He lived (not Death, but Juan) in a hurry

Of waste, and haste, and glare, and gloss, and glitter,

In this gay clime of bear-skins black and furry--

Which (though I hate to say a thing that's bitter)

Peep out sometimes, when things are in a flurry,

Through all the "purple and fine linen," fitter

For Babylon's than Russia's royal harlot--

And neutralise her outward show of scarlet.

XXVII.

And this same state we won't describe: we would

Perhaps from hearsay, or from recollection:

But getting nigh grim Dante's "obscure wood,"[539]

That horrid equinox, that hateful section

Of human years--that half-way house--that rude

Hut, whence wise travellers drive with circumspection[jz]

Life's sad post-horses o'er the dreary frontier

Of Age, and looking back to Youth, give _one_ tear;--

XXVIII.

I won't describe,--that is, if I can help

Description; and I won't reflect,--that is,

If I can stave off thought, which--as a whelp

Clings to its teat--sticks to me through the abyss

Of this odd labyrinth; or as the kelp

Holds by the rock; or as a lover's kiss

Drains its first draught of lips:--but, as I said,

I _won't_ philosophise, and _will_ be read.

XXIX.

Juan, instead of courting courts, was courted,--

A thing which happens rarely: this he owed

Much to his youth, and much to his reported

Valour; much also to the blood he showed,

Like a race-horse; much to each dress he sported,

Which set the beauty off in which he glowed,

As purple clouds befringe the sun; but most

He owed to an old woman and his post.

XXX.

He wrote to Spain;--and all his near relations,

Perceiving he was in a handsome way

Of getting on himself, and finding stations

For cousins also, answered the same day.

Several prepared themselves for emigrations;

And eating ices, were o'erheard to say,

That with the addition of a slight pelisse,

Madrid's and Moscow's climes were of a piece.

XXXI.

His mother, Donna Inez, finding, too,

That in the lieu of drawing on his banker,

Where his assets were waxing rather few,

He had brought his spending to a handsome anchor,--

Replied, "that she was glad to see him through

Those pleasures after which wild youth will hanker;

As the sole sign of Man's being in his senses

Is--learning to reduce his past expenses.[ka]

XXXII.

"She also recommended him to God,

And no less to God's Son, as well as Mother,

Warned him against Greek worship, which looks odd

In Catholic eyes; but told him, too, to smother

_Outward_ dislike, which don't look well abroad;

Informed him that he had a little brother

Born in a second wedlock; and above

All, praised the Empress's _maternal_ love.

XXXIII.

"She could not too much give her approbation

Unto an Empress, who preferred young men

Whose age, and what was better still, whose nation

And climate, stopped all scandal (now and then);--

At home it might have given her some vexation;

But where thermometers sink down to ten,

Or five, or one, or zero, she could never

Believe that Virtue thawed before the river."[kb]

XXXIV.

Oh for a _forty-parson power_[540]--to chant

Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh for a hymn

Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt,

Not practise! Oh for trump of Cherubim!

Or the ear-trumpet of my good old aunt,[541]

Who, though her spectacles at last grew dim,

Drew quiet consolation through its hint,

When she no more could read the pious print.

XXXV.

She was no Hypocrite at least, poor soul,

But went to heaven in as sincere a way

As anybody on the elected roll,

Which portions out upon the Judgment Day

Heaven's freeholds, in a sort of Doomsday scroll,

Such as the conqueror William did repay

His knights with, lotting others' properties

Into some sixty thousand new knights' fees.

XXXVI.

I can't complain, whose ancestors are there,

Erneis, Radulphus--eight-and-forty manors

(If that my memory doth not greatly err)

Were _their_ reward for following Billy's banners:[542]

And though I can't help thinking 't was scarce fair

To strip the Saxons of their _hydes_[543] like tanners;

Yet as they founded churches with the produce,

You'll deem, no doubt, they put it to a good use.[kc]

XXXVII.

The gentle Juan flourished, though at times

He felt like other plants called sensitive,

Which shrink from touch, as Monarchs do from rhymes,

Save such as Southey can afford to give.

Perhaps he longed in bitter frosts for climes

In which the Neva's ice would cease to live

Before May-day: perhaps, despite his duty,

In Royalty's vast arms he sighed for Beauty:

XXXVIII.

Perhaps--but, sans perhaps, we need not seek[kd]

For causes young or old: the canker-worm

Will feed upon the fairest, freshest cheek,

As well as further drain the withered form:

Care, like a housekeeper, brings every week

His bills in, and however we may storm,

They must be paid: though six days smoothly run,

The seventh will bring blue devils or a dun.

XXXIX.

I don't know how it was, but he grew sick:

The Empress was alarmed, and her physician

(The same who physicked Peter) found the tick

Of his fierce pulse betoken a condition

Which augured of the dead, however _quick_

Itself, and showed a feverish disposition;

At which the whole Court was extremely troubled,

The Sovereign shocked, and all his medicines doubled.

XL.

Low were the whispers, manifold the rumours:

Some said he had been poisoned by Potemkin;

Others talked learnedly of certain tumours,

Exhaustion, or disorders of the same kin;[544]

Some said 't was a concoction of the humours,

Which with the blood too readily will claim kin:

Others again were ready to maintain,

"'T was only the fatigue of last campaign."

XLI.

But here is one prescription out of many:

"_Sodae sulphat_. ʒvj. ʒfs. _Mannae optim._

_Aq. fervent._ f. ℥ ifs. ʒij. _tinct. Sennae_

_Haustus_" (And here the surgeon came and cupped him)

"℞ _Pulv. Com._ gr. iij. _Ipecacuanhæ_"

(With more beside if Juan had not stopped 'em).

"_Bolus Potassae Sulphuret. sumendus_,

_Et haustus ter in die capiendus._"

XLII.

This is the way physicians mend or end us,

_Secundum artem_: but although we sneer

In health--when ill, we call them to attend us,

Without the least propensity to jeer;

While that "_hiatus maxime deflendus_"

To be filled up by spade or mattock's near,

Instead of gliding graciously down Lethe,

We tease mild Baillie,[545] or soft Abernethy.

XLIII.

Juan demurred at this first notice to

Quit; and though Death had threatened an ejection,

His youth and constitution bore him through,

And sent the doctors in a new direction.

But still his state was delicate: the hue

Of health but flickered with a faint reflection

Along his wasted cheek, and seemed to gravel

The faculty--who said that he must travel.

XLIV.

The climate was too cold, they said, for him,

Meridian-born, to bloom in. This opinion

Made the chaste Catherine look a little grim,

Who did not like at first to lose her minion:

But when she saw his dazzling eye wax dim,

And drooping like an eagle's with clipt pinion,

She then resolved to send him on a mission,

But in a style becoming his condition.

XLV.

There was just then a kind of a discussion,

A sort of treaty or negotiation,

Between the British cabinet and Russian,

Maintained with all the due prevarication

With which great states such things are apt to push on;

Something about the Baltic's navigation,

Hides, train-oil, tallow, and the rights of Thetis,

Which Britons deem their _uti possidetis_.

XLVI.

So Catherine, who had a handsome way

Of fitting out her favourites, conferred

This secret charge on Juan, to display

At once her royal splendour, and reward

His services. He kissed hands the next day,

Received instructions how to play his card,

Was laden with all kinds of gifts and honours,

Which showed what great discernment was the donor's.

XLVII.

But she was lucky, and luck's all. Your Queens

Are generally prosperous in reigning--

Which puzzles us to know what Fortune means:--

But to continue--though her years were waning,

Her climacteric teased her like her teens;

And though her dignity brooked no complaining,

So much did Juan's setting off distress her,

She could not find at first a fit successor.

XLVIII.

But Time, the comforter, will come at last;

And four-and-twenty hours, and twice that number

Of candidates requesting to be placed,

Made Catherine taste next night a quiet slumber:--

Not that she meant to fix again in haste,

Nor did she find the quantity encumber,

But always choosing with deliberation,

Kept the place open for their emulation.

XLIX.

While this high post of honour's in abeyance,

For one or two days, reader, we request

You'll mount with our young hero the conveyance

Which wafted him from Petersburgh: the best

Barouche, which had the glory to display once

The fair Czarina's autocratic crest,

When, a new Iphigene, she went to Tauris,

Was given to her favourite,[546] and now _bore his_.

L.

A bull-dog, and a bullfinch, and an ermine,

All private favourites of Don Juan;--for

(Let deeper sages the true cause determine)

He had a kind of inclination, or

Weakness, for what most people deem mere vermin,

Live animals: an old maid of threescore

For cats and birds more penchant ne'er displayed,

Although he was not old, nor even a maid;--

LI.

The animals aforesaid occupied

Their station: there were valets, secretaries,

In other vehicles; but at his side

Sat little Leila, who survived the parries

He made 'gainst Cossacque sabres in the wide

Slaughter of Ismail. Though my wild Muse varies

Her note, she don't forget the infant girl

Whom he preserved, a pure and living pearl.

LII.

Poor little thing! She was as fair as docile,

And with that gentle, serious character,

As rare in living beings as a fossile

Man, 'midst thy mouldy mammoths, "grand Cuvier!"[ke]

Ill fitted was her ignorance to jostle

With this o'erwhelming world, where all must err:

But she was yet but ten years old, and therefore

Was tranquil, though she knew not why or wherefore.

LIII.

Don Juan loved her, and she loved him, as

Nor brother, father, sister, daughter love.--

I cannot tell exactly what it was;

He was not yet quite old enough to prove

Parental feelings, and the other class,

Called brotherly affection, could not move

His bosom,--for he never had a sister:

Ah! if he had--how much he would have missed her!

LIV.

And still less was it sensual; for besides

That he was not an ancient debauchee,

(Who like sour fruit, to stir their veins' salt tides,

As acids rouse a dormant alkali,)[kf]

Although (_'t will_ happen as our planet guides)

His youth was not the chastest that might be,

There was the purest Platonism at bottom

Of all his feelings--only he forgot 'em.

LV.

Just now there was no peril of temptation;

He loved the infant orphan he had saved,

As patriots (now and then) may love a nation;

His pride, too, felt that she was not enslaved

Owing to him;--as also her salvation

Through his means and the Church's might be paved.

But one thing's odd, which here must be inserted,

The little Turk refused to be converted.

LVI.

'T was strange enough she should retain the impression

Through such a scene of change, and dread, and slaughter;

But though three Bishops told her the transgression,

She showed a great dislike to holy water;

She also had no passion for confession;

Perhaps she had nothing to confess:--no matter,

Whate'er the cause, the Church made little of it--

She still held out that Mahomet was a prophet.

LVII.

In fact, the only Christian she could bear

Was Juan; whom she seemed to have selected

In place of what her home and friends once _were_.

_He_ naturally loved what he protected:

And thus they formed a rather curious pair,

A guardian green in years, a ward connected

In neither clime, time, blood, with her defender;

And yet this want of ties made theirs more tender.

LVIII.

They journeyed on through Poland and through Warsaw,

Famous for mines of salt and yokes of iron:

Through Courland also, which that famous farce saw

Which gave her dukes the graceless name of "Biron."[547]

'T is the same landscape which the modern Mars saw,

Who marched to Moscow, led by Fame, the Siren!

To lose by one month's frost some twenty years

Of conquest, and his guard of Grenadiers.

LIX.

Let this not seem an anti-climax:--"Oh!

My guard! my old guard!"[548] exclaimed that god of clay.

Think of the Thunderer's falling down below

Carotid-artery-cutting Castlereagh![kg]

Alas! that glory should be chilled by snow!

But should we wish to warm us on our way

Through Poland, there is Kosciusko's name

Might scatter fire through ice, like Hecla's flame.

LX.

From Poland they came on through Prussia Proper,

And Königsberg, the capital, whose vaunt,

Besides some veins of iron, lead, or copper,

Has lately been the great Professor Kant.[549]

Juan, who cared not a tobacco-stopper

About philosophy, pursued his jaunt

To Germany, whose somewhat tardy millions

Have princes who spur more than their postilions.

LXI.

And thence through Berlin, Dresden, and the like,

Until he reached the castellated Rhine:--

Ye glorious Gothic scenes! how much ye strike

All phantasies, not even excepting mine!

A grey wall, a green ruin, rusty pike,

Make my soul pass the equinoctial line

Between the present and past worlds, and hover

Upon their airy confines, half-seas-over.

LXII.

But Juan posted on through Mannheim, Bonn,

Which Drachenfels[550] frowns over like a spectre

Of the good feudal times for ever gone,

On which I have not time just now to lecture.

From thence he was drawn onwards to Cologne,

A city which presents to the inspector

Eleven thousand maiden heads of bone.

The greatest number flesh hath ever known.[551]

LXIII.

From thence to Holland's Hague and Helvoetsluys,

That water-land of Dutchmen and of ditches,

Where juniper expresses its best juice,

The poor man's sparkling substitute for riches.

Senates and sages have condemned its use--

But to deny the mob a cordial, which is

Too often all the clothing, meat, or fuel,

Good government has left them, seems but cruel.

LXIV.

Here he embarked, and with a flowing sail

Went bounding for the Island of the free,

Towards which the impatient wind blew half a gale;

High dashed the spray, the bows dipped in the sea,

And sea-sick passengers turned somewhat pale;

But Juan, seasoned, as he well might be,

By former voyages, stood to watch the skiffs

Which passed, or catch the first glimpse of the cliffs.

LXV.

At length they rose, like a white wall along

The blue sea's border; and Don Juan felt--

What even young strangers feel a little strong

At the first sight of Albion's chalky belt--

A kind of pride that he should be among

Those haughty shopkeepers, who sternly dealt

Their goods and edicts out from pole to pole,

And made the very billows pay them toll.

LXVI.

I've no great cause to love that spot of earth,

Which holds what _might have been_ the noblest nation;

But though I owe it little but my birth,

I feel a mixed regret and veneration

For its decaying fame and former worth.

Seven years (the usual term of transportation)

Of absence lay one's old resentments level,

When a man's country's going to the devil.

LXVII.

