LXXXVIII.

What Juan saw and underwent shall be

My topic, with of course the due restriction Which is required by proper courtesy ;

And recollect the work is only fiction, And that I sing of neither mine nor me,

Though every scribe, in some slight turn of diction,
Will hint allusions never meant. Ne'er doubt
This-when I speak, I don't hint, but speak out.
LXXXIX.

Whether he married with the third or fourth
Offspring of some sage husband-hunting countess,
Or whether with some virgin of more worth
(I mean in Fortune's matrimonial bounties)
He took to regularly peopling Earth,

Of which your lawful awful wedlock fount is, -
Or whether he was taken in for damages,
For being too excursive in his homages,-

[Cantos XII., XIII., and XIV. appeared in London, in November, 1823.]

2 [In an unpublished letter to Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, dated Genoa, Jan. 18. 1823, we find the following passage: -“I will economise and do, as I have partly proved to you by my surplus revenue of 1822, which almost equals the ditto of the United States of America (vide President's Report to Congress); and do you second my parsimony by judicious disbursements of what is requisite, and a moderate liquidation. Also make an investment of any spare moneys as may render some usance to the owner; because, however little, every little makes a mickle,' as we of the north say, with more reason than rhyme. I hope that you have all receipts, &c. &c. &c., and acknowledgments of moneys paid in liquidation of debts, to prevent extortion, and hinder the fellows from coming twice, of which they would be capable, particularly as my absence would lend a pretext to the pretension. - You will perhaps wonder at this recent and furious fit of accumulation and retrenchment; but it is not so unnatural. not naturally ostentatious, although once careless, and expensive because careless: and my most extravagant passions have pretty well subsided, as it is time they should on the

I am

Love lingers still, although 't were late to wive;

And as for other love, the illusion's o'er ;
And money, that most pure imagination,
Gleams only through the dawn of its creation. 2
III.

O Gold! Why call we misers miserable ? $
Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall;
Theirs is the best bower anchor, the chain cable
Which holds fast other pleasures great and small.
Ye who but see the saving man at table,

And scorn his temperate board, as none at all,
And wonder how the wealthy can be sparing,
Know not what visions spring from each cheese-paring.
IV.

Love or lust makes man sick, and wine much sicker;
Ambition rends, and gaming gains a loss;

But making money, slowly first, then quicker,
And adding still a little through each cross
(Which will come over things), beats love or liquor,
The gamester's counter, or the statesman's dross.
O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper,

Which makes bank credit like a bark of vapour.

very verge of thirty-five. I always looked to about thirty as the barrier of any real or fierce delight in the passions, and determined to work them out in the younger ore and better veins of the mine; and I flatter myself (perhaps) that I have pretty well done so, and now the dross is coming, and I loves lucre: for we must love something. At any rate, then, I have a passion the more, and thus a feeling. However, it is not for myself; but I should like, God willing, to leave something to my relatives more than a mere name; and besides that, to be able to do good to others to a greater extent. If nothing else will do, I must try bread and water; which, by the way, are very nourishing and sufficient, if good of their kind."]

[BOSWELL. "I have heard old Mr. Sheridan maintain, with much ingenuity, that a complete miser is a happy man: a miser who gives himself wholly to the one passion of saving." JOHNSON. "That is flying in the face of all the world, who have called an avaricious man a miser, because he is miserable. No, sir; a man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments." -Boswell, vol. vit. p. 174., edit. 1835.]

4 The Descamisados.

2 ["Die, and endow a college, or a cat."- POPE.] ["Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below, and saints above,

3

And love is heaven, and heaven is love."
Lay of the Last Minstrel.]

[Mr. Malthus tells us, that the way to reduce our poorrates is to persuade the lower orders to continence; to discourage them, as much as possible, from marrying; to preach wedding-sermons to them, if they will marry, upon the immorality of breeding,- that being a luxury reserved only for those who can afford it; and if they will persist in so improper and immoral a practice, after so solemn and welltimed a warning, to leave them to the punishment of severe want, and rigidly deny all parish assistance. No public relief is to be given to the starving infant; it is worth nothing to society, for its place will be presently supplied, and society, therefore, has no further business than to hang the mother, if she should shorten the sufferings of her babe rather than see it die of want. The rich are to be called upon for no sacrifices; nothing more is required of them, than that they should harden their hearts. That we may not be suspected of exaggerating the detestable hard-heartedness of his system, we present it in his own language.- SOUTHEY.]

