[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'eprouveuse in a note to the Memoires 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 Caesar 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. [ezh]vj. [ezh]fs. Mannae optim. Aq. fervent. f.  [)ezh]ifs. [ezh]ij. tinct. Sennae Haustus" (And here the surgeon came and cupped him) "[Rx] Pulv. Com. gr. iij. Ipecacuanhae" (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 Koenigsberg, 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 (Elements de la Philosophie de Newton, Partie III. chap, iii.): "Un jour, en l'annee 1666 [1665], Newton, retire a la campagne, et voyant tomber des fruits d'un arbre, a ce que m'a conte sa niece (Madame Conduit), se laissa aller a une meditation profonde sur la cause qui entraine ainsi tous les corps dans une ligne qui, si elle etait prolongee, passerait a peu pres par le centre de la terre."—Oeuvres Completes, 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]: Sec.403Sec.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 Caesar 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 Caesar wore his "triumphal robe." (See Plutarch's Julius Caesar, 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 Lanskoi, see The Story of a Throne, by K. Waliszewsky, 1895, ii. 131, 133. For the rumour that he was poisoned by Potemkin, see Memoires 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 Catherine, born June 24, 1783, who married, in 1801, Francois Pignatelli de Belmonte, Duc d'Acerenza, and Dorothee, born August 21, 1793, who married, in 1809, Edmond de Talleyrand Perigord, Duc de Talleyrand, nephew to the Bishop of Autun. (See Almanach de Gotha, 1848, pp. 109, 110.)]

{418}[548] [Napoleon's exclamation at the Elysee 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 Koenigsberg, in 1729, became Professor and Rector of the University, and died at Koenigsberg 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 Lueneburg—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 enjoyed 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 Niccolo 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 "Salⱥm," 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 aged 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 learned 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 learned lucubrations pith, And passed for arguments of good endurance. That prodigy, Miss Araminta Smith (Who at sixteen translated "Hercules Furens" Into as furious English), with her best look, Set down his sayings in her common-place book.

LIII.

Juan knew several languages—as well He might—and brought them up with skill, in time To save his fame with each accomplished belle, Who still regretted that he did not rhyme. There wanted but this requisite to swell His qualities (with them) into sublime: Lady Fitz-Frisky, and Miss Maevia Mannish, Both longed extremely to be sung in Spanish.

LIV.

However, he did pretty well, and was Admitted as an aspirant to all The coteries, and, as in Banquo's glass, At great assemblies or in parties small, He saw ten thousand living authors pass, That being about their average numeral; Also the eighty "greatest living poets,"[585] As every paltry magazine can show it's.

LV.

In twice five years the "greatest living poet," Like to the champion in the fisty ring, Is called on to support his claim, or show it, Although 't is an imaginary thing. Even I—albeit I'm sure I did not know it, Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king,— Was reckoned, a considerable time, The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.[kx]

LVI.

But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero My Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain:[586] La Belle Alliance of dunces down at zero, Now that the Lion's fallen, may rise again: But I will fall at least as fell my Hero; Nor reign at all, or as a monarch reign; Or to some lonely isle of gaolers go, With turncoat Southey for my turnkey Lowe.[ky]

LVII.

Sir Walter reigned before me; Moore and Campbell Before and after; but now grown more holy, The Muses upon Sion's hill must ramble With poets almost clergymen, or wholly; And Pegasus has a psalmodic amble Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley,[kz][587] Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts, A modern Ancient Pistol—"by these hilts!"[588]

LVIII.

Still he excels that artificial hard Labourer in the same vineyard, though the vine Yields him but vinegar for his reward.— That neutralised dull Dorus of the Nine; That swarthy Sporus, neither man nor bard; That ox of verse, who ploughs for every line:— Cambyses' roaring Romans beat at least The howling Hebrews of Cybele's priest.—[589]

LIX.

Then there's my gentle Euphues,—who, they say,[la] Sets up for being a sort of moral me;[590] He'll find it rather difficult some day To turn out both, or either, it may be. Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway; And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three; And that deep-mouthed Boeotian "Savage Landor"[591] Has taken for a swan rogue Southey's gander.

