Volume 93 — VERB. SAP.
Reading edition
(To a Wandering Star.)
"I am willing to throw in my lot with that of my friend Huxley, and 'to fight to the death' against this wicked and cowardly surrender. A desperate gamester miscalled a Statesman, has chosen to invoke ignorant foreign opinion against the instructed opinion of his own countrymen."—Professor Tyndall's last Letter to the Times.
Tyndall, Tyndall, learned star, How we wonder where you are! Fizzing up like penny pop, Coming down on Gladstone flop! "Desperate gamester!" Tyndall mine, Such invective is not fine. Have you not a card to trump, Rattling Randolph on the stump? Science in her calm retreat Ought that sort of bosh to beat; She, whose words should drop like gold, Must not ape an angry scold. Party scribes who rage for pay, When most rabid write that way, Politicians of the pot Perpetrate that sort of rot. Just suppose that W. G., Fancying your remarks too free, Dubbed you, in polemic rage, "Sciolist miscalled a sage." How you savants would cry "Shame!" Why should Science only claim Right to be exceeding rude, Sourly false and coarsely crude? "Wicked! Cowardly!" Oh, bless us! Hercules in the shirt of Nessus Did not rage in wilder fashion Than our Tyndall in a passion. Difference exists no doubt; Let us calmly fight it out; But to call each other names Is the vulgarest of games. Honestly one view you hold; If to differ one makes bold, Is it fair, Sir, to infer, That he's rascal, traitor, cur? Pooh! That's Party's puerile plan. Wisdom, Sir, should play the man. Drop these tart polemic pennings, Leave that sort of stuff to Jennings.