friend. In the number for February 7, 1846, appeared the following verses,— rather lame, indeed, but well intended: The "new Timon" And Alfred Tennyson's Pension. You've seen a burly mastiff's port, So stands the bard of Locksley Hall, "School-miss Alfred" then took up the cudgels for himself in very masculine fashion. The number of Punch for February 28, 1846, came out with some lines entitled "The New Timon and the Poets." They were signed "Alcibiades," but were universally recognized as Tennyson's. They are well known, but we will quote them in full: The "New Timon" And The Poets. We know him out of Shakespeare's art, And those fine curses which he spoke; That, strongly loathing, greatly broke. So died the Old: here comes the New. Regard him: a familiar face; The padded man,—that wears the stays,— Who killed the girls and thrilled the boys With dandy pathos when you wrote! And shook a mane en papillotes. And once you tried the Muses too: You failed, sir; therefore now you turn, As Captain is to Subaltern. But men of long-enduring hopes, And careless what this hour may bring, And Brummels, when they try to sting. An Artist, sir, should rest in Art, And waive a little of his claim: Is more than all poetic fame. But you, sir, you are hard to please: You never look but half content, With moral breadth of temperament. And what with spites, and what with fears, You cannot let a body be: "They call this man as good as me." What profits now to understand The merits of a spotless shirt, If half the little soul is dirt? You talk of tinsel! why, we see The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks. That fcpiil hi» life about the cliques. A Timon, you T Nay, nay, for shame I It looks too arrogant a je*t,— You bandbox 1 Off, and let him rest \ It is evident that " Alcibiades" had penetrated the anonymous authorship of the "New Timon." Indeed, the secret was an open one from the first. Though the poem has few of the virtues of Bulwer's prose, it has all its vices, and the critics at once laid the foundling at his door. A week later (March 7) "Alcibiades" followed his first return shot with another, which only indirectly alludes to the "New Timon" controversy. Literary Squabbles. Ah, God! the petty fools of rhyme That shriek and sweat in pygmy wars And looked at by the silent stars;— That hate each other for a song, And do their little best to bite; And scratch the very dead for spite;— And strive to make an inch of room For their sweet selves, and cannot hear On them and theirs, and all things here;— When one small touch of Charity Could lift them nearer Godlike state Like those that cried Diana great. And I too talk, and lose the touch I talk of. Surely, after all, Is kindly silence when they bawl. Tennyson has never publicly acknowledged these "Alcibiades" poems. He included them in no edition of his works. Nevertheless, their authorship is undeniable and undenied. They served their purpose. The victim was demolished. The public was with Tennyson. In the third edition of the 44 New Timon" the obnoxious lines and the note were withdrawn. Bulwer made no answer to " Alcibiades." But to Tennyson he seems to have written a private letter, whose contents we can only guess at from the following poem by Tennyson, written apparently in December, 1846: On A Spiteful Letter. Here, it is here,—the close of the year, And with it a spiteful letter. My fame in song has done him much wrong, For himself has done much better. 0 foolish bard! is your lot so hard If men neglect your pages? 1 think not much of yours or of mine; I hear the roll of the ages. This fallen leaf, isn't fame as brief? My rhymes may have been the stronger, Yet hate me not, but abide your lot; I last but a moment longer. O faded leaf, isn't fame as brief? What room is here for a hater? For it nangt one moment later. Greater than I,—isn't that your cry?