With all the praises ever said or sung:
    Though hymned by every harp, unless within
    Your heart joins chorus, Fame is but a din.

                      XXXV.

    Oh! ye great authors luminous, voluminous!
      Ye twice ten hundred thousand daily scribes!
    Whose pamphlets, volumes, newspapers, illumine us!
      Whether you're paid by government in bribes,
    To prove the public debt is not consuming us--
      Or, roughly treading on the "courtier's kibes"
    With clownish heel[501] your popular circulation
    Feeds you by printing half the realm's starvation;--

                      XXXVI.

    Oh, ye great authors!--_A propos des bottes,_--
      I have forgotten what I meant to say,
    As sometimes have been greater sages' lots;--
      'T was something calculated to allay
    All wrath in barracks, palaces, or cots:
      Certes it would have been but thrown away,
    And that's one comfort for my lost advice,
    Although no doubt it was beyond all price.

                      XXXVII.

    But let it go:--it will one day be found
      With other relics of "a former World,"
    When this World shall be _former,_ underground,
      Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisped, and curled,
    Baked, fried, or burnt, turned inside-out, or drowned,
      Like all the worlds before, which have been hurled
    First out of, and then back again to chaos--
    The superstratum which will overlay us.[jd]

                      XXXVIII.

    So Cuvier says:[502]--and then shall come again
      Unto the new creation, rising out
    From our old crash, some mystic, ancient strain
      Of things destroyed and left in airy doubt;
    Like to the notions we now entertain
      Of Titans, giants, fellows of about
    Some hundred feet in height, _not_ to say _miles,_
    And mammoths, and your winged crocodiles.

                      XXXIX.

    Think if then George the Fourth should be dug up![503]
      How the new worldlings of the then new East
    Will wonder where such animals could sup!
      (For they themselves will be but of the least:
    Even worlds miscarry, when too oft they pup,
      And every new creation hath decreased
    In size, from overworking the material--
    Men are but maggots of some huge Earth's burial.)

                      XL.

    _How_ will--to these young people, just thrust out
      From some fresh Paradise, and set to plough,
    And dig, and sweat, and turn themselves about,
      And plant, and reap, and spin, and grind, and sow,
    Till all the arts at length are brought about,
      Especially of War and taxing,--_how_,
    I say, will these great relics, when they see 'em,
    Look like the monsters of a new Museum!

                      XLI.

    But I am apt to grow too metaphysical:
      "The time is out of joint,"[504]--and so am I;
    I quite forget this poem's merely quizzical,
      And deviate into matters rather dry.
    I ne'er decide what I shall say, and this I call[je]
      Much too poetical: men should know why
    They write, and for what end; but, note or text,
    I never know the word which will come next.

                      XLII.

    So on I ramble, now and then narrating,
      Now pondering:--it is time we should narrate.
    I left Don Juan with his horses baiting--
      Now we'll get o'er the ground at a great rate:
    I shall not be particular in stating
      His journey, we've so many tours of late:
    Suppose him then at Petersburgh; suppose
    That pleasant capital of painted snows;[505]

                      XLIII.

    Suppose him in a handsome uniform--
      A scarlet coat, black facings, a long plume,
    Waving, like sails new shivered in a storm,
      Over a cocked hat in a crowded room,
    And brilliant breeches, bright as a Cairn Gorme,
      Of yellow casimire we may presume,
    White stockings drawn uncurdled as new milk
    O'er limbs whose symmetry set off the silk;[jf]

                      XLIV.

    Suppose him sword by side, and hat in hand,
      Made up by Youth, Fame, and an army tailor--
    That great enchanter, at whose rod's command
      Beauty springs forth, and Nature's self turns paler,
    Seeing how Art can make her work more grand
      (When she don't pin men's limbs in like a gaoler),--
    Behold him placed as if upon a pillar! He[jg]
    Seems Love turned a Lieutenant of Artillery![506]

                      XLV.

    His bandage slipped down into a cravat--
      His wings subdued to epaulettes--his quiver
    Shrunk to a scabbard, with his arrows at
      His side as a small sword, but sharp as ever--
    His bow converted into a cocked hat--
      But still so like, that Psyche were more clever
    Than some wives (who make blunders no less stupid),
    If she had not mistaken him for Cupid.

                      XLVI.

    The courtiers stared, the ladies whispered, and
      The Empress smiled: the reigning favourite frowned--[jh]
    I quite forget which of them was in hand
      Just then, as they are rather numerous found,[507]
    Who took, by turns, that difficult command
      Since first her Majesty was singly crowned:[508]
    But they were mostly nervous six-foot fellows,
    All fit to make a Patagonian jealous.

                      XLVII.

    Juan was none of these, but slight and slim,
      Blushing and beardless; and, yet, ne'ertheless,
    There was a something in his turn of limb,
      And still more in his eye, which seemed to express,
    That, though he looked one of the Seraphim,
      There lurked a man beneath the Spirit's dress.
    Besides, the Empress sometimes liked a boy,
    And had just buried the fair-faced Lanskoi.[ji][509]

                      XLVIII.

    No wonder then that Yermoloff, or Momonoff,[510]
      Or Scherbatoff, or any other _off_
    Or _on_, might dread her Majesty had not room enough
      Within her bosom (which was not too tough),
    For a new flame; a thought to cast of gloom enough
      Along the aspect, whether smooth or rough,
    Of him who, in the language of his station,
    Then held that "high official situation."

                      XLIX.

    O gentle ladies! should you seek to know
      The import of this diplomatic phrase,
    Bid Ireland's Londonderry's Marquess[511] show
      His parts of speech, and in the strange displays
    Of that odd string of words, all in a row,
      Which none divine, and every one obeys,
    Perhaps you may pick out some queer _no_ meaning,--
    Of that weak wordy harvest the sole gleaning.

                      L.

    I think I can explain myself without
      That sad inexplicable beast of prey--
    That Sphinx, whose words would ever be a doubt,
      Did not his deeds unriddle them each day--
    That monstrous hieroglyphic--that long spout
      Of blood and water--leaden Castlereagh!
    And here I must an anecdote relate,
    But luckily of no great length or weight.