Alas! could she but fully, truly, know

How her great name is now throughout abhorred;

How eager all the Earth is for the blow

Which shall lay bare her bosom to the sword;

How all the nations deem her their worst foe,

That worse than _worst of foes_, the once adored

False friend, who held out Freedom to Mankind,

And now would chain them--to the very _mind_;--

LXVIII.

Would she be proud, or boast herself the free,

Who is but first of slaves? The nations are

In prison,--but the gaoler, what is he?

No less a victim to the bolt and bar.

Is the poor privilege to turn the key

Upon the captive, Freedom? He's as far

From the enjoyment of the earth and air

Who watches o'er the chain, as they who wear.

LXIX.

Don Juan now saw Albion's earliest beauties,

Thy cliffs, _dear_ Dover! harbour, and hotel;

Thy custom-house, with all its delicate duties;

Thy waiters running mucks at every bell;

Thy packets, all whose passengers are booties

To those who upon land or water dwell;

And last, not least, to strangers uninstructed,

Thy long, long bills, whence nothing is deducted.

LXX.

Juan, though careless, young, and _magnifique_,

And rich in rubles, diamonds, cash, and credit,

Who did not limit much his bills per week,

Yet stared at this a little, though he paid it,--

(His Maggior Duomo, a smart, subtle Greek,

Before him summed the awful scroll and read it):

But, doubtless, as the air--though seldom sunny--

Is free, the respiration's worth the money.

LXXI.

On with the horses! Off to Canterbury!

Tramp, tramp o'er pebble, and splash, splash through puddle;

Hurrah! how swiftly speeds the post so merry!

Not like slow Germany, wherein they muddle

Along the road,[552] as if they went to bury

Their fare; and also pause besides, to fuddle

With "schnapps"--sad dogs! whom "Hundsfot," or "Verflucter,"[553]

Affect no more than lightning a conductor.[kh]

LXXII.

Now there is nothing gives a man such spirits,

Leavening his blood as cayenne doth a curry,

As going at full speed--no matter where its

Direction be, so 't is but in a hurry,

And merely for the sake of its own merits;

For the less cause there is for all this flurry,

The greater is the pleasure in arriving

At the great _end_ of travel--which is driving.

LXXIII.

They saw at Canterbury the cathedral;

Black Edward's helm, and Becket's bloody stone,

Were pointed out as usual by the bedral,

In the same quaint, uninterested tone:--

There's glory again for you, gentle reader! All

Ends in a rusty casque and dubious bone,[554]

Half-solved into these sodas or magnesias,

Which form that bitter draught, the human species.

LXXIV.

The effect on Juan was of course sublime:

He breathed a thousand Cressys, as he saw

That casque, which never stooped except to Time.

Even the bold Churchman's tomb excited awe,

Who died in the then great attempt to climb

O'er Kings, who _now_ at least _must talk_ of Law

Before they butcher. Little Leila gazed,

And asked why such a structure had been raised:

LXXV.

And being told it was "God's House," she said

He was well lodged, but only wondered how

He suffered Infidels in his homestead,

The cruel Nazarenes, who had laid low

His holy temples in the lands which bred

The True Believers;--and her infant brow

Was bent with grief that Mahomet should resign

A mosque so noble, flung like pearls to swine.

LXXVI.

On! on! through meadows, managed like a garden,

A paradise of hops and high production;

For, after years of travel by a bard in

Countries of greater heat, but lesser suction,

A green field is a sight which makes him pardon

The absence of that more sublime construction,

Which mixes up vines--olives--precipices--

Glaciers--volcanoes--oranges and ices.

LXXVII.

And when I think upon a pot of beer----

But I won't weep!--and so drive on, postilions!

As the smart boys spurred fast in their career,

Juan admired these highways of free millions--

A country in all senses the most dear

To foreigner or native, save some silly ones,

Who "kick against the pricks" just at this juncture,

And for their pains get only a fresh puncture.[ki]

LXXVIII.

What a delightful thing's a turnpike road!

So smooth, so level, such a mode of shaving

The Earth, as scarce the eagle in the broad

Air can accomplish, with his wide wings waving.

Had such been cut in Phaeton's time, the god

Had told his son to satisfy his craving

With the York mail;--but onward as we roll,

_Surgit amari aliquid_--the toll![555]

LXXIX.

Alas! how deeply painful is all payment!

Take lives--take wives--take aught except men's purses:

As Machiavel shows those in purple raiment,

Such is the shortest way to general curses.[556]

They hate a murderer much less than a claimant

On that sweet ore which everybody nurses.--

Kill a man's family, and he may brook it,

But keep your hands out of his breeches' pocket:

LXXX.

So said the Florentine: ye monarchs, hearken

To your instructor. Juan now was borne,

Just as the day began to wane and darken,

O'er the high hill, which looks with pride or scorn

Toward the great city.--Ye who have a spark in

Your veins of Cockney spirit, smile or mourn

According as you take things well or ill;--

Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill!

LXXXI.

The Sun went down, the smoke rose up, as from

A half-unquenched volcano, o'er a space

Which well beseemed the "Devil's drawing-room,"

As some have qualified that wondrous place:

But Juan felt, though not approaching _Home_,

As one who, though he were not of the race,

Revered the soil, of those true sons the mother,

Who butchered half the earth, and bullied t' other.[557]

LXXXII.

A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,

Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye

Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping

In sight, then lost amidst the forestry

Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping

On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy;

A huge, dun Cupola, like a foolscap crown

On a fool's head--and there is London Town!

LXXXIII.

But Juan saw not this: each wreath of smoke

Appeared to him but as the magic vapour

Of some alchymic furnace, from whence broke

The wealth of worlds (a wealth of tax and paper):

The gloomy clouds, which o'er it as a yoke

Are bowed, and put the Sun out like a taper,

Were nothing but the natural atmosphere,

Extremely wholesome, though but rarely clear.

LXXXIV.

He paused--and so will I; as doth a crew

Before they give their broadside. By and by,

My gentle countrymen, we will renew

Our old acquaintance; and at least I'll try

To tell you truths _you_ will not take as true,

Because they are so;--a male Mrs. Fry,[558]

With a soft besom will I sweep your halls,

And brush a web or two from off the walls.

LXXXV.

Oh Mrs. Fry! Why go to Newgate? Why

Preach to _poor_ rogues? And wherefore not begin

With Carlton, or with other houses? Try

Your hand at hardened and imperial Sin.

To mend the People's an absurdity,

A jargon, a mere philanthropic din,

Unless you make their betters better:--Fie!

I thought you had more religion, Mrs. Fry.

LXXXVI.

Teach _them_ the decencies of good threescore;

Cure _them_ of tours, hussar and highland dresses;

Tell _them_ that youth once gone returns no more,

That hired huzzas redeem no land's distresses;

Tell them Sir William Curtis[559] is a bore,

Too dull even for the dullest of excesses--

The witless Falstaff of a hoary Hal,

A fool whose bells have ceased to ring at all.

LXXXVII.

Tell them, though it may be, perhaps, too late--

On Life's worn confine, jaded, bloated, sated--

To set up vain pretence of being _great_,

'T is not so to be _good_; and, be it stated,

The worthiest kings have ever loved least state:

And tell them--But you won't, and I have prated

Just now enough; but, by and by, I'll prattle

Like Roland's horn[560] in Roncesvalles' battle.[kj][561]

FOOTNOTES:

{400}[jt] _In a most natural whirling of rotation_.--[MS. erased.]

[ju] _Since Adam--gloriously against an apple_.--[MS. erased.]

[525] ["Neither Pemberton nor Whiston, who received from Newton himself

the history of his first Ideas of Gravity, records the story of the

falling apple. It was mentioned, however, to Voltaire by Catherine

Barton (afterwards Mrs. Conduit), Newton's niece. We saw the apple tree

in 1814.... The tree was so much decayed that it was taken down in 1820"

(_Memoirs, etc., of Sir Isaac Newton_, by Sir David Brewster, 1855, i.

27, note 1). Voltaire tells the story thus (_Éléments de la Philosophie

de Newton_, Partie III. chap, iii.): "Un jour, en l'année 1666 [1665],

Newton, retiré à la campagne, et voyant tomber des fruits d'un arbre, à

ce que m'a conté sa nièce (Madame Conduit), se laissa aller à une

méditation profonde sur la cause qui entraîne ainsi tous les corps dans

une ligne qui, si elle était prolongée, passerait à peu près par le

centre de la terre."--_Oeuvres Complètes_, 1837, v. 727.]

[jv] _To the then unploughed stars_----.--[MS. erased.]

{401}[526] [Compare _Churchill's Grave,_ line 23, _Poetical Works,_

1901, iv. 47, note 1.]

[527] [Shelley entitles him "The Pilgrim of Eternity," in his _Adonais_

(stanza xxx. line 3), which was written and published at Pisa in 1821.]

{402}[528] [Byron left Pisa (Palazzo Lanfranchi on the Arno) for the

Villa Saluzzo at Genoa, in the autumn of 1822.]

[jw]: {403} _Malicious people_--.--[MS. erased.]

[529] ["We think the abuse of Mr. Southey ... by far too savage and

intemperate. It is of ill example, we think, in the literary world, and

does no honour either to the _taste_ or the _temper_ of the noble

author." --_Edinburgh Review_, February, 1822, vol. xxxvi. p. 445.

"I have read the recent article of Jeffrey ... I suppose the long and

the short of it is, that he wishes to provoke me to reply. But I won't,

for I owe him a good turn still for his kindness by-gone. Indeed, I

presume that the present opportunity of attacking me again was

irresistible; and I can't blame him, knowing what human nature

is."--Letter to Moore, June 8, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 80.]

[jx]--_that essence of all Lie_.--[MS. erased.]

{404}[530] "Reformers," or rather "Reformed." The Baron Bradwardine in

_Waverley_ is authority for the word. [The word is certainly in Butler's

_Hudibras_, Part II. Canto 2--

"Although your Church be opposite

To mine as Black Fryars are to White,

In _Rule_ and _Order_, yet I grant

You are a _Reformado Saint_."]

[531] [Stanza XV. is not in the MS. The "legal broom," _sc._ Brougham,

was an afterthought.]

[532] Query, _suit_?--Printer's Devil.

[533] [It has been argued that when "great Cæsar fell" he wore his

"robe" to muffle up his face, and that, in like manner, Jeffrey sank the

critic in the lawyer. A "deal likelier" interpretation is that Jeffrey

wore "his gown" right royally, as Cæsar wore his "triumphal robe." (See

Plutarch's _Julius Cæsar_, Langhorne's translation, 1838, p. 515.)]

{405}[534] ["I don't like to bore you about the Scotch novels (as they

call them, though two of them are English, and the rest half so); but

nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes

in your company, that you are _not_ the man. To me these novels have so

much of 'Auld Lang Syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old),

that I never move without them."--Letter to Sir W. Scott, January 12,

1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 4, 5.]

[535] [Compare _The Island_, Canto II. lines 280-297.]

[536] The brig of Don, near the "auld toun" of Aberdeen, with its one

arch, and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as

yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote, the awful

proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a

childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side. The

saying as recollected by me was this, but I have never heard or seen it

since I was nine years of age:--

"Brig of Balgounie, _black_'s your _wa'_,

Wi' a wife's _ae son_, and a mear's _ae foal_,

Doun ye shall fa'!"

[See for illustration of the Brig o' Balgownie, with its single Gothic

arch, _Letters_, 1901 [L.P.], v. 406. ]

{406}[537]

["Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,

Land of the mountain and the flood," etc.

_Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Canto VI. stanza ii.]

{407}[jy]

_Some thirty years before at fair eighteen_.--[MS.]

or, _Seven and twenty_--which, _it does not matter_,--

_Wrinkles, those damnedst democrats, won't flatter_.--[MS. erased.]

[538] Tiberius Gracchus, being tribune of the people, demanded in their

name the execution of the Agrarian law; by which all persons possessing

above a certain number of acres were to be deprived of the surplus for

the benefit of the poor citizens.

{408}[539]

"Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura."

_Inferno_, Canto I. line 2.

[jz] _Hut where we travellers bait with dim reflection_.--[MS. erased.]

{409}[ka] _Is when he learns to limit his expenses_.--[MS. erased.]

[kb]

---- _till the ice_

_Cracked, she would ne'er believe in thaws for vice_.--[MS. erased.]

{410}[540] A metaphor taken from the "forty-horse power" of a

steam-engine. That mad wag, the Reverend Sydney Smith, sitting by a

brother clergyman at dinner, observed afterwards that his dull neighbour

had a _"twelve-parson power"_ of conversation.

[541] [In a letter to his sister, October 25, 1804 (_Letters_, 1898, i.

40), Byron mentions an aunt--"the amiable antiquated Sophia," and asks,

"Is she yet in the land of the living, or does she sing psalms with the

Blessed in the other world?" This was his father's sister, Sophia Maria,

daughter of Admiral the Hon. John Byron. But his "good old aunt" is,

more probably, the Hon. Mrs. Frances Byron, widow of George (born April

22, 1730) son of the fourth, and brother of the "Wicked" lord. She was

the daughter and co-heiress of Ellis Levett, Esq., and lived "at

Nottingham in her own house." She died, aged 86, June 13, 1822, not long

before this Canto was written. She is described in the obituary notice

of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, June, 1822, vol. 92, p. 573, as "Daughter

of Vice-Admiral the Hon. John Byron (who sailed round the world with

Lord Anson), grandfather of the present Lord Byron." But that is,

chronologically, impossible. Byron must have retained a pleasing

recollection of the ear-trumpet and the spectacles, and it gratified his

kindlier humour to embalm their owner in his verse.]

[542] [See Collins's _Peerage_, 1779, vii. 120. It is probable that

Byron was lineally descended from Ralph de Burun, of Horestan, who is

mentioned in Doomsday Book (sect. xi.) as holding eight lordships in

Notts and five in Derbyshire, but with regard to Ernysius or Erneis the

pedigree is silent. (See _Pedigree of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron_,

by Edward Bernard, 1870.)]

{411}[543] "Hyde."--I believe a hyde of land to be a legitimate word,

and, as such, subject to the tax of a quibble.

[kc]

_And humbly hope that the same God which hath given_

_Us land on earth, will do no less in Heaven_.--[MS. erased.]

