STORIES OF FAMOUS SONGS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—In the Spectator of January 22nd you wrote : "The For ever, never' refrain of The Old Clock on the Stairs' seems so entirely the natural language of a ticking time- piece, that it is almost provoking to learn that it was not directly suggested to Longfellow by the voice of a clock. He got the idea from an old French missionary," &c. I should doubt it. Do you know some remarkable blank verse by the late Lord Tennyson, written at fourteen, quoted in the memoir by Hallam (" Lord Tennyson," VoL L, p. 26) ?— " There is a clock in Pandemonium,
Hard by the burning throne of my great grandbire, The slow vibrations of whose pendulum, With click-clack alternation to and fro, Sound 'Ever, Never,' thro' the Courts of Hell."
The late Poet-Laureate used to say about these lines : "These are very good lines for a boy, but if I were to publish them now the Press would at once say that I had copied them from Longfellow, or that Longfellow had copied them from 27 Rutland Gate, S.W., January 26th.
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