                      LI.

    An English lady asked of an Italian,
      What were the actual and official duties
    Of the strange thing some women set a value on,
      Which hovers oft about some married beauties,
    Called "Cavalier Servente?"[512]--a Pygmalion
      Whose statues warm (I fear, alas! too true 't is)
    Beneath his art:[jj]--the dame, pressed to disclose them,
    Said--"Lady, I beseech you to _suppose them_."

                      LII.

    And thus I supplicate your supposition,
      And mildest, matron-like interpretation,
    Of the imperial favourite's condition.
      'T was a high place, the highest in the nation
    In fact, if not in rank; and the suspicion
      Of any one's attaining to his station,
    No doubt gave pain, where each new pair of shoulders,
    If rather broad, made stocks rise--and their holders.

                      LIII.

    Juan, I said, was a most beauteous boy,
      And had retained his boyish look beyond
    The usual hirsute seasons which destroy,
      With beards and whiskers, and the like, the fond
    _Parisian_ aspect, which upset old Troy
      And founded Doctors' Commons:[jk]--I have conned
    The history of divorces, which, though chequered,
    Calls Ilion's the first damages on record.

                      LIV.

    And Catherine, who loved all things (save her Lord,
      Who was gone to his place), and passed for much,
    Admiring those (by dainty dames abhorred)
      Gigantic gentlemen, yet had a touch
    Of sentiment: and he she most adored
      Was the lamented Lanskoi, who was such
    A lover as had cost her many a tear,
    And yet but made a middling grenadier.

                      LV.

    Oh thou "_teterrima causa_" of all "_belli_"--[513]
      Thou gate of Life and Death--thou nondescript!
    Whence is our exit and our entrance,--well I
      May pause in pondering how all souls are dipped
    In thy perennial fountain:--how man _fell_ I
      Know not, since Knowledge saw her branches stripped
    Of her first fruit; but how he _falls_ and rises
    Since,--_thou_ hast settled beyond all surmises.

                      LVI.

    Some call thee "the _worst_ cause of War," but I
      Maintain thou art the _best_:--for after all,
    From thee we come, to thee we go, and why
      To get at thee not batter down a wall,
    Or waste a World? since no one can deny
      Thou dost replenish worlds both great and small:
    With--or without thee--all things at a stand[jl]
    Are, or would be, thou sea of Life's dry land![jm]

                      LVII.

    Catherine, who was the grand Epitome
      Of that great cause of War, or Peace, or what
    You please (it causes all the things which be,
      So you may take your choice of this or that)--
    Catherine, I say, was very glad to see
      The handsome herald, on whose plumage sat[514]
    Victory; and, pausing as she saw him kneel
    With his despatch, forgot to break the seal.

                      LVIII.

    Then recollecting the whole Empress, nor
      Forgetting quite the Woman (which composed
    At least three parts of this great whole), she tore
      The letter open with an air which posed
    The Court, that watched each look her visage wore,
      Until a royal smile at length disclosed
    Fair weather for the day. Though rather spacious,
    Her face was noble, her eyes fine, mouth gracious.[515]

                      LIX.

    Great joy was hers, or rather joys: the first
      Was a ta'en city, thirty thousand slain:
    Glory and triumph o'er her aspect burst,
      As an East Indian sunrise on the main:--
    These quenched a moment her Ambition's thirst--
      So Arab deserts drink in Summer's rain:
    In vain!--As fall the dews on quenchless sands,
    Blood only serves to wash Ambition's hands!

                      LX.

    Her next amusement was more fanciful;
      She smiled at mad Suwarrow's rhymes, who threw
    Into a Russian couplet rather dull
      The whole gazette of thousands whom he slew:
    Her third was feminine enough to annul
      The shudder which runs naturally through
    Our veins, when things called Sovereigns think it best
    To kill, and Generals turn it into jest.

                      LXI.

    The two first feelings ran their course complete,
      And lighted first her eye, and then her mouth:
    The whole court looked immediately most sweet,
      Like flowers well watered after a long drouth:--
    But when on the Lieutenant at her feet
      Her Majesty, who liked to gaze on youth
    Almost as much as on a new despatch,
    Glanced mildly,--all the world was on the watch.

                      LXII.

    Though somewhat large, exuberant, and truculent,
      When _wroth_--while _pleased_, she was as fine a figure
    As those who like things rosy, ripe, and succulent,
      Would wish to look on, while they are in vigour.
    She could repay each amatory look you lent
      With interest, and, in turn, was wont with rigour
    To exact of Cupid's bills the full amount
    At sight, nor would permit you to discount.

                      LXIII.

    With her the latter, though at times convenient,
      Was not so necessary; for they tell
    That she was handsome, and though fierce _looked_ lenient,
      And always used her favourites too well.
    If once beyond her boudoir's precincts in ye went,
      Your "fortune" was in a fair way "to swell
    A man" (as Giles says);[516] for though she would widow all
    Nations, she liked Man as an individual.

                      LXIV.

    What a strange thing is Man! and what a stranger
      Is Woman! What a whirlwind is her head,
    And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger
      Is all the rest about her! Whether wed,
    Or widow--maid--or mother, she can change her
      Mind like the wind: whatever she has said
    Or done, is light to what she'll say or do;--
    The oldest thing on record, and yet new!

                      LXV.

    Oh Catherine! (for of all interjections,
      To thee both _oh!_ and _ah!_ belong, of right,
    In Love and War) how odd are the connections
      Of human thoughts, which jostle in their flight!
    Just now _yours_ were cut out in different sections:
      _First_ Ismail's capture caught your fancy quite;
    _Next_ of new knights, the fresh and glorious batch:
    And _thirdly_ he who brought you the despatch!

                      LXVI.

    Shakespeare talks of "the herald Mercury
      New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:"[517]
    And some such visions crossed her Majesty,
      While her young herald knelt before her still.
    'T is very true the hill seemed rather high,
      For a Lieutenant to climb up; but skill
    Smoothed even the Simplon's steep, and by God's blessing,
    With Youth and Health all kisses are "Heaven-kissing."

                      LXVII.