[kd] _Perhaps--but d--n perhaps_----.--[MS.]

{412}[544] [For the illness ("a scarlet fever, complicated by angina,

both aggravated by premature exhaustion") and death of Lanskoï, see _The

Story of a Throne_, by K. Waliszewsky, 1895, ii. 131, 133. For the

rumour that he was poisoned by Potemkin, see _Mémoires Secrets, etc._

[by C.F.P. Masson], 1800, i. 170.]

[545] [Matthew Baillie (1761-1823), the nephew of William Hunter, the

brother of Agnes and Joanna Baillie, was a celebrated anatomist. He

attended Byron (1799-1802), when an endeavour was made to effect a cure

of the muscular contraction of his right leg and foot. He was consulted

by Lady Byron, in 1816, with regard to her husband's supposed

derangement, but was not admitted when he called at the house in

Piccadilly. He is said to have "avoided technical and learned phrases;

to have affected no sentimental tenderness, but expressed what he had to

say in the simplest and plainest terms" (_Annual Biography_, 1824, p.

319). Jekyll (_Letters_, 1894, p. 110) repeats or invents an anecdote

that "the old king, in his mad fits, used to say he could bring any dead

people to converse with him, except those who had died under Baillie's

care, for that the doctor always dissected them into so many morsels,

that they had not a leg to walk to Windsor with." It is hardly necessary

to say that John Abernethy (1764-1831) "expressed what _he_ had to say"

in the bluntest and rudest terms at his disposal.]

[546] The empress went to the Crimea, accompanied by the Emperor Joseph,

in the year--I forget which.

[The Prince de Ligne, who accompanied Catherine in her progress through

her southern provinces, in 1787, gives the following particulars: "We

have crossed during many days vast, solitary regions, from which her

Majesty has driven Zaporogua, Budjak, and Nogais Tartars, who, ten years

ago, threatened to ravage her empire. All these places were furnished

with magnificent tents for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, suppers, and

sleeping-rooms ... deserted regions were at once transformed into

fields, groves, villages: ... The Empress has left in each chief town

gifts to the value of a hundred thousand roubles. Every day that we

remained stationary was marked with diamonds, balls, fireworks, and

illuminations throughout a circuit of ten leagues." --_The Prince de

Ligne, His Memoirs, etc._, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley,

1899, ii. 31.]

{415}[ke] _Man, midst thy mouldy mammoths, Cuvier._--[MS.]

{416}[kf]

_Who like sour fruit to sharpen up the tides_

_Of their salt veins, and stir their stagnancy._--[MS. erased.]

{417}[547] In the Empress Anne's time, Biren, her favourite, assumed the

name and arms of the "Birons" of France; which families are yet extant

with that of England. There are still the daughters of Courland of that

name; one of them I remember seeing in England in the blessed year of

the Allies (1814)--the Duchess of S.--to whom the English Duchess of

Somerset presented me as a namesake.

["Ernest John Biren was born in Courland [in 1690]. His grandfather had

been head groom to James, the third Duke of Courland, and obtained from

his master the present of a small estate in land.... In 1714 he made his

appearance at St. Petersburg, and solicited the place of page to the

Princess Charlotte, wife of the Tzarovitch Alexey; but being

contemptuously rejected as a person of mean extraction, retired to

Mittau, where he chanced to ingratiate himself with Count Bestuchef,

Master of the Household to Anne, widow of Frederic William, Duke of

Courland, who resided at Mittau. Being of a handsome figure and polite

address, he soon gained the good will of the duchess, and became her

secretary and chief favourite. On her being declared sovereign of

Russia, Anne called Biren to Petersburg, and the secretary soon became

Duke of Courland, and first minister or rather despot of Russia. On the

death of Anne, which happened in 1740, Biren, being declared regent,

continued daily increasing his vexations and cruelties, till he was

arrested, on the 18th of December, only twenty days after he had been

appointed to the regency; and at the revolution that ensued he was

exiled to the frozen shores of the Oby." _Catherine II._, by W. Tooke,

1800, i. 160, _footnote_. He was recalled in 1763, and died in 1772.

In a letter to his sister, dated June 18, 1814, Byron gives a slightly

different version of the incident, recorded in his note (_vide supra_):

"The Duchess of Somerset also, to mend matters, insisted on presenting

me to a Princess _Biron_, Duchess of Hohen-God-knows-what, and another

person to her two sisters, Birons too. But I flew off, and _would_ not,

saying I had had enough of introductions for that night at

least."--_Letters_, 1899, iii. 98. The "daughters of Courland" must have

been descendants of "Pierre, dernier Duc de Courlande, De la Maison de

Biron," viz. Jeanne Cathérine, born June 24, 1783, who married, in 1801,

François Pignatelli de Belmonte, Duc d'Acerenza, and Dorothée, born

August 21, 1793, who married, in 1809, Edmond de Talleyrand Périgord,

Duc de Talleyrand, nephew to the Bishop of Autun. (See _Almanach de

Gotha_, 1848, pp. 109, 110.)]

{418}[548] [Napoleon's exclamation at the Elysée Bourbon, June 23, 1815.

"When his civil counsellors talked of defence, the word wrung from him

the bitter ejaculation, 'Ah! my old guard! could they but defend

themselves like you!'"--_Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_, by Sir Walter

Scott, _Prose Works_, 1846, ii. 760.]

[kg]

_Who now that he is dead has not a foe_;

_The last expired in cut-throat Castlereagh_.--[MS. erased.]

[549] [Immanuel Kant, born at Königsberg, in 1729, became Professor and

Rector of the University, and died at Königsberg in 1804.]

{419}[550]

["The castled crag of Drachenfels

Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine," etc.

_Childe Harold_, Canto III.]

[551] St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins were still extant in

1816, and may be so yet, as much as ever.

{421}[552] ["We left Ratzeburg at 7 o'clock Wednesday evening, and

arrived at Lüneburg--_i.e._ 35 English miles--at 3 o'clock on Thursday

afternoon. This is a fair specimen! In England I used to laugh at the

'flying waggons;' but compared with a German Post-Coach, the metaphor is

perfectly justifiable, and for the future I shall never meet a flying

waggon without thinking respectfully of its speed."--S.T. Coleridge,

March 12, 1799, _Letters of S.T.C._, 1895, i. 278.]

[553] [See for German oaths, "Extracts from a Diary," January 12, 1821,

_Letters_, 1901, v. 172.]

[kh]

_With "Schnapps"--Democritus would cease to smile,_

_By German, post-boys driven a mile_.--[MS.]

_With "Schnapps"--and spite of "Dam'em," "dog" and "log"_

_Launched at their heads jog-jog-jog-jog-jog-jog_.--[MS. erased.]

{422}[554] [The French Inscription (see _Memorial Inscriptions_, etc.,

by Joseph Meadows Cowper, 1897, p. 134) on the Black Prince's monument

is thus translated in the _History of Kent_ (John Weevers' _Funerall

Monuments_, 1636, pp. 205, 206)--

"Who so thou be that passeth by

Where this corps entombed lie,

Understand what I shall say,

As at this time, speake I may.

Such as thou art, sometime was I.

Such as I am, shalt thou be.

I little thought on th' oure of death,

So long as I enjoyéd breath.

Great riches here did I possess,

Whereof I made great nobleness;

I had gold, silver, wardrobes, and

Great treasure, horses, houses, land.

But now a caitife poore am I,

Deepe in the ground, lo! here I lie;

My beautie great is all quite gone,

My flesh is wasted to the bone.

My house is narrow now and throng,

Nothing but Truth comes from my tongue.

And if ye should see me this day,

I do not think but ye would say,

That I had never beene a man,

So much altered now I am."]

{423}[ki]

---- _of higher stations_,

_And for their pains get smarter puncturations_.--[MS. erased.]

{424}[555] [See _Childe Harold_, Canto I. stanza xxxii. line 2,

_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 93, note 16.]

[556] [See _The Prince_ (_Il Principe_), chap. xvii., by Niccolò

Machiavelli, translated by Ninian Hill Thomson, 1897, p. 121: "But above

all [a Prince] must abstain from the property of others. For men will

sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their

patrimony."]

[557] [India; America.]

{425}[558] [Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) began her visits to Newgate in

1813. In 1820 she corresponded with the Princess Sophie of Russia, and

at a later period she was entertained by Louis Philippe, and by the King

of Prussia at Kaiserwerth. She might have, she may have, admonished

George IV. "with regard to all good things."]

{426}[559] [See _The Age of Bronze_, line 768, _Poetical Works_, 1901,

v. 578, note 1.]

[560]

["O for a blast of that dread horn,

On Fontarabian echoes borne,

That to King Charles did come,

When Rowland brave, and Olivier,

And every paladin and peer,

On Roncesvalles died."

_Marmion_, Canto VI. stanza xxxiii. lines 7-12.]

[kj] _Like an old Roman trumpet ere a battle_.--[MS. erased.]

[561] B. Genoa, Oct. 6^th^, 1822. End of Canto 10^th^.

CANTO THE ELEVENTH.

I.

WHEN Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter,"[562]

And proved it--'t was no matter what he said:

They say his system 't is in vain to batter,

Too subtle for the airiest human head;

And yet who can believe it? I would shatter

Gladly all matters down to stone or lead,

Or adamant, to find the World a spirit,

And wear my head, denying that I wear it.

II.

What a sublime discovery 't was to make the

Universe universal egotism,

That all's ideal--_all ourselves!_--I'll stake the

World (be it what you will) that _that's_ no schism.

Oh Doubt!--if thou be'st Doubt, for which some take thee,

But which I doubt extremely--thou sole prism

Of the Truth's rays, spoil not my draught of spirit!

Heaven's brandy, though our brain can hardly bear it.

III.

For ever and anon comes Indigestion

(Not the most "dainty Ariel"),[563] and perplexes

Our soarings with another sort of question:

And that which after all my spirit vexes,

Is, that I find no spot where Man can rest eye on,

Without confusion of the sorts and sexes,

Of Beings, Stars, and this unriddled wonder,

The World, which at the worst's a _glorious_ blunder--

IV.

If it be chance--or, if it be according

To the old text, still better:--lest it should

Turn out so, we 'll say nothing 'gainst the wording,

As several people think such hazards rude.

They're right; our days are too brief for affording

Space to dispute what _no one_ ever could

Decide, and _everybody one day_ will

Know very clearly--or at least lie still.

V.

And therefore will I leave off metaphysical

Discussion, which is neither here nor there:

If I agree that what is, is; then this I call

Being quite perspicuous and extremely fair;

The truth is, I've grown lately rather phthisical:[564]

I don't know what the reason is--the air

Perhaps; but as I suffer from the shocks

Of illness, I grow much more orthodox.

VI.

The first attack at once proved the Divinity

(But that I never doubted, nor the Devil);

The next, the Virgin's mystical virginity;

The third, the usual Origin of Evil;

The fourth at once established the whole Trinity

On so uncontrovertible a level,

That I devoutly wished the three were four--

On purpose to believe so much the more.

VII.

To our theme.--The man who has stood on the Acropolis,

And looked down over Attica; or he

Who has sailed where picturesque Constantinople is,

Or seen Timbuctoo, or hath taken tea

In small-eyed China's crockery-ware metropolis,

Or sat amidst the bricks of Nineveh,[kk]

May not think much of London's first appearance--

But ask him what he thinks of it a year hence!

VIII.

Don Juan had got out on Shooter's Hill;

Sunset the time, the place the same declivity

Which looks along that vale of Good and Ill

Where London streets ferment in full activity,

While everything around was calm and still,

Except the creak of wheels, which on their pivot he

Heard,--and that bee-like, bubbling, busy hum

Of cities, that boil over with their scum:--

IX.

I say, Don Juan, wrapped in contemplation,

Walked on behind his carriage, o'er the summit,

And lost in wonder of so great a nation,

Gave way to 't, since he could not overcome it.

"And here," he cried, "is Freedom's chosen station;

Here peals the People's voice, nor can entomb it

Racks--prisons--inquisitions; Resurrection

Awaits it, each new meeting or election.

X.

"Here are chaste wives, pure lives; here people pay

But what they please; and if that things be dear,

'T is only that they love to throw away

Their cash, to show how much they have a-year.

Here laws are all inviolate--none lay

Traps for the traveller--every highway's clear--

Here"--he was interrupted by a knife,

With--"Damn your eyes! your money or your life!"--

XI.

These free-born sounds proceeded from four pads

In ambush laid, who had perceived him loiter

Behind his carriage; and, like handy lads,

Had seized the lucky hour to reconnoitre,

In which the heedless gentleman who gads

Upon the road, unless he prove a fighter,

May find himself within that isle of riches

Exposed to lose his life as well as breeches.

XII.

Juan, who did not understand a word

Of English, save their shibboleth, "God damn!"[565]

And even that he had so rarely heard,

He sometimes thought 't was only their "Salām,"

Or "God be with you!"--and 't is not absurd

To think so,--for half English as I am

(To my misfortune), never can I say

I heard them wish "God with you," save that way;--

XIII.

Juan yet quickly understood their gesture,

And being somewhat choleric and sudden,

Drew forth a pocket pistol from his vesture,

And fired it into one assailant's pudding--

Who fell, as rolls an ox o'er in his pasture,

And roared out, as he writhed his native mud in,

Unto his nearest follower or henchman,

"Oh Jack! I'm floored by that 'ere bloody Frenchman!"

XIV.

On which Jack and his train set off at speed,

And Juan's suite, late scattered at a distance,

Came up, all marvelling at such a deed,

And offering, as usual, late assistance.

Juan, who saw the moon's late minion[566] bleed

As if his veins would pour out his existence,

Stood calling out for bandages and lint,

And wished he had been less hasty with his flint.

XV.

"Perhaps," thought he, "it is the country's wont

To welcome foreigners in this way: now

I recollect some innkeepers who don't

Differ, except in robbing with a bow,

In lieu of a bare blade and brazen front--

But what is to be done? I can't allow

The fellow to lie groaning on the road:

So take him up--I'll help you with the load."

XVI.

But ere they could perform this pious duty,

The dying man cried, "Hold! I've got my gruel!