LX.

John Keats, who was killed off by one critique, Just as he really promised something great, If not intelligible, without Greek Contrived to talk about the gods of late, Much as they might have been supposed to speak.[592] Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate; 'T is strange the mind, that very fiery particle,[lb][593] Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

LXI.

The list grows long of live and dead pretenders To that which none will gain—or none will know The conqueror at least; who, ere Time renders His last award, will have the long grass grow Above his burnt-out brain, and sapless cinders. If I might augur, I should rate but low Their chances;—they're too numerous, like the thirty[594] Mock tyrants, when Rome's annals waxed but dirty.

LXII.

This is the literary lower empire, Where the praetorian bands take up the matter;— A "dreadful trade," like his who "gathers samphire,"[595] The insolent soldiery to soothe and flatter, With the same feelings as you'd coax a vampire. Now, were I once at home, and in good satire, I'd try conclusions with those Janizaries, And show them what an intellectual war is.

LXIII.

I think I know a trick or two, would turn Their flanks;—but it is hardly worth my while, With such small gear to give myself concern: Indeed I've not the necessary bile; My natural temper's really aught but stern, And even my Muse's worst reproof's a smile; And then she drops a brief and modern curtsy, And glides away, assured she never hurts ye.

LXIV.

My Juan, whom I left in deadly peril Amongst live poets and blue ladies, passed With some small profit through that field so sterile, Being tired in time—and, neither least nor last, Left it before he had been treated very ill; And henceforth found himself more gaily classed Amongst the higher spirits of the day, The Sun's true son, no vapour, but a ray.

LXV.

His morns he passed in business—which dissected, Was, like all business, a laborious nothing That leads to lassitude, the most infected And Centaur Nessus garb of mortal clothing,[596] And on our sofas makes us lie dejected, And talk in tender horrors of our loathing All kinds of toil, save for our country's good— Which grows no better, though 't is time it should.

LXVI.

His afternoons he passed in visits, luncheons, Lounging and boxing; and the twilight hour In riding round those vegetable puncheons Called "Parks," where there is neither fruit nor flower Enough to gratify a bee's slight munchings; But after all it is the only "bower"[597] (In Moore's phrase) where the fashionable fair Can form a slight acquaintance with fresh air.

LXVII.

Then dress, then dinner, then awakes the world! Then glare the lamps, then whirl the wheels, then roar Through street and square fast flashing chariots hurled Like harnessed meteors; then along the floor Chalk mimics painting; then festoons are twirled; Then roll the brazen thunders of the door, Which opens to the thousand happy few An earthly Paradise of Or Molu.

LXVIII.

There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink With the three-thousandth curtsy; there the waltz, The only dance which teaches girls to think,[598] Makes one in love even with its very faults. Saloon, room, hall, o'erflow beyond their brink, And long the latest of arrivals halts, 'Midst royal dukes and dames condemned to climb, And gain an inch of staircase at a time.

LXIX.

Thrice happy he who, after a survey Of the good company, can win a corner, A door that's in or boudoir out of the way, Where he may fix himself like small "Jack Horner," And let the Babel round run as it may, And look on as a mourner, or a scorner, Or an approver, or a mere spectator, Yawning a little as the night grows later.

LXX.

But this won't do, save by and by; and he Who, like Don Juan, takes an active share, Must steer with care through all that glittering sea Of gems and plumes and pearls and silks, to where He deems it is his proper place to be; Dissolving in the waltz to some soft air, Or proudlier prancing with mercurial skill, Where Science marshals forth her own quadrille.

LXXI.

Or, if he dance not, but hath higher views Upon an heiress or his neighbour's bride, Let him take care that that which he pursues Is not at once too palpably descried: Full many an eager gentleman oft rues His haste; Impatience is a blundering guide Amongst a people famous for reflection, Who like to play the fool with circumspection.

LXXII.

But, if you can contrive, get next at supper; Or, if forestalled, get opposite and ogle:— Oh, ye ambrosial moments! always upper In mind, a sort of sentimental bogle,[599] Which sits for ever upon Memory's crupper, The ghost of vanished pleasures once in vogue! Ill Can tender souls relate the rise and fall Of hopes and fears which shake a single ball.