    Her Majesty looked down, the youth looked up--
      And so they fell in love;--she with his face,
    His grace, his God-knows-what: for Cupid's cup
      With the first draught intoxicates apace,
    A quintessential laudanum or "Black Drop,"
      Which makes one drunk at once, without the base
    Expedient of full bumpers; for the eye
    In love drinks all Life's fountains (save tears) dry.

                      LXVIII.

    He, on the other hand, if not in love,
      Fell into that no less imperious passion,
    Self-love--which, when some sort of thing above
      Ourselves, a singer, dancer, much in fashion,
    Or Duchess--Princess--Empress, "deigns to prove"[518]
      ('T is Pope's phrase) a great longing, though a rash one,
    For one especial person out of many,
    Make us believe ourselves as good as any.

                      LXIX.

    Besides, he was of that delighted age
      Which makes all female ages equal--when
    We don't much care with whom we may engage,
      As bold as Daniel in the lions' den,
    So that we can our native sun assuage
      In the next ocean, which may flow just then--
    To make a _twilight_ in, just as Sol's heat is
    Quenched in the lap of the salt sea, or Thetis.

                      LXX.

    And Catherine (we must say thus much for Catherine),
      Though bold and bloody, was the kind of thing
    Whose temporary passion was quite flattering,
      Because each lover looked a sort of King,
    Made up upon an amatory pattern,
      A royal husband in all save the _ring_--[jn]
    Which, (being the damnedest part of matrimony,)
    Seemed taking out the sting to leave the honey:

                      LXXI.

    And when you add to this, her Womanhood
      In its meridian, her blue eyes[519] or gray--
    (The last, if they have soul, are quite as good,
      Or better, as the best examples say:
    Napoleon's, Mary's[520] (Queen of Scotland), should
      Lend to that colour a transcendent ray;
    And Pallas also sanctions the same hue,
    Too wise to look through optics black or blue)--

                      LXXII.

    Her sweet smile, and her then majestic figure,[jo]
      Her plumpness, her imperial condescension,
    Her preference of a boy to men much bigger
      (Fellows whom Messalina's self would pension),
    Her prime of life, just now in juicy vigour,
      With other _extras_, which we need not mention,--
    All these, or any one of these, explain
    Enough to make a stripling very vain.

                      LXXIII.

    And that's enough, for Love is vanity,
      Selfish in its beginning as its end,[jp]
    Except where 't is a mere insanity,
      A maddening spirit which would strive to blend
    Itself with Beauty's frail inanity,
      On which the Passion's self seems to depend;
    And hence some heathenish philosophers
    Make Love the main-spring of the Universe.

                      LXXIV.

    Besides Platonic love, besides the love
      Of God, the love of sentiment, the loving
    Of faithful pairs--(I needs must rhyme with dove,
      That good old steam-boat which keeps verses moving
    'Gainst reason--Reason ne'er was hand-and-glove
      With rhyme, but always leant less to improving
    The sound than sense)--besides all these pretences
    To Love, there are those things which words name senses;

                      LXXV.

    Those movements, those improvements in our bodies
      Which make all bodies anxious to get out
    Of their own sand-pits, to mix with a goddess,
      For such all women are at first no doubt.[jq]
    How beautiful that moment! and how odd is
      That fever which precedes the languid rout
    Of our sensations! What a curious way
    The whole thing is of clothing souls in clay![jr]

                      LXXVI.[521]

    The noblest kind of love is love Platonical,
      To end or to begin with; the next grand
    Is that which may be christened love canonical,
      Because the clergy take the thing in hand;
    The third sort to be noted in our chronicle
      As flourishing in every Christian land,
    Is when chaste matrons to their other ties
    Add what may be called _marriage in disguise_.

                      LXXVII.

    Well, we won't analyse--our story must
      Tell for itself: the Sovereign was smitten,
    Juan much flattered by her love, or lust;--
      I cannot stop to alter words once written,
    And the _two_ are so mixed with human dust,
      That he who _names one_, both perchance may hit on:
    But in such matters Russia's mighty Empress
    Behaved no better than a common sempstress.

                      LXXVIII.

    The whole court melted into one wide whisper,
      And all lips were applied unto all ears!
    The elder ladies' wrinkles curled much crisper
      As they beheld; the younger cast some leers
    On one another, and each lovely lisper
      Smiled as she talked the matter o'er; but tears
    Of rivalship rose in each clouded eye
    Of all the standing army who stood by.

                      LXXIX.

    All the ambassadors of all the powers
      Inquired, Who was this very new young man,
    Who promised to be great in some few hours?
      Which is full soon (though Life is but a span).
    Already they beheld the silver showers
      Of rubles rain, as fast as specie can,
    Upon his cabinet, besides the presents
    Of several ribands, and some thousand peasants.[522]

                      LXXX.

    Catherine was generous,--all such ladies are:
      Love--that great opener of the heart and all
    The ways that lead there, be they near or far,
      Above, below, by turnpikes great or small,--
    Love--(though she had a cursed taste for War,
      And was not the best wife unless we call
    Such Clytemnestra, though perhaps 't is better
    That one should die--than two drag on the fetter)--

                      LXXXI.

    Love had made Catherine make each lover's fortune,
      Unlike our own half-chaste Elizabeth,
    Whose avarice all disbursements did importune,
      If History, the grand liar, ever saith
    The truth; and though grief her old age might shorten,
      Because she put a favourite to death,
    Her vile, ambiguous method of flirtation,
    And stinginess, disgrace her sex and station.

                      LXXXII.

    But when the levée rose, and all was bustle
      In the dissolving circle, all the nations'
    Ambassadors began as 't were to hustle
      Round the young man with their congratulations.
    Also the softer silks were heard to rustle
      Of gentle dames, among whose recreations
    It is to speculate on handsome faces,
    Especially when such lead to high places.

                      LXXXIII.

    Juan, who found himself, he knew not how,
      A general object of attention, made
    His answers with a very graceful bow,
      As if born for the ministerial trade.
    Though modest, on his unembarrassed brow
      Nature had written "Gentleman!" He said
    Little, but to the purpose; and his manner
    Flung hovering graces o'er him like a banner.