Oh! for a glass of _max_![567] We've missed our booty;

Let me die where I am!" And as the fuel

Of Life shrunk in his heart, and thick and sooty

The drops fell from his death-wound, and he drew ill

His breath,--he from his swelling throat untied

A kerchief, crying, "Give Sal that!"--and died.

XVII.

The cravat stained with bloody drops fell down

Before Don Juan's feet: he could not tell

Exactly why it was before him thrown,

Nor what the meaning of the man's farewell.

Poor Tom was once a kiddy upon town,

A thorough varmint, and a _real_ swell,

Full flash,[568] all fancy, until fairly diddled,

His pockets first and then his body riddled.

XVIII.

Don Juan, having done the best he could

In all the circumstances of the case,

As soon as "Crowner's quest"[569] allowed, pursued

His travels to the capital apace;--

Esteeming it a little hard he should

In twelve hours' time, and very little space,

Have been obliged to slay a free-born native

In self-defence: this made him meditative.

XIX.

He from the world had cut off a great man,

Who in his time had made heroic bustle.

Who in a row like Tom could lead the van,

Booze in the ken, or at the spellken hustle?

Who queer a flat?[570] Who (spite of Bow-street's ban)

On the high toby-spice so flash the muzzle?

Who on a lark with black-eyed Sal (his blowing),

So prime--so swell--so nutty--and so knowing?[kl][571]

XX.

But Tom's no more--and so no more of Tom.

Heroes must die; and by God's blessing 't is

Not long before the most of them go home.

Hail! Thamis, hail! Upon thy verge it is

That Juan's chariot, rolling like a drum

In thunder, holds the way it can't well miss,

Through Kennington and all the other "tons,"

Which make us wish ourselves in town at once;--

XXI.

Through Groves, so called as being void of trees,

(Like _lucus_ from _no_ light); through prospects named

Mount Pleasant, as containing nought to please,

Nor much to climb; through little boxes framed

Of bricks, to let the dust in at your ease,

With "To be let," upon their doors proclaimed;

Through "Rows" most modestly called "Paradise,"[572]

Which Eve might quit without much sacrifice;--[km]

XXII.

Through coaches, drays, choked turnpikes, and a whirl

Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion;

Here taverns wooing to a pint of "purl,"[573]

There mails fast flying off like a delusion;

There barbers' blocks with periwigs in curl

In windows; here the lamplighter's infusion

Slowly distilled into the glimmering glass

(For in those days we had not got to gas--);[kn][574]

XXIII.

Through this, and much, and more, is the approach

Of travellers to mighty Babylon:

Whether they come by horse, or chaise, or coach,

With slight exceptions, all the ways seem one.

I could say more, but do not choose to encroach

Upon the Guide-book's privilege. The Sun

Had set some time, and night was on the ridge

Of twilight, as the party crossed the bridge.

XXIV.

That's rather fine, the gentle sound of Thamis--

Who vindicates a moment, too, his stream--

Though hardly heard through multifarious "damme's:"

The lamps of Westminster's more regular gleam,

The breadth of pavement, and yon shrine where Fame is

A spectral resident--whose pallid beam

In shape of moonshine hovers o'er the pile--

Make this a sacred part of Albion's isle.

XXV.

The Druids' groves are gone--so much the better:

Stonehenge is not--but what the devil is it?--

But Bedlam still exists with its sage fetter,

That madmen may not bite you on a visit;

The Bench too seats or suits full many a debtor;

The Mansion House,[575] too (though some people quiz it),

To me appears a stiff yet grand erection;

But then the Abbey's worth the whole collection.

XXVI.

The line of lights,[576] too, up to Charing Cross,

Pall Mall, and so forth, have a coruscation

Like gold as in comparison to dross,

Matched with the Continent's illumination,

Whose cities Night by no means deigns to gloss.

The French were not yet a lamp-lighting nation,

And when they grew so--on their new-found lantern,

Instead of wicks, they made a wicked man turn.[577]

XXVII.

A row of Gentlemen along the streets

Suspended may illuminate mankind,

As also bonfires made of country seats;

But the old way is best for the purblind:

The other looks like phosphorus on sheets,

A sort of _ignis fatuus_ to the mind,

Which, though 't is certain to perplex and frighten,

Must burn more mildly ere it can enlighten.

XXVIII.

But London's so well lit, that if Diogenes

Could recommence to hunt his _honest man_,

And found him not amidst the various progenies

Of this enormous City's spreading span,

'T were not for want of lamps to aid his dodging his

Yet undiscovered treasure. What _I_ can,

I've done to find the same throughout Life's journey,

But see the World is only one attorney.

XXIX.

Over the stones still rattling, up Pall Mall,

Through crowds and carriages, but waxing thinner

As thundered knockers broke the long sealed spell

Of doors 'gainst duns, and to an early dinner

Admitted a small party as night fell,--

Don Juan, our young diplomatic sinner,

Pursued his path, and drove past some hotels,

St. James's Palace, and St. James's "Hells."[578]

XXX.

They reached the hotel: forth streamed from the front door[ko]

A tide of well-clad waiters, and around

The mob stood, and as usual several score

Of those pedestrian Paphians who abound

In decent London when the daylight's o'er;

Commodious but immoral, they are found

Useful, like Malthus, in promoting marriage.--

But Juan now is stepping from his carriage

XXXI.

Into one of the sweetest of hotels,[kp][579]

Especially for foreigners--and mostly

For those whom favour or whom Fortune swells,

And cannot find a bill's small items costly.

There many an envoy either dwelt or dwells

(The den of many a diplomatic lost lie),

Until to some conspicuous square they pass,

And blazon o'er the door their names in brass.

XXXII.

Juan, whose was a delicate commission,

Private, though publicly important, bore

No title to point out with due precision

The exact affair on which he was sent o'er.

'T was merely known, that on a secret mission

A foreigner of rank had graced our shore,

Young, handsome, and accomplished, who was said

(In whispers) to have turned his Sovereign's head.

XXXIII.

Some rumour also of some strange adventures

Had gone before him, and his wars and loves;

And as romantic heads are pretty painters,

And, above all, an Englishwoman's roves[kq]

Into the excursive, breaking the indentures

Of sober reason, wheresoe'er it moves,

He found himself extremely in the fashion,

Which serves our thinking people for a passion.

XXXIV.

I don't mean that they are passionless, but quite

The contrary; but then 't is in the head;

Yet as the consequences are as bright

As if they acted with the heart instead,

What after all can signify the site

Of ladies' lucubrations? So they lead

In safety to the place for which you start,

What matters if the road be head or heart?

XXXV.

Juan presented in the proper place,

To proper placemen, every Russ credential;

And was received with all the due grimace

By those who govern in the mood potential,

Who, seeing a handsome stripling with smooth face,

Thought (what in state affairs is most essential),

That they as easily might _do_ the youngster,

As hawks may pounce upon a woodland songster.

XXXVI.

They erred, as agéd men will do; but by

And by we'll talk of that; and if we don't,

'T will be because our notion is not high

Of politicians and their double front,

Who live by lies, yet dare not boldly lie:--

Now what I love in women is, they won't

Or can't do otherwise than lie--but do it

So well, the very Truth seems falsehood to it.

XXXVII.

And, after all, what is a lie? 'T is but

The truth in masquerade; and I defy[kr]

Historians--heroes--lawyers--priests, to put

A fact without some leaven of a lie.

The very shadow of true Truth would shut

Up annals--revelations--poesy,

And prophecy--except it should be dated

Some years before the incidents related.

XXXVIII.

Praised be all liars and all lies! Who now

Can tax my mild Muse with misanthropy?

She rings the World's "Te Deum," and her brow

Blushes for those who will not:--but to sigh

Is idle; let us like most others bow,

Kiss hands--feet--any part of Majesty,

After the good example of "Green Erin,"[580]

Whose shamrock now seems rather worse for wearing.[ks]

XXXIX.

Don Juan was presented, and his dress

And mien excited general admiration--

I don't know which was more admired or less:

One monstrous diamond drew much observation,

Which Catherine in a moment of _"ivresse"_

(In Love or Brandy's fervent fermentation),

Bestowed upon him, as the public learned;

And, to say truth, it had been fairly earned.

XL.

Besides the ministers and underlings,

Who must be courteous to the accredited

Diplomatists of rather wavering Kings,

Until their royal riddle's fully read,

The very clerks,--those somewhat dirty springs

Of Office, or the House of Office, fed

By foul corruption into streams,--even they

Were hardly rude enough to earn their pay:

XLI.

And insolence no doubt is what they are

Employed for, since it is their daily labour,

In the dear offices of Peace or War;

And should you doubt, pray ask of your next neighbour,

When for a passport, or some other bar

To freedom, he applied (a grief and a bore),

If he found not this spawn of tax-born riches,

Like lap-dogs, the least civil sons of b-----s.

XLII.

But Juan was received with much _"empressement:"_--

These phrases of refinement I must borrow

From our next neighbours' land, where, like a chessman,

There is a move set down for joy or sorrow,

Not only in mere talking, but the press. Man

In Islands is, it seems, downright and thorough,

More than on Continents--as if the Sea

(See Billingsgate) made even the tongue more free.

XLIII.

And yet the British "Damme"'s rather Attic,

Your continental oaths are but incontinent,

And turn on things which no aristocratic

Spirit would name, and therefore even I won't anent[581]

This subject quote; as it would be schismatic

In _politesse_, and have a sound affronting in 't;--

But "Damme"'s quite ethereal, though too daring--

Platonic blasphemy--the soul of swearing.[kt]

XLIV.

For downright rudeness, ye may stay at home;

For true or false politeness (and scarce _that

Now_) you may cross the blue deep and white foam--

The first the emblem (rarely though) of what

You leave behind, the next of much you come

To meet. However, 't is no time to chat

On general topics: poems must confine

Themselves to unity, like this of mine.[ku]

XLV.

In the great world,--which, being interpreted,

Meaneth the West or worst end of a city,

And about twice two thousand people bred

By no means to be very wise or witty,

But to sit up while others lie in bed,

And look down on the Universe with pity,--

Juan, as an inveterate patrician,

Was well received by persons of condition.

XLVI.

He was a bachelor, which is a matter

Of import both to virgin and to bride,

The former's hymeneal hopes to flatter;

And (should she not hold fast by Love or Pride)

'T is also of some moment to the latter:

A rib's a thorn in a wed gallant's side,

Requires decorum, and is apt to double

The horrid sin--and what's still worse, the trouble.

XLVII.

But Juan was a bachelor--of arts,

And parts, and hearts: he danced and sung, and had

An air as sentimental as Mozart's

Softest of melodies; and could be sad

Or cheerful, without any "flaws or starts,"[582]

Just at the proper time: and though a lad,

Had seen the world--which is a curious sight,

And very much unlike what people write.

XLVIII.

Fair virgins blushed upon him; wedded dames

Bloomed also in less transitory hues;[kv]

For both commodities dwell by the Thames,

The painting and the painted; Youth, Ceruse,[kw]

Against his heart preferred their usual claims,

Such as no gentleman can quite refuse:

Daughters admired his dress, and pious mothers

Inquired his income, and if he had brothers.

XLIX.

The milliners who furnish "drapery Misses"[583]

Throughout the season, upon speculation

Of payment ere the Honeymoon's last kisses

Have waned into a crescent's coruscation,

Thought such an opportunity as this is,

Of a rich foreigner's initiation,

Not to be overlooked--and gave such credit,

That future bridegrooms swore, and sighed, and paid it.

L.

The Blues, that tender tribe, who sigh o'er sonnets,

And with the pages of the last Review

Line the interior of their heads or bonnets,

Advanced in all their azure's highest hue:

They talked bad French or Spanish, and upon its

Late authors asked him for a hint or two;

And which was softest, Russian or Castilian?

And whether in his travels he saw Ilion?

LI.

Juan, who was a little superficial,

And not in literature a great Drawcansir,[584]

Examined by this learnéd and especial

Jury of matrons, scarce knew what to answer:

His duties warlike, loving or official,

His steady application as a dancer,

Had kept him from the brink of Hippocrene,

Which now he found was blue instead of green.

LII.

However, he replied at hazard, with

A modest confidence and calm assurance,

Which lent his learnéd lucubrations pith,

And passed for arguments of good endurance.

That prodigy, Miss Araminta Smith

(Who at sixteen translated "Hercules Furens"

Into as furious English), with her best look,

Set down his sayings in her common-place book.

LIII.

Juan knew several languages--as well

He might--and brought them up with skill, in time

To save his fame with each accomplished belle,

Who still regretted that he did not rhyme.

There wanted but this requisite to swell

His qualities (with them) into sublime:

Lady Fitz-Frisky, and Miss Maevia Mannish,

Both longed extremely to be sung in Spanish.

LIV.

However, he did pretty well, and was

Admitted as an aspirant to all

The coteries, and, as in Banquo's glass,

At great assemblies or in parties small,

He saw ten thousand living authors pass,

That being about their average numeral;

Also the eighty "greatest living poets,"[585]

As every paltry magazine can show _it's_.

LV.

In twice five years the "greatest living poet,"

Like to the champion in the fisty ring,

Is called on to support his claim, or show it,

Although 't is an imaginary thing.

Even I--albeit I'm sure I did not know it,

Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king,--

Was reckoned, a considerable time,

The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.[kx]

LVI.

But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero

My Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain:[586]

_La Belle Alliance_ of dunces down at zero,

Now that the Lion's fallen, may rise again:

But I will fall at least as fell my Hero;

Nor reign at all, or as a _monarch_ reign;

Or to some lonely isle of gaolers go,

With turncoat Southey for my turnkey Lowe.[ky]

LVII.

Sir Walter reigned before me; Moore and Campbell

Before and after; but now grown more holy,

The Muses upon Sion's hill must ramble

With poets almost clergymen, or wholly;

And Pegasus has a psalmodic amble

Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley,[kz][587]

Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts,

A modern Ancient Pistol--"by these hilts!"[588]

LVIII.

Still he excels that artificial hard

Labourer in the same vineyard, though the vine

Yields him but vinegar for his reward.--

That neutralised dull Dorus of the Nine;

That swarthy Sporus, neither man nor bard;

That ox of verse, who _ploughs_ for every line:--

Cambyses' roaring Romans beat at least

The howling Hebrews of Cybele's priest.--[589]

LIX.