XIII.

"Love rules the camp, the court, the grove, — for love [bard;

Is heaven, and heaven is love: "3-so sings the Which it were rather difficult to prove

(A thing with poetry in general hard).
Perhaps there may be something in "the grove,"
At least it rhymes to "love: " but I'm prepared
To doubt (no less than landlords of their rental)
If "courts" and "camps" be quite so sentimental.
XIV.

But if Love don't, Cash does, and Cash alone:
Cash rules the grove, and fells it too besides ;
Without cash, camps were thin, and courts were none;
Without cash, Malthus tells you-" take no
So Cash rules Love the ruler, on his own [brides. "+
High ground, as virgin Cynthia sways the tides:
And as for "Heaven being Love," why not say honey
Is wax? Heaven is not Love, 'tis Matrimony.

"We have no notion that Lord Byron had any mischievous intention in these publications, and readily acquit him of any wish to corrupt the morals, or impair the happiness of his readers; but it is our duty to say, that much of what he has published appears to us to have this tendency. How opposite to this is the system, or the temper, of the great author of Waverley. With all his unrivalled power of invention and judgment, of pathos and pleasantry, the tenour of his sentiments is uniformly generous, indulgent, and good-humoured: and so remote from the bitterness of niisanthropy, that he never indulges in sarcasm, and scarcely, in any case, carries his merriment so far as derision. But the peculiarity by which he stands most broadly and proudly distinguished from Lord Byron is, that beginning, as he frequently does, with some ludicrous or satirical theme, he never fails to raise out of it some feelings of a generous or gentle kind, and to end by exciting our tender pity, or deep respect, for those very individuals or classes of persons who seemed at first to be brought on the stage for our mere sport and amusement; thus making the ludicrous itself subservient to the cause of benevolence and inculcating, at every turn, and as the true end and result of all his trials and experiments, the love of our kind, and the duty and delight of a cordial and genuine sympathy with the joys and sorrows of every condition of men." JEFFREY, in the Edinburgh Review for 1822.]

Good people all, of every degree,

Ye gentle readers and ungentle writers,
In this twelfth Canto 't is my wish to be
As serious as if I had for inditers
Malthus and Wilberforce :- the last set free

The Negroes, and is worth a million fighters;
While Wellington has but enslaved the Whites,
And Malthus does the thing 'gainst which he writes.
XXI.

I'm serious-so are all men upon paper;

And why should I not form my speculation,
And hold up to the sun my little taper?"

Mankind just now seem wrapt in meditation
On constitutions and steam-boats of vapour;
While sages write against all procreation,
Unless a man can calculate his means
Of feeding brats the moment his wife weans.
XXII.

That's noble! That's romantic! For my part,
I think that "Philo-genitiveness" is—
(Now here's a word quite after my own heart,
Though there's a shorter a good deal than this,
If that politeness set it not apart;

But I'm resolved to say nought that's amiss)—
I say, methinks that "Philo-genitiveness "4
Might meet from men a little more forgiveness.
XXIII.

And now to business. -O my gentle Juan!
Thou art in London-in that pleasant place,
Where every kind of mischief's daily brewing,
Which can await warm youth in its wild race.
'Tis true, that thy career is not a new one;
Thou art no novice in the headlong chase
Of early life; but this is a new land,
Which foreigners can never understand.

His great

1 See Mitford's Greece. "Græcia Veraz." pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, his is the best modern history of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues -learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.

["It has been, injuriously for him, too extensively held among modern writers, that Plutarch was to be considered as an historian whose authority might be quoted for matters of fact with the same confidence as that of Thucydides or Xenophon, or Cæsar or Tacitus. Sometimes, indeed, he undertakes historical discussion, or, relating different reports, leaves judgment on them to his reader. When truth thus

The little Leila, with her orient eyes,

And taciturn Asiatic disposition,

(Which saw all western things with small surprise, To the surprise of people of condition, Who think that novelties are butterflies

To be pursued as food for inanition,) Her charming figure and romantic history Became a kind of fashionable mystery.

XXVIII.