LXXIII.

But these precautionary hints can touch Only the common run, who must pursue, And watch and ward; whose plans a word too much Or little overturns; and not the few Or many (for the number's sometimes such) Whom a good mien, especially if new, Or fame—or name—for Wit, War, Sense, or Nonsense, Permits whate'er they please,—or did not long since.

LXXIV.

Our Hero—as a hero—young and handsome, Noble, rich, celebrated, and a stranger, Like other slaves of course must pay his ransom, Before he can escape from so much danger As will environ a conspicuous man. Some Talk about poetry, and "rack and manger," And ugliness, disease, as toil and trouble;— I wish they knew the life of a young noble.

LXXV.

They are young, but know not Youth—it is anticipated; Handsome but wasted, rich without a sou;[lc] Their vigour in a thousand arms is dissipated; Their cash comes from, their wealth goes to a Jew; Both senates see their nightly votes participated Between the Tyrant's and the Tribunes' crew; And having voted, dined, drunk, gamed, and whored, The family vault receives another Lord.

LXXVI.

"Where is the World?" cries Young, at eighty[600]—"Where The World in which a man was born?" Alas! Where is the world of eight years past? 'T was there— I look for it—'t is gone, a globe of glass! Cracked, shivered, vanished, scarcely gazed on, ere[ld] A silent change dissolves the glittering mass. Statesmen, Chiefs, Orators, Queens, Patriots, Kings, And Dandies—all are gone on the Wind's wings.

LXXVII.

Where is Napoleon the Grand? God knows! Where little Castlereagh? The devil can tell! Where Grattan, Curran, Sheridan—all those Who bound the Bar or Senate in their spell? Where is the unhappy Queen, with all her woes? And where the Daughter, whom the Isles loved well? Where are those martyred saints the Five per Cents?[le][601] And where—oh, where the devil are the Rents?

LXXVIII.

Where's Brummell? Dished. Where's Long Pole Wellesley?[602] Diddled. Where's Whitbread? Romilly? Where's George the Third? Where is his will?[603] (That's not so soon unriddled.) And where is "Fum" the Fourth, our "royal bird?"[604] Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled Unto by Sawney's violin, we have heard: "Caw me, caw thee"—for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching.

LXXIX.

Where is Lord This? And where my Lady That? The Honourable Mistresses and Misses? Some laid aside like an old Opera hat, Married, unmarried, and remarried: (this is An evolution oft performed of late). Where are the Dublin shouts—and London hisses? Where are the Grenvilles? Turned as usual. Where My friends the Whigs? Exactly where they were.

LXXX.

Where are the Lady Carolines and Franceses?[605] Divorced or doing thereanent. Ye annals So brilliant, where the list of routs and dances is,— Thou Morning Post, sole record of the panels Broken in carriages, and all the phantasies Of fashion,—say what streams now fill those channels? Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent, Because the times have hardly left them one tenant.

LXXXI.

Some who once set their caps at cautious dukes,[lf] Have taken up at length with younger brothers: Some heiresses have bit at sharpers' hooks: Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers: Others have lost their fresh and fairy looks: In short, the list of alterations bothers. There's little strange in this, but something strange is The unusual quickness of these common changes.

LXXXII.

Talk not of seventy years as age; in seven I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to The humblest individuals under Heaven, Than might suffice a moderate century through. I knew that nought was lasting, but now even Change grows too changeable, without being new: Nought's permanent among the human race, Except the Whigs not getting into place.

LXXXIII.

I have seen Napoleon, who seemed quite a Jupiter, Shrink to a Saturn. I have seen a Duke (No matter which) turn politician stupider, If that can well be, than his wooden look. But it is time that I should hoist my "blue Peter," And sail for a new theme:—I have seen—and shook To see it—the King hissed, and then caressed; But don't pretend to settle which was best.

LXXXIV.