                      LXXXIV.

    An order from her Majesty consigned
      Our young Lieutenant to the genial care
    Of those in office: all the world looked kind,
      (As it will look sometimes with the first stare,
    Which Youth would not act ill to keep in mind,)
      As also did Miss Protasoff[523] then there,[js]
    Named from her mystic office "l'Eprouveuse,"
    A term inexplicable to the Muse.

                      LXXXV.

    With _her_ then, as in humble duty bound,
      Juan retired,--and so will I, until
    My Pegasus shall tire of touching ground.
      We have just lit on a "heaven-kissing hill,"
    So lofty that I feel my brain turn round,
      And all my fancies whirling like a mill;
    Which is a signal to my nerves and brain,
    To take a quiet ride in some green lane.[524]

FOOTNOTES:

{373}[476] [Stanzas i.-viii., which are headed "_Don Juan_, Canto III.,
July 10, 1819," are in the handwriting of (?) the Countess Guiccioli.
Stanzas ix., x., which were written on the same sheet of paper, are in
Byron's handwriting. The original MS. opens with stanza xi., "Death
laughs," etc. (See letter to Moore, July 12, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi.
96.)]

[477]

    ["Faut qu' lord Villain-ton ait tout pris;
    N'y a plus d' argent dans c' gueux de Paris."

De Béranger, "Complainte d'une de ces Demoiselles a l'Occasion des
Affaires du Temps (Février, 1816)," _Chansons_, 1821, ii. 17.

Compare a retaliatory epigram which appeared in a contemporary
newspaper--

    "These French _petit-maîtres_ who the spectacle throng,
    Say of Wellington's dress _qu'il fait vilain ton!_
    But, at Waterloo, Wellington made the French stare
    When their army he dressed _à la mode Angleterre!_"]

[it] _Oh Wellington_ (_or "Vilainton"_)----.--[MS. B.]

[478] Query, _Ney?_--Printer's Devil. [Michel Ney, Duke of Elchingen,
"the bravest of the brave" (see _Ode from the French_, stanza i.
_Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 431), born January 10, 1769, was arrested
August 5, and shot December 7, 1815.]

[479] [The story of the attempted assassination (February 11, 1818) of
the Duke of Wellington, which is dismissed by Alison in a few words
(_Hist. of Europe_ (1815-1852), 1853, i. 577, 578), occupies many pages
of the _Supplementary Despatches_ (1865, xii. 271-546). Byron probably
drew his own conclusions as to the Kinnaird-Marinet incident, from the
_Letter to the Duke of Wellington on the Arrest of M. Marinet_, by Lord
Kinnaird, 1818. The story, which is full of interest, may be briefly
recounted. On January 30, 1818, Lord Kinnaird informed Sir George Murray
(Chief of the Staff of the Army of Occupation) that a person, whose name
he withheld, had revealed to him the existence of a plot to assassinate
the Duke of Wellington. At 12.30 a.m., February 11, 1818, the Duke, on
returning to his Hotel, was fired at by an unknown person; and then, but
not till then, he wrote to urge Lord Clancarty to advise the Prince
Regent to take steps to persuade or force Kinnaird to disclose the name
of his informant. A Mr. G.W. Chad, of the Consular Service, was
empowered to proceed to Brussels, and to seek an interview with
Kinnaird. He carried with him, among other documents, a letter from the
Duke to Lord Clancarty, dated February 12, 1818. A postscript contained
this intimation: "It may be proper to mention to you that the French
Government are disposed to go every length in the way of negotiation
with the person mentioned by Lord Kinnaird, or others, to discover the
plot."

Kinnaird absolutely declined to give up the name of his informant, but,
acting on the strength of the postscript, which had been read but not
shown to him, started for Paris with "the great unknown." Some days
after their arrival, and while Kinnaird was a guest of the Duke, the man
was arrested, and discovered to be one Nicholle or Marinet, who had been
appointed _receveur_ under the restored government of Louis XVIII., but
during the _Cent jours_ had fled to Belgium, retaining the funds he had
amassed during his term of office. Kinnaird regarded this action of the
French Government as a breach of faith, and in a "Memorial" to the
French Chamber of Peers, and his _Letter_, maintained that the Duke's
postscript implied a promise of a safe conduct for Marinet to and from
Paris to Brussels. The Duke, on the other hand, was equally positive
(see his letter to Lord Liverpool, May 30, 1818) "that he never intended
to have any negotiations with anybody." Kinnaird was a "dog with a bad
name." He had been accused (see his _Letter to the Earl of Liverpool_,
1816, p. 16) of "the promulgation of dangerous opinions," and of
intimacy "with persons suspected." The Duke speaks of him as "the friend
of Revolutionists"! It is evident that he held the dangerous doctrine
that a promise to a rogue _is_ a promise, and that the authorities took
a different view of the ethics of the situation. It is clear, too, that
the Duke's postscript was ambiguous, but that it did not warrant the
assumption that if Marinet went to Paris he should be protected. The air
was full of plots. The great Duke despised and was inclined to ignore
the pistol or the dagger of the assassin; but he believed that "mischief
was afoot," and that "great personages" might or might not be
responsible. He was beset by difficulties at every turn, and would have
been more than mortal if he had put too favourable a construction on the
scruples, or condoned the imprudence of a "friend of Revolutionists."]

{374}[480] [The reference may be to the Duke of Wellington's intimacy
with Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. Byron had "passed that way"
himself (see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 251, note i, 323, etc.), and could
hardly attack the Duke on _that_ score.]

[481] ["Thou art the best o' the cut-throats." _Macbeth_, act iii.
sc. 4, line 17.]

[482] ["I have supped full of horrors." _Macbeth_, act v. sc. 5, line 13.]

[483] _Vide_ speeches in Parliament, after the battle of Waterloo.

{376}[484] ["I at this time got a post, being for fatigue, with four
others. We were sent to break biscuit, and make a mess for Lord
Wellington's hounds. I was very hungry, and thought it a good job at the
time, as we got our own fill, while we broke the biscuit,--a thing I had
not got for some days. When thus engaged, the Prodigal Son was never
once out of my mind; and I sighed, as I fed the dogs, over my humble
situation and my ruined hopes."--_Journal of a Soldier of the 71st
Regiment_, 1806 to 1815 (Edinburgh, 1822), pp. 132, 133.]