[all

The women much divided-as is usual
Amongst the sex in little things or great.
Think not, fair creatures, that I mean to abuse you
I have always liked you better than I state :
Since I've grown moral, still I must accuse you all
Of being apt to talk at a great rate;
And now there was a general sensation
Amongst you, about Leila's education.
XXIX.

In one point only were you settled — and
You had reason; 't was that a young child of grace,
As beautiful as her own native land,

And far away, the last bud of her race,
Howe'er our friend Don Juan might command
Himself for five, four, three, or two years' space,
Would be much better taught beneath the eye
Of peeresses whose follies had run dry.

appears his object, his matter is valuable for the historian. But generally to do justice to his great work, his Lives, apparently it should be considered that, next at least to panegyric of his nation, example, political and moral, was his purpose, more than historical information. Little scrupulous as he has shown himself about transactions the most public, concerning which he often contradicts, without reserve or apology, not only the highest authorities, but even himself, it can hardly be supposed that he would scrutinise with great solicitude the testimonies to private anecdotes, if even he does not sometimes indulge his invention."- MITFORD.] 3 [" Thus commentators each dark passage shun, And hold their farthing candles to the sun."-Young.] 4 [Philo-progenitiveness. Spurzheim and Gall discover the organ of this name in a bump behind the ears, and say it is remarkably developed in the bull.]

XXX.

So first there was a generous emulation,
And then there was a general competition,
To undertake the orphan's education.

As Juan was a person of condition,

It had been an affront on this occasion
To talk of a subscription or petition;
But sixteen dowagers, ten unwed she sages,
Whose tale belongs to "Hallam's Middle Ages,""
XXXI.

And one or two sad, separate wives, without

A fruit to bloom upon their withering bough— Begged to bring up the little girl, and "out," For that's the phrase that settles all things now, Meaning a virgin's first blush at a rout,

And all her points as thorough-bred to show : And I assure you, that like virgin honey Tastes their first season (mostly if they have money). XXXII.

How all the needy honourable misters,

Each out-at-elbow peer, or desperate dandy, The watchful mothers, and the careful sisters,

(Who, by the by, when clever, are more handy At making matches, where " 't is gold that glisters," Than their he relatives,) like flies o'er candy Buzz round" the Fortune" with their busy battery, To turn her head with waltzing and with flattery!

XXXIII.

Each aunt, each cousin, hath her speculation;

Nay, married dames will now and then discover Such pure disinterestedness of passion,

I've known them court an heiress for their lover. "Tantæne!" Such the virtues of high station,

Even in the hopeful Isle, whose outlet 's "Dover!" While the poor rich wretch, object of these cares, Has cause to wish her sire had had male heirs.

XXXIV.

Some are soon bagg'd, and some reject three dozen. 'Tis fine to see them scattering refusals And wild dismay o'er every angry cousin

(Friends of the party), who begin accusals, Such as-"Unless Miss (Blank) meant to have chosen Poor Frederick, why did she accord perusals To his billets? Why waltz with him? Why, I pray, Look yes last night, and yet say no to-day?

XXXV.

"Why?—Why? - Besides, Fred really was attach'd ;
'T was not her fortune- he has enough without :
The time will come she 'll wish that she had snatch'd
So good an opportunity, no doubt: —
But the old marchioness some plan had hatch'd,
As I'll tell Aurea at to-morrow's rout:
And after all poor Frederick may do better —
Pray did you see her answer to his letter?"
XXXVI.

Smart uniforms and sparkling coronets

Are spurn'd in turn, until her turn arrives, After male loss of time, and hearts, and bets

Upon the sweepstakes for substantial wives; And when at last the pretty creature gets

Some gentleman, who fights, or writes, or drives, It soothes the awkward squad of the rejected To find how very badly she selected.

1 ["Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ !"- VIRG.]

XXXVII.

For sometimes they accept some long pursuer,
Worn out with importunity; or fall
(But here perhaps the instances are fewer)

To the lot of him who scarce pursued at all.
A hazy widower turn'd of forty's sure 2
(If 't is not vain examples to recall)

To draw a high prize: now, howe'er he got her, I
See nought more strange in this than t' other lottery.
XXXVIII.

more,

I, for my part-(one “modern instance"
"True, 'tis a pity-pity 'tis, 'tis true")
Was chosen from out an amatory score,
Albeit my years were less discreet than few;
But though I also had reform'd before

Those became one who soon were to be two, I'll not gainsay the generous public's voice, That the young lady made a monstrous choice. XXXIX.

