Again they looked for a bard divine. 'Here's one,' they exclaimed, 'should be preferred A poet the half of whose name is _Swine_, Is fittest to sing to the swinish herd. But _Swine_ and _burn_ suggest in their turn Ideas a little too gross and warm; And a poet who writes of hermaphrodites Is scarcely the man to weather the storm. So Swineburne, too, Won't do, won't do! What's to be done With the raging throng? We can't have the queerest, We'll pay for the dearest: Give us a song!' V. The cry went forth o'er cities and towns; It tickled the ears of the men who write; It leaped from the land and over the downs, And flew like wind through the Isle of Wight: There Tennyson sat in his wide-awake hat, Or smoked and strolled on his 'sponge-wet' grounds; '_I_'ll give them a song not over long-- I'll give them a song for two hundred pounds.' How happy, how happy, The Editors grew! 'Were it the merest Trash, 'tis the _dearest_, And therefore will do.' VI. The poet wrote the poem I quote, 'The Victim,' whose life the priests would destroy But the Editor knows ere now, I suppose, That _he_ is the victim, and not the boy: 'Tis he must _bleed_ for this rhythmic deed And ever for more, as the public cry, May Alfred the Great--the Laureate-- Shriek out 'the _dearest_, the _dearest_ am I!' And the public are happy, And so they ought; For to them doth belong, If not the sincerest Outburst of song That ever was thought, At least the dearest That ever was bought. January 27, 1868, "M." _Dublin Paper_. Tennyson's _The Victim_ was curiously anticipated by _The Prophet Enoch_, a poem by James Burton Robertson (London, James Blackwood, 1860), in which the following passage occurs:-- "'One victim more!' a thousand voices cry; 'One victim more!' resounds the cave of gloom. Lo! borne on lofty car, 'mid savage cries Of a wild band, a costlier victim comes. It is a lovely stripling, o'er whose cheek Youth hath her earliest purple bloom suffused: In rich luxuriant curls his locks descend, Twined with the fatal flowers that sweetly mock The victim they adorn. Wild with despair, His shrieking mother grasps the iron wheel Of the inexorable car: she spurns The fierce rebukes, or menace of the throng, To catch the last glimpse of her darling boy. 'Ah! spare my son; shed mine own blood instead: My life may satisfy your vengeful gods!'" Exclaims the hapless matron, but in vain. * * * * * THE THREE COURSES OF ACHILLES.