[485] ["We are assured that Epaminondas died so poor that the Thebans
buried him at the public charge; for at his death nothing was found in
his house but an iron spit."--Plutarch's _Fabius Maximus_, Langhorne's
translation, 1838, p. 140. See, too, Cornelius Nepos, _Epam_., cap. iii.
"Paupertatem adeo facilè perpessus est, ut de Republica nihil præter
gloriam ceperit."]

[486] [For Pitt's refusal to accept £100,000 from the merchants of
London towards the payment of his debts, or £30,000 from the King's
Privy Purse, see _Pitt_, by Lord Rosebery, 1891. p. 231.]

{377}[iu] _To_ you _this_ one _unflattering Muse inscribes_.--[MS.
erased.]

{377}[iv]
    _He strips from man his mantle (which is dear_
    _Though beautiful in youth) his carnal skin_.--[MS. erased.]

[487] [_Hamlet_, act iii. sc. i, line 56.]

[488] ["O dura messorum ilia!" etc.-Hor., _Epod._ iii. 4.]

[iw] _Ye iron guts_----.--[MS. erased.]

{379}[489] ["Ce n'est qu'à l'édition de 1635 qu'on voit paraître la
devise que Montaigne avait adoptée, le _que sais-je_? avec l'emblème des
balances. ... Ce _que sais-je_ que Pascal a si sévèrement analysé se lit
au chapitre douze du livre ii; il caractérise parfaitement la
philosophie de Montaigne; il est la conséquence de cette maxime qu'il
avait inscrite en grec sur les solives de sa librairie: 'Il n'est point
de raisonnement au quel on n'oppose un raissonnement
contraire.'"--_Oeuvres de ... Montaigne_, 1837, "Notice
Bibliographique," p. xvii.]

[490] [Concerning the Pyrrhonists or Sceptics and their master Pyrrho,
who held that Truth was incomprehensible (_inprensibilis_), and that you
may not affirm of aught that it be rather this or that, or neither this
nor that (οὐ μᾶλλον οὕτως ἔχει τόδε ἢ ἐκείνως ἢ οὐδετέρως), [Greek: (ou)
ma~llon ou(/tôs e)/chei to/de ê)\ e)kei/nôs ê)\ ou)dete/rôs),] see Aul.
Gellii _Noct. Attic._, lib. xi. cap. v.]

[491] See _Othello_, [act ii. sc. 3, lines 206, 207: "Well, God's above
all, and there be souls must be saved; and there be souls must not be
saved--Let's have no more of this."]

{380}[492] [_Hamlet_, act v. sc. 2, lines 94, 98, 102.]

[493] [For "Lycanthropy," see "The Soldier's Story" in the _Satyricôn_
of Petronius Arbiter, cap. 62; see, too, _Letters on Demonology, etc._,
by Sir W. Scott, 1830, pp. 211, 212.]

[494] [In respect of suavity and forbearance Melancthon was the
counterpart of Luther. John Arrowsmith (1602-1657), in his _Tractica
Sacra_, describes him as "Vir in quo cum pietate doctrina, et cum
utrâque candor certavit."]

[ix] _Like Moses or like Cobbett who have ne'er._

Moses and Cobbet proclaim themselves the "meekest of men." See their
writings.--[MS.]

_Like Moses who was "very meek" had ne'er_.--[MS. erased.]

{381}[495] [See his "Correspondance avec L'Impératrice de Russie,"
_Oeuvres Complètes_ de Voltaire, 1836, x. 393-477. M. Waliszewski, in
his _Story of a Throne_, 1895, i. 224, has gathered a handful of these
flowers of speech: "She is the chief person in the world.... She is the
fire and life of nations.... She is a saint.... She is above all
saints.... She is equal to the mother of God.... She is the divinity of
the North.--_Te Catherinam laudamus, te Dominam confitemur, etc.,
etc._"]

[iy] _Of everything that ever cursed a nation._--[_MS. erased._]

[496] ["It is still more difficult to say which form of government is
the _worst_--all are so bad. As for democracy, it is the worst of the
whole; for what is (_in fact_) democracy?--an Aristocracy of
Blackguards."--See "My Dictionary" (May 1, 1821), _Letters_, 1901, v.
405, 406.]

{382}[iz] _Though priests and slaves may join the servile cry_.--[_MS.
erased._]

[497] In Greece I never saw or heard these animals; but among the ruins
of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds.

[See _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cliii. line 6, _Poetical Works_,
1899, ii. 441; and _Siege of Corinth_, line 329, ibid., 1900, iii. 462,
note 1.]

[ja] _Whereas the others hunt for rascal spiders._--[_MS. erased._]

[jb] _Which still are strongly fluttering to be free_.--[_MS. erased._]

{383}[498] [Compare _The Age of Bronze_, line 576, sq., _Poetical
Works_, 1901, v. 570.]

{384}[499] [Nadir Shah, or Thamas Kouli Khan, born November, 1688,
invaded India, 1739-40, was assassinated June 19, 1747.]

[jc]
    ---- _went mad and was_
    _Killed because what he swallowed would not pass_.--[MS. erased.]

[500] He was killed in a conspiracy, after his temper had been
exasperated by his extreme costivity to a degree of insanity.

[To such a height had his madness (attributed to _melancholia_ produced
by dropsy) attained, that he actually ordered the Afghan chiefs to rise
suddenly upon the Persian guard, and seize the ... chief nobles; but the
project being discovered, the intended victims conspired in turn, and a
body of them, including Nadir's guard, and the chief of his own tribe of
Afshar, entered his tent at midnight, and, after a moment's involuntary
pause--when challenged by the deep voice at which they had so often
trembled--rushed upon the king, who being brought to the ground by a
sabre-stroke, begged for life, and attempted to rise, but soon expired
beneath the repeated blows of the conspirators.--_The Indian Empire_, by
R. Montgomery Martin (1857), i. 172.]