Then there's my gentle Euphues,--who, they say,[la]

Sets up for being a sort of _moral me_;[590]

He'll find it rather difficult some day

To turn out both, or either, it may be.

Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway;

And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three;

And that deep-mouthed Boeotian "Savage Landor"[591]

Has taken for a swan rogue Southey's gander.

LX.

John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,

Just as he really promised something great,

If not intelligible, without Greek

Contrived to talk about the gods of late,

Much as they might have been supposed to speak.[592]

Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate;

'T is strange the mind, that very fiery particle,[lb][593]

Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

LXI.

The list grows long of live and dead pretenders

To that which none will gain--or none will know

The conqueror at least; who, ere Time renders

His last award, will have the long grass grow

Above his burnt-out brain, and sapless cinders.

If I might augur, I should rate but low

Their chances;--they're too numerous, like the thirty[594]

Mock tyrants, when Rome's annals waxed but dirty.

LXII.

This is the literary _lower_ empire,

Where the praetorian bands take up the matter;--

A "dreadful trade," like his who "gathers samphire,"[595]

The insolent soldiery to soothe and flatter,

With the same feelings as you'd coax a vampire.

Now, were I once at home, and in good satire,

I'd try conclusions with those Janizaries,

And show them _what_ an intellectual war is.

LXIII.

I think I know a trick or two, would turn

Their flanks;--but it is hardly worth my while,

With such small gear to give myself concern:

Indeed I've not the necessary bile;

My natural temper's really aught but stern,

And even my Muse's worst reproof's a smile;

And then she drops a brief and modern curtsy,

And glides away, assured she never hurts ye.

LXIV.

My Juan, whom I left in deadly peril

Amongst live poets and _blue_ ladies, passed

With some small profit through that field so sterile,

Being tired in time--and, neither least nor last,

Left it before he had been treated very ill;

And henceforth found himself more gaily classed

Amongst the higher spirits of the day,

The Sun's true son, no vapour, but a ray.

LXV.

His morns he passed in business--which dissected,

Was, like all business, a laborious nothing

That leads to lassitude, the most infected

And Centaur Nessus garb of mortal clothing,[596]

And on our sofas makes us lie dejected,

And talk in tender horrors of our loathing

All kinds of toil, save for our country's good--

Which grows no better, though 't is time it should.

LXVI.

His afternoons he passed in visits, luncheons,

Lounging and boxing; and the twilight hour

In riding round those vegetable puncheons

Called "Parks," where there is neither fruit nor flower

Enough to gratify a bee's slight munchings;

But after all it is the only "bower"[597]

(In Moore's phrase) where the fashionable fair

Can form a slight acquaintance with fresh air.

LXVII.

Then dress, then dinner, then awakes the world!

Then glare the lamps, then whirl the wheels, then roar

Through street and square fast flashing chariots hurled

Like harnessed meteors; then along the floor

Chalk mimics painting; then festoons are twirled;

Then roll the brazen thunders of the door,

Which opens to the thousand happy few

An earthly Paradise of _Or Molu_.

LXVIII.

There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink

With the three-thousandth curtsy; there the waltz,

The only dance which teaches girls to think,[598]

Makes one in love even with its very faults.

Saloon, room, hall, o'erflow beyond their brink,

And long the latest of arrivals halts,

'Midst royal dukes and dames condemned to climb,

And gain an inch of staircase at a time.

LXIX.

Thrice happy he who, after a survey

Of the good company, can win a corner,

A door that's _in_ or boudoir _out_ of the way,

Where he may fix himself like small "Jack Horner,"

And let the Babel round run as it may,

And look on as a mourner, or a scorner,

Or an approver, or a mere spectator,

Yawning a little as the night grows later.

LXX.

But this won't do, save by and by; and he

Who, like Don Juan, takes an active share,

Must steer with care through all that glittering sea

Of gems and plumes and pearls and silks, to where

He deems it is his proper place to be;

Dissolving in the waltz to some soft air,

Or proudlier prancing with mercurial skill,

Where Science marshals forth her own quadrille.

LXXI.

Or, if he dance not, but hath higher views

Upon an heiress or his neighbour's bride,

Let him take care that that which he pursues

Is not at once too palpably descried:

Full many an eager gentleman oft rues

His haste; Impatience is a blundering guide

Amongst a people famous for reflection,

Who like to play the fool with circumspection.

LXXII.

But, if you can contrive, get next at supper;

Or, if forestalled, get opposite and ogle:--

Oh, ye ambrosial moments! always upper

In mind, a sort of sentimental bogle,[599]

Which sits for ever upon Memory's crupper,

The ghost of vanished pleasures once in vogue! Ill

Can tender souls relate the rise and fall

Of hopes and fears which shake a single ball.

LXXIII.

But these precautionary hints can touch

Only the common run, who must pursue,

And watch and ward; whose plans a word too much

Or little overturns; and not the few

Or many (for the number's sometimes such)

Whom a good mien, especially if new,

Or fame--or name--for Wit, War, Sense, or Nonsense,

Permits whate'er they please,--or _did_ not long since.

LXXIV.

Our Hero--as a hero--young and handsome,

Noble, rich, celebrated, and a stranger,

Like other slaves of course must pay his ransom,

Before he can escape from so much danger

As will environ a conspicuous man. Some

Talk about poetry, and "rack and manger,"

And ugliness, disease, as toil and trouble;--

I wish they knew the life of a young noble.

LXXV.

They are young, but know not Youth--it is anticipated;

Handsome but wasted, rich without a sou;[lc]

Their vigour in a thousand arms is dissipated;

Their cash comes _from_, their wealth goes _to_ a Jew;

Both senates see their nightly votes participated

Between the Tyrant's and the Tribunes' crew;

And having voted, dined, drunk, gamed, and whored,

The family vault receives another Lord.

LXXVI.

"Where is the World?" cries Young, at _eighty_[600]--"Where

The World in which a man was born?" Alas!

Where is the world of _eight_ years past? _'T was there_--

I look for it--'t is gone, a globe of glass!

Cracked, shivered, vanished, scarcely gazed on, ere[ld]

A silent change dissolves the glittering mass.

Statesmen, Chiefs, Orators, Queens, Patriots, Kings,

And Dandies--all are gone on the Wind's wings.

LXXVII.

Where is Napoleon the Grand? God knows!

Where little Castlereagh? The devil can tell!

Where Grattan, Curran, Sheridan--all those

Who bound the Bar or Senate in their spell?

Where is the unhappy Queen, with all her woes?

And where the Daughter, whom the Isles loved well?

Where are those martyred saints the Five per Cents?[le][601]

And where--oh, where the devil are the Rents?

LXXVIII.

Where's Brummell? Dished. Where's Long Pole Wellesley?[602] Diddled.

Where's Whitbread? Romilly? Where's George the Third?

Where is his will?[603] (That's not so soon unriddled.)

And where is "Fum" the Fourth, our "royal bird?"[604]

Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled

Unto by Sawney's violin, we have heard:

"Caw me, caw thee"--for six months hath been hatching

This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching.

LXXIX.

Where is Lord This? And where my Lady That?

The Honourable Mistresses and Misses?

Some laid aside like an old Opera hat,

Married, unmarried, and remarried: (this is

An evolution oft performed of late).

Where are the Dublin shouts--and London hisses?

Where are the Grenvilles? Turned as usual. Where

My friends the Whigs? Exactly where they were.

LXXX.

Where are the Lady Carolines and Franceses?[605]

Divorced or doing thereanent. Ye annals

So brilliant, where the list of routs and dances is,--

Thou Morning Post, sole record of the panels

Broken in carriages, and all the phantasies

Of fashion,--say what streams now fill those channels?

Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent,

Because the times have hardly left them _one_ tenant.

LXXXI.

Some who once set their caps at cautious dukes,[lf]

Have taken up at length with younger brothers:

Some heiresses have bit at sharpers' hooks:

Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers:

Others have lost their fresh and fairy looks:

In short, the list of alterations bothers.

There's little strange in this, but something strange is

The unusual quickness of these common changes.

LXXXII.

Talk not of seventy years as age; in seven

I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to

The humblest individuals under Heaven,

Than might suffice a moderate century through.

I knew that nought was lasting, but now even

Change grows too changeable, without being new:

Nought's permanent among the human race,

Except the Whigs _not_ getting into place.

LXXXIII.

I have seen Napoleon, who seemed quite a Jupiter,

Shrink to a Saturn. I have seen a Duke

(No matter which) turn politician stupider,

If that can well be, than his wooden look.

But it is time that I should hoist my "blue Peter,"

And sail for a new theme:--I have seen--and shook

To see it--the King hissed, and then caressed;

But don't pretend to settle which was best.

LXXXIV.

I have seen the Landholders without a rap--

I have seen Joanna Southcote--I have seen

The House of Commons turned to a tax-trap--

I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen--

I have seen crowns worn instead of a fool's cap--

I have seen a Congress[606] doing all that's mean--

I have seen some nations, like o'erloaded asses,

Kick off their burthens--meaning the high classes.

LXXXV.

I have seen small poets, and great prosers, and

Interminable--_not eternal_--speakers--

I have seen the funds at war with house and land--

I have seen the country gentlemen turn squeakers--

I have seen the people ridden o'er like sand

By slaves on horseback--I have seen malt liquors

Exchanged for "thin potations"[607] by John Bull--

I have seen John half detect himself a fool.--

LXXXVI.

But _"carpe diem,"_ Juan, _"carpe, carpe!"_[608]

To-morrow sees another race as gay

And transient, and devoured by the same harpy.

"Life's a poor player,"[609]--then "play out the play,[610]

Ye villains!" and above all keep a sharp eye

Much less on what you do than what you say:

Be hypocritical, be cautious, be

Not what you _seem_, but always what you _see_.

LXXXVII.

But how shall I relate in other cantos

Of what befell our hero in the land,

Which 't is the common cry and lie to vaunt as

A moral country? But I hold my hand--

For I disdain to write an Atalantis;[611]

But 't is as well at once to understand,

You are _not_ a moral people, and you know it,

Without the aid of too sincere a poet.

LXXXVIII.

What Juan saw and underwent shall be

My topic, with of course the due restriction

Which is required by proper courtesy;

And recollect the work is only fiction,

And that I sing of neither mine nor me,

Though every scribe, in some slight turn of diction,

Will hint allusions never _meant_. Ne'er doubt

_This_--when I speak, I _don't hint_, but _speak out_.

LXXXIX.

Whether he married with the third or fourth

Offspring of some sage husband-hunting countess,

Or whether with some virgin of more worth

(I mean in Fortune's matrimonial bounties),

He took to regularly peopling Earth,

Of which your lawful, awful wedlock fount is,--

Or whether he was taken in for damages,

For being too excursive in his homages,--

XC.

Is yet within the unread events of Time.

Thus far, go forth, thou Lay, which I will back

Against the same given quantity of rhyme,

For being as much the subject of attack

As ever yet was any work sublime,

By those who love to say that white is black.

So much the better!--I may stand alone,

But would not change my free thoughts for a throne.[612]

FOOTNOTES:

{427}[562] [Berkeley did not deny the reality of existence, but the

reality of matter as an abstract conception. "It is plain," he says (_On

the Principles of Human Knowledge_, sect. ix.), "that the very notion of

what is called _matter_ or _corporeal substance_, involves a

contradiction in it." Again, "It were a mistake to think that what is

here said derogates in the least from the reality of things." His

contention was that this _reality_ depended, not on an abstraction

_called_ matter, "an inert, extended unperceiving substance," but on

"those unextended, indivisible substances or _spirits_, which act, and

think, and perceive them [unthinking beings]."--_Ibid._, sect. xci.,

_The Works_ of George Berkeley, D.D., 1820, i. 27, 69, 70.]

{428}[563] [_Tempest_, act v. sc. i, line 95.]

[564] ["I have been very unwell--four days confined to my bed in 'the

worst inn's worst room' at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and bilious

attack, constipation, and the devil knows what."--Letter to Murray,

October 9, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 121. The same letter contains an

announcement that he had "a fifth [Canto of _Don Juan_] (the 10th)

finished, but not transcribed yet; and the _eleventh_ begun."]

{429}[kk] _Or Rome, or Tiber--Naples or the sea_.--[MS. erased.]

{430}[565] [_Vide ante_, Canto I. stanza xiv. lines 7, 8.]

{431}[566] ["_Falstaff_. Let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the

shade, minions of the moon: and let men say, we be men of good

government; being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste

mistress the moon, under whose countenance we--steal."-_I Henry IV._,

act i. sc. 2, lines 24-28.]

[567] [Gin. Hence the antithesis of _"All Max"_ in the East to Almack's

in the West. (See _Life in London_, by Pierce Egan, 1823, pp. 284-290.)]

[568] [According to the _Vocabulary of the Flash Language_, compiled by

James Hardy Vaux, in 1812, and published at the end of his Memoirs,

1819, ii. 149-227, a kiddy, or "flash-kiddy," is a thief of the lower

orders, who, when he is _breeched_ by a course of successful depredation

dresses in the extreme of vulgar gentility, and affects a knowingness in

his air and conversation. A "swell" or "rank swell" ("_real_ swell"

appears in Egan's _Life in London_) is the more recent "toff;" and

"flash" is "fly," "down," or "awake," _i.e._ knowing, not easily imposed

upon.]

{432}[569] [_Hamlet_, act v. sc. 1, line 21.]

[570] ["Ken" is a house, s.c. a thieves' lodging-house; "spellken," a

play-house; "high toby-spice" is robbery on horseback, as distinguished

from "spice," i.e. footpad robbery; to "flash the muzzle" is to show off

the face, to swagger openly; "blowing" or "blowen" is a doxy or trull;

and "nutty" is, conjointly, amorous and fascinating.]

[kl]

_Poor Tom was once a knowing one in town_.

_Not a mere_ kiddy, _but a_ real _one_.--[MS. erased.]

