"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:—
FROM A.....N S......E.
Sick of the perfume of praise, and faint with the fervid caresses,
Flushing his face with a flame that is fair, like the blood on a dove;
Weary of pangs that have pleased him, the poet refrains and confesses—
Shrinks from the rapture of death, and the lips and the languors of love;
The rootless rose of delight, and the love that lasts only to blossom,
Blossom and die without fruit, as the kisses that feed and not fill;