[501] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto I. stanza lxvii. line 5, _Poetical
Works_, 1899, ii. 64, note 3.]

{385}[jd] _Or the substrata_----.--[MS.]

[502] [Compare Preface to _Cain_, _Poetical Works_, 1901, V. 210, note
1.]

[503] [_Vide ante,_ Canto VIII. stanza cxxvi. line 9, p. 368.]

{386}[504] [_Hamlet_, act i. sc. 5, line 189.]

[je] _I never know what's next to come_----.--[MS. erased.]

[505] [It is possible that the phrase "painted snows" was suggested by
Tooke's description of the winter-garden of the Taurida Palace: "The
genial warmth, ... the voluptuous silence that reigns in this enchanting
garden, lull the fancy into sweet romantic dreams: we think ourselves in
the groves of Italy, while torpid nature, through the windows of this
pavilion, announces the severity of a northern winter" (_The Life,
etc._, 1800, iii. 48).]

{387}[jf] _O'er limits which mightily_----:--[MS. erased.]

[jg]---- _in Youth and Glory's pillory_.--[MS. erased.]

[506] [In his _Notes sur le Don Juanisme_ (_Mercure de France_, 1898,
xxvi. 66), M. Bruchard says that this phrase defines and summarizes the
Byronic Don Juan.]

[jh]
      _The Empress smiled while all the Orloff frowned_--
    _A numerous family, to whose heart or hand_
      _Mild Catherine owed the chance of being crowned,_.--[MS. erased.]

{388}[507] [C.F.P. Masson, in his _Mémoires Secrets, etc._, 1880, i.
150-178, gives a list of twelve favourites, and in this Canto, Don Juan
takes upon himself the characteristics of at least three, Lanskoï,
Zoritch (or Zovitch), and Plato Zoubof. For example (p. 167), "Zoritch
... est le seul étranger qu'elle ait osé créer son favori pendant son
regne. C'étoit un _Servien_ échappé du bagne de Constantinople où il
étoit prisonnier: il parut, pour la première fois, en habit de hussard à
la cour. Il éblouit tout le monde par sa beauté, et les vielles dames en
parlent encore comme d'un Adonis." M. Waliszewski, in his _Romance of an
Empress_ (1894), devotes a chapter to "Private Life and Favouritism"
(ii. 234-286), in which he graphically describes the election and
inauguration of the _Vremienchtchik_, "the man of the moment," paramour
regnant, and consort of the Empress _pro hac vice_: "'We may observe in
Russia a sort of interregnum in affairs, caused by the displacement of
one favourite and the installation of his successor.' ... The
interregnums are, however, of very short duration. Only one lasts for
several months, between the death of Lanskoï (1784) and the succession
of Iermolof.... There is no lack of candidates. The place is good....
Sometimes, too, on the height by the throne, reached at a bound, these
spoilt children of fate grow giddy.... It is over in an instant, at an
evening reception it is noticed that the Empress has gazed attentively
at some obscure lieutenant, presented but just before ... next day it is
reported that he has been appointed aide-de-camp to her Majesty. What
that means is well known. Next day he finds himself in the special suite
of rooms.... The rooms are already vacated, and everything is prepared
for the new-comer. All imaginable comfort and luxury ... await him; and,
on opening a drawer, he finds a hundred thousand roubles [about
£20,000], the usual first gift, a foretaste of Pactolus. That evening,
before the assembled court, the Empress appears, leaning familiarly on
his arm, and on the stroke of ten, as she retires, the new favourite
follows her" (_ibid._, pp. 246-249).]

[508] [After the death or murder of her husband, Peter III., Catherine
Alexievna (1729-1796) (born Sophia Augusta), daughter of the Prince of
Anhalt Zerbst, was solemnly crowned (September, 1762) Empress of all the
Russias.]

{389}[ji] _And almost died for the scarce-fledged Lanskoi_.--[MS.
erased.]

[509] He was the grande passion of the grande Catherine. See her Lives
under the head of "Lanskoi."

[Lanskoi was a youth of as fine and interesting a figure as the
imagination can paint. Of all Catherine's favourites, he was the man
whom she loved the most. In 1784 he was attacked with a fever, and
perished in the arms of her Majesty. When he was no more, Catherine gave
herself up to the most poignant grief, and remained three months without
going out of her palace of Tzarsko-selo. She afterwards raised a superb
monument to his memory. (See _Life of Catherine II._, by W. Tooke, 1800,
iii. 88, 89.)]

[510] [Ten months after the death of Lanskoi, the Empress consoled
herself with Iermolof, described, by Bezborodky, as "a modest refined
young man, who cultivates the society of serious people." In less than a
year this excellent youth is, in turn, displaced by Dmitrief Mamonof.
His _petit nom_ was _Red Coat_, and, for a time, he is a "priceless
creature." "He has," says Catherine, "two superb black eyes, with
eyebrows outlined as one rarely sees; about the middle height, noble in
manner, easy in demeanour." But Mamonof suffered from "scruples of
conscience," and, after a while, with Catherine's consent and blessing,
was happily married to the Princess Shtcherbatof, a maid of honour, and
not, as Byron supposed, a rival "man of the moment."--See _The Story of
a Throne_, by K. Waliszewski, 1895, ii. 135, sq.]

[511] This was written long before the suicide of that person. [For "his
parts of speech" compare--

                    " ... that long mandarin
    C-stle-r-agh (whom Fum calls the Confucius of Prose)
    Was rehearsing a speech upon Europe's repose
    To the deep double bass of the fat Idol's nose."

Moore's _Fum and Hum, The Two Birds of Royalty_.]

{390}[512] [Compare _Beppo_, stanza xvii. line 8, _Poetical Works_,
1901, iv. 165. See, too, letter to Hoppner, December 31, 1819,
_Letters_, 1900, iv. 393.]

[jj]
        _Beneath his chisel_--
    or, _Beneath his touches_----.--[MS. erased.]

{391}[jk] ---- _and bound fair Helen in a bond_.--[MS. erased.]

[513] Hor., _Sat._, lib. i. sat. iii. lines 107, 108.