Oh, pardon my digression—or at least
Peruse! 'Tis always with a moral end
That I dissert, like grace before a feast:
For like an aged aunt or tiresome friend,
A rigid guardian, or a zealous priest,

My Muse by exhortation means to mend All people, at all times, and in most places, Which puts my Pegasus to these grave paces.

XL.

But now I'm going to be immoral; now
I mean to show things really as they are,
Not as they ought to be: for I avow,

That till we see what's what in fact, we're far
From much improvement with that virtuous plough
Which skims the surface, leaving scarce a scar
Upon the black loam long manured by Vice,
Only to keep its corn at the old price.

XLI.

But first of little Leila we'll dispose;

For like a day-dawn she was young and pure,
Or like the old comparison of snows,
Which are more pure than pleasant to be sure.
Like many people every body knows,
Don Juan was delighted to secure
A goodly guardian for his infant charge,
Who might not profit much by being at large.
XLII.

Besides, he had found out he was no tutor

(I wish that others would find out the same);
And rather wish'd in such things to stand neuter,
For silly wards will bring their guardians blame :
So when he saw each ancient dame a suitor
To make his little wild Asiatic tame,
Consulting" the Society for Vice
Suppression," Lady Pinchbeck was his choice.
XLIII.

Olden she was— -but had been very young;
Virtuous she was-and had been, I believe;
Although the world has such an evil tongue
That but my chaster ear will not receive
An echo of a syllable that's wrong:

In fact, there's nothing makes me so much grieve, As that abominable tittle-tattle,

Which is the cud eschew'd by human cattle.

2 This line may puzzle the commentators more than the present generation.

Adversity is the first path to truth:

He who hath proved war, storm, or woman's rage, Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,

Hath won the experience which is deem'd so weighty.

LI.

How far it profits is another matter.

Our hero gladly saw his little charge Safe with a lady, whose last grown-up daughter Being long married, and thus set at large, Had left all the accomplishments she taught her To be transmitted, like the Lord Mayor's barge, To the next comer; or-as it will tell More Muse-like-like to Cytherea's shell.

LII.

I call such things transmission; for there is
A floating balance of accomplishment,
Which forms a pedigree from Miss to Miss,

According as their minds or backs are bent.
Some waltz; some draw; some fathom the abyss
Of metaphysics; others are content
With music; the most moderate shine as wits;
While others have a genius turn'd for fits.

LIII.

But whether fits, or wits, or harpsichords,
Theology, fine arts, or finer stays,
May be the baits for gentlemen or lords

With regular descent, in these our days,
The last year to the new transfers its hoards;

New vestals claim men's eyes with the same praise Of" elegant" et cætera, in fresh batchesAll matchless creatures, and yet bent on matches. LIV.

But now I will begin my poem. 'Tis

Perhaps a little strange, if not quite new,
That from the first of Cantos up to this

I've not begun what we have to go through.
These first twelve books are merely flourishes,
Preludios, trying just a string or two
Upon my lyre, or making the pegs sure;
And when so, you shall have the overture.

LV.

My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin

About what's called success, or not succeeding: Such thoughts are quite below the strain they have

chosen ;

'Tis a "great moral lesson" 4 they are reading.
I thought, at setting off, about two dozen
Cantos would do; but at Apollo's pleading,
If that my Pegasus should not be founder'd,
I think to canter gently through a hundred.
LVI.

Don Juan saw that microcosm on stilts,

Yclept the Great World; for it is the least, Although the highest: but as swords have hilts By which their power of mischief is increased, When man in battle or in quarrel tilts,

Thus the low world, north, south or west, or east, Must still obey the high which is their handle, Their moon, their sun, their gas, their farthing candle.

Allied Sovereigns to gratify the French people, but the sacrifice they would make would be impolitic, as it would deprive them of the opportunity of giving the French nation a great moral lesson."— WELLINGTON, Paris, 1815.]

2 ["Enfin partout la bonne société régle tout."—VOLTAIRE.]