The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 / Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 / Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824| Author: | Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824 |
| Title: | The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 |
| Date: | 2006-07-06 |
| Contributor(s): | Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, 1846-1920 [Editor] |
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| Language: | en |
| Publisher: | Project Gutenberg |
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Project Gutenberg's The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6, by Lord Byron
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Title: The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6
Author: Lord Byron
Editor: Ernest Hartley Coleridge
Release Date: July 6, 2006 [EBook #18762]
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF LORD BYRON, VOLUME 6 ***
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THE WORKS
OF
LORD BYRON.
A NEW, REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION,
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
Poetry. Vol. VI.
EDITED BY
ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, M.A.,
HON. F.R.S.L.
LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1903
THIS EDITION
OF A GREAT POEM
IS DEDICATED
WITH HIS PERMISSION
TO
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
MDCCCCII.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
This etext is a Latin-1 file. The original contained a few phrases or lines
of Greek text. These are represented here as Beta-code transliterations,
for example [Greek: nous]. The original text used a other characters not
found in the Latin-1 character set. These have been represented using
bracket notation, as follows: [-a] a with macron; [-o] o with macron; [)e]
e with breve. In Canto X, Stanza XLI Byron used three pharmaceutical
symbols, represented as [ezh] (looks like a "3"), [)ezh] (same, with caron),
and [Rx] (prescription symbol).
An important feature of this edition is its copious footnotes. Footnotes
indexed with arabic numbers (e.g. [17], [221]) are informational. Note
text in square brackets is the work of editor E.H. Coleridge, and is
unique to this edition. Other note text is from earlier editions and is
by a preceding editor or Byron himself.
Footnotes indexed with letters (e.g. [c], [bf]) document variant forms
of the text from manuscripts and other sources.
In the original, footnotes were printed at the foot of the page on which
they were referenced, and their indices started over on each page. In
this etext, footnotes have been collected at the ends of each preface or
Canto, and have been numbered consecutively throughout. However, in the
blocks of footnotes are numbers in braces: {321}. These represent the
page number on which following notes originally appeared, and can be
used to find notes by page. For example, the Preface directs you to "a
note (pp. 495..." and you can locate this note in its new location by
searching for {495}.
PREFACE TO THE SIXTH VOLUME.
The text of this edition of _Don Juan_ has been collated with original
MSS. in the possession of the Lady Dorchester and Mr. John Murray. The
fragment of a Seventeenth Canto, consisting of fourteen stanzas, is now
printed and published for the first time.
I have collated with the original authorities, and in many instances
retranscribed, the numerous quotations from Sir G. Dalzell's _Shipwrecks
and Disasters at Sea_ (1812, 8vo) [Canto II. stanzas xxiv.-civ. pp.
87-112], and from a work entitled _Essai sur l'Histoire Ancienne et
Moderne de la Nouvelle Russie_, par le Marquis Gabriel de Castelnau
(1827, 8vo) [Canto VII. stanzas ix.--liii. pp. 304-320, and Canto VIII.
stanzas vi.--cxxvii. pp. 331-368], which were first included in the
notes to the fifteenth and sixteenth volumes of the edition of 1833, and
have been reprinted in subsequent issues of Lord Byron's _Poetical
Works_.
A note (pp. 495-497) illustrative of the famous description of Newstead
Abbey (Canto XIII. stanzas lv.-lxxii.) contains particulars not hitherto
published. My thanks and acknowledgments are due to Lady Chermside and
Miss Ethel Webb, for the opportunity afforded me of visiting Newstead
Abbey, and for invaluable assistance in the preparation of this and
other notes.
The proof-sheets of this volume have been read by Mr. Frank E. Taylor. I
am indebted to his care and knowledge for many important corrections and
emendations.
I must once more record my gratitude to Dr. Garnett, C.B., for the
generous manner in which he has devoted time and attention to the
solution of difficulties submitted to his consideration.
I am also indebted, for valuable information, to the Earl of Rosebery,
K.G.; to Mr. J. Willis Clark, Registrar of the University of Cambridge;
to Mr. W.P. Courtney; to my friend Mr. Thomas Hutchinson; to Miss Emily
Jackson, of Hucknall Torkard; and to Mr. T.E. Page, of the Charterhouse.
On behalf of the publisher, I beg to acknowledge the kindness of the
Lady Frances Trevanion, Sir J.G. Tollemache Sinclair, Bart., and Baron
Dimsdale, in permitting the originals of portraits and drawings in their
possession to be reproduced in this volume.
NOTE.
It was intended that the whole of Lord Byron's Poetical Works should be
included in six volumes, corresponding to the six volumes of the
Letters, and announcements to this effect have been made; but this has
been found to be impracticable. The great mass of new material
incorporated in the Introductions, notes, and variants, has already
expanded several of the published volumes to a disproportionate size,
and _Don Juan_ itself occupies 612 pages.
Volume Seven, which will complete the work, will contain Occasional
Poems, Epigrams, etc., a Bibliography more complete than has ever
hitherto been published, and an exhaustive Index.
CONTENTS OF VOL. VI.
Dedication v
Preface to Vol. VI. of the Poems vii
Introduction to DON JUAN xv
Dedication to Robert Southey, Esq. 3
DON JUAN--
Canto I 11
Canto II 81
Canto III 143
Canto IV 183
Canto V 218
Preface to Cantos VI., VII., and VIII 264
Canto VI 268
Canto VII 302
Canto VIII 330
Canto IX 373
Canto X 400
Canto XI 427
Canto XII 455
Canto XIII 481
Canto XIV 516
Canto XV 544
Canto XVI 572
Canto XVII 608
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
1. PORTRAIT OF LORD BYRON, FROM A DRAWING FROM THE
LIFE BY J. HOLMES, FORMERLY THE PROPERTY OF THE
LATE HUGH CHARLES TREVANION, ESQ. frontispiece
2. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, FROM THE PORTRAIT BY H.W.
PICKERSGILL, R.A., IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY To face p. 4
3. NINON DE LENCLOS, FROM A MINIATURE IN THE
POSSESSION OF SIR J.G. TOLLEMACHE SINCLAIR, BART. 246
4. FOUNTAIN AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY 500
INTRODUCTION TO _DON JUAN_
Byron was a rapid as well as a voluminous writer. His _Tales_ were
thrown off at lightning speed, and even his dramas were thought out and
worked through with unhesitating energy and rapid achievement.
Nevertheless, the composition of his two great poems was all but
coextensive with his poetical life. He began the first canto of _Childe
Harold_ in the autumn of 1809, and he did not complete the fourth canto
till the spring of 1818. He began the first canto of _Don Juan_ in the
autumn of 1818, and he was still at work on a seventeenth canto in the
spring of 1823. Both poems were issued in parts, and with long intervals
of unequal duration between the parts; but the same result was brought
about by different causes and produced a dissimilar effect. _Childe
Harold_ consists of three distinct poems descriptive of three successive
travels or journeys in foreign lands. The adventures of the hero are but
the pretext for the shifting of the diorama; whereas in _Don Juan_ the
story is continuous, and the scenery is exhibited as a background for
the dramatic evolution of the personality of the hero. _Childe Harold_
came out at intervals, because there were periods when the author was
stationary; but the interruptions in the composition and publication of
_Don Juan_ were due to the disapproval and discouragement of friends,
and the very natural hesitation and procrastination of the publisher.
Canto I. was written in September, 1818; Canto II. in December-January,
1818-1819. Both cantos were published on July 15, 1819. Cantos III., IV.
were written in the winter of 1819-1820; Canto V., after an interval of
nine months, in October-November, 1820, but the publication of Cantos
III., IV., V. was delayed till August 8, 1821. The next interval was
longer still, but it was the last. In June, 1822, Byron began to work at
a sixth, and by the end of March, 1823, he had completed a sixteenth
canto. But the publication of these later cantos, which had been
declined by Murray, and were finally entrusted to John Hunt, was spread
over a period of several months. Cantos VI., VII., VIII., with a
Preface, were published July 15; Cantos IX., X., XI, August 29; Cantos
XII., XIII., XIV., December 17, 1823; and, finally, Cantos XV., XVI.,
March 26, 1824. The composition of _Don Juan_, considered as a whole,
synchronized with the composition of all the dramas (except _Manfred_)
and the following poems: _The Prophecy of Dante_, (the translation of)
_The Morgante Maggiore, The Vision of Judgment, The Age of Bronze_, and
_The Island_.
There is little to be said with regard to the "Sources" of _Don Juan_.
Frere's _Whistlecraft_ had suggested _Beppo_, and, at the same time, had
prompted and provoked a sympathetic study of Frere's Italian models,
Berni and Pulci (see "Introduction to _Beppo_," _Poetical Works_, 1901,
iv. 155-158; and "Introduction to _The Morgante Maggiore_" ibid., pp.
279-281); and, again, the success of _Beppo_, and, still more, a sense
of inspiration and the conviction that he had found the path to
excellence, suggested another essay of the _ottava rima_, a humorous
poem "_a la Beppo_" on a larger and more important scale. If Byron
possessed more than a superficial knowledge of the legendary "Don Juan,"
he was irresponsive and unimpressed. He speaks (letter to Murray,
February 16, 1821) of "the Spanish tradition;" but there is nothing to
show that he had read or heard of Tirso de Molina's (Gabriel Tellez) _El
Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra_ (_The Deceiver of Seville and
the Stone Guest_), 1626, which dramatized the "ower true tale" of the
actual Don Juan Tenorio; or that he was acquainted with any of the
Italian (e.g. _Convitato di Pietra_, del Dottor Giacinto Andrea
Cicognini, Fiorentino [see L. Allacci _Dramaturgia_, 1755, 4º, p. 862])
or French adaptations of the legend (_e.g_. _Le Festin de Pierre, ou le
fils criminel_, Tragi-comedie de De Villiers, 1659; and Moliere's _Dom
Juan, ou Le Festin de Pierre_, 1665). He had seen (_vide post_, p. 11,
note 2) Delpini's pantomime, which was based on Shadwell's
_Libertine_, and he may have witnessed, at Milan or Venice, a
performance of Mozart's _Don Giovanni_; but in taking Don Juan for his
"hero," he took the name only, and disregarded the "terrible figure" "of
the Titan of embodied evil, the likeness of sin made flesh" (see
_Selections from the Works of Lord Byron_, by A.C. Swinburne, 1885, p.
xxvi.), "as something to his purpose nothing"!
Why, then, did he choose the name, and what was the scheme or motif of
his poem? Something is to be gathered from his own remarks and
reflections; but it must be borne in mind that he is on the defensive,
and that his half-humorous paradoxes were provoked by advice and
opposition. Writing to Moore (September 19, 1818), he says, "I have
finished the first canto ... of a poem in the style and manner of
_Beppo_, encouraged by the good success of the same. It is ... meant to
be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. But I doubt whether it
is not--at least as far as it has gone--too free for these very modest
days." The critics before and after publication thought that _Don Juan_
_was_ "too free," and, a month after the two first cantos had been
issued, he writes to Murray (August 12, 1819), "You ask me for the plan
of Donny Johnny; I _have_ no plan--I _had_ no plan; but I had or have
materials.... You are too earnest and eager about a work never intended
to be serious. Do you suppose that I could have any intention but to
giggle and make giggle?--a playful satire, with as little poetry as
could be helped, was what I meant." Again, after the completion but
before the publication of Cantos III., IV., V., in a letter to Murray
(February 16, 1821), he writes, "The Fifth is so far from being the last
of _Don Juan_, that it is hardly the beginning. I meant to take him the
tour of Europe, with a proper mixture of siege, battle, and adventure,
and to make him finish as Anacharsis Cloots in the French Revolution....
I meant to have made him a _Cavalier Servente_ in Italy, and a cause for
a divorce in England, and a Sentimental 'Werther-faced' man in Germany,
so as to show the different ridicules of the society in each of these
countries, and to have displayed him gradually _gate_ and _blase_, as he
grew older, as is natural. But I had not quite fixed whether to make him
end in Hell, or in an unhappy marriage, not knowing which would be the
severest."
Byron meant what he said, but he kept back the larger truth. Great
works, in which the poet speaks _ex animo_, and the man lays bare the
very pulse of the machine, are not conceived or composed unconsciously
and at haphazard. Byron did not "whistle" _Don Juan_ "for want of
thought." He had found a thing to say, and he meant to make the world
listen. He had read with angry disapproval, but he had read, Coleridge's
_Critique on_ [Maturin's] _Bertram_ (_vide post_, p. 4, note 1), and,
it may be, had caught an inspiration from one brilliant sentence which
depicts the Don Juan of the legend somewhat after the likeness of Childe
Harold, if not of Lord Byron: "Rank, fortune, wit, talent, acquired
knowledge, and liberal accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous
health, ... all these advantages, elevated by the habits and sympathies
of noble birth and natural character, are ... combined in Don Juan, so
as to give him the means of carrying into all its practical consequences
the doctrine of a godless nature ... Obedience to nature is the only
virtue." Again, "It is not the wickedness of Don Juan ... which
constitutes the character an abstraction, ... but the rapid succession
of the correspondent acts and incidents, his intellectual superiority,
and the splendid accumulation of his gifts and desirable qualities as
coexistent with entire wickedness in one and the same person." Here was
at once a suggestion and a challenge.
Would it not be possible to conceive and to depict an ideal character,
gifted, gracious, and delightful, who should "carry into all its
practical consequences" the doctrine of a mundane, if not godless
doctrine, and, at the same time, retain the charities and virtues of
uncelestial but not devilish manhood? In defiance of monition and in
spite of resolution, the primrose path is trodden by all sorts and
conditions of men, sinners no doubt, but not necessarily abstractions of
sin, and to assert the contrary makes for cant and not for
righteousness. The form and substance of the poem were due to the
compulsion of Genius and the determination of Art, but the argument is a
vindication of the natural man. It is Byron's "criticism of life." _Don
Juan_ was _taboo_ from the first. The earlier issues of the first five
cantos were doubly anonymous. Neither author nor publisher subscribed
their names on the title-page. The book was a monster, and, as its maker
had foreseen, "all the world" shuddered. Immoral, in the sense that it
advocates immoral tenets, or prefers evil to good, it is not, but it is
unquestionably a dangerous book, which (to quote Kingsley's words used
in another connection) "the young and innocent will do well to leave
altogether unread." It is dangerous because it ignores resistance and
presumes submission to passion; it is dangerous because, as Byron
admitted, it is "now and then voluptuous;" and it is dangerous, in a
lesser degree, because, here and there, the purport of the quips and
allusions is gross and offensive. No one can take up the book without
being struck and arrested by these violations of modesty and decorum;
but no one can master its contents and become possessed of it as a whole
without perceiving that the mirror is held up to nature, that it
reflects spots and blemishes which, on a survey of the vast and various
orb, dwindle into _natural_ and so comparative insignificance. Byron was
under no delusion as to the grossness of _Don Juan_. His plea or
pretence, that he was sheltered by the superior grossness of Ariosto and
La Fontaine, of Prior and of Fielding, is _nihil ad rem_, if it is not
insincere. When Murray (May 3, 1819) charges him with "approximations to
indelicacy," he laughs himself away at the euphemism, but when Hobhouse
and "the Zoili of Albemarle Street" talked to him "about morality," he
flames out, "I maintain that it is the most moral of poems." He looked
upon his great work as a whole, and he knew that the "_raison d'etre_ of
his song" was not only to celebrate, but, by the white light of truth,
to represent and exhibit the great things of the world--Love and War,
and Death by sea and land, and Man, half-angel, half-demon--the comedy
of his fortunes, and the tragedy of his passions and his fate.
_Don Juan_ has won great praise from the great. Sir Walter Scott
(_Edinburgh Weekly Journal_, May 19, 1824) maintained that its creator
"has embraced every topic of human life, and sounded every string of the
divine harp, from its slightest to its most powerful and
heart-astounding tones." Goethe (_Kunst und Alterthum_, 1821 [ed.
Weimar, iii. 197, and _Saemmtliche Werke_, xiii. 637]) described _Don
Juan_ as "a work of boundless genius." Shelley (letter to Byron, October
21, 1821), on the receipt of Cantos III., IV., V., bore testimony to his
"wonder and delight:" "This poem carries with it at once the stamp of
originality and defiance of imitation. Nothing has ever been written
like it in English, nor, if I may venture to prophesy, will there be,
unless carrying upon it the mark of a secondary and borrowed light....
You are building up a drama," he adds, "such as England has not yet
seen, and the task is sufficiently noble and worthy of you." Again, of
the fifth canto he writes (Shelley's _Prose Works_, ed. H. Buxton
Forman, iv. 219), "Every word has the stamp of immortality.... It
fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long preached of
producing--something wholly new and relative to the age, and yet
surpassingly beautiful." Finally, a living poet, neither a disciple nor
encomiast of Byron, pays eloquent tribute to the strength and splendour
of _Don Juan_: "Across the stanzas ... we swim forward as over the
'broad backs of the sea;' they break and glitter, hiss and laugh, murmur
and move like waves that sound or that subside. There is in them a
delicious resistance, an elastic motion, which salt water has and fresh
water has not. There is about them a wide wholesome air, full of vivid
light and constant wind, which is only felt at sea. Life undulates and
Death palpitates in the splendid verse.... This gift of life and variety
is the supreme quality of Byron's chief poem" (_A Selection, etc._, by
A.C. Swinburne, 1885, p. x.).
Cantos I., II. of _Don Juan_ were reviewed in _Blackwood's Edinburgh
Magazine_, August, 1819, vol. v. pp. 512-518; Cantos III., IV., V.,
August, 1821, vol. x. pp. 107-115; and Cantos VI., VII., VIII., July,
1823, vol. xiv. pp. 88-92: in the _British Critic_, Cantos I., II. were
reviewed August, 1819, vol. xii. pp. 195-205; and Cantos III., IV., V.,
September, 1821, vol. xvi. pp. 251-256: in the _British Review_, Cantos
I., II. were reviewed August, 1819, vol. xiv. pp. 266-268; and Cantos
III., IV., V., December, 1821, vol. xviii. pp. 245-265: in the
_Examiner_, Cantos I., II. were reviewed October 31, 1819; Cantos III.,
IV., V., August 26, 1821; and Cantos XV., XVI., March 14 and 21, 1824:
in the _Literary Gazette_, Cantos I., II. were reviewed July 17 and 24,
1819; Cantos III., IV., V., August 11 and 18, 1821; Cantos VI., VII.,
VIII., July 19, 1823; Cantos IX., X., XL, September 6, 1823; Cantos
XII., XIII., XIV., December 6, 1823; and Cantos XV., XVI., April 3,
1824: in the _Monthly Review_., Cantos I., II. were reviewed July, 1819,
Enlarged Series, vol. 89, p. 309; Cantos III., IV., V., August, 1821,
vol. 95, p. 418; Cantos VI., VII., VIII., July, 1823, vol. 101, p. 316;
Cantos IX., X., XI., October, 1823, vol. 102, p. 217; Cantos XII.,
XIII., XIV., vol. 103, p. 212; and Cantos XV., XVI., April, 1824, vol.
103, p. 434: in the _New Monthly Magazine_, Cantos I., II. were reviewed
August, 1819, vol. xii. p. 75. See, too, an article on the "Morality of
_Don Juan_," _Dublin University Magazine_, May, 1875, vol. lxxxv. pp.
