LXXXII.

I have seen Napoleon, who seem'd quite a Jupiter, Shrink to a Saturn. I have seen a Duke (No matter which) turn politician stupider,

If that can well be, than his wooden look. But it is time that I should hoist my "blue Peter," And sail for a new theme:-I have seen-and shook To see it the King hiss'd, and then caress'd; But don't pretend to settle which was best.

LXXXIII.

I have seen the landholders without a rap-
I have seen Joanna Southcote-I have seen
The House of Commons turn'd to a tax-trap-

I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen-
I have seen crowns worn instead of a fool's cap-
I have seen a Congress (1) doing all that's mean-
I have seen some nations, like o'erloaded asses,
Kick off their burthens-meaning the high classes.
LXXXIV.

I have seen small poets, and great prosers, and
Interminable-not eternal-speakers-

I have seen the funds at war with house and land-
I have seen the country gentlemen turn squeakers-

I have seen the people ridden o'er like sand

By slaves on horseback-I have seen malt liquors Exchanged for "thin potations" (2) by John BullI have seen John half detect himself a fool.

LXXXV.

But "carpe diem," Juan," carpe, carpe!" (3)
To-morrow sees another race as gay
And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy.
"Life's a poor player," then "play out the play,(4)
Ye villains!" and above all keep a sharp eye

Much less on what you do than what you say:
Be hypocritical, be cautious, be

Not what you seem, but always what you see.
LXXXVI.

But how shall I relate in other cantos

Of what befell our hero in the land,
Which 'tis the common cry and lie to vaunt as
A moral country? But I hold my hand-
For I disdain to write an Atalantis; (5)

But 'tis as well at once to understand
You are not a moral people, and you know it
Without the aid of too sincere a poet.

LXXXVII.

What Juan saw and underwent shall be
My topic, with of course.the due restriction

(1) The Congress at Verona, in 1822. See antè, p. 571.

-L. E.

(2) "If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack." Shaksp. Henry IV. -L. E.

(3) "Carpe diem, quàm minimum credula postero." Hor.-L. E. Henry IV.-L. E.

(4) "Out, you rogue! play out the play."

(5) See the New Atalantis, or Memoirs and Manners of several Persons of Quality,-a work in which the authoress, Mrs. Manley, makes very free with many distinguished characters of her day. Warburton calls it "a famous book, full of court and party scandal, and written in a loose effeminacy of style and sentiment, which well suited the debauched taste of the better vulgar." Pope also alludes to it in the Rape of the Lock:

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.

LXXXVIII.

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,-

LXXXIX.

Is yet within the unread events of time.
Thus far, go forth, thou lay, which I will back
Against the same given quantity of rhyme,

For being as much the subject of attack
As ever yet was any work sublime,

By those who love to say that white is black. So much the better!-I may stand alone, But would not change my free thoughts for a throne.

CANTO XII. (3)

I.

Of all the barbarous middle ages, that

Which is most barbarous is the middle age Of man; it is I really scarce know what;

But when we hover between fool and sage, And don't know justly what we would be atA period something like a printed page, Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were;—

II.

Too old for youth,-too young, at thirty-five,

To herd with boys, or hoard with good threescore,—' I wonder people should be left alive; But since they are, that epoch is a bore: Love lingers still, although 't were late to wive; And as for other love, the illusion's o'er; And money, that most pure imagination, Gleams only through the dawn of its creation. (7)

"As long as Atalantis shall be read,

Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed,
While nymphs take treats or assignations give,
So long my honour, name, and praise shall live."
And Swift, in his ballad on "Corinna:"-
"Her common-place book all gallant is;
Of scandal now a cornucopia-
She pours it out in Atalantis,

Or memoirs of the New Utopia. "—L. E. (6) Cantos XII. XIII. and XIV. appeared in London, in November 1823.-L. E.

(7) In an unpublished letter to Mr. Kinnaird, dated Genoa, Jan. 18, 1823, we find the following passage:-"I 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

III.

O Gold! Why call we misers miserable? (1)
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.

V.

Who hold the balance of the world? Who reign
O'er congress, whether royalist or liberal?
Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain? (2)

(That make old Europe's journals squeak and gibber
Who keep the world, both old and new, in pain [all.) |
Or pleasure? Who make politics run glibber all?
The shade of Bonaparte's noble daring?—
Jew Rothschild, and his fellow-Christian, Baring.

VI.

Those, and the truly liberal Laffitte,

Are the true lords of Europe. Every loan Is not a merely speculative hit,

But seats a nation or upsets a throne. Republics also get involved a bit;

Columbia's stock hath holders not unknown On 'Change; and even thy silver soil, Peru, Must get itself discounted by a Jew.

VII.