— And I shall live to see it. And if it be so, so be it. O summar leaf, isn't life as brief? But this is the time of hollies, 1 hate the spites and follies. It is pleasant to note in conclusion that the feud, so bitter and rancorous while it lasted, was healed long before the death of Bulwer. Indeed, the poet-romancer might have paraphrased an old saying attributed to many famous men, by asserting that Lord Lytton did not remember the enmities of Bulwer. By the time he had become Lord Lytton he was a wealthy man, a man of fashion, of political and titular eminence,—a sort of golden link between literature and the aristocracy. He honestly strove to gain the good will of his literary fellow-laborers, even those who had formerly abused him. With such adjuncts, it was not difficult to succeed. Thackeray apologized for Yellowplush and Bui wig. The critics were gained over. A mutual admiration sprang up between the Laureate and the Lord, and in a speech made at Hertford, October 9, 1862, Lord Lytton made an amende honorable for his ill-considered verses when he said publicly, "We must comfort ourselves with the thought so exquisitely expressed by our Poet-Laureate, that the Prince we lament is still The silent father of our kings to be." New World, America, the Western Hemisphere. There is a tradition that Ferdinand and Isabella, at some date unspecified, granted to Columbus as a legend for his coat of arms the motto A Castilla y a Leon Nuevo mundo did Colon. (" To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a new world.") It is added that when the discoverer's bones were removed to Seville, the motto, by Ferdinand's orders, was placed on his tomb. There is no historical foundation for this story. It is first mentioned by Oviedo in 1535, who gives the motto a somewhat different turn: Por Castilla y por Leon Nuevo mundo hall6 Lolon. But the other form was preferred by Ferdinand Columbus, who about 1535, or earlier, had adopted it on his arms, and on whose tomb in the cathedral at Seville it may still be read. Evidently legend transferred to the father the motto adopted, if not invented, by the son. The phrase "New World" as applied to the recent discoveries was unknown to Columbus and his contemporaries. The true significance of these discoveries had not yet dawned upon ▼oyager or writer. Columbus died in the belief that he had found a new route to the Indies by sailing west. Nobody was looking for a new world, and when it at last came to be realized that America was not Asia it was looked upon merely as a barrier in the way to Asia. The main object of the explorers who entered its navigable streams was to ascertain if these might not prove to be arms of the sea separating the mass of land in two, and so leading to the longed-for haven. The phrase New World was first used by Amerigo Vespucci in a letter to Lorenzo de* Medici, written from Lisbon in March or April, 1503. "It is proper to call them a new world," he says, referring to the tract of Brazilian sea-coast, south of the equator, which he aaa had discovered on his third voyage. In 1504 a Latin version of the letter was published under the title "Mundus Novus," Its daring assertion of the existence of a populous land beyond the equator and unknown to the ancients (whose omniscience had not yet been questioned) excited great curiosity.. The pamphlet was a great success. It familiarized Europe with the title New World as applied to a great continent detached from Asia. Not yet, however, was any connection fancied between the discoveries of Columbus and those of Vespucci. In 1507, Martin Waldseemuller published a little treatise in which the suggestion was made that the Quarta Pars, or New and Fourth Part of the earth's surface, discovered by Americus Vespucius, should be called America. The suggestion was accepted without a word of protest, even from Ferdinand Columbus, the devoted son of the great navigator, himself an accomplished geographer. That he owned a copy of the book of Waldseemuller's, that he had it for eighteen years in his possession, and that he annotated it with fulness and care, these are known facts. Nevertheless, Ferdinand Columbus made no comment upon the passage in which the discovery of a new world is attributed to Vespucius. This silence is absolutely decisive. It proves that Ferdinand Columbus shared Waldseemuller's opinion that the Fourth Parf meant something very different from what we mean when we speak of Amer. ica, and that whereas Christopher Columbus had discovered the eastern coast of Asia, or, in other words, a section of the Old World, it was to Vespucius that the discovery of a New World south of the equator belonged. By the time geographers had comprehended that Brazil pertained to the same continent revealed by Columbus and Cabot, the terms Quarta Pars, New World, and America had become interchangeable and synonymous; and thus, not for the first time in history,—the extension of the term Africa is another example,—the part gave a name to the whole. See Fiske's "Discovery of America," chap, vii., "Mundus Novus." Newcastle, To carry coals to, a proverbial expression for unnecessary gifts or supererogatory favors, Newcastle being the greatest coal-mart in the world. The trade in coal seems to have been important from the beginning of the town. In 1239 the burgesses received from Henry III. a license to dig coals within the borough, and by the reign of Edward I. the business had increased so rapidly that Newcastle paid an annual revenue of two hundred pounds. In 1615 the trade employed four hundred ships, and extended to France and the Netherlands. Analogous expressions abound in every language,—viz.: To send owls to Athens, box to Cyprus, a clod to the ploughed field; to add a farthing to the millions of Croesus.