630-637.
Neither the _Quarterly_ nor the _Edinburgh Review_ devoted separate
articles to _Don Juan_; but Heber, in the _Quarterly Review_ (Lord
Byron's _Dramas_), July, 1822, vol. xxvii. p. 477, and Jeffrey, in the
_Edinburgh Review_ (Lord Byron's _Tragedies_), February, 1822, vol. 36,
pp. 446-450, took occasion to pass judgment on the poem and its author.
For the history of the legend, see _History of Spanish Literature_, by
George Ticknor, 1888, vol. ii. pp. 380, 381; and _Das Kloster_, von J.
Scheible, 1846, vol. iii. pp. 663-765. See, too, _Notes sur le Don
Juanisme_, par Henri de Bruchard, _Mercure de France_, Avril, 1898, vol.
xxvi. pp. 58-73; and _Don Juan_, par Gustave Kahn, _Revue
Encyclopedique_, 1898, tom. viii. pp. 326-329.
DON JUAN.
FRAGMENT
ON THE BACK OF THE MS. OF CANTO I.
I WOULD to Heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling--
Because at least the past were passed away,
And for the future--(but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly to-day,
So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
I say--the future is a serious matter--
And so--for God's sake--hock and soda-water!
DEDICATION.[1]
I.
BOB SOUTHEY! You're a poet--Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race;
Although 't is true that you turned out a Tory at
Last,--yours has lately been a common case;
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;
II.
"Which pye being opened they began to sing,"
(This old song and new simile holds good),
"A dainty dish to set before the King,"
Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;--
And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,--
Explaining Metaphysics to the nation--
I wish he would explain his Explanation.[2]
III.
You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,
And be the only Blackbird in the dish;
And then you overstrain yourself, or so,
And tumble downward like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall, for lack of moisture, quite a-dry, Bob![3]
IV.
And Wordsworth, in a rather long "Excursion,"
(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages),
Has given a sample from the vasty version
Of his new system[4] to perplex the sages;
'T is poetry-at least by his assertion,
And may appear so when the dog-star rages--
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story to the Tower of Babel.
V.
You--Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick, and, through still continued fusion
Of one another's minds, at last have grown
To deem as a most logical conclusion,
That Poesy has wreaths for you alone:
There is a narrowness in such a notion,
Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for Ocean.
VI.
I would not imitate the petty thought,
Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,
For all the glory your conversion brought,
Since gold alone should not have been its price.
You have your salary; was 't for that you wrought?
And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.[5]
You're shabby fellows--true--but poets still,
And duly seated on the Immortal Hill.
VII.
Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows--
Perhaps some virtuous blushes;--let them go--
To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs--
And for the fame you would engross below,
The field is universal, and allows
Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow:
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe, will try
'Gainst you the question with posterity.
VIII.
For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
Contend not with you on the winged steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The fame you envy, and the skill you need;
And, recollect, a poet nothing loses
In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of merit--and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.
IX.
He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he
Being only injured by his own assertion;
And although here and there some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,
The major part of such appellants go
To--God knows where--for no one else can know.
X.
If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,[6]
Milton appealed to the Avenger, Time,
If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And makes the word "Miltonic" mean "_Sublime_,"
_He_ deigned not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
_He_ did not loathe the Sire to laud the Son,
But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.
XI.
Think'st thou, could he--the blind Old Man--arise
Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,
Or be alive again--again all hoar
With time and trials, and those helpless eyes,
And heartless daughters--worn--and pale[7]--and poor;
Would _he_ adore a sultan? _he_ obey
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?[8]
XII.
Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore,
The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fixed,
And offer poison long already mixed.
XIII.
An orator of such set trash of phrase
Ineffably--legitimately vile,
That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes--all nations--condescend to smile,--
Nor even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.
XIV.
A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid--
States to be curbed, and thoughts to be confined,
Conspiracy or Congress to be made--
Cobbling at manacles for all mankind--
A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
With God and Man's abhorrence for its gains.
XV.
If we may judge of matter by the mind,
Emasculated to the marrow _It_
Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind,
Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
Eutropius of its many masters,[9]--blind
To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,
Fearless--because _no_ feeling dwells in ice,
Its very courage stagnates to a vice.[10]
XVI.
Where shall I turn me not to _view_ its bonds,
For I will never _feel_ them?--Italy!
Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds
Beneath the lie this State-thing breathed o'er thee[11]--
Thy clanking chain, and Erin's yet green wounds,
Have voices--tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves--allies--kings--armies still--
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.
XVII.
Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate,
In honest simple verse, this song to you.
And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
'T is that I still retain my "buff and blue;"[12]
My politics as yet are all to educate:
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,
To keep _one_ creed's a task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?[13]
Venice, Sept. 16, 1818.
FOOTNOTES:
{3}[1] ["As the Poem is to be published anonymously, _omit_ the
Dedication. I won't attack the dog in the dark. Such things are for
scoundrels and renegadoes like himself" [_Revise_]. See, too, letter to
Murray, May 6, 1819 (_Letters_, 1900, iv. 294); and Southey's letter to
Bedford, July 31, 1819 (_Selections from the Letters, etc._, 1856, in.
137, 138). According to the editor of the _Works of Lord Byron_, 1833
(xv. 101), the existence of the Dedication "became notorious" in
consequence of Hobhouse's article in the _Westminster Review_, 1824. He
adds, for Southey's consolation and encouragement, that "for several
years the verses have been selling in the streets as a broadside," and
that "it would serve no purpose to exclude them on the present
occasion." But Southey was not appeased. He tells Allan Cunningham (June
3, 1833) that "the new edition of Byron's works is ... one of the very
worst symptoms of these bad times" (_Life and Correspondence_, 1850, vi.
217).]
{4}[2] [In the "Critique on _Bertram_," which Coleridge contributed to
the _Courier_, in 1816, and republished in the _Biographia Literaria_,
in 1817 (chap, xxiii.), he gives a detailed analysis of "the old Spanish
play, entitled _Atheista Fulminato [vide ante_, the 'Introduction to
_Don Juan_'] ... which under various names (_Don Juan_, the _Libertine_,
etc.) has had its day of favour in every country throughout Europe ...
Rank, fortune, wit, talent, acquired knowledge, and liberal
accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous health, and
constitutional hardihood,--all these advantages, elevated by the habits
and sympathies of noble birth and national character, are supposed to
have combined in Don Juan, so as to give him the means of carrying into
all its practical consequences the doctrine of a godless nature, as the
sole ground and efficient cause not only of all things, events, and
appearances, but likewise of all our thoughts, sensations, impulses, and
actions. Obedience to nature is the only virtue." It is possible that
Byron traced his own lineaments in this too life-like portraiture, and
at the same time conceived the possibility of a new Don Juan, "made up"
after his own likeness. His extreme resentment at Coleridge's just,
though unwise and uncalled-for, attack on Maturin stands in need of some
explanation. See letter to Murray, September 17, 1817 (_Letters_, 1900,
iv. 172).]
[3] ["Have you heard that _Don Juan_ came over with a dedication to me,
in which Lord Castlereagh and I (being hand in glove intimates) were
coupled together for abuse as 'the two Roberts'? A fear of persecution
(_sic_) from the _one_ Robert is supposed to be the reason why it has
been suppressed" (Southey to Rev. H. Hill, August 13, 1819, _Selections
from the Letters, etc._, 1856, iii. 142). For "Quarrel between Byron and
Southey," see Introduction to _The Vision of Judgment_, _Poetical
Works_, 1901, iv. 475-480; and _Letters_, 1901, vi. 377-399 (Appendix
I.).]
[4] [The reference must be to the detailed enumeration of "the powers
requisite for the production of poetry," and the subsequent antithesis
of Imagination and Fancy contained in the Preface to the collected
_Poems of William Wordsworth_, published in 1815. In the Preface to the
_Excursion_ (1814) it is expressly stated that "it is not the author's
intention formally to announce a system."]
{5}[5] Wordsworth's place may be in the Customs--it is, I think, in that
or the Excise--besides another at Lord Lonsdale's table, where this
poetical charlatan and political parasite licks up the crumbs with a
hardened alacrity; the converted Jacobin having long subsided into the
clownish sycophant [_despised retainer_,--_MS. erased_] of the worst
prejudices of the aristocracy.
[Wordsworth obtained his appointment as Distributor of Stamps for the
county of Westmoreland in March, 1813, through Lord Lonsdale's
"patronage" (see his letter, March 6, 1813). _The Excursion_ was
dedicated to Lord Lonsdale in a sonnet dated July 29, 1814--
"Oft through thy fair domains, illustrious Peer,
In youth I roamed ...
Now, by thy care befriended, I appear
Before thee, Lonsdale, and this Work present."
]
{6}[6] [_Paradise Lost_, vii. 25, 26.]
{7}[7] "Pale, but not cadaverous:"--Milton's two elder daughters are
said to have robbed him of his books, besides cheating and plaguing him
in the economy of his house, etc., etc. His feelings on such an outrage,
both as a parent and a scholar, must have been singularly painful.
Hayley compares him to Lear. See part third, _Life of Milton_, by W.
Hayley (or Hailey, as spelt in the edition before me).
[_The Life of Milton_, by William Hailey (_sic_), Esq., Basil, 1799, p. 186.]
[8] Or--
"Would _he_ subside into a hackney Laureate--
A scribbling, self-sold, soul-hired, scorned Iscariot?"
I doubt if "Laureate" and "Iscariot" be good rhymes, but must say, as
Ben Jonson did to Sylvester, who challenged him to rhyme with--
"I, John Sylvester,
Lay with your sister."
Jonson answered--"I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wife." Sylvester
answered,--"That is not rhyme."--"No," said Ben Jonson; "but it is
_true_."
[For Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, see _The Age of Bronze_, line
538, _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 568, note 2; and _Letters_, 1900, iv.
108, note 1.]
{8}[9] For the character of Eutropius, the eunuch and minister at the
court of Arcadius, see Gibbon, [_Decline and Fall_, 1825, ii. 307, 308].
[10] ["Mr. John Murray,--As publisher to the Admiralty and of various
Government works, if the five stanzas concerning Castlereagh should risk
your ears or the Navy List, you may omit them in the publication--in
that case the two last lines of stanza 10 [_i.e_. 11] must end with the
couplet (lines 7, 8) inscribed in the margin. The stanzas on Castlerighi
(as the Italians call him) are 11, 12, 13, 14, 15."--_MS. M_.]
[11] [Commenting on a "pathetic sentiment" of Leoni, the author of the
Italian translation of _Childe Harold_ ("Sciagurata condizione di questa
mia patria!"), Byron affirms that the Italians execrated Castlereagh "as
the cause, by the conduct of the English at Genoa." "Surely," he
exclaims, "that man will not die in his bed: there is no spot of the
earth where his name is not a hissing and a curse. Imagine what must be
the man's talent for Odium, who has contrived to spread his infamy like
a pestilence from Ireland to Italy, and to make his name an execration
in all languages."--Letter to Murray, May 8, 1820, _Letters_, 1901, v.
22, note 1.]
{9}[12] [Charles James Fox and the Whig Club of his time adopted a
uniform of blue and buff. Hence the livery of the _Edinburgh Review_.]
[13] I allude not to our friend Landor's hero, the traitor Count Julian,
but to Gibbon's hero, vulgarly yclept "The Apostate."
DON JUAN
CANTO THE FIRST.[14]
I.
I WANT a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan--
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,[15]
Sent to the Devil somewhat ere his time.
II.
Vernon,[16] the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And filled their sign-posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,
Followers of Fame, "nine farrow"[17] of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparte[18] and Dumourier[19]
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.
III.
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette[20]
Were French, and famous people, as we know;
And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,[21]
With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.
IV.
Nelson was once Britannia's god of War,
And still should be so, but the tide is turned;
There's no more to be said of Trafalgar,
'T is with our hero quietly inurned;
Because the army's grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concerned;
Besides, the Prince is all for the land-service.
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.
V.
Brave men were living before Agamemnon[22]
And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
But then they shone not on the poet's page,
And so have been forgotten:--I condemn none,
But can't find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan.
VI.
Most epic poets plunge _"in medias res"_[23]
(Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road),
And then your hero tells, whene'er you please,
What went before--by way of episode,
While seated after dinner at his ease,
Beside his mistress in some soft abode,
Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern,
Which serves the happy couple for a tavern.
VII.
That is the usual method, but not mine--
My way is to begin with the beginning;
The regularity of my design
Forbids all wandering as the worst of sinning,
And therefore I shall open with a line
(Although it cost me half an hour in spinning),
Narrating somewhat of Don Juan's father,
And also of his mother, if you'd rather.
VIII.
In Seville was he born, a pleasant city,
Famous for oranges and women,--he
Who has not seen it will be much to pity,
So says the proverb[24]--and I quite agree;
Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty,
Cadiz perhaps--but that you soon may see;--
Don Juan's parents lived beside the river,
A noble stream, and called the Guadalquivir.
IX.
His father's name was Jose-_Don_, of course,--
A true Hidalgo, free from every stain
Of Moor or Hebrew blood, he traced his source
Through the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain;
A better cavalier ne'er mounted horse,
Or, being mounted, e'er got down again,
Than Jose, who begot our hero, who
Begot--but that's to come----Well, to renew:
X.[25]
His mother was a learned lady, famed
For every branch of every science known--
In every Christian language ever named,
With virtues equalled by her wit alone:
She made the cleverest people quite ashamed,
And even the good with inward envy groan,
Finding themselves so very much exceeded,
In their own way, by all the things that she did.
XI.
Her memory was a mine: she knew by heart
All Calderon and greater part of Lope;
So, that if any actor missed his part,
She could have served him for the prompter's copy;
For her Feinagle's were an useless art,[26]
And he himself obliged to shut up shop--he
Could never make a memory so fine as
That which adorned the brain of Donna Inez.
XII.
Her favourite science was the mathematical,
Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity,
Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all,
Her serious sayings darkened to sublimity;[a]
In short, in all things she was fairly what I call
A prodigy--her morning dress was dimity,
Her evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin,
And other stuffs, with which I won't stay puzzling.
XIII.
She knew the Latin--that is, "the Lord's prayer,"
And Greek--the alphabet--I'm nearly sure;
She read some French romances here and there,
Although her mode of speaking was not pure;
For native Spanish she had no great care,
At least her conversation was obscure;
Her thoughts were theorems, her words a problem,
As if she deemed that mystery would ennoble 'em.
XIV.
She liked the English and the Hebrew tongue,
And said there was analogy between 'em;
She proved it somehow out of sacred song,
But I must leave the proofs to those who've seen 'em;
But this I heard her say, and can't be wrong,
And all may think which way their judgments lean 'em,
"'T is strange--the Hebrew noun which means 'I am,'
The English always use to govern d--n."
XV.
Some women use their tongues--she _looked_ a lecture,
Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily,
An all-in-all sufficient self-director,
Like the lamented late Sir Samuel Romilly,[27]
The Law's expounder, and the State's corrector,
Whose suicide was almost an anomaly--
One sad example more, that "All is vanity,"--
(The jury brought their verdict in "Insanity!")
XVI.
In short, she was a walking calculation,
Miss Edgeworth's novels stepping from their covers,[28]
Or Mrs. Trimmer's books on education,[29]
Or "Coelebs' Wife"[30] set out in quest of lovers,
Morality's prim personification,
In which not Envy's self a flaw discovers;
To others' share let "female errors fall,"[31]
For she had not even one--the worst of all.
XVII.
Oh! she was perfect past all parallel--
Of any modern female saint's comparison;
So far above the cunning powers of Hell,
Her Guardian Angel had given up his garrison;
Even her minutest motions went as well
As those of the best time-piece made by Harrison:[32]
In virtues nothing earthly could surpass her,
Save thine "incomparable oil," Macassar![33]
XVIII.
Perfect she was, but as perfection is
Insipid in this naughty world of ours,
Where our first parents never learned to kiss
Till they were exiled from their earlier bowers,
Where all was peace, and innocence, and bliss,[b]
(I wonder how they got through the twelve hours),
Don Jose, like a lineal son of Eve,
Went plucking various fruit without her leave.
XIX.
He was a mortal of the careless kind,
With no great love for learning, or the learned,
Who chose to go where'er he had a mind,
And never dreamed his lady was concerned;
The world, as usual, wickedly inclined
To see a kingdom or a house o'erturned,
Whispered he had a mistress, some said _two_.
But for domestic quarrels _one_ will do.
XX.
Now Donna Inez had, with all her merit,
A great opinion of her own good qualities;
Neglect, indeed, requires a saint to bear it,
And such, indeed, she was in her moralities;[c]
But then she had a devil of a spirit,
And sometimes mixed up fancies with realities,
And let few opportunities escape
Of getting her liege lord into a scrape.
XXI.
This was an easy matter with a man
Oft in the wrong, and never on his guard;
And even the wisest, do the best they can,
Have moments, hours, and days, so unprepared,
That you might "brain them with their lady's fan;"[34]
And sometimes ladies hit exceeding hard,
And fans turn into falchions in fair hands,
And why and wherefore no one understands.
XXII.
'T is pity learned virgins ever wed
With persons of no sort of education,
Or gentlemen, who, though well born and bred,
Grow tired of scientific conversation:
I don't choose to say much upon this head,
I'm a plain man, and in a single station,
But--Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?
XXIII.
Don Jose and his lady quarrelled--_why_,
Not any of the many could divine,
Though several thousand people chose to try,
'T was surely no concern of theirs nor mine;
I loathe that low vice--curiosity;
But if there's anything in which I shine,
'T is in arranging all my friends' affairs,
Not having, of my own, domestic cares.
XXIV.
And so I interfered, and with the best
Intentions, but their treatment was not kind;
I think the foolish people were possessed,
For neither of them could I ever find,
Although their porter afterwards confessed--
But that's no matter, and the worst's behind,
For little Juan o'er me threw, down stairs,
A pail of housemaid's water unawares.
XXV.
A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,
And mischief-making monkey from his birth;
His parents ne'er agreed except in doting
Upon the most unquiet imp on earth;
Instead of quarrelling, had they been but both in
Their senses, they'd have sent young master forth
To school, or had him soundly whipped at home,
To teach him manners for the time to come.
XXVI.
Don Jose and the Donna Inez led
For some time an unhappy sort of life,
Wishing each other, not divorced, but dead;[d]
They lived respectably as man and wife,
Their conduct was exceedingly well-bred,
And gave no outward signs of inward strife,
Until at length the smothered fire broke out,
And put the business past all kind of doubt.
XXVII.
For Inez called some druggists and physicians,
And tried to prove her loving lord was _mad_,[35]
But as he had some lucid intermissions,
She next decided he was only _bad_;
Yet when they asked her for her depositions,
No sort of explanation could be had,
Save that her duty both to man and God[36]
Required this conduct--which seemed very odd.[37]
XXVIII.
She kept a journal, where his faults were noted,
And opened certain trunks of books and letters,[38]
All which might, if occasion served, be quoted;
And then she had all Seville for abettors,
Besides her good old grandmother (who doted);
The hearers of her case became repeaters,
Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges,
Some for amusement, others for old grudges.
XXIX.
And then this best and meekest woman bore
With such serenity her husband's woes,
Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,
Who saw their spouses killed, and nobly chose
Never to say a word about them more--
Calmly she heard each calumny that rose,
And saw _his_ agonies with such sublimity,
That all the world exclaimed, "What magnanimity!"