I have seen the Landholders without a rap— I have seen Joanna Southcote—I have seen The House of Commons turned to a tax-trap— I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen— I have seen crowns worn instead of a fool's cap— I have seen a Congress[606] doing all that's mean— I have seen some nations, like o'erloaded asses, Kick off their burthens—meaning the high classes.

LXXXV.

I have seen small poets, and great prosers, and Interminable—not eternal—speakers— I have seen the funds at war with house and land— I have seen the country gentlemen turn squeakers— I have seen the people ridden o'er like sand By slaves on horseback—I have seen malt liquors Exchanged for "thin potations"[607] by John Bull— I have seen John half detect himself a fool.—

LXXXVI.

But "carpe diem," Juan, "carpe, carpe!"[608] To-morrow sees another race as gay And transient, and devoured by the same harpy. "Life's a poor player,"[609]—then "play out the play,[610] Ye villains!" and above all keep a sharp eye Much less on what you do than what you say: Be hypocritical, be cautious, be Not what you seem, but always what you see.

LXXXVII.

But how shall I relate in other cantos Of what befell our hero in the land, Which 't is the common cry and lie to vaunt as A moral country? But I hold my hand— For I disdain to write an Atalantis;[611] But 't is as well at once to understand, You are not a moral people, and you know it, Without the aid of too sincere a poet.

LXXXVIII.

What Juan saw and underwent shall be My topic, with of course the due restriction Which is required by proper courtesy; And recollect the work is only fiction, And that I sing of neither mine nor me, Though every scribe, in some slight turn of diction, Will hint allusions never meant. Ne'er doubt This—when I speak, I don't hint, but speak out.

LXXXIX.

Whether he married with the third or fourth Offspring of some sage husband-hunting countess, Or whether with some virgin of more worth (I mean in Fortune's matrimonial bounties), He took to regularly peopling Earth, Of which your lawful, awful wedlock fount is,— Or whether he was taken in for damages, For being too excursive in his homages,—

XC.

Is yet within the unread events of Time. Thus far, go forth, thou Lay, which I will back Against the same given quantity of rhyme, For being as much the subject of attack As ever yet was any work sublime, By those who love to say that white is black. So much the better!—I may stand alone, But would not change my free thoughts for a throne.[612]

FOOTNOTES:

{427}[562] [Berkeley did not deny the reality of existence, but the reality of matter as an abstract conception. "It is plain," he says (On the Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. ix.), "that the very notion of what is called matter or corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it." Again, "It were a mistake to think that what is here said derogates in the least from the reality of things." His contention was that this reality depended, not on an abstraction called matter, "an inert, extended unperceiving substance," but on "those unextended, indivisible substances or spirits, which act, and think, and perceive them [unthinking beings]."—Ibid., sect. xci., The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., 1820, i. 27, 69, 70.]

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

[564] ["I have been very unwell—four days confined to my bed in 'the worst inn's worst room' at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and bilious attack, constipation, and the devil knows what."—Letter to Murray, October 9, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 121. The same letter contains an announcement that he had "a fifth [Canto of Don Juan] (the 10th) finished, but not transcribed yet; and the eleventh begun."]

{429}[kk] Or Rome, or Tiber—Naples or the sea.—[MS. erased.]

{430}[565] [Vide ante, Canto I. stanza xiv. lines 7, 8.]

{431}[566] ["Falstaff. Let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon: and let men say, we be men of good government; being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we—steal."-I Henry IV., act i. sc. 2, lines 24-28.]

[567] [Gin. Hence the antithesis of "All Max" in the East to Almack's in the West. (See Life in London, by Pierce Egan, 1823, pp. 284-290.)]

[568] [According to the Vocabulary of the Flash Language, compiled by James Hardy Vaux, in 1812, and published at the end of his Memoirs, 1819, ii. 149-227, a kiddy, or "flash-kiddy," is a thief of the lower orders, who, when he is breeched by a course of successful depredation dresses in the extreme of vulgar gentility, and affects a knowingness in his air and conversation. A "swell" or "rank swell" ("real swell" appears in Egan's Life in London) is the more recent "toff;" and "flash" is "fly," "down," or "awake," i.e. knowing, not easily imposed upon.]

