with his attack—“Gang back,” said he, “and tell Lieutenant Smith that I hae nae leisure to come to Haddington; but tell him to come here, and I’ll tak’ a look o’ him, and if I think I’m fit to fecht, I’ll fecht him; and if no, I’ll do as he did—I’ll rin awa’.”
Hard and stinging things have been uttered against poets, but the hardest and sharpest have been those hurled by one poet against another. As instance, the “Flyting” of Dunbar and Kennedy, the less remote encounter between Tennyson and Bulwer Lytton in the pages of Punch, and the more recent scalping scuffle which took place between Buchanan, Swinburne, and Rossetti. The wit of the poet is indispensable for affording the proper point to the sting of humorous satire. Here is a good example:—A few years ago the late William C. Cameron, of Glasgow, a shoemaker to trade, and author of a meritorious volume of verses, entitled Light, Shade, and Toil, contributed a little poem to the columns of the Weekly Herald, each succeeding stanza of which opened somewhat ostentatiously with the request—“Write me my epitaph!” one entire verse being:—
“Write me my epitaph! short let it be,
Say that here, ’neath the sod, lies one of the free,