XXX.
No doubt this patience, when the world is damning us,
Is philosophic in our former friends;
'T is also pleasant to be deemed magnanimous,
The more so in obtaining our own ends;
And what the lawyers call a _"malus animus"_
Conduct like this by no means comprehends:
Revenge in person's certainly no virtue,
But then 't is not _my_ fault, if _others_ hurt you.
XXXI.
And if our quarrels should rip up old stories,
And help them with a lie or two additional,
_I_'m not to blame, as you well know--no more is
Any one else--they were become traditional;
Besides, their resurrection aids our glories
By contrast, which is what we just were wishing all:
And Science profits by this resurrection--
Dead scandals form good subjects for dissection.
XXXII.
Their friends had tried at reconciliation,[e]
Then their relations, who made matters worse.
('T were hard to tell upon a like occasion
To whom it may be best to have recourse--
I can't say much for friend or yet relation)
The lawyers did their utmost for divorce,[f]
But scarce a fee was paid on either side
Before, unluckily, Don Jose died.
XXXIII.
He died: and most unluckily, because,
According to all hints I could collect
From Counsel learned in those kinds of laws,
(Although their talk's obscure and circumspect)
His death contrived to spoil a charming cause;
A thousand pities also with respect
To public feeling, which on this occasion
Was manifested in a great sensation.
XXXIV.
But ah! he died; and buried with him lay
The public feeling and the lawyers' fees:
His house was sold, his servants sent away,
A Jew took one of his two mistresses,
A priest the other--at least so they say:
I asked the doctors after his disease--
He died of the slow fever called the tertian,
And left his widow to her own aversion.
XXXV.
Yet Jose was an honourable man,
That I must say, who knew him very well;
Therefore his frailties I'll no further scan,
Indeed there were not many more to tell:
And if his passions now and then outran
Discretion, and were not so peaceable
As Numa's (who was also named Pompilius),
He had been ill brought up, and was born bilious.[g]
XXXVI.
Whate'er might be his worthlessness or worth,
Poor fellow! he had many things to wound him.
Let's own--since it can do no good on earth--[h]
It was a trying moment that which found him
Standing alone beside his desolate hearth,
Where all his household gods lay shivered round him:[39]
No choice was left his feelings or his pride,
Save Death or Doctors' Commons--so he died.[i]
XXXVII.
Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir
To a chancery suit, and messuages, and lands,
Which, with a long minority and care,
Promised to turn out well in proper hands:
Inez became sole guardian, which was fair,
And answered but to Nature's just demands;
An only son left with an only mother
Is brought up much more wisely than another.
XXXVIII.
Sagest of women, even of widows, she
Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon,
And worthy of the noblest pedigree,
(His Sire was of Castile, his Dam from Aragon)
Then, for accomplishments of chivalry,
In case our Lord the King should go to war again,
He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress--or a nunnery.
XXXIX.
But that which Donna Inez most desired,
And saw into herself each day before all
The learned tutors whom for him she hired,
Was, that his breeding should be strictly moral:
Much into all his studies she inquired,
And so they were submitted first to her, all,
Arts, sciences--no branch was made a mystery
To Juan's eyes, excepting natural history.
XL.
The languages, especially the dead,
The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,
The arts, at least all such as could be said
To be the most remote from common use,
In all these he was much and deeply read:
But not a page of anything that's loose,
Or hints continuation of the species,
Was ever suffered, lest he should grow vicious.
XLI.
His classic studies made a little puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
But never put on pantaloons or bodices;[40]
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,
And for their AEneids, Iliads, and Odysseys,[j]
Were forced to make an odd sort of apology,
For Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.
XLII.
Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example,
Although Longinus[41] tells us there is no hymn
Where the Sublime soars forth on wings more ample;
But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one
Beginning with _"Formosum Pastor Corydon."_[42]
XLIII.
Lucretius' irreligion is too strong
For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;
I can't help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,
So much indeed as to be downright rude;
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?
XLIV.
Juan was taught from out the best edition,
Expurgated by learned men, who place,
Judiciously, from out the schoolboy's vision,
The grosser parts; but, fearful to deface
Too much their modest bard by this omission,[k]
And pitying sore his mutilated case,
They only add them all in an appendix,[43]
Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index;
XLV.
For there we have them all "at one fell swoop,"
Instead of being scattered through the pages;
They stand forth marshalled in a handsome troop,
To meet the ingenuous youth of future ages,
Till some less rigid editor shall stoop
To call them back into their separate cages,
Instead of standing staring all together,
Like garden gods--and not so decent either.
XLVI.
The Missal too (it was the family Missal)
Was ornamented in a sort of way
Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all
Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they,
Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all,
Could turn their optics to the text and pray,
Is more than I know--But Don Juan's mother
Kept this herself, and gave her son another.
XLVII.
Sermons he read, and lectures he endured,
And homilies, and lives of all the saints;
To Jerome and to Chrysostom inured,
He did not take such studies for restraints;
But how Faith is acquired, and then insured,
So well not one of the aforesaid paints
As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions,
Which make the reader envy his transgressions.[44]
XLVIII.
This, too, was a sealed book to little Juan--
I can't but say that his mamma was right,
If such an education was the true one.
She scarcely trusted him from out her sight;
Her maids were old, and if she took a new one,
You might be sure she was a perfect fright;
She did this during even her husband's life--
I recommend as much to every wife.
XLIX.
Young Juan waxed in goodliness and grace;
At six a charming child, and at eleven
With all the promise of as fine a face
As e'er to Man's maturer growth was given:
He studied steadily, and grew apace,
And seemed, at least, in the right road to Heaven,
For half his days were passed at church, the other
Between his tutors, confessor, and mother.
L.
At six, I said, he was a charming child,
At twelve he was a fine, but quiet boy;
Although in infancy a little wild,
They tamed him down amongst them: to destroy
His natural spirit not in vain they toiled,
At least it seemed so; and his mother's joy
Was to declare how sage, and still, and steady,
Her young philosopher was grown already.
LI.
I had my doubts, perhaps I have them still,
But what I say is neither here nor there:
I knew his father well, and have some skill
In character--but it would not be fair
From sire to son to augur good or ill:
He and his wife were an ill-sorted pair--
But scandal's my aversion--I protest
Against all evil speaking, even in jest.
LII.
For my part I say nothing--nothing--but
_This_ I will say--my reasons are my own--
That if I had an only son to put
To school (as God be praised that I have none),
'T is not with Donna Inez I would shut
Him up to learn his catechism alone,
No--no--I'd send him out betimes to college,
For there it was I picked up my own knowledge.
LIII.
For there one learns--'t is not for me to boast,
Though I acquired--but I pass over _that_,
As well as all the Greek I since have lost:
I say that there's the place--but "_Verbum sat_,"
I think I picked up too, as well as most,
Knowledge of matters--but no matter _what_--
I never married--but, I think, I know
That sons should not be educated so.
LIV.
Young Juan now was sixteen years of age,
Tall, handsome, slender, but well knit: he seemed
Active, though not so sprightly, as a page;
And everybody but his mother deemed
Him almost man; but she flew in a rage[45]
And bit her lips (for else she might have screamed)
If any said so--for to be precocious
Was in her eyes a thing the most atrocious.
LV.
Amongst her numerous acquaintance, all
Selected for discretion and devotion,
There was the Donna Julia, whom to call
Pretty were but to give a feeble notion
Of many charms in her as natural
As sweetness to the flower, or salt to Ocean,
Her zone to Venus, or his bow to Cupid,
(But this last simile is trite and stupid.)
LVI.
The darkness of her Oriental eye
Accorded with her Moorish origin;
(Her blood was not all Spanish; by the by,
In Spain, you know, this is a sort of sin;)
When proud Granada fell, and, forced to fly,
Boabdil wept:[46] of Donna Julia's kin
Some went to Africa, some stayed in Spain--
Her great great grandmamma chose to remain.
LVII.
She married (I forget the pedigree)
With an Hidalgo, who transmitted down
His blood less noble than such blood should be;
At such alliances his sires would frown,
In that point so precise in each degree
That they bred _in and in_, as might be shown,
Marrying their cousins--nay, their aunts, and nieces,
Which always spoils the breed, if it increases.
LVIII.
This heathenish cross restored the breed again,
Ruined its blood, but much improved its flesh;
For from a root the ugliest in Old Spain
Sprung up a branch as beautiful as fresh;
The sons no more were short, the daughters plain:
But there's a rumour which I fain would hush,[l]
'T is said that Donna Julia's grandmamma
Produced her Don more heirs at love than law.
LIX.
However this might be, the race went on
Improving still through every generation,
Until it centred in an only son,
Who left an only daughter; my narration
May have suggested that this single one
Could be but Julia (whom on this occasion
I shall have much to speak about), and she
Was married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three.
LX.
Her eye (I'm very fond of handsome eyes)
Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire
Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise
Flashed an expression more of pride than ire,
And love than either; and there would arise
A something in them which was not desire,
But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul
Which struggled through and chastened down the whole.
LXI.
Her glossy hair was clustered o'er a brow
Bright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth;
Her eyebrow's shape was like the aerial bow,
Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth,
Mounting, at times, to a transparent glow,
As if her veins ran lightning; she, in sooth,
Possessed an air and grace by no means common:
Her stature tall--I hate a dumpy woman.
LXII.
Wedded she was some years, and to a man
Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;
And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE
'T were better to have TWO of five-and-twenty,
Especially in countries near the sun:
And now I think on 't, "_mi vien in mente_",
Ladies even of the most uneasy virtue
Prefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty.[m]
LXIII.
'T is a sad thing, I cannot choose but say,
And all the fault of that indecent sun,
Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay,
But will keep baking, broiling, burning on,
That howsoever people fast and pray,
The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone:
What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate's sultry,
LXIV.
Happy the nations of the moral North!
Where all is virtue, and the winter season
Sends sin, without a rag on, shivering forth
('T was snow that brought St. Anthony[47] to reason);
Where juries cast up what a wife is worth,
By laying whate'er sum, in mulct, they please on
The lover, who must pay a handsome price,
Because it is a marketable vice.
LXV.
Alfonso was the name of Julia's lord,
A man well looking for his years, and who
Was neither much beloved nor yet abhorred:
They lived together as most people do,
Suffering each other's foibles by accord,
And not exactly either _one_ or _two_;
Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it,
For Jealousy dislikes the world to know it.
LXVI.
Julia was--yet I never could see why--
With Donna Inez quite a favourite friend;
Between their tastes there was small sympathy,
For not a line had Julia ever penned:
Some people whisper (but, no doubt, they lie,
For Malice still imputes some private end)
That Inez had, ere Don Alfonso's marriage,
Forgot with him her very prudent carriage;
LXVII.
And that still keeping up the old connection,
Which Time had lately rendered much more chaste,
She took his lady also in affection,
And certainly this course was much the best:
She flattered Julia with her sage protection,
And complimented Don Alfonso's taste;
And if she could not (who can?) silence scandal,
At least she left it a more slender handle.
LXVIII.
I can't tell whether Julia saw the affair
With other people's eyes, or if her own
Discoveries made, but none could be aware
Of this, at least no symptom e'er was shown;
Perhaps she did not know, or did not care,
Indifferent from the first, or callous grown:
I'm really puzzled what to think or say,
She kept her counsel in so close a way.
LXIX.
Juan she saw, and, as a pretty child,
Caressed him often--such a thing might be
Quite innocently done, and harmless styled,
When she had twenty years, and thirteen he;
But I am not so sure I should have smiled
When he was sixteen, Julia twenty-three;
These few short years make wondrous alterations,
Particularly amongst sun-burnt nations.
LXX.
Whate'er the cause might be, they had become
Changed; for the dame grew distant, the youth shy,
Their looks cast down, their greetings almost dumb,
And much embarrassment in either eye;
There surely will be little doubt with some
That Donna Julia knew the reason why,
But as for Juan, he had no more notion
Than he who never saw the sea of Ocean.
LXXI.
Yet Julia's very coldness still was kind,
And tremulously gentle her small hand
Withdrew itself from his, but left behind
A little pressure, thrilling, and so bland
And slight, so very slight, that to the mind
'T was but a doubt; but ne'er magician's wand
Wrought change with all Armida's[48] fairy art
Like what this light touch left on Juan's heart.
LXXII.
And if she met him, though she smiled no more,
She looked a sadness sweeter than her smile,
As if her heart had deeper thoughts in store
She must not own, but cherished more the while
For that compression in its burning core;
Even Innocence itself has many a wile,
And will not dare to trust itself with truth,
And Love is taught hypocrisy from youth.
LXXIII.
But Passion most dissembles, yet betrays
Even by its darkness; as the blackest sky
Foretells the heaviest tempest, it displays
Its workings through the vainly guarded eye,
And in whatever aspect it arrays
Itself, 't is still the same hypocrisy;
Coldness or Anger, even Disdain or Hate,
Are masks it often wears, and still too late.
LXXIV.
Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,
And stolen glances, sweeter for the theft,
And burning blushes, though for no transgression,
Tremblings when met, and restlessness when left;
All these are little preludes to possession,
Of which young Passion cannot be bereft,
And merely tend to show how greatly Love is
Embarrassed at first starting with a novice.
LXXV.
Poor Julia's heart was in an awkward state;
She felt it going, and resolved to make
The noblest efforts for herself and mate,
For Honour's, Pride's, Religion's, Virtue's sake:
Her resolutions were most truly great,
And almost might have made a Tarquin quake:
She prayed the Virgin Mary for her grace,
As being the best judge of a lady's case.[49]
LXXVI.
She vowed she never would see Juan more,
And next day paid a visit to his mother,
And looked extremely at the opening door,
Which, by the Virgin's grace, let in another;
Grateful she was, and yet a little sore--
Again it opens, it can be no other,
'T is surely Juan now--No! I'm afraid
That night the Virgin was no further prayed.[50]
LXXVII.
She now determined that a virtuous woman
Should rather face and overcome temptation,
That flight was base and dastardly, and no man
Should ever give her heart the least sensation,
That is to say, a thought beyond the common
Preference, that we must feel, upon occasion,
For people who are pleasanter than others,
But then they only seem so many brothers.
LXXVIII.
And even if by chance--and who can tell?
The Devil's so very sly--she should discover
That all within was not so very well,
And, if still free, that such or such a lover
Might please perhaps, a virtuous wife can quell
Such thoughts, and be the better when they're over;
And if the man should ask, 't is but denial:
I recommend young ladies to make trial.
LXXIX.
And, then, there are such things as Love divine,
Bright and immaculate, unmixed and pure,
Such as the angels think so very fine,
And matrons, who would be no less secure,
Platonic, perfect, "just such love as mine;"
Thus Julia said--and thought so, to be sure;
And so I'd have her think, were _I_ the man
On whom her reveries celestial ran.
LXXX.
Such love is innocent, and may exist
Between young persons without any danger.
A hand may first, and then a lip be kissed;
For my part, to such doings I'm a stranger,
But _hear_ these freedoms form the utmost list
Of all o'er which such love may be a ranger:
If people go beyond, 't is quite a crime,
But not my fault--I tell them all in time.
LXXXI.
Love, then, but Love within its proper limits,
Was Julia's innocent determination
In young Don Juan's favour, and to him its
Exertion might be useful on occasion;
And, lighted at too pure a shrine to dim its
Ethereal lustre, with what sweet persuasion
He might be taught, by Love and her together--
I really don't know what, nor Julia either.
LXXXII.
Fraught with this fine intention, and well fenced
In mail of proof--her purity of soul[51]--
She, for the future, of her strength convinced,
And that her honour was a rock, or mole,[n]
Exceeding sagely from that hour dispensed
With any kind of troublesome control;
But whether Julia to the task was equal
Is that which must be mentioned in the sequel.
LXXXIII.
Her plan she deemed both innocent and feasible,
And, surely, with a stripling of sixteen
Not Scandal's fangs could fix on much that's seizable,
Or if they did so, satisfied to mean
Nothing but what was good, her breast was peaceable--
A quiet conscience makes one so serene!
Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
LXXXIV.
And if in the mean time her husband died,
But Heaven forbid that such a thought should cross
Her brain, though in a dream! (and then she sighed)
Never could she survive that common loss;
But just suppose that moment should betide,
I only say suppose it--_inter nos_:
(This should be _entre nous_, for Julia thought
In French, but then the rhyme would go for nought.)
LXXXV.
I only say, suppose this supposition:
Juan being then grown up to man's estate
Would fully suit a widow of condition,
Even seven years hence it would not be too late;
And in the interim (to pursue this vision)
The mischief, after all, could not be great,
For he would learn the rudiments of Love,
I mean the _seraph_ way of those above.
LXXXVI.
So much for Julia! Now we'll turn to Juan.
Poor little fellow! he had no idea
Of his own case, and never hit the true one;
In feelings quick as Ovid's Miss Medea,[52]
He puzzled over what he found a new one,
But not as yet imagined it could be a
Thing quite in course, and not at all alarming,
Which, with a little patience, might grow charming.
LXXXVII.
Silent and pensive, idle, restless, slow,
His home deserted for the lonely wood,
Tormented with a wound he could not know,
His, like all deep grief, plunged in solitude:
I'm fond myself of solitude or so,
But then, I beg it may be understood,
By solitude I mean a Sultan's (not
A Hermit's), with a haram for a grot.
LXXXVIII.
"Oh Love! in such a wilderness as this,
Where Transport and Security entwine,
Here is the Empire of thy perfect bliss,
And here thou art a God indeed divine."[53]
The bard I quote from does not sing amiss,
With the exception of the second line,
For that same twining "Transport and Security"
Are twisted to a phrase of some obscurity.
LXXXIX.
The Poet meant, no doubt, and thus appeals
To the good sense and senses of mankind,
The very thing which everybody feels,
As all have found on trial, or may find,
That no one likes to be disturbed at meals
Or love.--I won't say more about "entwined"
Or "Transport," as we knew all that before,
But beg "Security" will bolt the door.
XC.
Young Juan wandered by the glassy brooks,
Thinking unutterable things; he threw
Himself at length within the leafy nooks
Where the wild branch of the cork forest grew;
There poets find materials for their books,
And every now and then we read them through,
So that their plan and prosody are eligible,
Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.
XCI.
He, Juan (and not Wordsworth), so pursued
His self-communion with his own high soul,
Until his mighty heart, in its great mood,
Had mitigated part, though not the whole
Of its disease; he did the best he could
With things not very subject to control,
And turned, without perceiving his condition,
Like Coleridge, into a metaphysician.[54]
XCII.
He thought about himself, and the whole earth,
Of man the wonderful, and of the stars,
And how the deuce they ever could have birth:
And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars,
How many miles the moon might have in girth,
Of air-balloons, and of the many bars
To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies;--
And then he thought of Donna Julia's eyes.
XCIII.
In thoughts like these true Wisdom may discern
Longings sublime, and aspirations high,
Which some are born with, but the most part learn
To plague themselves withal, they know not why:
'T was strange that one so young should thus concern
His brain about the action of the sky;[o]
If _you_ think 't was Philosophy that this did,
I can't help thinking puberty assisted.
XCIV.