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

[570] ["Ken" is a house, s.c. a thieves' lodging-house; "spellken," a play-house; "high toby-spice" is robbery on horseback, as distinguished from "spice," i.e. footpad robbery; to "flash the muzzle" is to show off the face, to swagger openly; "blowing" or "blowen" is a doxy or trull; and "nutty" is, conjointly, amorous and fascinating.]

[kl] Poor Tom was once a knowing one in town. Not a mere kiddy, but a real one.—[MS. erased.]

[571] The advance of science and of language has rendered it unnecessary to translate the above good and true English, spoken in its original purity by the select mobility and their patrons. The following is a stanza of a song which was very popular at least in my early days:—

"On the high toby-spice flash the muzzle, In spite of each gallows old scout; If you at the spellken can't hustle, You'll be hobbled in making a clout. Then your blowing will wax gallows haughty, When she hears of your scaly mistake, She'll surely turn snitch for the forty— That her Jack may be regular weight."

If there be any gemman so ignorant as to require a traduction, I refer him to my old friend and corporeal pastor and master, John Jackson, Esq., Professor of Pugilism; who, I trust, still retains the strength and symmetry of his model of a form, together with his good humour, and athletic as well as mental accomplishments.

[Gentleman Jackson was of good renown. "Servility," says Egan (Life in London, 1823, p. 217), "is not known to him. Flattery he detests. Integrity, impartiality, good-nature, and manliness, are the corner-stones of his understanding." Byron once said of him that "his manners were infinitely superior to those of the Fellows of the College whom I meet at the high table" (J.W. Clark, Cambridge, 1890, p. 140). (See, too, letter to John Jackson, September 18, 1808, Letters, 1898, i. 189, note 2; Hints from Horace, line 638, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 433, note 3.) As to the stanza quoted by Egan (Anecdotes of the Turf, 1827, p. 44), but not traduced or interpreted, "To be hobbled for making a clout" is to be taken into custody for stealing a handkerchief, to "turn snitch" is to inform, and the "forty" is the L40 offered for the detection of a capital crime, and shared by the police or Bow Street runners. Dangerous characters were let alone and tacitly encouraged to continue their career of crime, until the measure of their iniquity was full, and they "weighed forty." If Jack was clumsy enough to be detected in a trifling theft, his "blowen" would go over to the enemy, and betray him for the sake of the Government reward (see Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose, 1823, art. "Weigh forty").]

{433}[572] [Don Juan must have driven by Pleasant Row, and passed within hail of Paradise Row, on the way from Kennington to Westminster Bridge. (See Cary's New Pocket Plan of London, Westminster, and Southwark, 1819.) But, perhaps, there is more in the names of streets and places than meets the eye. Here, as elsewhere, there is, or there may be, "a paltering with us in a double sense."]

[km] Through rows called "Paradise," by way of showing Good Christians that to which they all are going.—[MS. erased.]

{434}[573] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto 1. stanza lxix. line 8, var. ii., Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 66, note 2.]

[kn]—— distilling into the re-kindling glass.—[MS.]

[574] [The streets of London were first regularly lighted with gas in 1812.]

{435}[575] [Thomas Pennant, in Some Account of London, 1793, p. 444. writes down the Mansion House (1739-1752) as "damned ... to everlasting fame."]

[576] [Fifty years ago "the lights of Piccadilly" were still regarded as one of the "sights" of London. Byron must often have looked at them from his house in Piccadilly Terrace.]

[577] [Joseph Francois Foulon, army commissioner, provoked the penalty of the "lantern" (i.e. an improvised gallows on the yard of a lamp-post at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie) by his heartless sneer, "Eh bien! si cette canaille n'a pas de pain, elle mangera du foin." He was hanged, July 22, 1789. See The Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, cap. xxii.; see, too, Carlyle's French Revolution, 1839, i. 253: "With wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands: he is whirled ... to the 'Lanterne,' ... pleading bitterly for life,—to the deaf winds. Only with the third rope (for two ropes broke, and the quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged! His Body is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating people."]