[571] The advance of science and of language has rendered it unnecessary

to translate the above good and true English, spoken in its original

purity by the select mobility and their patrons. The following is a

stanza of a song which was very popular at least in my early days:--

"On the high toby-spice flash the muzzle,

In spite of each gallows old scout;

If you at the spellken can't hustle,

You'll be hobbled in making a clout.

Then your blowing will wax gallows haughty,

When she hears of your scaly mistake,

She'll surely turn snitch for the forty--

That her Jack may be regular weight."

If there be any gemman so ignorant as to require a traduction, I refer

him to my old friend and corporeal pastor and master, John Jackson,

Esq., Professor of Pugilism; who, I trust, still retains the strength

and symmetry of his model of a form, together with his good humour, and

athletic as well as mental accomplishments.

[Gentleman Jackson was of good renown. "Servility," says Egan (_Life in

London_, 1823, p. 217), "is not known to him. Flattery he detests.

Integrity, impartiality, good-nature, and manliness, are the

corner-stones of his understanding." Byron once said of him that "his

manners were infinitely superior to those of the Fellows of the College

whom I meet at the high table" (J.W. Clark, _Cambridge_, 1890, p. 140).

(See, too, letter to John Jackson, September 18, 1808, _Letters_, 1898,

i. 189, note 2; _Hints from Horace_, line 638, _Poetical Works_, 1898,

i. 433, note 3.) As to the stanza quoted by Egan (_Anecdotes of the

Turf_, 1827, p. 44), but not _traduced_ or interpreted, "To be hobbled

for making a clout" is to be taken into custody for stealing a

handkerchief, to "turn snitch" is to inform, and the "forty" is the £40

offered for the detection of a capital crime, and shared by the police

or Bow Street runners. Dangerous characters were let alone and tacitly

encouraged to continue their career of crime, until the measure of their

iniquity was full, and they "weighed forty." If Jack was clumsy enough

to be detected in a trifling theft, his "blowen" would go over to the

enemy, and betray him for the sake of the Government reward (see

_Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_, by Francis Grose, 1823,

art. "Weigh forty").]

{433}[572] [Don Juan must have driven by _Pleasant Row_, and passed

within hail of _Paradise Row_, on the way from Kennington to Westminster

Bridge. (See Cary's _New Pocket Plan of London, Westminster, and

Southwark_, 1819.) But, perhaps, there is more in the names of streets

and places than meets the eye. Here, as elsewhere, there is, or there

may be, "a paltering with us in a double sense."]

[km]

_Through rows called "Paradise," by way of showing_

_Good Christians that to which they all are going_.--[MS. erased.]

{434}[573] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto 1. stanza lxix. line 8, _var._

ii., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 66, note 2.]

[kn]---- _distilling into the re-kindling glass_.--[MS.]

[574] [The streets of London were first regularly lighted with gas in

1812.]

{435}[575] [Thomas Pennant, in _Some Account of London_, 1793, p. 444,

writes down the Mansion House (1739-1752) as "damned ... to everlasting

fame."]

[576] [Fifty years ago "the lights of Piccadilly" were still regarded as

one of the "sights" of London. Byron must often have looked at them from

his house in Piccadilly Terrace.]

[577] [Joseph François Foulon, army commissioner, provoked the penalty

of the "lantern" (i.e. an improvised gallows on the yard of a lamp-post

at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie) by his heartless sneer, "Eh

bien! si cette canaille n'a pas de pain, elle mangera du foin." He was

hanged, July 22, 1789. See _The Tale of Two Cities_, by Charles Dickens,

cap. xxii.; see, too, Carlyle's _French Revolution_, 1839, i. 253: "With

wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands: he is

whirled ... to the _'Lanterne,'_ ... pleading bitterly for life,--to the

deaf winds. Only with the third rope (for two ropes broke, and the

quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged! His

Body is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the

mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating

people."]

{436}[578] "Hells," gaming-houses. What their number may now be in this

life, I know not. Before I was of age I knew them pretty accurately,

both "gold" and "silver." I was once nearly called out by an

acquaintance, because when he asked me where I thought that his soul

would be found hereafter, I answered, "In Silver Hell."

[ko]

_At length the boys drew up before a door_,

_From whence poured forth a tribe of well-clad waiters_;

(_While on the pavement many a hungry w--re_

_With which the moralest of cities caters_

_For gentlemen whose passions may boil o'er,_

_Stood as the unpacking gathered more spectators,_)

_And Juan found himself in an extensive_

_Apartment;--fashionable but expensive_.--[MS.]

{437}[kp] _'Twas one of the delightfullest hotels_.--[MS.]

[579] [Perhaps Grillion's Hotel (afterwards Grillion's Club) in

Albemarle Street. In 1822 diplomats patronized more than one hotel in

and near St. James's Street, but among the "Departures from Grillion's

Hotel," recorded in the _Morning Chronicle_ of September, 17, 1822,

appositely enough, is that of H.E. Don Juan Garcia, del Rio.]

[kq]

---- _of his loves and wars_;

_And as romantic heads are pretty painters,_

_And ladies like a little spice of Mars_.--[MS. erased.]

{438}[kr] _The false attempt at Truth_----.--[MS.]

{439}[580] [Compare--

"Lo! Erin, thy Lord!

Kiss his foot with thy blessing"----

_The Irish Avatar_, stanza 14, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 558.]

[ks]

_Kiss hands--or feet--or what Man by and by_

Will _kiss, not in sad metaphor--but earnest,_

_Unless on Tyrants' sterns--we turn the sternest_.--[MS.]

{440}[581] "Anent" was a Scotch phrase meaning "concerning"--"with

regard to: "it has been made English by the Scotch novels; and, as the

Frenchman said, "If it _be not, ought to be_ English." [See, for

instance, _The Abbot_, chap. xvii. 132.]

[kt]

_But "Damme's" simple--dashing--free and daring_

_The purest blasphemy_----.--[MS.]

[ku]

_About such general matters--but particular_

_A poem's progress should be perpendicular_.--[MS.]

{441}[582] [_Macbeth_, act iii. sc. 4, line 63.]

[kv] _Blushed, too, but it was hidden by their rouge_.--[MS. erased.]

[kw] _The natural and the prepared ceruse_.--[MS. erased.]

{442}[583] "Drapery Misses."--This term is probably anything now but a

_mystery_. It was, however, almost so to me when I first returned from

the East in 1811-1812. It means a pretty, a high-born, a fashionable

young female, well instructed by her friends, and furnished by her

milliner with a wardrobe upon credit, to be repaid, when married, by the

_husband_. The riddle was first read to me by a young and pretty

heiress, on my praising the "drapery" of the _"untochered"_ but "pretty

virginities" (like Mrs. Anne Page) of the _then_ day, which has now been

some years yesterday: she assured me that the thing was common in

London; and as her own thousands, and blooming looks, and rich

simplicity of array, put any suspicion in her own case out of the

question, I confess I gave some credit to the allegation. If necessary,

authorities might be cited; in which case I could quote both "drapery"

and the wearers. Let us hope, however, that it is now obsolete.

[584] [Compare _Hints from Horace_, line 173, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i.

401, note 1.]

{443}[585] [In his so-called "Dedication" of _Marino Faliero_ to Goethe,

Byron makes fun of the "nineteen hundred and eighty-seven poets," whose

names were to be found in _A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors,

etc._ (See Introduction to _Marino Faliero, Poetical Works_, 1901, iv.

340, 341, note 1.)]

{444}[kx] _A paper potentate_----.--[MS. erased.]

[586] [See "Introduction to _Cain_," _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 204.]

[ky] _With turnkey Southey for my Hudson Lowe._--[MS.]

[kz] _Beneath the reverend Cambyses Croly._--[MS.]

[587] [The Reverend George Croly, D.D. (1780-1860), began his literary

career as dramatic critic of the _Times_. "Croly," says H.C. Robinson

(_Diary_, 1869, i. 412), "is a fierce-looking Irishman, very lively in

conversation, and certainly has considerable talents as a writer; his

eloquence, like his person, is rather energetic than eloquent" (hence

the epithet "Cambyses," i.e. "King Cambyses' vein" in _var._ iii.). "He

wrote tragedies, comedies, and novels; and, at last, settled down as a

preacher, with the rank of doctor, but of what faculty I do not know"

(ibid., footnote, H.C.R., 1847). He wrote, _inter alia_, _Paris in

1815_, a poem; _Catiline, A Tragedy_, 1822; and _Salathiel_, a novel,

1827. In lines 7, 8, Byron seems to refer to _The Angel of the World, An

Arabian Poem_, published in 1820.]

[588] [_I Henry IV._, act ii. sc. 4, line 197.]

{445}[589] [Stanza lviii. was first published in 1837. The reference is

to Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868). Byron was under the impression that

Milman had influenced Murray against continuing the publication of _Don

Juan_. Added to this surmise, was the mistaken belief that it was Milman

who had written the article in the _Quarterly_, which "killed John

Keats." Hence the virulence of the attack.

"Dull Dorus" is obscure, but compare Propertius, _Eleg._ III. vii. 44,

where Callimachus is addressed as "Dore poeta." He is the "ox of verse,"

because he had been recently appointed to the Professorship of Poetry at

Oxford. The "roaring Romans" are "The soldiery" who shout "All, All," in

Croly's _Catiline_, act v. sc. 2.]

[la] _Then there's my gentle Barry--who they say._--[MS.]

[590] [Jeffrey, in his review of _A Sicilian Story, etc._, Bryan Waller

Procter (Barry Cornwall), 1787-1874 (_Edinburgh Review_, January, 1820,

vol. 33, pp. 144-155), compares _Diego de Montilla_, a poem in _ottava

rima_, with _Don Juan_, favourably and unfavourably: "There is no

profligacy and no horror ... no mocking of virtue and honour, and no

strong mixtures of buffoonery and grandeur." But it may fairly match

with Byron and his Italian models "as to the better qualities of

elegance, delicacy, and tenderness." See, too, _Blackwood's Edinburgh

Magazine_, March, 1820, vol. vi. pp. 153, 647.]

[591] [See Preface to the _Vision of Judgment, Poetical Works_, 1901,

iv. 484, note 3.]

[592] [Croker's article in the _Quarterly_ (April, 1818 [pub.

September], vol. xix. pp. 204-208) did not "kill John Keats." See letter

to George and Georgiana Keats, October, 1818 (_Letters, etc._, 1895, p.

215). Byron adopts Shelley's belief that the Reviewer, "miserable man,"

"one of the meanest," had "wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens

of the workmanship of God." See Preface to _Adonais_, and stanzas

xxxvi., xxxvii.]

{446}[lb]

_And weakly mind, to let that all celestial Particle_.--[MS. erased.]

or, _'T is strange the mind should let such phrases quell its_

Chief Impulse with a few, frail, paper pellets_.--[MS. erased.]

[593] "Divinæ particulam auræ" [Hor., _Sat._ ii. 2. 79]

[594] [For "the crowd of usurpers" who started up in the reign of

Gallienus, and were dignified with the honoured appellation of "the

thirty tyrants," see Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, 1825, i. 164.]

[595] [_King Lear_, act iv. sc. 6, line 15.]

{447}[596] ["Illita Nesseo misi tibi texta veneno."

Ovid., _Heroid. Epist_. ix. 163.]

[597] [A "bower," in Moore's phrase, signifies a solitude _à deux_; e.g.

"Here's the Bower she lov'd so much."

"Come to me, love, the twilight star

Shall guide thee to my bower."

Moore.]

{448}[598] [Compare _The Waltz_, lines 220-229, _et passim_, _Poetical

Works_, 1898, i. 501.]

{449}[599] Scotch for goblin.

[lc] _Handsome but_ blasé----[MS.]

{450}[600] [The sentiment is reiterated in _The Night Thoughts_, and is

the theme of _Resignation_, which was written and published when Young

was more than eighty years old. ]

[ld] _And fresher, since without a breath of air_.--[MS.]

[le] _Where are the thousand lovely innocents?_--[MS.]

[601] ["I have ... written ... to express my willingness to accept the,

or almost any mortgage, any thing to get out of the tremulous Funds of

these oscillating times. There will be a war somewhere, no doubt--and

whatever it may be, the Funds will be affected more or less; so pray get

us out of them with all proper expedition. It has been the burthen of my

song to you three years and better, and about as useful as better

counsels."--Letter of Byron to Kinnaird, January 18, 1823, _Letters_,

1901, vi. 162, 163.]

{451}[602] [For William Pole Tylney Long Wellesley (1788-1857), see _The

Waltz_, line 21, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 484, note 1. He was only

on the way to being "diddled" in 1822, but the prophecy (suggested, no

doubt, by the announcement of the sale of furniture, etc., at Wanstead

House, in the _Morning Chronicle_, July 8, 1822) was ultimately

fulfilled. Samuel Whitbread, born 1758, committed suicide July 6, 1815.

Sir Samuel Romilly, born 1758, committed suicide November 2, 1818.]

[603] [According to Charles Greville, George the Third made two

wills--the first in 1770, the second, which he never signed, in 1810. By

the first will he left "all he had to the Queen for her life, Buckingham

House to the Duke of Clarence," etc., and as Buckingham House had been

twice sold, and the other legatees were dead, a question arose between

the King and the Duke of York as to the right of inheritance of their

father's personal property. George IV. conceived that it devolved upon

him personally, and not on the Crown, and "consequently appropriated to

himself the whole of the money and the jewels." It is possible that this

difference between the brothers was noised abroad, and that old stories

of the destruction of royal wills were revived to the new king's

discredit. (See _The Greville Memoirs_, 1875, i. 64, 65.)]

[604] [See Moore's _Fum and Hum, the Two Birds of Royalty_, appended to

his _Fudge Family_.]

[605] [Lady Caroline Lamb and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster.]

{452}[lf] ---- _their caps and curls at Dukes._--[MS.]

{453}[606] [The Congress at Verona, in 1822. See the Introduction to

_The Age of Bronze, Poetical Works_, 1891, v. 537-540.]

[607] [_2 Henry IV._, act iv. sc. 3, line 117.]

[608] [Hor., _Od._ I. xi. line 8.]

[609] [_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 5, line 24.]

[610] [_1 Henry IV._, act ii. sc. 4, line 463.]