Why call the miser miserable? as

I said before: the frugal life is his, Which in a saint or cynic ever was

The theme of praise: a hermit would not miss Canonization for the self-same cause,

And wherefore blame gaunt Wealth's austerities? Because, you'll say, nought calls for such a trial;— Then there's more merit in his self-denial.

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, etc. etc. etc., 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. I am 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 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 my. self (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

VIII.

He is your only poet;-passion, pure

And sparkling on from heap to heap, displays, Possess'd, the ore, of which mere hopes allure Nations athwart the deep: the golden rays Flash up in ingots from the mine obscure;

On him the diamond pours its brilliant blaze; While the mild emerald's beam shades down the dyes Of other stones, to soothe the miser's eyes.

IX.

The lands on either side are his: the ship

From Ceylon, Inde, or far Cathay, (3) unloads For him the fragrant produce of each trip; Beneath his cars of Ceres groan the roads, And the vine blushes like Aurora's lip;

His very cellars might be kings' abodes; While he, despising every sensual call, Commands-the intellectual lord of all.

X.

Perhaps he hath great projects in his mind,
To build a college, or to found a race, (4)
An hospital, a church,—and leave behind
Some dome surmounted by his meagre face:
Perhaps he fain would liberate mankind

Even with the very ore which makes them base;
Perhaps he would be wealthiest of his nation,
Or revel in the joys of calculation.

XI.

But whether all, or each, or none of these
May be the hoarder's principle of action,
The fool will call such mania a disease:
What is his own? Go-look at each transaction,
Wars, revels, loves-do these bring men more ease

Than the mere plodding through each "vulgar fracOr do they benefit mankind? Lean miser! [tion?" Let spendthrifts' heirs inquire of yours-who's wiser?

XII.

How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins (Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests

Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines, But) of fine unclipt gold, where dully rests

Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines, Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp:Yes! ready money is Aladdin's lamp.

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 nourish. ing and sufficient, if good of their kind."-L. E.

(1) 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." Croker's Boswell, vol. iv. p. 182.-L. E. (2) The Descamisados.-L. E. (2) China.-L. E.

(4) "Die, and endow a college, or a cat." Pope.-L. E.

(1) "Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below, and saints above;

And love is heaven, and heaven is love." Lay of the Last Minstrel.-L. E. (2) "Mr. Malthus tells us, that the way to reduce our poor-rates 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 well-timed 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. -L.E.

(3) "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 anthor of Waverley! With all his unrivalled power of invention and judgment, of pathos and pleasantry, the tenor of his sentiments is uniformly generous, indulgent, and good-humoured; and so remote from the bitter

XVII.

Well, if I don't succeed, I have succeeded,
And that's enough; succeeded in my youth,
The only time when much success is needed:
And my success produced what I, in sooth,
Cared most about; it need not now be pleaded-
Whate'er it was, 't was mine; I've paid, in truth,
Of late, the penalty of such success,
But have not learn'd to wish it any less.

XVIII.

That suit in Chancery,-which some persons plead
In an appeal to the unborn, whom they,
In the faith of their procreative creed,

Baptize posterity, or future clay,—
To me seems but a dubious kind of reed
To lean on for support in any way;
Since odds are that posterity will know
No more of them, than they of her, I trow.
XIX.

Why, I'm posterity-and so are you;

And whom do we remember? Not a hundred. Were every memory written down all true,

The tenth or twentieth name would be but blunder'd; ¦ Even Plutarch's Lires have but pick'd out a few, And'gainst those few your annalists have thunder'd, And Mitford (4) in the nineteenth century Gives, with Greek truth, the good old Greek the lie. (5) XX.

Good people all, of every degree,

Ye gentle readers and ungentle writers,
In this twelfth Canto 'tis 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.

ness of misanthropy, that he never indulges in sarcasm. and scarcely, in any case, carries his merriment so far derision. But the peculiarity by which he stands me broadly and proudly distinguished from Lord Byron is, t beginning, as he frequently does, with some ludicrous satirical theme, he never fails to raise out of it some feel of a generous or gentle kind, and to end by exciting o tender pity, or deep respect, for those very individuals classes of persons who seemed at first to be brought on the stage for our mere sport and amusement;-thus mala the ludicrous itself subservient to the cause of benevolem -and inculcating, at every turn, and as the true end 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.-L. E.

(4) See Mitford's Greece. "Græcia Veraz." His grest 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 y language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern histsrians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair state his virtues-learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.

(5) "It has been, injuriously for him, too extensively beld 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 of Xenophon, or Cæsar or Tacitus. Sometimes, indeed, be undertakes historical discussion, or, relating different re ports, leaves judgment on them to his reader. When truth thus appears his object, his matter is valuable for the histo rian. But generally, to do justice to his great work, his