He pored upon the leaves, and on the flowers,
And heard a voice in all the winds; and then
He thought of wood-nymphs and immortal bowers,
And how the goddesses came down to men:
He missed the pathway, he forgot the hours,
And when he looked upon his watch again,
He found how much old Time had been a winner--
He also found that he had lost his dinner.
XCV.
Sometimes he turned to gaze upon his book,
Boscan,[55] or Garcilasso;[56]--by the wind
Even as the page is rustled while we look,
So by the poesy of his own mind
Over the mystic leaf his soul was shook,
As if 't were one whereon magicians bind
Their spells, and give them to the passing gale,
According to some good old woman's tale.
XCVI.
Thus would he while his lonely hours away
Dissatisfied, not knowing what he wanted;
Nor glowing reverie, nor poet's lay,
Could yield his spirit that for which it panted,
A bosom whereon he his head might lay,
And hear the heart beat with the love it granted,
With----several other things, which I forget,
Or which, at least, I need not mention yet.
XCVII.
Those lonely walks, and lengthening reveries,
Could not escape the gentle Julia's eyes;
She saw that Juan was not at his ease;
But that which chiefly may, and must surprise,
Is, that the Donna Inez did not tease
Her only son with question or surmise;
Whether it was she did not see, or would not,
Or, like all very clever people, could not.
XCVIII.
This may seem strange, but yet 't is very common;
For instance--gentlemen, whose ladies take
Leave to o'erstep the written rights of Woman,
And break the----Which commandment is 't they break?
(I have forgot the number, and think no man
Should rashly quote, for fear of a mistake;)
I say, when these same gentlemen are jealous,
They make some blunder, which their ladies tell us.
XCIX.
A real husband always is suspicious,
But still no less suspects in the wrong place,[p]
Jealous of some one who had no such wishes,
Or pandering blindly to his own disgrace,
By harbouring some dear friend extremely vicious;
The last indeed's infallibly the case:
And when the spouse and friend are gone off wholly,
He wonders at their vice, and not his folly.
C.
Thus parents also are at times short-sighted:
Though watchful as the lynx, they ne'er discover,
The while the wicked world beholds delighted,
Young Hopeful's mistress, or Miss Fanny's lover,
Till some confounded escapade has blighted
The plan of twenty years, and all is over;
And then the mother cries, the father swears,
And wonders why the devil he got heirs.
CI.
But Inez was so anxious, and so clear
Of sight, that I must think, on this occasion,
She had some other motive much more near
For leaving Juan to this new temptation,
But what that motive was, I sha'n't say here;
Perhaps to finish Juan's education,
Perhaps to open Don Alfonso's eyes,
In case he thought his wife too great a prize.
CII.
It was upon a day, a summer's day;--
Summer's indeed a very dangerous season,
And so is spring about the end of May;
The sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason;
But whatsoe'er the cause is, one may say,
And stand convicted of more truth than treason,
That there are months which nature grows more merry in,--
March has its hares, and May must have its heroine.
CIII.
'T was on a summer's day--the sixth of June:
I like to be particular in dates,
Not only of the age, and year, but moon;
They are a sort of post-house, where the Fates
Change horses, making History change its tune,[q]
Then spur away o'er empires and o'er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.[r]
CIV.
'T was on the sixth of June, about the hour
Of half-past six--perhaps still nearer seven--
When Julia sate within as pretty a bower
As e'er held houri in that heathenish heaven
Described by Mahomet, and Anacreon Moore,[57]
To whom the lyre and laurels have been given,
With all the trophies of triumphant song--
He won them well, and may he wear them long!
CV.
She sate, but not alone; I know not well
How this same interview had taken place,
And even if I knew, I should not tell--
People should hold their tongues in any case;
No matter how or why the thing befell,
But there were she and Juan, face to face--
When two such faces are so, 't would be wise,
But very difficult, to shut their eyes.
CVI.
How beautiful she looked! her conscious heart
Glowed in her cheek, and yet she felt no wrong:
Oh Love! how perfect is thy mystic art,
Strengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong!
How self-deceitful is the sagest part
Of mortals whom thy lure hath led along!--
The precipice she stood on was immense,
So was her creed in her own innocence.[s]
CVII.
She thought of her own strength, and Juan's youth,
And of the folly of all prudish fears,
Victorious Virtue, and domestic Truth,
And then of Don Alfonso's fifty years:
I wish these last had not occurred, in sooth,
Because that number rarely much endears,
And through all climes, the snowy and the sunny,
Sounds ill in love, whate'er it may in money.
CVIII.
When people say, "I've told you _fifty_ times,"
They mean to scold, and very often do;
When poets say, "I've written _fifty_ rhymes,"
They make you dread that they 'll recite them too;
In gangs of _fifty_, thieves commit their crimes;
At _fifty_ love for love is rare, 't is true,
But then, no doubt, it equally as true is,
A good deal may be bought for _fifty_ Louis.
CIX.
Julia had honour, virtue, truth, and love
For Don Alfonso; and she inly swore,
By all the vows below to Powers above,
She never would disgrace the ring she wore,
Nor leave a wish which wisdom might reprove;
And while she pondered this, besides much more,
One hand on Juan's carelessly was thrown,
Quite by mistake--she thought it was her own;
CX.
Unconsciously she leaned upon the other,
Which played within the tangles of her hair;
And to contend with thoughts she could not smother
She seemed by the distraction of her air.
'T was surely very wrong in Juan's mother
To leave together this imprudent pair,[t]
She who for many years had watched her son so--
I'm very certain _mine_ would not have done so.
CXI.
The hand which still held Juan's, by degrees
Gently, but palpably confirmed its grasp,
As if it said, "Detain me, if you please;"
Yet there's no doubt she only meant to clasp
His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze;
She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp,
Had she imagined such a thing could rouse
A feeling dangerous to a prudent spouse.
CXII.
I cannot know what Juan thought of this,
But what he did, is much what you would do;
His young lip thanked it with a grateful kiss,
And then, abashed at its own joy, withdrew
In deep despair, lest he had done amiss,--
Love is so very timid when 't is new:
She blushed, and frowned not, but she strove to speak,
And held her tongue, her voice was grown so weak.
CXIII.
The sun set, and up rose the yellow moon:
The Devil's in the moon for mischief; they
Who called her CHASTE, methinks, began too soon
Their nomenclature; there is not a day,
The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
Sees half the business in a wicked way,
On which three single hours of moonshine smile--
And then she looks so modest all the while!
CXIV.
There is a dangerous silence in that hour,
A stillness, which leaves room for the full soul
To open all itself, without the power
Of calling wholly back its self-control;
The silver light which, hallowing tree and tower,
Sheds beauty and deep softness o'er the whole,
Breathes also to the heart, and o'er it throws
A loving languor, which is not repose.
CXV.
And Julia sate with Juan, half embraced
And half retiring from the glowing arm,
Which trembled like the bosom where 't was placed;
Yet still she must have thought there was no harm,
Or else 't were easy to withdraw her waist;
But then the situation had its charm,
And then--God knows what next--I can't go on;
I'm almost sorry that I e'er begun.
CXVI.
Oh Plato! Plato! you have paved the way,
With your confounded fantasies, to more
Immoral conduct by the fancied sway
Your system feigns o'er the controlless core
Of human hearts, than all the long array
Of poets and romancers:--You're a bore,
A charlatan, a coxcomb--and have been,
At best, no better than a go-between.
CXVII.
And Julia's voice was lost, except in sighs,
Until too late for useful conversation;
The tears were gushing from her gentle eyes,
I wish, indeed, they had not had occasion;
But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?
Not that Remorse did not oppose Temptation;
A little still she strove, and much repented,
And whispering "I will ne'er consent"--consented.
CXVIII.
'T is said that Xerxes offered a reward[58]
To those who could invent him a new pleasure:
Methinks the requisition's rather hard,
And must have cost his Majesty a treasure:
For my part, I'm a moderate-minded bard,
Fond of a little love (which I call leisure);
I care not for new pleasures, as the old
Are quite enough for me, so they but hold.
CXIX.
Oh Pleasure! you're indeed a pleasant thing,[59]
Although one must be damned for you, no doubt:
I make a resolution every spring
Of reformation, ere the year run out,
But somehow, this my vestal vow takes wing,
Yet still, I trust, it may be kept throughout:
I'm very sorry, very much ashamed,
And mean, next winter, to be quite reclaimed.
CXX.
Here my chaste Muse a liberty must take--
Start not! still chaster reader--she'll be nice hence-
Forward, and there is no great cause to quake;
This liberty is a poetic licence,
Which some irregularity may make
In the design, and as I have a high sense
Of Aristotle and the Rules, 't is fit
To beg his pardon when I err a bit.
CXXI.
This licence is to hope the reader will
Suppose from June the sixth (the fatal day,
Without whose epoch my poetic skill
For want of facts would all be thrown away),
But keeping Julia and Don Juan still
In sight, that several months have passed; we'll say
'T was in November, but I'm not so sure
About the day--the era's more obscure.
CXXII.
We'll talk of that anon.--'T is sweet to hear
At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep
The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,[60]
By distance mellowed, o'er the waters sweep;
'T is sweet to see the evening star appear;
'T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creep
From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high
The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.
CXXIII.
'T is sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark
Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home;
'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark
Our coming, and look brighter when we come;[u]
'T is sweet to be awakened by the lark,
Or lulled by falling waters; sweet the hum
Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,
The lisp of children, and their earliest words.
CXXIV.
Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes
In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,
Purple and gushing: sweet are our escapes
From civic revelry to rural mirth;
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,
Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth,
Sweet is revenge--especially to women--
Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.
CXXV.
Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet[v]
The unexpected death of some old lady,
Or gentleman of seventy years complete,
Who've made "us youth"[61] wait too--too long already,
For an estate, or cash, or country seat,
Still breaking, but with stamina so steady,
That all the Israelites are fit to mob its
Next owner for their double-damned post-obits.[w]
CXXVI.
'T is sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels,
By blood or ink; 't is sweet to put an end
To strife; 't is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,
Particularly with a tiresome friend:
Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;
Dear is the helpless creature we defend
Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot[62]
We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.
CXXVII.
But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,
Is first and passionate Love--it stands alone,
Like Adam's recollection of his fall;
The Tree of Knowledge has been plucked--all 's known--
And Life yields nothing further to recall
Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,
No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven
Fire which Prometheus filched for us from Heaven.
CXXVIII.
Man's a strange animal, and makes strange use
Of his own nature, and the various arts,
And likes particularly to produce
Some new experiment to show his parts;
This is the age of oddities let loose,
Where different talents find their different marts;
You'd best begin with truth, and when you've lost your
Labour, there's a sure market for imposture.
CXXIX.
What opposite discoveries we have seen!
(Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)
One makes new noses[63], one a guillotine,
One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets;
But Vaccination certainly has been
A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets,[64]
With which the Doctor paid off an old pox,
By borrowing a new one from an ox.[65]
CXXX.
Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes:
And Galvanism has set some corpses grinning,[66]
But has not answered like the apparatus
Of the Humane Society's beginning,
By which men are unsuffocated gratis:
What wondrous new machines have late been spinning!
I said the small-pox has gone out of late;
Perhaps it may be followed by the great.[67]
CXXXI.
'T is said the great came from America;
Perhaps it may set out on its return,--
The population there so spreads, they say
'T is grown high time to thin it in its turn,
With war, or plague, or famine--any way,
So that civilisation they may learn;
And which in ravage the more loathsome evil is--
Their real _lues,_ or our pseudo-syphilis?
CXXXII.
This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions:
Sir Humphry Davy's lantern,[68] by which coals
Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions,
Tombuctoo travels,[69] voyages to the Poles[70]
Are ways to benefit mankind, as true,
Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.
CXXXIII.
Man's a phenomenon, one knows not what,
And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure;
'T is pity though, in this sublime world, that
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes Sin's a pleasure;[x]
Few mortals know what end they would be at,
But whether Glory, Power, or Love, or Treasure,
The path is through perplexing ways, and when
The goal is gained, we die, you know--and then----
CXXXIV.
What then?--I do not know, no more do you--
And so good night.--Return we to our story:
'T was in November, when fine days are few,
And the far mountains wax a little hoary,
And clap a white cape on their mantles blue;[y]
And the sea dashes round the promontory,
And the loud breaker boils against the rock,
And sober suns must set at five o'clock.
CXXXV.
'T was, as the watchmen say, a cloudy night;[z]
No moon, no stars, the wind was low or loud
By gusts, and many a sparkling hearth was bright
With the piled wood, round which the family crowd;
There's something cheerful in that sort of light,
Even as a summer sky's without a cloud:
I'm fond of fire, and crickets, and all that,[aa][71]
A lobster salad[72], and champagne, and chat.
CXXXVI.
'T was midnight--Donna Julia was in bed,
Sleeping, most probably,--when at her door
Arose a clatter might awake the dead,
If they had never been awoke before,
And that they have been so we all have read,
And are to be so, at the least, once more;--
The door was fastened, but with voice and fist
First knocks were heard, then "Madam--Madam--hist!
CXXXVII.
"For God's sake, Madam--Madam--here's my master,[73]
With more than half the city at his back--Was
ever heard of such a curst disaster!
'T is not my fault--I kept good watch--Alack!
Do pray undo the bolt a little faster--
They're on the stair just now, and in a crack
Will all be here; perhaps he yet may fly--
Surely the window's not so _very_ high!"
CXXXVIII.
By this time Don Alfonso was arrived,
With torches, friends, and servants in great number;
The major part of them had long been wived,
And therefore paused not to disturb the slumber
Of any wicked woman, who contrived
By stealth her husband's temples to encumber:
Examples of this kind are so contagious,
Were _one_ not punished, _all_ would be outrageous.
CXXXIX.
I can't tell how, or why, or what suspicion
Could enter into Don Alfonso's head;
But for a cavalier of his condition
It surely was exceedingly ill-bred,
Without a word of previous admonition,
To hold a levee round his lady's bed,
And summon lackeys, armed with fire and sword,
To prove himself the thing he most abhorred.
CXL.
Poor Donna Julia! starting as from sleep,
(Mind--that I do not say--she had not slept),
Began at once to scream, and yawn, and weep;
Her maid, Antonia, who was an adept,
Contrived to fling the bed-clothes in a heap,
As if she had just now from out them crept:[ab]
I can't tell why she should take all this trouble
To prove her mistress had been sleeping double.
CXLI.
But Julia mistress, and Antonia maid,
Appeared like two poor harmless women, who
Of goblins, but still more of men afraid,
Had thought one man might be deterred by two,
And therefore side by side were gently laid,
Until the hours of absence should run through,
And truant husband should return, and say,
"My dear,--I was the first who came away."
CXLII.
Now Julia found at length a voice, and cried,
"In Heaven's name, Don Alfonso, what d' ye mean?
Has madness seized you? would that I had died
Ere such a monster's victim I had been![ac]
What may this midnight violence betide,
A sudden fit of drunkenness or spleen?
Dare you suspect me, whom the thought would kill?
Search, then, the room!"--Alfonso said, "I will."
CXLIII.
_He_ searched, _they_ searched, and rummaged everywhere,
Closet and clothes' press, chest and window-seat,
And found much linen, lace, and several pair
Of stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete,
With other articles of ladies fair,
To keep them beautiful, or leave them neat:
Arras they pricked and curtains with their swords,
And wounded several shutters, and some boards.
CXLIV.
Under the bed they searched, and there they found--
No matter what--it was not that they sought;
They opened windows, gazing if the ground
Had signs or footmarks, but the earth said nought;
And then they stared each others' faces round:
'T is odd, not one of all these seekers thought,
And seems to me almost a sort of blunder,
Of looking _in_ the bed as well as under.
CXLV.
During this inquisition Julia's tongue[ad]
Was not asleep--"Yes, search and search," she cried,
"Insult on insult heap, and wrong on wrong!
It was for this that I became a bride!
For this in silence I have suffered long
A husband like Alfonso at my side;
But now I'll bear no more, nor here remain,
If there be law or lawyers in all Spain.
CXLVI.
"Yes, Don Alfonso! husband now no more,
If ever you indeed deserved the name,
Is 't worthy of your years?--you have threescore--
Fifty, or sixty, it is all the same--
Is 't wise or fitting, causeless to explore
For facts against a virtuous woman's fame?
Ungrateful, perjured, barbarous Don Alfonso,
How dare you think your lady would go on so?
CXLVII.
"Is it for this I have disdained to hold
The common privileges of my sex?
That I have chosen a confessor so old
And deaf, that any other it would vex,
And never once he has had cause to scold,
But found my very innocence perplex
So much, he always doubted I was married--
How sorry you will be when I've miscarried!
CXLVIII.
"Was it for this that no Cortejo[74] e'er
I yet have chosen from out the youth of Seville?
Is it for this I scarce went anywhere,
Except to bull-fights, mass, play, rout, and revel?
Is it for this, whate'er my suitors were,
I favoured none--nay, was almost uncivil?
Is it for this that General Count O'Reilly,
Who took Algiers,[75] declares I used him vilely?
CXLIX.
"Did not the Italian _Musico_ Cazzani
Sing at my heart six months at least in vain?
Did not his countryman, Count Corniani,[76]
Call me the only virtuous wife in Spain?
Were there not also Russians, English, many?
The Count Strongstroganoff I put in pain,
And Lord Mount Coffeehouse, the Irish peer,
Who killed himself for love (with wine) last year.
CL.
"Have I not had two bishops at my feet?
The Duke of Ichar, and Don Fernan Nunez;
And is it thus a faithful wife you treat?
I wonder in what quarter now the moon is:
I praise your vast forbearance not to beat
Me also, since the time so opportune is--
Oh, valiant man! with sword drawn and cocked trigger,
Now, tell me, don't you cut a pretty figure?
CLI.
"Was it for this you took your sudden journey,
Under pretence of business indispensable
With that sublime of rascals your attorney,
Whom I see standing there, and looking sensible
Of having played the fool? though both I spurn, he
Deserves the worst, his conduct's less defensible,
Because, no doubt, 't was for his dirty fee,
And not from any love to you nor me.
CLII.
"If he comes here to take a deposition,
By all means let the gentleman proceed;
You've made the apartment in a fit condition:--
There's pen and ink for you, sir, when you need--
Let everything be noted with precision,
I would not you for nothing should be fee'd--
But, as my maid's undressed, pray turn your spies out."
"Oh!" sobbed Antonia, "I could tear their eyes out."
CLIII.
"There is the closet, there the toilet, there
The antechamber--search them under, over;
There is the sofa, there the great arm-chair,
The chimney--which would really hold a lover.[ae]
I wish to sleep, and beg you will take care
And make no further noise, till you discover
The secret cavern of this lurking treasure--
And when 't is found, let me, too, have that pleasure.
CLIV.
"And now, Hidalgo! now that you have thrown
Doubt upon me, confusion over all,
Pray have the courtesy to make it known
_Who_ is the man you search for? how d' ye call
Him? what's his lineage? let him but be shown--
I hope he's young and handsome--is he tall?
Tell me--and be assured, that since you stain
My honour thus, it shall not be in vain.
CLV.
"At least, perhaps, he has not sixty years,
At that age he would be too old for slaughter,
Or for so young a husband's jealous fears--
(Antonia! let me have a glass of water.)
I am ashamed of having shed these tears,
They are unworthy of my father's daughter;
My mother dreamed not in my natal hour,
That I should fall into a monster's power.
CLVI.