[611] [See the _Secret Memoirs and Manners of several Persons of

Quality, of Both Sexes, from the New Atalantis_, 1709, a work in which

the authoress, Mrs. Manley, satirizes the distinguished characters of

her day. Warburton (_Works of Pope_, ed. 1751, i. 244) calls it "a

famous book.... full of court and party scandal, and in a loose

effeminacy of style and sentiment, which well suited the debauched taste

of the better vulgar." Pope also alludes to it in the _Rape of the

Lock_, iii. 165, 166--

"As long as _Atalantis_ shall be read,

Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed."

And Swift, in his ballad on "Corinna" (stanza 8)--

"Her common-place book all gallant is,

Of scandal now a cornucopia,

She pours it out in _Atalantis_,

Or memoirs of the New Utopia."

_Works_, 1824, xii. 302.]

{454}[612] [Oct. 17, 1822.--MS.]

CANTO THE TWELFTH.

I.

Of all the barbarous middle ages, that

Which is most barbarous is the middle age

Of man! it is--I really scarce know what;

But when we hover between fool and sage,

And don't know justly what we would be at--

A period something like a printed page,

Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair

Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were;--

II.

Too old for Youth,--too young, at thirty-five,

To herd with boys, or hoard with good threescore,--

I wonder people should be left alive;

But since they are, that epoch is a bore:

Love lingers still, although 't were late to wive:

And as for other love, the illusion's o'er;

And Money, that most pure imagination,

Gleams only through the dawn of its creation.[613]

III.

O Gold! Why call we misers miserable?[614]

Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall;

Theirs is the best bower anchor, the chain cable

Which holds fast other pleasures great and small.

Ye who but see the saving man at table,

And scorn his temperate board, as none at all,

And wonder how the wealthy can be sparing,

Know not what visions spring from each cheese-paring.

IV.

Love or lust makes Man sick, and wine much sicker;

Ambition rends, and gaming gains a loss;

But making money, slowly first, then quicker,

And adding still a little through each cross

(Which _will_ come over things), beats Love or liquor,

The gamester's counter, or the statesman's _dross_.

O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper,

Which makes bank credit like a bank of _vapour_.

V.

Who hold the balance of the World? Who reign

O'er congress, whether royalist or liberal?

Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain?[615]

(That make old Europe's journals "squeak and gibber"[616] all)

Who keep the World, both old and new, in pain

Or pleasure? Who make politics run glibber all?

The shade of Buonaparte's noble daring?--

Jew Rothschild,[617] and his fellow-Christian, Baring.

VI.

Those, and the truly liberal Lafitte,[618]

Are the true Lords of Europe. Every loan

Is not a merely speculative hit,

But seats a Nation or upsets a Throne.

Republics also get involved a bit;

Columbia's stock hath holders not unknown

On 'Change; and even thy silver soil, Peru,

Must get itself discounted by a Jew.

VII.

Why call the miser miserable? as

I said before: the frugal life is his,

Which in a saint or cynic ever was

The theme of praise: a hermit would not miss

Canonization for the self-same cause,

And wherefore blame gaunt Wealth's austerities?

Because, you 'll say, nought calls for such a trial;--

Then there's more merit in his self-denial.

VIII.

He is your only poet;--Passion, pure

And sparkling on from heap to heap, displays,

_Possessed_, the ore, of which _mere hopes_ allure

Nations athwart the deep: the golden rays

Flash up in ingots from the mine obscure:

On him the Diamond pours its brilliant blaze,

While the mild Emerald's beam shades down the dies

Of other stones, to soothe the miser's eyes.

IX.

The lands on either side are his; the ship

From Ceylon, Inde, or far Cathay, unloads

For him the fragrant produce of each trip;

Beneath his cars of Ceres groan the roads,

And the vine blushes like Aurora's lip;

His very cellars might be Kings' abodes;

While he, despising every sensual call,

Commands--the intellectual Lord of _all_.

X.

Perhaps he hath great projects in his mind,

To build a college, or to found a race,

A hospital, a church,--and leave behind

Some dome surmounted by his meagre face:

Perhaps he fain would liberate Mankind

Even with the very ore which makes them base;

Perhaps he would be wealthiest of his nation,

Or revel in the joys of calculation.

XI.

But whether all, or each, or none of these

May be the hoarder's principle of action,

The fool will call such mania a disease:--

What is his _own?_ Go--look at each transaction,

Wars, revels, loves--do these bring men more ease

Than the mere plodding through each "vulgar fraction?"

Or do they benefit Mankind? Lean Miser!

Let spendthrifts' heirs inquire of yours--who's wiser?

XII.

How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests

Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins

(Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests

Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines,[lg]

But) of fine unclipped gold, where dully rests

Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines,

Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp!--

Yes! ready money _is_ Aladdin's lamp.[619]

XIII.

"Love rules the Camp, the Court, the Grove,--for Love

Is Heaven, and Heaven is Love:"[620]--so sings the bard;

Which it were rather difficult to prove

(A thing with poetry in general hard).

Perhaps there may be something in "the Grove,"

At least it rhymes to "Love:" but I'm prepared

To doubt (no less than landlords of their rental)

If "Courts" and "Camps" be quite so sentimental.

XIV.

But if Love don't, _Cash_ does, and Cash alone:

Cash rules the Grove, and fells it too besides;

Without cash, camps were thin, and courts were none;

Without cash, Malthus tells you--"take no brides."[621]

So Cash rules Love the ruler, on his own

High ground, as virgin Cynthia sways the tides:

And as for "Heaven being Love," why not say honey

Is wax? Heaven is not Love, 't is Matrimony.

XV.

Is not all Love prohibited whatever,

Excepting Marriage? which is Love, no doubt,

After a sort; but somehow people never

With the same thought the two words have helped out.

Love may exist _with_ Marriage, and _should_ ever,

And Marriage also may exist without;

But Love _sans_ banns is both a sin and shame,

And ought to go by quite another name.

XVI.

Now if the "Court," and "Camp," and "Grove," be not

Recruited all with constant married men,

Who never coveted their neighbour's lot,

I say _that_ line's a lapsus of the pen;--

Strange too in my _buon camerado_ Scott,

So celebrated for his morals, when

My Jeffrey held him up as an example[622]

To me;--of whom these morals are a sample.[lh]

XVII.

Well, if I don't succeed, I _have_ succeeded,

And that's enough; succeeded in my youth,

The only time when much success is needed:

And my success produced what I, in sooth,

Cared most about; it need not now be pleaded--

Whate'er it was, 'twas mine; I've paid, in truth,

Of late, the penalty of such success,

But have not learned to wish it any less.

XVIII.

That suit in Chancery,[623]--which some persons plead

In an appeal to the unborn, whom they,

In the faith of their procreative creed,

Baptize Posterity, or future clay,--

To me seems but a dubious kind of reed

To lean on for support in any way;

Since odds are that Posterity will know

No more of them, than they of her, I trow.

XIX.[li]

Why, I'm Posterity--and so are you;

And whom do we remember? Not a hundred.

Were every memory written down all true,

The tenth or twentieth name would be but blundered;

Even Plutarch's Lives have but picked out a few,

And 'gainst those few your annalists have thundered;

And Mitford[624] in the nineteenth century

Gives, with Greek truth, the good old Greek the lie.

XX.

Good people all, of every degree,

Ye gentle readers and ungentle writers,

In this twelfth Canto 't is my wish to be

As serious as if I had for inditers

Malthus and Wilberforce:--the last set free

The Negroes, and is worth a million fighters;

While Wellington has but enslaved the Whites,

And Malthus[625] does the thing 'gainst which he writes.

XXI.

I'm serious--so are all men upon paper;

And why should I not form my speculation,

And hold up to the Sun my little taper?[626]

Mankind just now seem wrapped in meditation

On constitutions and steam-boats of vapour;

While sages write against all procreation,

Unless a man can calculate his means

Of feeding brats the moment his wife weans.

XXII.

That's noble! That's romantic! For my part,

I think that "Philo-genitiveness" is--

(Now here's a word quite after my own heart,

Though there's a shorter a good deal than this,

If that politeness set it not apart;

But I'm resolved to say nought that's amiss)--

I say, methinks that "Philo-genitiveness"[627]

Might meet from men a little more forgiveness.

XXIII.

And now to business.--O my gentle Juan!

Thou art in London--in that pleasant place,

Where every kind of mischief's daily brewing,

Which can await warm Youth in its wild race.

'T is true, that thy career is not a new one;

Thou art no novice in the headlong chase

Of early life; but this is a new land,

Which foreigners can never understand.

XXIV.

What with a small diversity of climate,

Of hot or cold, mercurial or sedate,

I could send forth my mandate like a Primate

Upon the rest of Europe's social state;

But thou art the most difficult to rhyme at,

Great Britain, which the Muse may penetrate.

All countries have their "Lions," but in thee

There is but one superb menagerie.

XXV.

But I am sick of politics. Begin--

_"Paulo Majora."_ Juan, undecided

Amongst the paths of being "taken in,"

Above the ice had like a skater glided:[lj]

When tired of play, he flirted without sin

With some of those fair creatures who have prided

Themselves on innocent tantalisation,[lk]

And hate all vice except its reputation.

XXVI.

But these are few, and in the end they make

Some devilish escapade or stir, which shows

That even the purest people may mistake

Their way through Virtue's primrose paths of snows;

And then men stare, as if a new ass spake

To Balaam, and from tongue to ear o'erflows

Quicksilver small talk, ending (if you note it)

With the kind World's Amen--"Who would have thought it?"

XXVII.

The little Leila, with her Orient eyes,

And taciturn Asiatic disposition,

(Which saw all Western things with small surprise,

To the surprise of people of condition,

Who think that novelties are butterflies

To be pursued as food for inanition,)

Her charming figure and romantic history

Became a kind of fashionable mystery.

XXVIII.

The women much divided--as is usual

Amongst the sex in little things or great--

Think not, fair creatures, that I mean to abuse you all,

I have always liked you better than I state--

Since I've grown moral, still I must accuse you all

Of being apt to talk at a great rate;

And now there was a general sensation

Amongst you, about Leila's education.

XXIX.

In one point only were you settled--and

You had reason; 't was that a young child of grace,

As beautiful as her own native land,

And far away, the last bud of her race,

Howe'er our friend Don Juan might command

Himself for five, four, three, or two years' space,

Would be much better taught beneath the eye

Of peeresses whose follies had run dry.

XXX.

So first there was a generous emulation,

And then there was a general competition,

To undertake the orphan's education:

As Juan was a person of condition,

It had been an affront on this occasion

To talk of a subscription or petition;

But sixteen dowagers, ten unwed she sages

Whose tale belongs to "Hallam's Middle Ages,"[628]

XXXI.

And one or two sad, separate wives, without

A fruit to bloom upon their withering bough--

Begged to bring _up_ the little girl, and _"out"_--

For that's the phrase that settles all things now,

Meaning a virgin's first blush at a rout,

And all her points as thorough-bred to show:

And I assure you, that like virgin honey

Tastes their first season (mostly if they have money).

XXXII.

How all the needy honourable misters,

Each out-at-elbow peer, or desperate dandy,

The watchful mothers, and the careful sisters,

(Who, by the by, when clever, are more handy

At making matches, where "'t is gold that glisters,"

Than their _he_ relatives), like flies o'er candy

Buzz round "the Fortune" with their busy battery,

To turn her head with waltzing and with flattery!

XXXIII.

Each aunt, each cousin, hath her speculation;

Nay, married dames will now and then discover

Such pure disinterestedness of passion,

I've known them court an heiress for their lover.

"_Tantoene!_" Such the virtues of high station,

Even in the hopeful Isle, whose outlet's "Dover!"

While the poor rich wretch, object of these cares,

Has cause to wish her sire had had male heirs.

XXXIV.

Some are soon bagged, and some reject three dozen:

'T is fine to see them scattering refusals

And wild dismay o'er every angry cousin

(Friends of the party), who begin accusals,

Such as--"Unless Miss Blank meant to have chosen

Poor Frederick, why did she accord perusals

To his billets? _Why_ waltz with him? Why, I pray,

Look _'Yes'_ last night, and yet say _'No'_ to-day?

XXXV.

"Why?--Why?--Besides, Fred really was _attached_;

'T was not her fortune--he has enough without;

The time will come she'll wish that she had snatched

So good an opportunity, no doubt:--

But the old Marchioness some plan had hatched,

As I'll tell Aurea at to-morrow's rout:

And after all poor Frederick may do better--

Pray did you see her answer to his letter?"

XXXVI.

Smart uniforms and sparkling coronets

Are spurned in turn, until her turn arrives,

After male loss of time, and hearts, and bets

Upon the sweepstakes for substantial wives;

And when at last the pretty creature gets

Some gentleman, who fights, or writes, or drives,

It soothes the awkward squad of the rejected

To find how very badly she selected.

XXXVII.

For sometimes they accept some long pursuer,

Worn out with importunity; or fall

(But here perhaps the instances are fewer)

To the lot of him who scarce pursued at all.

A hazy widower turned of forty 's sure[ll][629]

(If 't is not vain examples to recall)[lm]

To draw a high prize: now, howe'er he got her, I

See nought more strange in this than t' other lottery.

XXXVIII.

I, for my part--(one "modern instance" more,

"True,'t is a pity--pity 't is, 't is true")--[630]

Was chosen from out an amatory score,

Albeit my years were less discreet than few;

But though I also had reformed before

Those became one who soon were to be two,

I'll not gainsay the generous public's voice,

That the young lady made a monstrous choice.

XXXIX.

Oh, pardon my digression--or at least

Peruse! 'T is always with a moral end

That I dissert, like grace before a feast:

For like an agéd aunt, or tiresome friend,

A rigid guardian, or a zealous priest,

My Muse by exhortation means to mend

All people, at all times, and in most places,

Which puts my Pegasus to these grave paces.

XL.

But now I'm going to be immoral; now

I mean to show things really as they are,

Not as they ought to be: for I avow,

That till we see what's what in fact, we're far

From much improvement with that virtuous plough

Which skims the surface, leaving scarce a scar

Upon the black loam long manured by Vice,

Only to keep its corn at the old price.

XLI.