[jl] _That Riddle which all read, none understand_.--[MS. erased.]

[jm]---- _thou Sea which lavest Life's sand_.--[MS. erased.]

{392}[514] ["Fortune and victory sit on thy helm."--_Richard III._, act
v, sc. 3, line 79.]

[515] ["Catherine had been handsome in her youth, and she preserved a
gracefulness and majesty to the last period of her life. She was of a
moderate stature, but well proportioned; and as she carried her head
very high, she appeared rather tall. She had an open front, an aquiline
nose, an agreeable mouth, and her chin, though long, was not mis-shapen.
Her hair was auburn, her eyebrows black and rather thick, and her blue
eyes had a gentleness which was often affected, but oftener still a
mixture of pride. Her physiognomy was not deficient in expression; but
this expression never discovered what was passing in the soul of
Catherine, or rather it served her the better to disguise it."--_Life of
Catherine II._, by W. Tooke, iii. 381 (translated from _Vie de Catherine
II._ (J.H. Castéra), 1797, ii. 450).]

{393}[516] ["His fortune swells him: 'Tis rank, he's married."--_Sir
Giles Overreach_, in Massinger's _New Way to pay Old Debts_, act v. sc.
1.]

{394}[517] [_Hamlet_, act iii. sc. iv. lines 58, 59.]

{395}[518]

    ["Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove;
      No! make me mistress to the man I love."

Pope, _Eloisa to Abelard_, lines 87, 88.]

[jn]
    _O'er whom an Empress her Crown-jewels scattering_
    _Was wed with something better than a ring_.--[MS. erased.]

[519] ["Several persons who lived at the court affirm that Catherine had
very blue eyes, and not brown, as M. Rulhières has stated."--_Life of
Catherine II._, by W. Tooke, 1800, iii. 382.]

{396}[520] [The historic Catherine (_æt._ 62) was past her meridian in
the spring of 1791.]

[jo] _Her figure, and her vigour, and her rigour_.--[MS. erased.]

[jp] _In its sincere beginning, or dull end_.--[MS. erased.]

{397}[jq] _For such all women are just_ then, _no doubt_.--[MS.]

[jr]
    _Of such sensations, in the drowsy drear_
    After--_which shadows the, say_--second _year_.--[MS.]
    _Of that sad heavy, drowsy, doubly drear_
    After, _which shadows the first--say, year_.--[MS. erased.]

[521] [Stanza lxxvi. is not in the MS.]

{398}[522] A Russian estate is always valued by the number of the slaves
upon it.

{399}[523] [The "Protassova" (born 1744) was a cousin of the Orlofs. She
survived Catherine by many years, and was, writes M. Waliszewski (_The
Story of a Throne_, 1895, ii. 193), "present at the Congress of Vienna,
covered with diamonds like a reliquary, and claiming precedence of every
one." She is named _l'éprouveuse_ in a note to the _Mémoires Secrets_,
1800, i. 148.]

[js] _And not be dazzled by its early glare_.--[MS. erased.]

[524] End of Canto 9^th^, Augt. Sept., 1822. B.

                  CANTO THE TENTH.

                      I.

    When Newton saw an apple fall, he found
      In that slight startle from his contemplation--
    'T is _said_ (for I'll not answer above ground
      For any sage's creed or calculation)--
    A mode of proving that the Earth turned round
      In a most natural whirl, called "gravitation;"
    And this is the sole mortal who could grapple,[jt]
    Since Adam--with a fall--or with an apple.[ju][525]

                      II.

    Man fell with apples, and with apples rose,
      If this be true; for we must deem the mode
    In which Sir Isaac Newton could disclose
      Through the then unpaved stars the turnpike road,[jv]
    A thing to counterbalance human woes:[526]
      For ever since immortal man hath glowed
    With all kinds of mechanics, and full soon
    Steam-engines will conduct him to the moon.

                      III.

    And wherefore this exordium?--Why, just now,
      In taking up this paltry sheet of paper,
    My bosom underwent a glorious glow,
      And my internal spirit cut a caper:
    And though so much inferior, as I know,
      To those who, by the dint of glass and vapour,
    Discover stars, and sail in the wind's eye,
    I wish to do as much by Poesy.

                      IV.

    In the wind's eye I have sailed, and sail; but for
      The stars, I own my telescope is dim;
    But at the least I have shunned the common shore,
      And leaving land far out of sight, would skim
    The Ocean of Eternity:[527] the roar
      Of breakers has not daunted my slight, trim,
    But _still_ sea-worthy skiff; and she may float
    Where ships have foundered, as doth many a boat.

                      V.

    We left our hero, Juan, in the _bloom_
      Of favouritism, but not yet in the _blush;--_
    And far be it from my _Muses_ to presume
      (For I have more than one Muse at a push),
    To follow him beyond the drawing-room:
      It is enough that Fortune found him flush
    Of Youth, and Vigour, Beauty, and those things
    Which for an instant clip Enjoyment's wings.

                      VI.

    But soon they grow again and leave their nest.
      "Oh!" saith the Psalmist, "that I had a dove's
    Pinions to flee away, and be at rest!"
      And who that recollects young years and loves,--
    Though hoary now, and with a withering breast,
      And palsied Fancy, which no longer roves
    Beyond its dimmed eye's sphere,--but would much rather
    Sigh like his son, than cough like his grandfather?

                      VII.

    But sighs subside, and tears (even widows') shrink,
      Like Arno[528] in the summer, to a shallow,
    So narrow as to shame their wintry brink,
      Which threatens inundations deep and yellow!
    Such difference doth a few months make. You'd think
      Grief a rich field which never would lie fallow;
    No more it doth--its ploughs but change their boys,
    Who furrow some new soil to sow for joys.

                      VIII.

    But coughs will come when sighs depart--and now
      And then before sighs cease; for oft the one
    Will bring the other, ere the lake-like brow
      Is ruffled by a wrinkle, or the Sun
    Of Life reached ten o'clock: and while a glow,
      Hectic and brief as summer's day nigh done,
    O'erspreads the cheek which seems too pure for clay,
    Thousands blaze, love, hope, die,--how happy they!--

                      IX.