—Greek. To give fruit to Alcinous (whose orchards were famous for bearing fruit all the year round); to take wood to the forest.—Latin. To carry oil to the City of Olives.—Hebrew. To carry pepper to Hindostan.—Persian. To carry water to the sea..—German. To carry leaves to the forest; to carry water to the river.—French. To carry wood to the mountains; to offer honey to the owner of beehives.—Spanish. A familiar proverb in the Middle Ages was, To send indulgences to Rome. Johannes Garlandius, a poet of the eleventh century, begins his "Opus Synonymorum" with a list of similar proverbial sayings: Porno vel Alcmoo vel mollia thura Sabaeo— I Ad vcterum curas euro superaddere nostras. Burton says, "To enlarge or illustrate the power and effect of love is to set a candle in the sun." {Anatomy of MJanchofyi Sec 2, Memb. 1, Subsec %.) But the most noteworthy example in poetry of similar metaphors occurs in Shakespeare, in the familiar lines,— To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. King John, Act iv., Sc. 2. Newcome, Johnny, a nickname particularly applied to a young, unpractised officer in the British army, and more generally to any raw, inexperienced youth. "A' comes o' taking folk on the right side, I trow," quoth Caleb to himself, " and I had ance the ill hap to say he was but a Johnny Newcome in our town, and the carle bore the family an ill will ever since."—Sir Walter Scott. Newland, Abraham. A Bank-of-England note used to be called an "Abraham Newland," from the name of the cashier, fifty or sixty years ago, to whose order the notes of the bank were made payable. The notes are celebrated thus in the words of a song of the period: For fashion and arts, should you seek foreign parts, It matters not wherever you land, The language of Abraham Newland. Chorus. News. It is popular to say that this word is derived from the initial letters of the four points of the compass arranged in a device in the form of a cross and placed at the top of some of the earlier news-sheets to indicate that their contents were derived from all quarters. But it is easy to show that this is purely fanciful. First, the earliest English newspaper dates from 1662, and we find the word news, exactly in its modern sense, in Shakespeare, who died nearly fifty years earlier,—namely, in 1616. Thus, we have " How now? What news?" (Macbeth, Act i., Sc. 7 ;)" But let time's news be known!" (Winter's Tale, Act iv.f Sc. 1 ;) "Even at that news he dies" (King John). This list, which might be extended indefinitely from Shakespeare and other old writers, would alone be sufficient to dispose of the north-east-west-south theory; but a reference to the equivalent words in the tongues to which English is most nearly allied will further show its fallacy. In German the initials of the points of the compass read in this order, N. O. W S., while the word for news is neuigkeiten, obviously impossible of derivation from these four letters, while it is derived from the word for new. Again, in French the initials are N. E. O. S., while the word for news is nouvelles% which is simply the plural form of the word for new. The true derivation does not seem difficult to trace. Some take it directly from the German das Neue^ which is an abstract noun signifying "the new, and equivalent to our news. The genitive is neues% and the phrase " Was giebt's neues?" renders the exact sense of our •' What's the news?" Moreover, the old German spelling is newt genitive newes. Yet this, plausible as it looks, is not the origin of the word. When we find in Anglo-Saxon such a phrase z&hwatniwes ? (" what news ?") we can be at no loss to determine that the word is of pure Low German or native English origin, although the French nouvelles may have influenced its use. The fact that the word is often used in the singular confirms this. Thus, we have in John Florio's |