But first of little Leila we'll dispose,[ln]

For like a day-dawn she was young and pure--

Or like the old comparison of snows,[631]

(Which are more pure than pleasant, to be sure,

Like many people everybody knows),--

Don Juan was delighted to secure

A goodly guardian for his infant charge,

Who might not profit much by being at large.

XLII.

Besides, he had found out he was no tutor

(I wish that others would find out the same),[632]

And rather wished in such things to stand neuter,

For silly wards will bring their guardians blame:

So when he saw each ancient dame a suitor

To make his little wild Asiatic tame,

Consulting "the Society for Vice

Suppression," Lady Pinchbeck was his choice.

XLIII.

Olden she was--but had been very young;

Virtuous she was--and had been, I believe;

Although the World has such an evil tongue

That--but my chaster ear will not receive

An echo of a syllable that's wrong:[lo]

In fact, there's nothing makes me so much grieve,

As that abominable tittle-tattle,

Which is the cud eschewed[633] by human cattle.

XLIV.

Moreover I've remarked (and I was once

A slight observer in a modest way),

And so may every one except a dunce,

That ladies in their youth a little gay,

Besides their knowledge of the World, and sense

Of the sad consequence of going astray,

Are wiser in their warnings 'gainst the woe

Which the mere passionless can never know.

XLV.

While the harsh prude indemnifies her virtue

By railing at the unknown and envied passion,

Seeking far less to save you than to hurt you,

Or, what's still worse, to put you out of fashion,--

The kinder veteran with calm words will court you,

Entreating you to pause before you dash on;

Expounding and illustrating the riddle

Of epic Love's beginning--end--and middle.

XLVI.

Now whether it be thus, or that they are stricter,

As better knowing why they should be so,

I think you'll find from many a family picture,

That daughters of such mothers as may know

The World by experience rather than by lecture,

Turn out much better for the Smithfield Show

Of vestals brought into the marriage mart,

Than those bred up by prudes without a heart.

XLVII.

I said that Lady Pinchbeck had been talked about--

As who has not, if female, young, and pretty?

But now no more the ghost of Scandal stalked about;

She merely was deemed amiable and witty,

And several of her best _bons-mots_ were hawked about:

Then she was given to charity and pity,

And passed (at least the latter years of life)

For being a most exemplary wife.

XLVIII.

High in high circles, gentle in her own,

She was the mild reprover of the young,

Whenever--which means every day--they'd shown

An awkward inclination to go wrong.

The quantity of good she did 's unknown,

Or at the least would lengthen out my song:

In brief, the little orphan of the East

Had raised an interest in her,--which increased.

XLIX.

Juan, too, was a sort of favourite with her,

Because she thought him a good heart at bottom,

A little spoiled, but not so altogether;

Which was a wonder, if you think who got him,

And how he had been tossed, he scarce knew whither:

Though this might ruin others, it did _not_ him,

At least entirely--for he had seen too many

Changes in Youth, to be surprised at any.

L.

And these vicissitudes tell best in youth;

For when they happen at a riper age,

People are apt to blame the Fates, forsooth,

And wonder Providence is not more sage.

Adversity is the first path to Truth:

He who hath proved War--Storm--or Woman's rage,

Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,

Hath won the experience which is deemed so weighty.

LI.

How far it profits is another matter.--

Our hero gladly saw his little charge

Safe with a lady, whose last grown-up daughter

Being long married, and thus set at large,

Had left all the accomplishments she taught her

To be transmitted, like the Lord Mayor's barge,

To the next comer; or--as it will tell

More Muse-like--like to Cytherea's shell.[lp]

LII.

I call such things transmission; for there is

A floating balance of accomplishment,

Which forms a pedigree from Miss to Miss,

According as their minds or backs are bent.

Some waltz--some draw--some fathom the abyss

Of Metaphysics; others are content

With Music; the most moderate shine as wits;--

While others have a genius turned for fits.

LIII.

But whether fits, or wits, or harpsichords--

Theology--fine arts--or finer stays,

May be the baits for Gentlemen or Lords

With regular descent, in these our days,

The last year to the new transfers its hoards;

New vestals claim men's eyes with the same praise

Of "elegant" _et cætera_, in fresh batches--

All matchless creatures--and yet bent on matches.

LIV.

But now I will begin my poem. 'Tis

Perhaps a little strange, if not quite new,

That from the first of Cantos up to this

I've not begun what we have to go through.

These first twelve books are merely flourishes,

_Preludios_, trying just a string or two

Upon my lyre, or making the pegs sure;

And when so, you shall have the overture.

LV.

My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin

About what's called success, or not succeeding:

Such thoughts are quite below the strain they have chosen;

'T is a "great moral lesson"[634] they are reading.

I thought, at setting off, about two dozen

Cantos would do; but at Apollo's pleading,

If that my Pegasus should not be foundered,

I think to canter gently through a hundred.

LVI.

Don Juan saw that Microcosm on stilts,

Yclept the Great World; for it is the least,

Although the highest: but as swords have hilts

By which their power of mischief is increased,

When Man in battle or in quarrel tilts,

Thus the low world, north, south, or west, or east,

Must still obey the high[635]--which is their handle,

Their Moon, their Sun, their gas, their farthing candle.

LVII.

He had many friends who had many wives, and was

Well looked upon by both, to that extent

Of friendship which you may accept or pass,

It does nor good nor harm; being merely meant

To keep the wheels going of the higher class,

And draw them nightly when a ticket's sent;

And what with masquerades, and fêtes, and balls,

For the first season such a life scarce palls.

LVIII.

A young unmarried man, with a good name

And fortune, has an awkward part to play;

For good society is but a game,

"The royal game of Goose,"[636] as I may say,

Where everybody has some separate aim,

An end to answer, or a plan to lay--

The single ladies wishing to be double,

The married ones to save the virgins trouble.

LIX.

I don't mean this as general, but particular

Examples may be found of such pursuits:

Though several also keep their perpendicular

Like poplars, with good principles for roots;

Yet many have a method more _reticular_--

"Fishers for men," like Sirens with soft lutes:

For talk six times with the same single lady,

And you may get the wedding-dresses ready.

LX.

Perhaps you'll have a letter from the mother,

To say her daughter's feelings are trepanned;

Perhaps you'll have a visit from the brother,

All strut, and stays, and whiskers, to demand

What "your intentions are?"--One way or other

It seems the virgin's heart expects your hand:

And between pity for her case and yours,

You'll add to Matrimony's list of cures.

LXI.

I've known a dozen weddings made even _thus_,

And some of them high names: I have also known

Young men who--though they hated to discuss

Pretensions which they never dreamed to have shown--

Yet neither frightened by a female fuss,

Nor by mustachios moved, were let alone,

And lived, as did the broken-hearted fair,

In happier plight than if they formed a pair.

LXII.

There's also nightly, to the uninitiated,

A peril--not indeed like Love or Marriage,

But not the less for this to be depreciated:

It is--I meant and mean not to disparage

The show of Virtue even in the vitiated--

It adds an outward grace unto their carriage--

But to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot,

_Couleur de rose_, who's neither white nor scarlet.

LXIII.

Such is your cold coquette, who can't say "No,"

And won't say "Yes," and keeps you on and off-ing

On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow--

Then sees your heart wrecked, with an inward scoffing.

This works a world of sentimental woe,[lq]

And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin;

But yet is merely innocent flirtation,

Not quite adultery, but adulteration.

LXIV.

"Ye gods, I grow a talker!"[637] Let us prate.

The next of perils, though I place it _stern_est,

Is when, without regard to Church or State,

A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest.

Abroad, such things decide few women's fate--

(Such, early Traveller! is the truth thou learnest)--

But in old England, when a young bride errs,

Poor thing! Eve's was a trifling case to hers.

LXV.

For 't is a low, newspaper, humdrum, lawsuit

Country, where a young couple of the same ages[lr]

Can't form a friendship, but the world o'erawes it.

Then there's the vulgar trick of those d----d damages!

A verdict--grievous foe to those who cause it!--

Forms a sad climax to romantic homages;

Besides those soothing speeches of the pleaders,

And evidences which regale all readers.

LXVI.

But they who blunder thus are raw beginners;

A little genial sprinkling of hypocrisy

Has saved the fame of thousand splendid sinners,

The loveliest oligarchs of our Gynocracy;[638]

You may see such at all the balls and dinners,

Among the proudest of our aristocracy,

So gentle, charming, charitable, chaste--

And all by having _tact_ as well as taste.

LXVII.

Juan, who did not stand in the predicament

Of a mere novice, had one safeguard more;

For he was sick--no, 't was not the word _sick_ I meant--

But he had seen so much good love before,

That he was not in heart so very weak;--I meant

But thus much, and no sneer against the shore

Of white cliffs, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings--

Tithes, taxes, duns--and doors with double knockings.[ls]

LXVIII.

But coming young from lands and scenes romantic,

Where lives, not lawsuits, must be risked for Passion

And Passion's self must have a spice of frantic,

Into a country where 't is half a fashion,

Seemed to him half commercial, half pedantic,

Howe'er he might esteem this moral nation:

Besides (alas! his taste--forgive and pity!)

At _first_ he did not think the women pretty.

LXIX.

I say at _first_--for he found out at _last_,

But by degrees, that they were fairer far

Than the more glowing dames whose lot is cast

Beneath the influence of the Eastern Star.

A further proof we should not judge in haste;

Yet inexperience could not be his bar

To taste:--the truth is, if men would confess,

That novelties _please_ less than they _impress_.

LXX.

Though travelled, I have never had the luck to

Trace up those shuffling negroes, Nile or Niger,

To that impracticable place Timbuctoo,

Where Geography finds no one to oblige her

With such a chart as may be safely stuck to--

For Europe ploughs in Afric like "_bos piger_:"[639]

But if I _had been_ at Timbuctoo, there

No doubt I should be told that black is fair.[lt][640]

LXXI.

It is. I will not swear that black is white,

But I suspect in fact that white is black,

And the whole matter rests upon eye-sight:--

Ask a blind man, the best judge. You'll attack

Perhaps this new position--but I'm right;

Or if I'm wrong, I'll not be ta'en aback:--

He hath no morn nor night, but all is dark

Within--and what seest thou? A dubious spark!

LXXII.

But I'm relapsing into Metaphysics,

That labyrinth, whose clue is of the same

Construction as your cures for hectic phthisics,

Those bright moths fluttering round a dying flame:

And this reflection brings me to plain Physics,

And to the beauties of a foreign dame,

Compared with those of our pure pearls of price,

Those polar summers, _all_ Sun, and some ice.[lu][641]

LXXIII.

Or say they are like virtuous mermaids, whose

Beginnings are fair faces, ends mere fishes;--

Not that there's not a quantity of those

Who have a due respect for their own wishes.

Like Russians rushing from hot baths to snows[642]

Are they, at bottom virtuous even when vicious:

They warm into a scrape, but keep of course,

As a reserve, a plunge into remorse.

LXXIV.

But this has nought to do with their outsides.

I said that Juan did not think them pretty

At the first blush; for a fair Briton hides

Half her attractions--probably from pity--

And rather calmly into the heart glides,

Than storms it as a foe would take a city;

But once _there_ (if you doubt this, prithee try)[lv]

She keeps it for you like a true ally.

LXXV.

She cannot step as does an Arab barb,[643]

Or Andalusian girl from mass returning,

Nor wear as gracefully as Gauls her garb,

Nor in her eye Ausonia's glance is burning;

Her voice, though sweet, is not so fit to warb-

le those _bravuras_ (which I still am learning

To like, though I have been seven years in Italy,

And have, or had, an ear that served me prettily);--

LXXVI.

She cannot do these things, nor one or two

Others, in that off-hand and dashing style

Which takes so much--to give the Devil his due;

Nor is she quite so ready with her smile,

Nor settles all things in one interview,

(A thing approved as saving time and toil);--

But though the soil may give you time and trouble,

Well cultivated, it will render double.

LXXVII.

And if in fact she takes to a _grande passion_,

It is a very serious thing indeed:

Nine times in ten 't is but caprice or fashion,

Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead,

The pride of a mere child with a new sash on,

Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed:

But the _tenth_ instance will be a tornado,

For there's no saying what they will or may do.

LXXVIII.

The reason's obvious: if there's an _éclat_,

They lose their caste at once, as do the Parias;

And when the delicacies of the Law

Have filled their papers with their comments various,

Society, that china without flaw,

(The Hypocrite!) will banish them like Marius,

To sit amidst the ruins of their guilt:[644]

For Fame's a Carthage not so soon rebuilt.

LXXIX.

Perhaps this is as it should be;--it is

A comment on the Gospel's "Sin no more,

And be thy sins forgiven:"--but upon this

I leave the Saints to settle their own score.

Abroad, though doubtless they do much amiss,

An erring woman finds an opener door

For her return to Virtue--as they call

That Lady, who should be at home to all.[lw]

LXXX.

For me, I leave the matter where I find it,

Knowing that such uneasy virtue leads

People some ten times less in fact to mind it,

And care but for discoveries, and not deeds.

And as for Chastity, you'll never bind it

By all the laws the strictest lawyer pleads,

But aggravate the crime you have not prevented,

By rendering desperate those who had else repented.

LXXXI.

But Juan was no casuist, nor had pondered

Upon the moral lessons of mankind:

Besides, he had not seen of several hundred

A lady altogether to his mind.

A little _blasé_--'t is not to be wondered

At, that his heart had got a tougher rind:

And though not vainer from his past success,

No doubt his sensibilities were less.

LXXXII.

He also had been busy seeing sights--

The Parliament and all the other houses;

Had sat beneath the Gallery at nights,

To hear debates whose thunder _roused_ (not _rouses_)

The World to gaze upon those Northern Lights,

Which flashed as far as where the musk-bull browses;[645]

He had also stood at times behind the Throne--

But Grey[646] was not arrived, and Chatham gone.[647]

LXXXIII.

He saw, however, at the closing session,

That noble sight, when _really_ free the nation,

A King in constitutional possession

Of such a Throne as is the proudest station,

Though Despots know it not--till the progression

Of Freedom shall complete their education.

'T is not mere Splendour makes the show august

To eye or heart--it is the People's trust.

LXXXIV.