"Perhaps 't is of Antonia you are jealous,
You saw that she was sleeping by my side,
When you broke in upon us with your fellows:
Look where you please--we've nothing, sir, to hide;
Only another time, I trust, you'll tell us,
Or for the sake of decency abide
A moment at the door, that we may be
Dressed to receive so much good company.
CLVII.
"And now, sir, I have done, and say no more;
The little I have said may serve to show
The guileless heart in silence may grieve o'er[af]
The wrongs to whose exposure it is slow:--
I leave you to your conscience as before,
'T will one day ask you _why_ you used me so?
God grant you feel not then the bitterest grief!--
Antonia! where's my pocket-handkerchief?"
CLVIII.
She ceased, and turned upon her pillow; pale
She lay, her dark eyes flashing through their tears,
Like skies that rain and lighten; as a veil,
Waved and o'ershading her wan cheek, appears
Her streaming hair; the black curls strive, but fail
To hide the glossy shoulder, which uprears
Its snow through all;--her soft lips lie apart,
And louder than her breathing beats her heart.
CLIX.
The Senhor Don Alfonso stood confused;
Antonia bustled round the ransacked room,
And, turning up her nose, with looks abused
Her master, and his myrmidons, of whom
Not one, except the attorney, was amused;
He, like Achates, faithful to the tomb,
So there were quarrels, cared not for the cause,
Knowing they must be settled by the laws.
CLX.
With prying snub-nose, and small eyes, he stood,
Following Antonia's motions here and there,
With much suspicion in his attitude;
For reputations he had little care;
So that a suit or action were made good,
Small pity had he for the young and fair,
And ne'er believed in negatives, till these
Were proved by competent false witnesses.
CLXI.
But Don Alfonso stood with downcast looks,
And, truth to say, he made a foolish figure;
When, after searching in five hundred nooks,
And treating a young wife with so much rigour,
He gained no point, except some self-rebukes,
Added to those his lady with such vigour
Had poured upon him for the last half-hour,
Quick, thick, and heavy--as a thunder-shower.
CLXII.
At first he tried to hammer an excuse,
To which the sole reply was tears, and sobs,
And indications of hysterics, whose
Prologue is always certain throes, and throbs,
Gasps, and whatever else the owners choose:
Alfonso saw his wife, and thought of Job's;[77]
He saw too, in perspective, her relations,
And then he tried to muster all his patience.
CLXIII.
He stood in act to speak, or rather stammer,
But sage Antonia cut him short before
The anvil of his speech received the hammer,
With "Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more,
Or madam dies."--Alfonso muttered, "D--n her,"[78]
But nothing else, the time of words was o'er;
He cast a rueful look or two, and did,
He knew not wherefore, that which he was bid.
CLXIV.
With him retired his _"posse comitatus,"_
The attorney last, who lingered near the door
Reluctantly, still tarrying there as late as
Antonia let him--not a little sore
At this most strange and unexplained "_hiatus_"
In Don Alfonso's facts, which just now wore
An awkward look; as he revolved the case,
The door was fastened in his legal face.
CLXV.
No sooner was it bolted, than--Oh Shame!
Oh Sin! Oh Sorrow! and Oh Womankind!
How can you do such things and keep your fame,
Unless this world, and t' other too, be blind?
Nothing so dear as an unfilched good name!
But to proceed--for there is more behind:
With much heartfelt reluctance be it said,
Young Juan slipped, half-smothered, from the bed.
CLXVI.
He had been hid--I don't pretend to say
How, nor can I indeed describe the where--
Young, slender, and packed easily, he lay,
No doubt, in little compass, round or square;
But pity him I neither must nor may
His suffocation by that pretty pair;
'T were better, sure, to die so, than be shut
With maudlin Clarence in his Malmsey butt.[ag]
CLXVII.
And, secondly, I pity not, because
He had no business to commit a sin,
Forbid by heavenly, fined by human laws;--
At least 't was rather early to begin,
But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws
So much as when we call our old debts in
At sixty years, and draw the accompts of evil,
And find a deuced balance with the Devil.[ah]
CLXVIII.
Of his position I can give no notion:
'T is written in the Hebrew Chronicle,
How the physicians, leaving pill and potion,
Prescribed, by way of blister, a young belle,
When old King David's blood grew dull in motion,
And that the medicine answered very well;
Perhaps 't was in a different way applied,
For David lived, but Juan nearly died.
CLXIX.
What's to be done? Alfonso will be back
The moment he has sent his fools away.
Antonia's skill was put upon the rack,
But no device could be brought into play--
And how to parry the renewed attack?
Besides, it wanted but few hours of day:
Antonia puzzled; Julia did not speak,
But pressed her bloodless lip to Juan's cheek.
CLXX.
He turned his lip to hers, and with his hand
Called back the tangles of her wandering hair;
Even then their love they could not all command,
And half forgot their danger and despair:
Antonia's patience now was at a stand--
"Come, come, 't is no time now for fooling there,"
She whispered, in great wrath--"I must deposit
This pretty gentleman within the closet:
CLXXI.
"Pray, keep your nonsense for some luckier night--
_Who_ can have put my master in this mood?
What will become on 't--I'm in such a fright,
The Devil's in the urchin, and no good--
Is this a time for giggling? this a plight?
Why, don't you know that it may end in blood?
You'll lose your life, and I shall lose my place,
My mistress all, for that half-girlish face.
CLXXII.
"Had it but been for a stout cavalier[79]
Of twenty-five or thirty--(come, make haste)
But for a child, what piece of work is here!
I really, madam, wonder at your taste--
(Come, sir, get in)--my master must be near:
There, for the present, at the least, he's fast,
And if we can but till the morning keep
Our counsel--(Juan, mind, you must not sleep.)"
CLXXIII.
Now, Don Alfonso entering, but alone,
Closed the oration of the trusty maid:
She loitered, and he told her to be gone,
An order somewhat sullenly obeyed;
However, present remedy was none,
And no great good seemed answered if she staid:
Regarding both with slow and sidelong view,
She snuffed the candle, curtsied, and withdrew.
CLXXIV.
Alfonso paused a minute--then begun
Some strange excuses for his late proceeding;
He would not justify what he had done,
To say the best, it was extreme ill-breeding;
But there were ample reasons for it, none
Of which he specified in this his pleading:
His speech was a fine sample, on the whole,
Of rhetoric, which the learned call "_rigmarole._"
CLXXV.
Julia said nought; though all the while there rose
A ready answer, which at once enables
A matron, who her husband's foible knows,
By a few timely words to turn the tables,
Which, if it does not silence, still must pose,--
Even if it should comprise a pack of fables;
'T is to retort with firmness, and when he
Suspects with _one_, do you reproach with _three_.
CLXXVI.
Julia, in fact, had tolerable grounds,--
Alfonso's loves with Inez were well known;
But whether 't was that one's own guilt confounds--
But that can't be, as has been often shown,
A lady with apologies abounds;--
It might be that her silence sprang alone
From delicacy to Don Juan's ear,
To whom she knew his mother's fame was dear.
CLXXVII.
There might be one more motive, which makes two;
Alfonso ne'er to Juan had alluded,--
Mentioned his jealousy, but never who
Had been the happy lover, he concluded,
Concealed amongst his premises; 't is true,
His mind the more o'er this its mystery brooded;
To speak of Inez now were, one may say,
Like throwing Juan in Alfonso's way.
CLXXVIII.
A hint, in tender cases, is enough;
Silence is best: besides, there is a _tact_[80]--
(That modern phrase appears to me sad stuff,
But it will serve to keep my verse compact)--
Which keeps, when pushed by questions rather rough,
A lady always distant from the fact:
The charming creatures lie with such a grace,
There's nothing so becoming to the face.
CLXXIX.
They blush, and we believe them; at least I
Have always done so; 't is of no great use,
In any case, attempting a reply,
For then their eloquence grows quite profuse;
And when at length they're out of breath, they sigh,
And cast their languid eyes down, and let loose
A tear or two, and then we make it up;
And then--and then--and then--sit down and sup.
CLXXX.
Alfonso closed his speech, and begged her pardon,
Which Julia half withheld, and then half granted,
And laid conditions he thought very hard on,
Denying several little things he wanted:
He stood like Adam lingering near his garden,
With useless penitence perplexed and haunted;[ai]
Beseeching she no further would refuse,
When, lo! he stumbled o'er a pair of shoes.
CLXXXI.
A pair of shoes![81]--what then? not much, if they
Are such as fit with ladies' feet, but these
(No one can tell how much I grieve to say)
Were masculine; to see them, and to seize,
Was but a moment's act.--Ah! well-a-day!
My teeth begin to chatter, my veins freeze!
Alfonso first examined well their fashion,
And then flew out into another passion.
CLXXXII.
He left the room for his relinquished sword,
And Julia instant to the closet flew.
"Fly, Juan, fly! for Heaven's sake--not a word--
The door is open--you may yet slip through
The passage you so often have explored--
Here is the garden-key--Fly--fly--Adieu!
Haste--haste! I hear Alfonso's hurrying feet--
Day has not broke--there's no one in the street."
CLXXXIII.
None can say that this was not good advice,
The only mischief was, it came too late;
Of all experience 't is the usual price,
A sort of income-tax laid on by fate:
Juan had reached the room-door in a trice,
And might have done so by the garden-gate,
But met Alfonso in his dressing-gown,
Who threatened death--so Juan knocked him down.
CLXXXIV.
Dire was the scuffle, and out went the light;
Antonia cried out "Rape!" and Julia "Fire!"
But not a servant stirred to aid the fight.
Alfonso, pommelled to his heart's desire,
Swore lustily he'd be revenged this night;
And Juan, too, blasphemed an octave higher;
His blood was up: though young, he was a Tartar,
And not at all disposed to prove a martyr.
CLXXXV.
Alfonso's sword had dropped ere he could draw it,
And they continued battling hand to hand,
For Juan very luckily ne'er saw it;
His temper not being under great command,
If at that moment he had chanced to claw it,
Alfonso's days had not been in the land
Much longer.--Think of husbands', lovers' lives!
And how ye may be doubly widows--wives!
CLXXXVI.
Alfonso grappled to detain the foe,
And Juan throttled him to get away,
And blood ('t was from the nose) began to flow;
At last, as they more faintly wrestling lay,
Juan contrived to give an awkward blow,
And then his only garment quite gave way;
He fled, like Joseph, leaving it; but there,
I doubt, all likeness ends between the pair.
CLXXXVII.
Lights came at length, and men, and maids, who found
An awkward spectacle their eyes before;
Antonia in hysterics, Julia swooned,
Alfonso leaning, breathless, by the door;
Some half-torn drapery scattered on the ground,
Some blood, and several footsteps, but no more:
Juan the gate gained, turned the key about,
And liking not the inside, locked the out.
CLXXXVIII.
Here ends this canto.--Need I sing, or say,
How Juan, naked, favoured by the night,
Who favours what she should not, found his way,[aj]
And reached his home in an unseemly plight?
The pleasant scandal which arose next day,
The nine days' wonder which was brought to light,
And how Alfonso sued for a divorce,
Were in the English newspapers, of course.
CLXXXIX.
If you would like to see the whole proceedings,
The depositions, and the Cause at full,
The names of all the witnesses, the pleadings
Of Counsel to nonsuit, or to annul,
There's more than one edition, and the readings
Are various, but they none of them are dull:
The best is that in short-hand ta'en by Gurney,[82]
Who to Madrid on purpose made a journey.[83]
CXC.
But Donna Inez, to divert the train
Of one of the most circulating scandals
That had for centuries been known in Spain,
At least since the retirement of the Vandals,
First vowed (and never had she vowed in vain)
To Virgin Mary several pounds of candles;
And then, by the advice of some old ladies,
She sent her son to be shipped off from Cadiz.
CXCI.
She had resolved that he should travel through
All European climes, by land or sea,
To mend his former morals, and get new,
Especially in France and Italy--
(At least this is the thing most people do.)
Julia was sent into a convent--she
Grieved--but, perhaps, her feelings may be better[ak]
Shown in the following copy of her Letter:--
CXCII.
"They tell me 't is decided you depart:
'T is wise--'t is well, but not the less a pain;
I have no further claim on your young heart,
Mine is the victim, and would be again:
To love too much has been the only art
I used;--I write in haste, and if a stain
Be on this sheet, 't is not what it appears;
My eyeballs burn and throb, but have no tears.
CXCIII.
"I loved, I love you, for this love have lost
State, station, Heaven, Mankind's, my own esteem,
And yet can not regret what it hath cost,
So dear is still the memory of that dream;
Yet, if I name my guilt, 't is not to boast,
None can deem harshlier of me than I deem:
I trace this scrawl because I cannot rest--
I've nothing to reproach, or to request.
CXCIV.
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,[al]
'T is a Woman's whole existence; Man may range
The Court, Camp, Church, the Vessel, and the Mart;
Sword, Gown, Gain, Glory, offer in exchange
Pride, Fame, Ambition, to fill up his heart,
And few there are whom these can not estrange;
Men have all these resources, We but one,[84]
To love again, and be again undone."[am]
CXCV.
"You will proceed in pleasure, and in pride,[an]
Beloved and loving many; all is o'er
For me on earth, except some years to hide
My shame and sorrow deep in my heart's core:
These I could bear, but cannot cast aside
The passion which still rages as before,--
And so farewell--forgive me, love me--No,
That word is idle now--but let it go.[ao]
CXCVI.
"My breast has been all weakness, is so yet;
But still I think I can collect my mind;[ap]
My blood still rushes where my spirit's set,
As roll the waves before the settled wind;
My heart is feminine, nor can forget--
To all, except one image, madly blind;
So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole,
As vibrates my fond heart to my fixed soul.[aq]
CXCVII.
"I have no more to say, but linger still,
And dare not set my seal upon this sheet,
And yet I may as well the task fulfil,
My misery can scarce be more complete;
I had not lived till now, could sorrow kill;
Death shuns the wretch who fain the blow would meet,
And I must even survive this last adieu,
And bear with life, to love and pray for you!"
CXCVIII.
This note was written upon gilt-edged paper
With a neat little crow-quill, slight and new;[ar]
Her small white hand could hardly reach the taper,
It trembled as magnetic needles do,
And yet she did not let one tear escape her;
The seal a sun-flower; _"Elle vous suit partout,"_[85]
The motto cut upon a white cornelian;
The wax was superfine, its hue vermilion.
CXCIX.
This was Don Juan's earliest scrape; but whether
I shall proceed with his adventures is
Dependent on the public altogether;
We'll see, however, what they say to this:
Their favour in an author's cap's a feather,
And no great mischief's done by their caprice;
And if their approbation we experience,
Perhaps they'll have some more about a year hence.
CC.
My poem's epic, and is meant to be
Divided in twelve books; each book containing,
With Love, and War, a heavy gale at sea,
A list of ships, and captains, and kings reigning,
New characters; the episodes are three:[as]
A panoramic view of Hell's in training,
After the style of Virgil and of Homer,
So that my name of Epic's no misnomer.
CCI.
All these things will be specified in time,
With strict regard to Aristotle's rules,
The _Vade Mecum_ of the true sublime,
Which makes so many poets, and some fools:
Prose poets like blank-verse, I'm fond of rhyme,
Good workmen never quarrel with their tools;
I've got new mythological machinery,
And very handsome supernatural scenery.
CCII.
There's only one slight difference between
Me and my epic brethren gone before,
And here the advantage is my own, I ween
(Not that I have not several merits more,
But this will more peculiarly be seen);
They so embellish, that 't is quite a bore
Their labyrinth of fables to thread through,
Whereas this story's actually true.
CCIII.
If any person doubt it, I appeal
To History, Tradition, and to Facts,
To newspapers, whose truth all know and feel,
To plays in five, and operas in three acts;[at]
All these confirm my statement a good deal,
But that which more completely faith exacts
Is, that myself, and several now in Seville,
_Saw_ Juan's last elopement with the Devil.
CCIV.
If ever I should condescend to prose,
I'll write poetical commandments, which
Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those
That went before; in these I shall enrich
My text with many things that no one knows,
And carry precept to the highest pitch:
I'll call the work "Longinus o'er a Bottle,[au]
Or, Every Poet his _own_ Aristotle."
CCV.
Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk,[86] the third so quaint and mouthy:
With Crabbe it may be difficult to cope,
And Campbell's Hippocrene is somewhat drouthy:
Thou shalt not steal from Samuel Rogers, nor
Commit--flirtation with the muse of Moore.
CCVI.
Thou shalt not covet Mr. Sotheby's Muse,
His Pegasus, nor anything that's his;
Thou shalt not bear false witness like "the Blues"--
(There's _one_, at least, is very fond of this);
Thou shalt not write, in short, but what I choose:
This is true criticism, and you may kiss--
Exactly as you please, or not,--the rod;
But if you don't, I'll lay it on, by G--d!
CCVII.
If any person should presume to assert
This story is not moral, first, I pray,
That they will not cry out before they're hurt,
Then that they'll read it o'er again, and say
(But, doubtless, nobody will be so pert)
That this is not a moral tale, though gay:
Besides, in Canto Twelfth, I mean to show
The very place where wicked people go.
CCVIII.
If, after all, there should be some so blind
To their own good this warning to despise,
Led by some tortuosity of mind,
Not to believe my verse and their own eyes,
And cry that they "the moral cannot find,"
I tell him, if a clergyman, he lies;
Should captains the remark, or critics, make,
They also lie too--under a mistake.
CCIX.
The public approbation I expect,
And beg they'll take my word about the moral,
Which I with their amusement will connect
(So children cutting teeth receive a coral);
Meantime they'll doubtless please to recollect
My epical pretensions to the laurel:
For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish,
I've bribed my Grandmother's Review--the British.[87]
CCX.
I sent it in a letter to the Editor,
Who thanked me duly by return of post--
I'm for a handsome article his creditor;
Yet, if my gentle Muse he please to roast,
And break a promise after having made it her,
Denying the receipt of what it cost,
And smear his page with gall instead of honey,
All I can say is--that he had the money.
CCXI.
I think that with this holy _new_ alliance
I may ensure the public, and defy
All other magazines of art or science,
Daily, or monthly, or three monthly; I
Have not essayed to multiply their clients,
Because they tell me 't were in vain to try,
And that the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly
Treat a dissenting author very martyrly.
CCXII.
"_Non ego hoc ferrem calidus juventa
Consule Planco_"[88] Horace said, and so
Say I; by which quotation there is meant a
Hint that some six or seven good years ago
(Long ere I dreamt of dating from the Brenta)
I was most ready to return a blow,
And would not brook at all this sort of thing
In my hot youth--when George the Third was King.
CCXIII.
But now at thirty years my hair is grey--
(I wonder what it will be like at forty?
I thought of a peruke the other day--)[av]
My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I
Have squandered my whole summer while 't was May,
And feel no more the spirit to retort; I
Have spent my life, both interest and principal,
And deem not, what I deemed--my soul invincible.
CCXIV.
No more--no more--Oh! never more on me
The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,
Which out of all the lovely things we see
Extracts emotions beautiful and new,
Hived[89] in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee.
Think'st thou the honey with those objects grew?
Alas! 't was not in them, but in thy power
To double even the sweetness of a flower.
CCXV.
No more--no more--Oh! never more, my heart,
Canst thou be my sole world, my universe!