    But Juan was not meant to die so soon:--
      We left him in the focus of such glory
    As may be won by favour of the moon
      Or ladies' fancies--rather transitory
    Perhaps; but who would scorn the month of June,
      Because December, with his breath so hoary,
    Must come? Much rather should he court the ray,
    To hoard up warmth against a wintry day.

                      X.

    Besides, he had some qualities which fix
      Middle-aged ladies even more than young:
    The former know what's what; while new-fledged chicks
      Know little more of Love than what is sung
    In rhymes, or dreamt (for Fancy will play tricks)
      In visions of those skies from whence Love sprung.
    Some reckon women by their suns or years,
    I rather think the Moon should date the dears.

                      XI.

    And why? because she's changeable and chaste:
      I know no other reason, whatsoe'er
    Suspicious people, who find fault in haste,[jw]
      May choose to tax me with; which is not fair,
    Nor flattering to "their temper or their taste,"
      As my friend Jeffrey writes with such an air:[529]
    However, I forgive him, and I trust
    He will forgive himself;--if not, I must.

                      XII.

    Old enemies who have become new friends
      Should so continue--'t is a point of honour;
    And I know nothing which could make amends
      For a return to Hatred: I would shun her
    Like garlic, howsoever she extends
      Her hundred arms and legs, and fain outrun her.
    Old flames, new wives, become our bitterest foes--
    Converted foes should scorn to join with those.

                      XIII.

    This were the worst desertion:--renegadoes,
      Even shuffling Southey, that incarnate lie,[jx]
    Would scarcely join again the "reformadoes,"[530]
      Whom he forsook to fill the Laureate's sty;
    And honest men from Iceland to Barbadoes,
      Whether in Caledon or Italy,
    Should not veer round with every breath, nor seize
    To pain, the moment when you cease to please.

                      XIV.

    The lawyer and the critic but behold
      The baser sides of literature and life,
    And nought remains unseen, but much untold,
      By those who scour those double vales of strife.
    While common men grow ignorantly old,
      The lawyer's brief is like the surgeon's knife,
    Dissecting the whole inside of a question,
    And with it all the process of digestion.

                      XV.[531]

    A legal broom's a moral chimney-sweeper,
      And that's the reason he himself's so dirty;
    The endless soot[532] bestows a tint far deeper
      Than can be hid by altering his shirt; he
    Retains the sable stains of the dark creeper,
      At least some twenty-nine do out of thirty,
    In all their habits;--not so _you_, I own;
    As Cæsar wore his robe you wear your gown.[533]

                      XVI.

    And all our little feuds, at least all _mine_,
      Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe
    (As far as rhyme and criticism combine
      To make such puppets of us things below),
    Are over: Here's a health to "Auld Lang Syne!"
      I do not know you, and may never know
    Your face--but you have acted on the whole
    Most nobly, and I own it from my soul.

                      XVII.

    And when I use the phrase of "Auld Lang Syne!"
      'T is not addressed to you--the more's the pity
    For me, for I would rather take my wine
      With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud city:
    But somehow--it may seem a schoolboy's whine,
      And yet I seek not to be grand nor witty,
    But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
    A whole one, and my heart flies to my head,--[534]

                      XVIII.

    As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all,[535]
      Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear streams,
    The Dee--the Don--Balgounie's brig's _black wall_--[536]
      All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
    Of what I _then dreamt_, clothed in their own pall,--
      Like Banquo's offspring--floating past me seems
    My childhood, in this childishness of mine:--
    I care not--'t is a glimpse of "_Auld Lang Syne_."

                      XIX.

    And though, as you remember, in a fit
      Of wrath and rhyme, when juvenile and curly,
    I railed at Scots to show my wrath and wit,
      Which must be owned was sensitive and surly,
    Yet 't is in vain such sallies to permit,
      They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early:
    I "_scotched_ not killed" the Scotchman in my blood,
    And love the land of "mountain and of flood."[537]

                      XX.

    Don Juan, who was real, or ideal,--
      For both are much the same, since what men think
    Exists when the once thinkers are less real
      Than what they thought, for Mind can never sink,
    And 'gainst the Body makes a strong appeal;
      And yet 't is very puzzling on the brink
    Of what is called Eternity to stare,
    And know no more of what is _here_, than _there_;--

                      XXI.

    Don Juan grew a very polished Russian--
      _How_ we won't mention, _why_ we need not say:
    Few youthful minds can stand the strong concussion
      Of any slight temptation in their way;
    But _his_ just now were spread as is a cushion
      Smoothed for a Monarch's seat of honour: gay
    Damsels, and dances, revels, ready money,
    Made ice seem Paradise, and winter sunny.

                      XXII.

    The favour of the Empress was agreeable;
      And though the duty waxed a little hard,
    Young people at his time of life should be able
      To come off handsomely in that regard.
    He was now growing up like a green tree, able
      For Love, War, or Ambition, which reward
    Their luckier votaries, till old Age's tedium
    Make some prefer the circulating medium.

                      XXIII.

    About this time, as might have been anticipated,
      Seduced by Youth and dangerous examples,
    Don Juan grew, I fear, a little dissipated;
      Which is a sad thing, and not only tramples
    On our fresh feelings, but--as being participated
      With all kinds of incorrigible samples
    Of frail humanity--must make us selfish,
    And shut our souls up in us like a shell-fish.

                      XXIV.

    This we pass over. We will also pass
      The usual progress of intrigues between
    Unequal matches, such as are, alas!
      A young Lieutenant's with a _not old_ Queen,
    But one who is not so youthful as she was
      In all the royalty of sweet seventeen.[jy]
    Sovereigns may sway materials, but not matter,
    And wrinkles, the d----d democrats! won't flatter.

                      XXV.

    And Death, the Sovereign's Sovereign, though the great
      Gracchus of all mortality, who levels,
    With his _Agrarian_ laws,[538] the high estate
      Of him who feasts, and fights, and roars, and revels,
    To one small grass-grown patch (which must await
      Corruption for its crop) with the poor devils
    Who never had a foot of land till now,--
    Death's a reformer--all men must allow.

                      XXVI.

    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]