Once all in all, but now a thing apart,
Thou canst not be my blessing or my curse:
The illusion's gone for ever, and thou art
Insensible, I trust, but none the worse,
And in thy stead I've got a deal of judgment,
Though Heaven knows how it ever found a lodgment.
CCXVI.
My days of love are over; me no more[90]
The charms of maid, wife, and still less of widow,
Can make the fool of which they made before,--
In short, I must not lead the life I did do;
The credulous hope of mutual minds is o'er,
The copious use of claret is forbid too,
So for a good old-gentlemanly vice,
I think I must take up with avarice.
CCXVII.
Ambition was my idol, which was broken
Before the shrines of Sorrow, and of Pleasure;
And the two last have left me many a token
O'er which reflection may be made at leisure:
Now, like Friar Bacon's Brazen Head, I've spoken,
"Time is, Time was, Time's past:"[91]--a chymic treasure
Is glittering Youth, which I have spent betimes--
My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.
CCXVIII.
What is the end of Fame? 't is but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;[92]
For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper,"
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture and worse bust.[aw][93]
CCXIX.
What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's King
Cheops erected the first Pyramid
And largest, thinking it was just the thing
To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;
But somebody or other rummaging,
Burglariously broke his coffin's lid:
Let not a monument give you or me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.[94]
CCXX.
But I, being fond of true philosophy,
Say very often to myself, "Alas!
All things that have been born were born to die,
And flesh (which Death mows down to hay) is grass;
You've passed your youth not so unpleasantly,
And if you had it o'er again--'t would pass--
So thank your stars that matters are no worse,
And read your Bible, sir, and mind your purse."
CCXXI.
But for the present, gentle reader! and
Still gentler purchaser! the Bard--that's I--
Must, with permission, shake you by the hand,[ax]
And so--"your humble servant, and Good-bye!"
We meet again, if we should understand
Each other; and if not, I shall not try
Your patience further than by this short sample--
'T were well if others followed my example.
CCXXII.
"Go, little Book, from this my solitude!
I cast thee on the waters--go thy ways!
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The World will find thee after many days."[95]
When Southey's read, and Wordsworth understood,
I can't help putting in my claim to praise--
The four first rhymes are Southey's every line:
For God's sake, reader! take them not for mine.
Nov. 1, 1818.
FOOTNOTES:
{11}[14] [Begun at Venice, September 6; finished November 1, 1818.]
[15] [The pantomime which Byron and his readers "all had seen," was an
abbreviated and bowdlerized version of Shadwell's _Libertine_. "First
produced by Mr. Garrick on the boards of Drury Lane Theatre," it was
recomposed by Charles Anthony Delpini, and performed at the Royalty
Theatre, in Goodman's Fields, in 1787. It was entitled _Don Juan; or,
The Libertine Destroyed_: A Tragic Pantomimical Entertainment, In Two
Acts. Music Composed by Mr. Gluck. "Scaramouch," the "Sganarelle" of
Moliere's _Festin de Pierre_, was a favourite character of Joseph
Grimaldi. He was cast for the part, in 1801, at Sadler's Wells, and,
again, on a memorable occasion, November 28, 1809, at Covent Garden
Theatre, when the O.P. riots were in full swing, and (see the _Morning
Chronicle_, November 29, 1809) "there was considerable tumult in the
pit." According to "Boz" (_Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi_, 1846, ii. 81,
106, 107), Byron patronized Grimaldi's "benefits at Covent Garden," was
repeatedly in his company, and when he left England, in 1816, "presented
him with a valuable silver snuff-box." At the end of the pantomime "the
Furies gather round him [Don Juan], and the Tyrant being bound in chains
is hurried away and thrown into flames." The Devil is conspicuous by his
absence.]
{12}[16] [Edward Vernon, Admiral (1684-1757), took Porto Bello in 1739.
William Augustus, second son of George II. (1721-1765), fought at the
battles of Dettingen, 1743; Fontenoy, 1745; and at Culloden, 1746. For
the "severity of the Duke of Cumberland," see Scott's _Tales of a
Grandfather_, _Prose Works_, 1830, vii. 852, _sq_.
James Wolfe, General, born January 2, 1726, was killed at the siege of
Quebec, September 13, 1759.
Edward, Lord Hawke, Admiral (1715-1781), totally defeated the French
fleet in Quiberon Bay, November 20, 1759.
Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick (1721-1792), gained the victory at Minden,
August 1, 1759.
John Manners, Marquess of Granby (1721-1790), commanded the British
forces in Germany (1766-1769).
John Burgoyne, General, defeated the Americans at Germantown, October 3,
1777, but surrendered to General Gates at Saratoga, October 17, 1778. He
died in 1792.
Augustus, Viscount Keppel, Admiral (1725-1786), was tried by
court-martial, January-February, 1779, for allowing the French fleet off
Ushant to escape, July, 1778. He was honourably acquitted.
Richard, Earl Howe, Admiral (1725-1799), known by the sailors as "Black
Dick," defeated the French off Ushant, June 1, 1794.]
[17] [Compare _Macbeth_, act iv. sc. i, line 65.]
[18] ["In the eighth and concluding lecture of Mr. Hazlitt's canons of
criticism, delivered at the Surrey Institution (_The English Poets_,
1870, pp. 203, 204), I am accused of having 'lauded Buonaparte to the
skies in the hour of his success, and then peevishly wreaking my
disappointment on the god of my idolatry.' The first lines I ever wrote
upon Buonaparte were the 'Ode to Napoleon,' after his abdication in
1814. All that I have ever written on that subject has been done since
his decline;--I never 'met him in the hour of his success.' I have
considered his character at different periods, in its strength and in
its weakness: by his zealots I am accused of injustice--by his enemies
as his warmest partisan, in many publications, both English and foreign.
"For the accuracy of my delineation I have high authority. A year and
some months ago, I had the pleasure of seeing at Venice my friend the
honourable Douglas Kinnaird. In his way through Germany, he told me that
he had been honoured with a presentation to, and some interviews with,
one of the nearest family connections of Napoleon (Eugene Beauharnais).
During one of these, he read and translated the lines alluding to
Buonaparte, in the Third Canto of _Childe Harold_. He informed me, that
he was authorized by the illustrious personage--(still recognized as
such by the Legitimacy in Europe)--to whom they were read, to say, _that
'the delineation was complete,'_ or words to this effect. It is no
puerile vanity which induces me to publish this fact;--but Mr. Hazlitt
accuses my inconsistency, and infers my inaccuracy. Perhaps he will
admit that, with regard to the latter, one of the most intimate family
connections of the Emperor may be equally capable of deciding on the
subject. I tell Mr. Hazlitt that I never flattered Napoleon on the
throne, nor maligned him since his fall. I wrote what I think are the
incredible antitheses of his character.
"Mr. Hazlitt accuses me further of delineating _myself_ in _Childe
Harold_, etc., etc. I have denied this long ago--but, even were it true,
Locke tells us, that all his knowledge of human understanding was
derived from studying his own mind. From Mr. Hazlitt's opinion of my
poetry I do not appeal; but I request that gentleman not to insult me by
imputing the basest of crimes,--viz. 'praising publicly the same man
whom I wished to depreciate in his adversity:'--the _first_ lines I ever
wrote on Buonaparte were in his dispraise, in 1814,--the _last_, though
not at all in his favour, were more impartial and discriminative, in
1818. Has he become more fortunate since 1814?" For Byron's various
estimates of Napoleon's character and career, see _Childe Harold_, Canto
III, stanza xxxvi. line 7, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 238, note 1.]
{13}[19] [Charles Francois Duperier Dumouriez (1739-1823) defeated the
Austrians at Jemappes, November 6, 1792, etc. He published his
_Memoires_ (Hamburg et Leipsic), 1794. For the spelling, see _Memoirs of
General Dumourier_, written by himself, translated by John Fenwick.
London, 1794. See, too, _Lettre de Joseph Servan_, Ex-ministre de la
Guerre, _Sur le memoire lu par M. Dumourier le 13 Juin a l'Assemblee
Nationale; Bibiotheque Historique de la Revolution_, "Justifications,"
7, 8, 9.]
[20] [Antoine Pierre Joseph Barnave, born 1761, was appointed President
of the Constituent Assembly in 1790. He was guillotined November 30,
1793.
Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville, philosopher and politician, born
January 14, 1754, was one of the principal instigators of the revolt of
the Champ de Mars, July, 1789. He was guillotined October 31, 1793.
Marie Jean Antoine, Marquis de Condorcet, born September 17, 1743, was
appointed President of the Legislative Assembly in 1792. Proscribed by
the Girondins, he poisoned himself to escape the guillotine, March 28,
1794.
Honore Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, born March 9, 1749, died
April 2, 1791.
Jerome Petion de Villeneuve, born 1753, Mayor of Paris in 1791, took an
active part in the imprisonment of the king. In 1793 he fell under
Robespierre's displeasure, and to escape proscription took refuge in the
department of Calvados. In 1794 his body was found in a field, half
eaten by wolves.
Jean Baptiste, Baron de Clootz (better known as Anacharsis Clootz), was
born in 1755. In 1790, at the bar of the National Convention, he
described himself as the "Speaker of Mankind." Being suspected by
Robespierre, he was condemned to death, March 24, 1794. On the scaffold
he begged to be executed last, "in order to establish certain
principles." (See Carlyle's _French Revolution_, 1839, iii. 315.)
Georges Jacques Danton, born October 28, 1759, helped to establish the
Revolutionary Tribunal, March 10, and the Committee of Public Safety,
April 6, 1793; agreed to proscription of the Girondists, June, 1793; was
executed with Camille Desmoulins and others, April 5, 1794.
Jean Paul Marat, born May 24, 1744, physician and man of science,
proposed and carried out the wholesale massacre of September 2-5, 1792;
was denounced to, but acquitted by, the Revolutionary Tribunal, May,
1793; assassinated by Charlotte Corday, July 13, 1793.
Marie Jean Paul, Marquis de La Fayette, born September 6, 1757, died May
19, 1834.
With the exception of La Fayette, who outlived Byron by ten years, and
Lord St. Vincent, all "the famous persons" mentioned in stanzas ii.-iv.
had passed away long before the First Canto of _Don Juan_ was written.]
{14}[21] [Barthelemi Catherine Joubert, born April 14, 1769,
distinguished himself at the engagements of Cava, Montebello, Rivoli,
and in the Tyrol. He was afterwards sent to oppose Suvoroff, and was
killed at Novi, August 15, 1799.
For Hoche and Marceau, _vide ante, Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 296.
Jean Lannes, Duke of Montebello, born April 11, 1769, distinguished
himself at Lodi, Aboukir, Acre, Austerlitz, Jena and, lastly, at
Essling, where he was mortally wounded. He died May 31, 1809.
Louis Charles Antoine Desaix de Voygoux, born August 27, 1768, won the
victory at the Pyramids, July 21, 1798. He was mortally wounded at
Marengo, June 14, 1800.
Jean Victor Moreau, born August 11, 1763, was victorious at Engen, May
3, and at Hohenlinden, December 3, 1800. He was struck by a cannon-ball
at the battle of Dresden, August 27, and died September 2, 1813.]
{15}[22] [Hor., _Od._, iv. c. ix. 1. 25--
"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona," etc.]
[23] [Hor., _Epist. Ad Pisones_, lines 148, 149--
"Semper ad eventum festinat, et in medias res,
Non secus ac notas, auditorem rapit--"]
[24] ["Quien no ha visto Sevilla, no ha visto maravilla."]
{16}[25] [In his reply to _Blackwood_ (No. xxix. August, 1819), Byron
somewhat disingenuously rebuts the charge that _Don Juan_ contained "an
elaborate satire on the character and manners of his wife." "If," he
writes, "in a poem by no means ascertained to be my production there
appears a disagreeable, casuistical, and by no means respectable female
pedant, it is set down for my wife. Is there any resemblance? If there
be, it is in those who make it--I can see none."--Letters, 1900, iv.
477. The allusions in stanzas xii.-xiv., and, again, in stanzas
xxvii.-xxix., are, and must have been meant to be, unmistakable.]
[26] [Gregor von Feinagle, born? 1765, was the inventor of a system of
mnemonics, "founded on the topical memory of the ancients," as described
by Cicero and Quinctilian. He lectured, in 1811, at the Royal
Institution and elsewhere. When Rogers was asked if he attended the
lectures, he replied, "No; I wished to learn the Art of Forgetting"
(_Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers_, 1856, p. 42).]
{17}[a]
_Little she spoke--but what she spoke was Attic all_,
_With words and deeds in perfect unanimity._--[MS.]
[27] [Sir Samuel Romilly, born 1757, lost his wife on the 29th of
October, and committed suicide on the 2nd of November, 1818.--"But there
will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to see it. I
have at least seen Romilly shivered, who was one of the assassins. When
that felon or lunatic ... was doing his worst to uproot my whole family,
tree, branch, and blossoms--when, after taking my retainer, he went over
to them [see _Letters_, 1899, iii. 324]--when he was bringing desolation
... on my household gods--did he think that, in less than three years, a
natural event--a severe, domestic, but an unexpected and common
calamity--would lay his carcase in a cross-road, or stamp his name in a
verdict of Lunacy! Did he (who in his drivelling sexagenary dotage had
not the courage to survive his Nurse--for what else was a wife to him at
his time of life?)--reflect or consider what _my_ feelings must have
been, when wife, and child, and sister, and name, and fame, and country,
were to be my sacrifice on his legal altar,--and this at a moment when
my health was declining, my fortune embarrassed, and my mind had been
shaken by many kinds of disappointment--while I was yet young, and might
have reformed what might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved what was
perplexing in my affairs! But the wretch is in his grave," etc.-Letter
to Murray, June 7, 1819, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 316.]
[28] [Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) published _Castle Rackrent_, etc.,
etc., etc., in 1800. "In 1813," says Byron, "I recollect to have met
them [the Edgeworths] in the fashionable world of London.... She was a
nice little unassuming 'Jeannie Deans-looking body,' as we Scotch say;
and if not handsome, certainly not ill-looking" (_Diary_, January 19,
1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 177-179).]
[29] [Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) published, in 1782, _Easy Introduction
to the Study of Nature_; _History of the Robins_ (dedicated to the
Princess Sophia) in 1786, etc.]
[30] [Hannah More (1745-1833) published _Coelebs in Search of a Wife_ in
1809.]
[31] [Pope, _Rape of the Lock_, Canto II, line 17.]
{19}[32] [John Harrison (1693-1776), known as "Longitude" Harrison, was
the inventor of watch compensation. He received, in slowly and
reluctantly paid instalments, a sum of L20,000 from the Government, for
producing a chronometer which should determine the longitude within half
a degree. A watch which contained his latest improvements was worn by
Captain Cook during his three years' circumnavigation of the globe.]
[33] "Description des _vertus incomparables_ de l'Huile de Macassar."
See the Advertisement. [_An Historical, Philosophical and Practical
Essay on the Human Hair_, was published by Alexander Rowland, jun., in
1816. It was inscribed, "To her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte of
Wales and Cobourg."]
[b] _Where all was innocence and quiet bliss_.--[MS.]
[c] _And so she seemed, in all outside formalities_.--[MS.]
[34] ["'Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his
lady's fan."--I _Henry IV._, act ii, sc 3, lines 19, 20.]
{21}[d] _Wishing each other damned, divorced, or dead_.--[MS.]
[35] [According to Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 55), Byron "was
surprised one day by a Doctor and a Lawyer almost forcing themselves at
the same time into my room. I did not know," he adds, "till afterwards
the real object of their visit. I thought their questions singular,
frivolous, and somewhat importunate, if not impertinent: but what should
I have thought, if I had known that they were sent to provide proofs of
my insanity?" Lady Byron, in her _Remarks on Mr. Moore's Life, etc_.
(_Life_, pp. 661-663), says that Dr. Baillie (_vide post_, p. 412, note
2), whom she consulted with regard to her husband's supposed insanity,
"not having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive
opinion on this point." It appears, however, that another doctor, a Mr.
Le Mann (see _Letters_, 1899, iii. 293, note 1, 295, 299, etc.), visited
Byron professionally, and reported on his condition to Lady Byron.
Hence, perhaps, the mention of "druggists."]
{22}[36] ["I deem it _my duty to God_ to act as I am acting."--Letter of
Lady Byron to Mrs. Leigh, February 14, 1816, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 311.]
[37] ["This is so very pointed."--[?Hobhouse.] "If people make
application, it is their own fault."--[B.].--[_Revise._]
[38] ["There is some doubt about this."--[H.] "What has the 'doubt' to
do with the poem? it is, at least, poetically true. Why apply everything
to that absurd woman? I have no reference to living
characters."--[B.].--[_Revise._] Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 54)
attributes the "breaking open my writing-desk" to Mrs. Charlment (i.e.
Mrs. Clermont) the original of "A Sketch," _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii.
540-544. It is evident from Byron's reply to Hobhouse's remonstrance
that Medwin did not invent this incident, but that some one, perhaps
Fletcher's wife, had told him that his papers had been overhauled.]
{23}[e] _First their friends tried at reconciliation_.--[MS.]
[f] _The lawyers recommended a divorce_.--[MS.]
{24}[g]
/ besides was \
_He had been ill brought up, < > bilious_.
\ besides being /
or, _The reason was, perhaps, that he was bilious_.--[MS.]
[h]
/ now but \
_And we may own--since he is < > earth_.--[MS.]
\ laid in /
[39] ["I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl,--any thing but the
deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth,
with my household gods shivered around me.... Do you suppose I have
forgotten it? It has, comparatively swallowed up in me every other
feeling, and I am only a spectator upon earth till a tenfold opportunity
offers."--Letter to Moore, September 19, 1818, _Letters_, 1900, iv, 262,
263. Compare, too--
"I had one only fount of quiet left,
And _that_ they poisoned! My pure household gods
Were shivered on my hearth, and o'er their shrine
Sate grinning Ribaldry and sneering Scorn."
_Marino Faliero_, act iii. sc. II, lines 361-364.]
{25}[i]
/ litigation--\
_Save death or < > so he died_.--[MS.]
\ banishment--/
{26}[40] [Compare Leigh Hunt on the illustrations to Andrew Tooke's
_Pantheon_: "I see before me, as vividly now as ever, his Mars and
Apollo ... and Venus very handsome, we thought, and not looking too
modest in a 'light cymar.'"--_Autobiography_, 1860, p. 75.]
[j] _Defending still their Iliads and Odysseys_.--[MS.]
[41] See Longinus, Section 10, [Greek: "I/na me\ e(/n ti peri\ au)te\n
pa/thos phai/netai, pathon de\ sy/nodos."]
["The effect desired is that not one passion only should be seen in her,
but a concourse of passions" (_Longinis on the Sublime_, by W. Rhys
Roberts, 1899, pp. 70, 71).
The Ode alluded to is the famous [Greek: Phai/netai/ moi kenos i(/sos
theisin, k.t.l.]
"Him rival to the gods I place;
Him loftier yet, if loftier be,
Who, Lesbia, sits before thy face,
Who listens and who looks on thee."
W.E. Gladstone.
"I do not think you are quite held out by the quotation. Longinus says
the circumstantial assemblage of the passions makes the sublime; he does
not talk of the sublime being soaring and ample."--[H.] "I do not care
for this--it must stand."--[B.]--[_Marginal notes in Revise._]]
[42] [_Bucol._, Ecl. ii. "Alexis."]
{27}[k]
/ antique \ / elision \
Too much their < modest > bard by the < >--[MS.]
\ downright / \ omission /
[43] Fact! There is, or was, such an edition, with all the obnoxious
epigrams of Martial placed by themselves at the end.
[In the Delphin _Martial_ (Amsterdam, 1701) the _Epigrammata Obscaena_
are printed as an Appendix (pp. 2-56), "[Ne] quiequam desideraretur a
morosis quibusdam hominibus."]
{28}[44] See his _Confessions_, lib. i. cap. ix.; [lib. ii. cap. ii.,
_et passim_]. By the representation which Saint Augustine gives of
himself in his youth, it is easy to see that he was what we should call
a rake. He avoided the school as the plague; he loved nothing but gaming
and public shows; he robbed his father of everything he could find; he
invented a thousand lies to escape the rod, which they were obliged to
make use of to punish his irregularities.
{30}[45] [Byron's early letters are full of complaints of his mother's
violent temper. See, for instance, letter to the Hon. Augusta Byron,
April 23, 1805. In another letter to John M.B. Pigot, August 9, 1806, he
speaks of her as "Mrs. Byron '_furiosa_'" (_Letters_, 1898, i. 60,
101).]
[46] ["Having surrendered the last symbol of power, the unfortunate
Boabdil continued on towards the Alpuxarras, that he might not behold
the entrance of the Christians into his capital.... Having ascended an
eminence commanding the last view of Granada, the Moors paused
involuntarily to take a farewell gaze at their beloved city, which a few
steps more would shut from their sight for ever.... The heart of
Boabdil, softened by misfortunes, and overcharged with grief, could no
longer contain itself. 'Allah achbar! God is great!' said he; but the
words of resignation died upon his lips, and he burst into a flood of
tears."--_Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada_, by Washington Irving,
1829, ii. 379-381.]
{31}[l]
/ silence! hush!_ \
_I'll tell you a secret--< >--[MS.]
\ which you'll hush_ /
{32}[m]
_Spouses from twenty years of age to thirty_
/ strict \
_Are most admired by women of < > virtue_.--[MS.]
\ staid /
[47] For the particulars of St. Anthony's recipe for hot blood in cold
weather, see Mr. Alban Butler's _Lives of the Saints_.
["I am not sure it was not St. Francis who had the wife of snow--in that
case the line must run, 'St. Francis back to reason.'"--[_MS. M._]
For the seven snow-balls, of which "the greatest" was his wife, see Life
of "St. Francis of Assisi" (_The Golden Legend_ (edited by F.S. Ellis),
1900, v. 221). See, too, _the Lives of the Saints, etc._, by the Rev.
Alban Butler, 1838, ii. 574.]
{34}[48] [The sorceress in Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata_. The story of
Armida and Rinaldo forms the plot of operas by Glueck and Rossini.]
[49]Sec.35Sec. _Thinking God might not understand the case_.--[MS. M.,
Revise.]
{36}[50] ["Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante." Dante, _Inferno_,
canto v. line 138.]
{37}[51]
["Conscienzia m'assicura,
La buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
Sotto l'osbergo del sentirsi pura."
_Inferno_, canto xxviii, lines 115-117.]
[n] _Deemed that her thoughts no more required control_.--[MS.]
{38}[52] [See Ovid, _Metamorph_., vii. 9, sq.]
{39}[53] Campbell's _Gertrude of Wyoming_--(I think)--the opening of
Canto Second [Part III. stanza i. lines 1-4]--but quote from memory.
[54] [See Coleridge's _Biographia Literaria_, chap. i. (ed. 1847, i. 14,
15); and _Dejection: An Ode_, lines 86-93.]
{40}[o]
_I say this by the way--so don't look stern_.
_But if you're angry, reader, pass it by_.--[MS.]
[55] [Juan Boscan, of Barcelona (1500-1544), in concert with his friend
Garcilasso, Italianized Castilian poetry. He was the author of the
_Leandro_, a poem in blank verse, of canzoni, and sonnets after the
model of Petrarch, and of _The Allegory_.--_History of Spanish
Literature_, by George Ticknor, 1888, i. 513.]
[56] [Garcias Lasso or Garcilasso de la Vega (1503-1536), of a noble
family at Toledo, was a warrior as well as a poet, "now seizing on the
sword and now the pen." After serving with distinction in Germany,
Africa, and Provence, he was killed at Muy, near Frejus, in 1536, by a
stone, thrown from a tower, which fell on his head as he was leading on
his battalion. He was the author of thirty-seven sonnets, five canzoni,
and three pastorals.--_Vide ibidem_, pp. 522-535.]
{42}[p]
_A real wittol always is suspicious_,
_But always also hunts in the wrong place_.--[MS.]
{43}[q] _Change horses every hour from night till noon_.--[MS.]
[r] _Except the promises of true theology_.--[MS.]
[57]
["Oh, Susan! I've said, in the moments of mirth,
What's devotion to thee or to me?
I devoutly believe there's a heaven on earth,
And believe that _that_ heaven's in _thee._"
"The Catalogue," _Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little_, 1803, p.
128.]
{44}[s]
_She stood on Guilt's steep brink, in all the sense_
_And full security of Innocence_.--[MS.]
{45}[t] _To leave these two young people then and there.--[MS.]_
{46}[58] ["Age Xerxes.. eo usque luxuria gaudens, ut edicto praemium ei
proponeret, qui novum voluptatis genus reperisset."--Val. Max, _De
Dictis, etc._, lib. ix. cap. 1, ext. 3.]
[59] ["You certainly will be damned for all this scene."--[H.]]
{48}[60] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza iii. line 2,
_Poetical Works_, ii. 329, note 3.]
[u] _Our coming, nor look brightly till we come_.--[MS.]
[v] _Sweet is a lawsuit to the attorney--sweet, etc_.--[MS.]
[61] [So, too, Falstaff, _Henry IV._, act ii. sc. 2, lines 79, 80.]
{49}[w]
_Who've made us wait--God knows how long already,_
_For an entailed estate, or country-seat,_
_Wishing them not exactly damned, but dead--he_
_Knows nought of grief, who has not so been worried--_
_'T is strange old people don't like to be buried_.--[MS.]
[62] [Byron has not been forgotten at Harrow, though it is a bend of the
Cam (Byron's Pool), not his favourite Duck Pool (now "Ducker") which
bears his name.]
{50}[63] [The reference is to the metallic tractors of Benjamin Charles
Perkins, which were advertised as a "cure for all disorders, Red Noses,"
etc. Compare _English Bards, etc._, lines 131, 132--
"What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
The Cow-pox, Tractors, Galvanism, and Gas."
See _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 307, note 3.]
[64] [Edward Jenner (1749-1823) made his first experiments in
vaccination, May 14, 1796. Napoleon caused his soldiers to be
vaccinated, and imagined that the English would be gratified by his
recognition of Jenner's discovery.
Sir William Congreve (1772-1828) invented "Congreve rockets" or shells
in 1804. They were used with great effect at the battle of Leipzig, in
1813.]
[65] ["Mon cher ne touchez pas a la petite Verole."--[H.]--[Revise.]]
[66] [Experiments in galvanism were made on the body of Forster the
murderer, by Galvani's nephew, Professor Aldini, January and February,
1803.]
[67] ["Put out these lines, and keep the others."--[H.]--[_Revise._]]
{51}[68] [Sir Humphry Davy, P.R.S. (1778-1829), invented the safety-lamp
in 1815.]
[69] [In a critique of _An Account of the Empire of Marocco_.... _To
which is added an_ ... _account of Tombuctoo, the great Emporium of
Central Africa,_ by James Grey Jackson, London, 1809, the reviewer
comments on the author's pedantry in correcting "the common orthography
of African names." "We do not," he writes, "greatly object to ... _Fas_
for _Fez,_ or even _Timbuctoo_ for _Tombuctoo,_ but _Marocco_ for
_Morocco_ is a little too much."--_Edinburgh Review_, July, 1809 vol.
xiv. p. 307.]
[70] [Sir John Ross (1777-1856) published _A Voyage of Discovery_ ...
_for the purpose of Exploring Baffin's Bay, etc.,_ in 1819; Sir W.E.
Parry (1790-1855) published his _Journal of a Voyage of Discovery to the
Arctic Regions between 4th April and 18th November_, 1818, in 1820.]
[x] _Not only pleasure's sin, but sin's a pleasure_.--[MS.]
[y] _And lose in shining snow their summits blue_.--[MS.]
[z] _'Twas midnight--dark and sombre was the night, etc_.--[MS.]
[aa] _And supper, punch, ghost-stories, and such chat_.--[MS.]
[71] ["'All that, Egad,' as Bayes says" [in the Duke of Buckingham's
play _The Rehearsal_].--Letter to Murray, September 28, 1820, _Letters_,
1901, v. 80.]
[72] ["Lobster-sallad, _not_ a lobster-salad. Have you been at a London
_ball_, and not known a Lobster-_sallad?_"--[H.]--[_Revise._] ]
[73] ["To-night, as Countess Guiccioli observed me poring over _Don
Juan_, she stumbled by mere chance on the 137th stanza of the First
Canto, and asked me what it meant. I told her, 'Nothing,--but your
husband is coming.' As I said this in Italian with some emphasis, she
started up in a fright, and said, _'Oh, my God, is_ he _coming?'_
thinking it was _her own_....You may suppose we laughed when she found
out the mistake. You will be amused, as I was;--it happened not three
hours ago."--Letter to Murray, November 8, 1819, _Letters_, 1900, iv.
374.
It should be borne in mind that the loves of Juan and Julia, the
irruption of Don Alfonso, etc., were rather of the nature of prophecy
than of reminiscence. The First Canto had been completed before the
Countess Guiccioli appeared on the scene.]
[ab] _And thus as 'twere herself from out them crept_.--[MS. M.]
{54}[ac] _Ere I the wife of such a man had been!_--[MS.]
{55}[ad] _But while this search was making, Julia's tongue_.--[MS.]
[74] The Spanish "Cortejo" is much the same as the Italian "Cavalier
Servente."
{56}[75] Donna Julia here made a mistake. Count O'Reilly did not take
Algiers--but Algiers very nearly took him: he and his army and fleet
retreated with great loss, and not much credit, from before that city,
in the year 1775.
[Alexander O'Reilly, born 1722, a Spanish general of Irish extraction,
failed in an expedition against Algiers in 1775, in which the Spaniards
lost four thousand men. In 1794 he was appointed commander-in-chief of
the forces equipped against the army of the French National Convention.
He died March 23, 1794.]
[76] [The Italian names have an obvious signification.]
[ae] _The chimney--fit retreat for any lover!_--[MS.]
{58}[af] ---- _may deplore_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
{59}[77] ["Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh" (_Job_
ii. 10).]
[78] ["Don't be read aloud."--[H.]--[_Revise._]]
{60}[ag]
---- _than be put_
_To drown with Clarence in his Malmsey butt_.--[MS.]
[ah] _And reckon up our balance with the devil_.--[MS.]
{62}[79] ["Carissimo, do review the whole scene, and think what you
would say of it, if written by another."--[H.] "I would say, read 'The
Miracle' ['A Tale from Boccace'] in Hobhouse's poems, and 'January and
May,' and 'Paulo Purganti,' and 'Hans Carvel,' and 'Joconde.' _These_
are laughable: it is the _serious_--Little's poems and _Lalla
Rookh_--that affect seriously. Now Lust is a serious passion, and cannot
be excited by the ludicrous."--[B.]--_Marginal Notes in Revise_.]
For the "Miracle," see _Imitations and Translations_, 1809, pp.
111--128. "January and May" is Pope's version of Chaucer's _Merchant's
Tale_. "Paulo Purganti" and "Hans Carvel" are by Matthew Prior; and for
"Joconde" (_Nouvelle Tiree de L'Ariosto_, canto xxviii.) see _Contes et
Nouvelles en Vers_, de Mr. de la Fontaine, 1691, i. 1-19.]
{63}[80] [Compare "The use made in the French tongue of the word _tact_,
to denote that delicate sense of propriety, which enables a man to _feel
his way_ in the difficult intercourse of polished society, seems to have
been suggested by similar considerations (i.e. similar to those which
suggested the use of the word _taste_)."--_Outlines of Moral
Philosophy_, by Dugald Stewart, Part I. sect. x. ed. 1855, p. 48. For
D'Alembert's use of _tact_, to denote "that peculiar delicacy of
perception (which, like the nice touch of a blind man) arises from
habits of close attention to those slighter feelings which escape
general notice," see _Philosophical Essays_, by Dugald Stewart, 1818, p.
603.]
{64}[ai] _With base suspicion now no longer haunted._--[MS.]
[81] [For the incident of the shoes, Lord Byron was probably indebted to
the Scottish ballad--
"Our goodman came hame at e'en, and hame came he;
He spy'd a pair of jack-boots, where nae boots should be,
What's this now, goodwife? What's this I see?
How came these boots there, without the leave o' me!
Boots! quo' she:
Ay, boots, quo' he.
Shame fa' your cuckold face, and ill mat ye see,
It's but a pair of water stoups the cooper sent to me," etc.
See James Johnson's _Musical Museum_, 1787, etc., v. 466.]
{66}[aj] _Found--heaven knows how--his solitary way._--[MS.]
[82] [William Brodie Gurney (1777-1855), the son and grandson of eminent
shorthand writers, "reported the proceedings against the Duke of York in
1809, the trials of Lord Cochrane in 1814, and of Thistlewood in 1820,
and the proceedings against Queen Caroline."--_Dict. of Nat. Biog_.,
art. "Gurney."]
{67}[83] ["Venice, December 7, 1818.
"After _that stanza_ in the first canto of _Don Juan_ (sent by Lord
Lauderdale) towards the _conclusion_ of the canto--I speak of the stanza
whose two last lines are--
"'The best is that in short-hand ta'en by Gurney,
Who to Madrid on purpose made a journey,'
insert the following stanzas, 'But Donna Inez,' etc."--B.
The text is based on a second or revised copy of stanzas cxc.-cxcviii.
Many of the corrections and emendations which were inserted in the first
draft are omitted in the later and presumably improved version. Byron's
first intention was to insert seven stanzas after stanza clxxxix.,
descriptive and highly depreciatory of Brougham, but for reasons of
"fairness" (_vide infra_) he changed his mind. The casual mention of
"blundering Brougham" in _English Bards, etc._ (line 524, _Poetical
Works_, 1898, i. 338, note 2), is a proof that his suspicions were not
aroused as to the authorship of the review of _Hours of Idleness_
(_Edin. Rev._, January, 1808), and it is certain that Byron's animosity
was due to the part played by Brougham at the time of the Separation.
(In a letter to Byron, dated February 18, 1817, Murray speaks of a
certain B. "as your incessant persecutor--the source of all affected
public opinion respecting you.") The stanzas, with the accompanying
notes, are not included in the editions of 1833 or 1837, and are now
printed for the first time.
I.
"'Twas a fine cause for those in law delighting--
'Tis pity that they had no Brougham in Spain,
Famous for always talking, and ne'er fighting,
For calling names, and taking them again;
For blustering, bungling, trimming, wrangling, writing,
Groping all paths to power, and all in vain--
Losing elections, character, and temper,
A foolish, clever, fellow--_Idem semper!_
II.
"Bully in Senates, skulker in the Field,[*A]
The Adulterer's advocate when duly feed,
The libeller's gratis Counsel, dirty shield
Which Law affords to many a dirty deed;
A wondrous Warrior against those who yield--
A rod to Weakness, to the brave a reed--
The People's sycophant, the Prince's foe,
And serving him the more by being so.
III.
"Tory by nurture, Whig by Circumstance,
A Democrat some once or twice a year,
Whene'er it suits his purpose to advance
His vain ambition in its vague career:
A sort of Orator by sufferance,
Less for the comprehension than the ear;
With all the arrogance of endless power,
Without the sense to keep it for an hour.
IV.
"The House-of-Commons Damocles of words--
Above him, hanging by a single hair,
On each harangue depend some hostile Swords;
And deems he that we _always_ will forbear?
Although Defiance oft declined affords
A blotted shield no Shire's true knight would wear:
Thersites of the House. Parolles[*B] of Law,
The double Bobadill[*C] takes Scorn for Awe.
V.
"How noble is his language--never pert--
How grand his sentiments which ne'er run riot!
As when he swore 'by God he'd sell his shirt
To head the poll!' I wonder who would buy it
The skin has passed through such a deal of dirt
In grovelling on to power--such stains now dye it--
So black the long-worn Lion's hide in hue,
You'd swear his very heart had sweated through.
VI.
"Panting for power--as harts for cooling streams--
Yet half afraid to venture for the draught;
A go-between, yet blundering in extremes,
And tossed along the vessel fore and aft;
Now shrinking back, now midst the first he seems,
Patriot by force, and courtisan[*D] by craft;
Quick without wit, and violent without strength--
A disappointed Lawyer, at full length.
VII.
"A strange example of the force of Law,
And hasty temper on a kindling mind--
Are these the dreams his young Ambition saw?
Poor fellow! he had better far been blind!
I'm sorry thus to probe a wound so raw--
But, then, as Bard my duty to Mankind,
For warning to the rest, compels these raps--
As Geographers lay down a Shoal in Maps."
[[*A] For Brougham's Fabian tactics with regard to duelling, _vide
post_, Canto XIII. stanza lxxxiv. line 1, p. 506, note 1.]
[[*B] Vide post, Canto XIII. stanza lxxxiv. line 1, p. 506, note 1.]
[[*C] For "Captain Bobadill, a Paul's man," see Ben Jonson's _Every Man
in his Humour_, act iv. sc. 5, et passim.]
[[*D] The _N. Eng. Dict._, quotes a passage in _Phil. Trans._, iv. 286
(1669), as the latest instance of "courtisan" for "courtier."]
NOTE TO THE ANNEXED STANZAS ON BROUGHAM.
"Distrusted by the Democracy, disliked by the Whigs, and detested
by the Tories, too much of a lawyer for the people, and too much of
a demagogue for Parliament, a contestor of counties, and a
Candidate for cities, the refuse of half the Electors of England,
and representative at last upon sufferance of the proprietor of
some rotten borough, which it would have been more independent to
have purchased, a speaker upon all questions, and the outcast of
all parties, his support has become alike formidable to all his
enemies (for he has no friends), and his vote can be only valuable
when accompanied by his Silence. A disappointed man with a bad
temper, he is endowed with considerable but not first-rate
abilities, and has blundered on through life, remarkable only for a
fluency, in which he has many rivals at the bar and in the Senate,
and an eloquence in which he has several Superiors. 'Willing to
wound and _not_ afraid to strike, until he receives a blow in
return, he has not yet betrayed any illegal ardour, or Irish
alacrity, in accepting the defiances, and resenting the disgraceful
terms which his proneness to evil-speaking have (sic) brought upon
him. In the cases of Mackinnon and Manners,[*E] he sheltered
himself behind those parliamentary privileges, which Fox, Pitt,
Canning, Castlereagh, Tierney, Adam, Shelburne, Grattan, Corry,
Curran, and Clare disdained to adopt as their buckler. The House of
Commons became the Asylum of his Slander, as the Churches of Rome
were once the Sanctuary of Assassins.
"His literary reputation (with the exception of one work of his
early career) rests upon some anonymous articles imputed to him in
a celebrated periodical work; but even these are surpassed by the
Essays of others in the same Journal. He has tried every thing and
succeeded in nothing; and he may perhaps finish as a Lawyer without
practice, as he has already been occasionally an orator without an
audience, if not soon cut short in his career.
"The above character is _not_ written impartially, but by one who
has had occasion to know some of the baser parts of it, and regards
him accordingly with shuddering abhorrence, and just so much fear
as he deserves. In him is to be dreaded the crawling of the
centipede, not the spring of the tiger--the venom of the reptile,
not the strength of the animal--the rancour of the miscreant, not
the courage of the Man.
"In case the prose or verse of the above should be actionable, I
put my name, that the man may rather proceed against me than the
publisher--not without some faint hope that the brand with which I
blast him may induce him, however reluctantly, to a manlier
revenge."
[*E] [Possibly George Manners (1778-1853), editor of _The Satirist_,
whose appointment to a foreign consulate Brougham sharply criticized in
the House of Commons, July 9, 1817 (_Parl. Deb._, vol. xxxvi. pp. 1320,
1321); and Daniel Mackinnon (1791-1836), the nephew of Henry Mackinnon,
who fell at Ciudad Rodrigo. Byron met "Dan" Mackinnon at Lisbon in 1809,
and (Gronow, _Reminiscences_, 1889, ii. 259, 260) was amused by his
"various funny stories."]
EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO MURRAY.
"I enclose you the stanzas which were intended for 1st Canto, after
the line
'Who to Madrid on purpose made a journey:'
but I do not mean them for present publication, because I will not,
at this distance, publish _that_ of a Man, for which he has a claim
upon another too remote to give him redress.
"With regard to the Miscreant Brougham, however, it was only long
after the fact, and I was made acquainted with the language he had
held of me on my leaving England (with regard to the D^ss^ of D.'s
house),[*F] and his letter to Me. de Stael, and various matters for
all of which the first time he and I foregather--be it in England,
be it on earth--he shall account, and one of the two be carried
home.
"As I have no wish to have mysteries, I merely prohibit the
_publication_ of these stanzas in _print_, for the reasons of
fairness mentioned; but I by no means wish _him not_ to _know_
their existence or their tenor, nor my intentions as to himself: he
has shown no forbearance, and he shall find none. You may show them
to _him_ and to all whom it may concern, with the explanation that
the only reason that I have not had satisfaction of this man has
been, that I have never had an opportunity since I was aware of the
facts, which my friends had carefully concealed from me; and it was
only by slow degrees, and by piecemeal, that I got at them. I have
not sought him, nor gone out of my way for him; but I will _find_
him, and then we can have it out: he has shown so little courage,
that he _must_ fight at last in his absolute necessity to escape
utter degradation.
"I send you the stanzas, which (except the last) have been written
nearly two years, merely because I have been lately copying out
most of the MSS. which were in my drawers."
[*F] [Byron's town-house, in 1815-1816, No. 13, Piccadilly, belonged to
the Duchess of Devonshire. When he went abroad in April, 1816, the rent
was still unpaid. The duchess, through her agent, distrained, but was
unable to recover the debt. See Byron's "Letter to Elizabeth, Duchess of
Devonshire," November 3, 1817, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 178.]
{71}[ak]
_Julia was sent into a nunnery_,
_And there, perhaps, her feelings may be better_.--[MS. M.]
[al] _Man's love is of his life_----.--[MS. M.]
[84] ["Que les hommes sont heureux d'aller a la guerre, d'exposer leur
vie, de se livrer a l'enthousiasme de l'honneur et du danger! Mais il
n'y a rien au-dehors qui soulage les femmes."--_Corinne, ou L'Italie_,
Madame de Stael, liv., xviii. chap. v. ed. 1835, iii. 209.]
[am]
_To mourn alone the love which has undone._
or, _To lift our fatal love to God from man._
Take that which, of these three, seems the best prescription.--B.
{72}[an]
_You will proceed in beauty and in pride_,
_You will return_----.--[MS. M.]
[ao]
/ fatal now \
Or, _That word is < lost for me >--but let it go_.--[MS. M.]
\ deadly now /
[ap] _I struggle, but can not collect my mind_.--[MS.]
[aq]
_As turns the needle trembling to the pole_
_It ne'er can reach--so turns to you my soul_.--[MS.]
[ar] _With a neat crow-quill, rather hard, but new_.--[MS.]
{73}[85] [Byron had a seal bearing this motto.]
[as]
_And there are other incidents remaining_
_Which shall be specified in fitting time,_
_With good discretion, and in current rhyme_.--[MS.]
{74}[at]
_To newspapers, to sermons, which the zeal_
_Of pious men have published on his acts_.--[MS.]
[au] _I'll call the work "Reflections o'er a Bottle_."--[MS.]
[86] [Here, and elsewhere in _Don Juan_, Byron attacked Coleridge
fiercely and venomously, because he believed that his _protege_ had
accepted patronage and money, and, notwithstanding, had retailed
scandalous statements to the detriment and dishonour of his advocate and
benefactor (see letter to Murray, November 24, 1818, _Letters_, 1900,
iv. 272; and "Introduction to the _Vision of Judgment," Poetical Works_,
1901, iv. 475). Byron does not substantiate his charge of ingratitude,
and there is nothing to show whether Coleridge ever knew why a once
friendly countenance was changed towards him. He might have asked, with
the Courtenays, _Ubi lapsus, quid feci?_ If Byron had been on his mind
or his conscience he would have drawn up an elaborate explanation or
apology; but nothing of the kind is extant. He took the abuse as he had
taken the favours--for the unmerited gifts of the blind goddess Fortune.
(See, too, _Letter_ ..., by John Bull, 1821, p. 14.)]
{76}[87] [Compare Byron's "Letter to the Editor of My Grandmother's
Review," _Letters_, 1900, iv. Appendix VII. 465-470; and letter to
Murray, August 24, 1819, ibid., p. 348: "I wrote to you by last post,
enclosing a buffooning letter for publication, addressed to the buffoon
Roberts, who has thought proper to tie a canister to his own tail. It
was written off-hand, and in the midst of circumstances not very
favourable to facetiousness, so that there may, perhaps, be more
bitterness than enough for that sort of small acid punch." The letter
was in reply to a criticism of _Don Juan_ (Cantos I., II.) in the
_British Review_ (No. xxvii., 1819, vol. 14, pp. 266-268), in which the
Editor assumed, or feigned to assume, that the accusation of bribery was
to be taken _au grand serieux_.]
{77}[88] [Hor., _Od._ III. C. xiv. lines 27, 28.]
[av] _I thought of dyeing it the other day_.--[MS.]
[89] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza cvii. line 2.]
{78}[90]
"Me nec femina, nec puer
Jam, nec spes animi credula mutui,
Nec certare juvat mero;
Nec vincire novis tempora floribus."
Hor., _Od._ IV. i. 30.
[In the revise the words _nec puer Jam_ were omitted. On this Hobhouse
comments, "Better add the whole or scratch out all after
femina."--"Quote the whole then--it was only in compliance with your
_settentrionale_ notions that I left out the remnant of the
line."--[B.]]
[91] [For "How Fryer Bacon made a Brazen head to speak," see _The Famous
Historie of Fryer Bacon_ (Reprint, London, 1815, pp. 13-18); see, too,
_Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, by Robert Greene, ed. Rev. Alexander
Dyce, 1861, pp. 153-181.]
[92]
["Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar?" etc.
Beattie's _Minstrel_, Bk. I. stanza i. lines 1, 2.]
{79}[aw] _A book--a damned bad picture--and worse bust_.--[MS.]
["Don't swear again--the third 'damn.'"--[H.]--[_Revise._]]
[93] [Byron sat for his bust to Thorwaldsen, in May, 1817.]
[94] [This stanza appears to have been suggested by the following
passage in the _Quarterly Review_, April, 1818, vol. xix. p. 203: "[It
was] the opinion of the Egyptians, that the soul never deserted the body
while the latter continued in a perfect state. To secure this union,
King Cheops is said, by Herodotus, to have employed three hundred and
sixty thousand of his subjects for twenty years in raising over the
'angusta domus' destined to hold his remains, a pile of stone equal in
weight to six millions of tons, which is just three times that of the
vast Breakwater thrown across Plymouth Sound; and, to render this
precious dust still more secure, the narrow chamber was made accessible
only by small, intricate passages, obstructed by stones of an enormous
weight, and so carefully closed externally as not to be
perceptible.--Yet, how vain are all the precautions of man! Not a bone
was left of Cheops, either in the stone coffin, or in the vault, when
Shaw entered the gloomy chamber.]
{80}[ax] _Must bid you both farewell in accents bland_.--[MS.]
[95] [Lines 1-4 are taken from the last stanza of the _Epilogue to the
Lay of the Laureate_, entitled "L'Envoy." (See _Poetical Works_ of
Robert Southey, 1838, x. 174.)]
CANTO THE SECOND.[96]
I.
OH ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions--
It mends their morals, never mind the pain:
The best of mothers and of educations
In Juan's case were but employed in vain,
Since, in a way that's rather of the oddest, he
Became divested of his native modesty.[ay]
II.
Had he but been placed at a public school,
In the third form, or even in the fourth,
His daily task had kept his fancy cool,
At least, had he been nurtured in the North;
Spain may prove an exception to the rule,
But then exceptions always prove its worth--
A lad of sixteen causing a divorce
Puzzled his tutors very much, of course.
III.
I can't say that it puzzles me at all,
If all things be considered: first, there was
His lady-mother, mathematical,
A----never mind;--his tutor, an old ass;
A pretty woman--(that's quite natural,
Or else the thing had hardly come to pass)
A husband rather old, not much in unity
With his young wife--a time, and opportunity.
IV.
Well--well; the World must turn upon its axis,
And all Mankind turn with it, heads or tails,
And live and die, make love and pay our taxes,
And as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails;
The King commands us, and the Doctor quacks us,
The Priest instructs, and so our life exhales,
A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame,
Fighting, devotion, dust,--perhaps a name.
V.
I said that Juan had been sent to Cadiz--
A pretty town, I recollect it well--
'T is there the mart of the colonial trade is,
(Or was, before Peru learned to rebel),
And such sweet girls![97]--I mean, such graceful ladies,
Their very walk would make your bosom swell;
I can't describe it, though so much it strike,
Nor liken it--I never saw the like:[az]
VI.
An Arab horse, a stately stag, a barb
New broke, a camelopard, a gazelle,
No--none of these will do;--and then their garb,
Their veil and petticoat--Alas! to dwell
Upon such things would very near absorb
A canto--then their feet and ankles,--well,
Thank Heaven I've got no metaphor quite ready,
(And so, my sober Muse--come, let's be steady--
VII.
Chaste Muse!--well,--if you must, you must)--the veil
Thrown back a moment with the glancing hand,
While the o'erpowering eye, that turns you pale,
Flashes into the heart:--All sunny land
Of Love! when I forget you, may I fail
To----say my prayers--but never was there planned
A dress through which the eyes give such a volley,
Excepting the Venetian Fazzioli.[98]
VIII.
But to our tale: the Donna Inez sent
Her son to Cadiz only to embark;
To stay there had not answered her intent,
But why?--we leave the reader in the dark--
'T was for a voyage the young man was meant,
As if a Spanish ship were Noah's ark,
To wean him from the wickedness of earth,
And send him like a Dove of Promise forth.
IX.
Don Juan bade his valet pack his things
According to direction, then received
A lecture and some money: for four springs
He was to travel; and though Inez grieved
(As every kind of parting has its stings),
She hoped he would improve--perhaps believed:
A letter, too, she gave (he never read it)
Of good advice--and two or three of credit.
X.
In the mean time, to pass her hours away,
Brave Inez now set up a Sunday school
For naughty children, who would rather play
(Like truant rogues) the devil, or the fool;
Infants of three years old were taught that day,
Dunces were whipped, or set upon a stool:
The great success of Juan's education
Spurred her to teach another generation.[ba]
XI.
Juan embarked--the ship got under way,
The wind was fair, the water passing rough;
A devil of a sea rolls in that bay,
As I, who've crossed it oft, know well enough;
And, standing on the deck, the dashing spray
Flies in one's face, and makes it weather-tough:
And there he stood to take, and take again,
His first--perhaps his last--farewell of Spain.
XII.
I can't but say it is an awkward sight
To see one's native land receding through
The growing waters; it unmans one quite,
Especially when life is rather new:
I recollect Great Britain's coast looks white,[99]
But almost every other country's blue,
When gazing on them, mystified by distance,
We enter on our nautical existence.
XIII.
So Juan stood, bewildered on the deck:
The wind sung, cordage strained, and sailors swore,
And the ship creaked, the town became a speck,
From which away so fair and fast they bore.
The best of remedies is a beef-steak
Against sea-sickness: try it, Sir, before
You sneer, and I assure you this is true,
For I have found it answer--so may you.
XIV.
Don Juan stood, and, gazing from the stern,
Beheld his native Spain receding far:
First partings form a lesson hard to learn,
Even nations feel this when they go to war;
There is a sort of unexpressed concern,
A kind of shock that sets one's heart ajar,
At leaving even the most unpleasant people
And places--one keeps looking at the steeple.
XV.
But Juan had got many things to leave,
His mother, and a mistress, and no wife,
So that he had much better cause to grieve
Than many persons more advanced in life:
And if we now and then a sigh must heave
At quitting even those we quit in strife,
No doubt we weep for those the heart endears--
That is, till deeper griefs congeal our tears.
XVI.
So Juan wept, as wept the captive Jews
By Babel's waters, still remembering Sion:
I'd weep,--but mine is not a weeping Muse,
And such light griefs are not a thing to die on;
Young men should travel, if but to amuse
Themselves; and the next time their servants tie on
Behind their carriages their new portmanteau,
Perhaps it may be lined with this my canto.
XVII.
And Juan wept, and much he sighed and thought,
While his salt tears dropped into the salt sea,
"Sweets to the sweet;" (I like so much to quote;
You must excuse this extract,--'t is where she,
The Queen of Denmark, for Ophelia brought
Flowers to the grave;) and, sobbing often, he
Reflected on his present situation,
And seriously resolved on reformation.
XVIII.
"Farewell, my Spain! a long farewell!" he cried,
"Perhaps I may revisit thee no more,
But die, as many an exiled heart hath died,
Of its own thirst to see again thy shore:
Farewell, where Guadalquivir's waters glide!
Farewell, my mother! and, since all is o'er,
Farewell, too, dearest Julia!--(here he drew
Her letter out again, and read it through.)
XIX.
"And oh! if e'er I should forget, I swear--
But that's impossible, and cannot be--
Sooner shall this blue Ocean melt to air,
Sooner shall Earth resolve itself to sea,
Than I resign thine image, oh, my fair!
Or think of anything, excepting thee;
A mind diseased no remedy can physic--
(Here the ship gave a lurch, and he grew sea-sick.)
XX.
"Sooner shall Heaven kiss earth--(here he fell sicker)
Oh, Julia! what is every other woe?--
(For God's sake let me have a glass of liquor;
Pedro, Battista, help me down below.)
Julia, my love!--(you rascal, Pedro, quicker)--
Oh, Julia!--(this curst vessel pitches so)--
Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching!"
(Here he grew inarticulate with retching.)
XXI.
He felt that chilling heaviness of heart,
Or rather stomach, which, alas! attends,
Beyond the best apothecary's art,
The loss of Love, the treachery of friends,
Or death of those we dote on, when a part
Of us dies with them as each fond hope ends:
No doubt he would have been much more pathetic,
But the sea acted as a strong emetic.
XXII.
Love's a capricious power: I've known it hold
Out through a fever caused by its own heat,
But be much puzzled by a cough and cold,
And find a quinsy very hard to treat;
Against all noble maladies he's bold,
But vulgar illnesses don't like to meet,
Nor that a sneeze should interrupt his sigh,
Nor inflammations redden his blind eye.
XXIII.
But worst of all is nausea, or a pain
About the lower region of the bowels;
Love, who heroically breathes a vein,[100]
Shrinks from the application of hot towels,
And purgatives are dangerous to his reign,
Sea-sickness death: his love was perfect, how else[bb]
Could Juan's passion, while the billows roar,
Resist his stomach, ne'er at sea before?
XXIV.
The ship, called the most holy "Trinidada,"[101]
Was steering duly for the port Leghorn;
For there the Spanish family Moncada
Were settled long ere Juan's sire was born:
They were relations, and for them he had a
Letter of introduction, which the morn
Of his departure had been sent him by
His Spanish friends for those in Italy.
XXV.
His suite consisted of three servants and
A tutor, the licentiate Pedrillo,
Who several languages did understand,
But now lay sick and speechless on his pillow
And, rocking in his hammock, longed for land,
His headache being increased by every billow;
And the waves oozing through the port-hole made
His berth a little damp, and him afraid.
XXVI.
'T was not without some reason, for the wind
Increased at night, until it blew a gale;
And though 't was not much to a naval mind,
Some landsmen would have looked a little pale,
For sailors are, in fact, a different kind:
At sunset they began to take in sail,
For the sky showed it would come on to blow,
And carry away, perhaps, a mast or so.
XXVII.
At one o'clock the wind with sudden shift
Threw the ship right into the trough of the sea,
Which struck her aft, and made an awkward rift,
Started the stern-post, also shattered the
Whole of her stern-frame, and, ere she could lift
Herself from out her present jeopardy,
The rudder tore away: 't was time to sound
The pumps, and there were four feet water found.
XXVIII.
One gang of people instantly was put
Upon the pumps, and the remainder set
To get up part of the cargo, and what not;
But they could not come at the leak as yet;
At last they did get at it really, but
Still their salvation was an even bet:
The water rushed through in a way quite puzzling,
While they thrust sheets, shirts, jackets, bales of muslin,
XXIX.
Into the opening; but all such ingredients
Would have been vain, and they must have gone down,
Despite of all their efforts and expedients,
But for the pumps: I'm glad to make them known
To all the brother tars who may have need hence,
For fifty tons of water were upthrown
By them per hour, and they had all been undone,
But for the maker, Mr. Mann, of London.[102]
XXX.
As day advanced the weather seemed to abate,
And then the leak they reckoned to reduce,
And keep the ship afloat, though three feet yet
Kept two hand--and one chain-pump still in use.
The wind blew fresh again: as it grew late
A squall came on, and while some guns broke loose,
A gust--which all descriptive power transcends--
Laid with one blast the ship on her beam ends.
XXXI.
There she lay, motionless, and seemed upset;
The water left the hold, and washed the decks,
And made a scene men do not soon forget;
For they remember battles, fires, and wrecks,
Or any other thing that brings regret
Or breaks their hopes, or hearts, or heads, or necks:
Thus drownings are much talked of by the divers,
And swimmers, who may chance to be survivors.
XXXII.
Immediately the masts were cut away,
Both main and mizen; first the mizen went,
The main-mast followed: but the ship still lay
Like a mere log, and baffled our intent.
Foremast and bowsprit were cut down, and they
Eased her at last (although we never meant
To part with all till every hope was blighted),
And then with violence the old ship righted.[103]
XXXIII.
It may be easily supposed, while this
Was going on, some people were unquiet,
That passengers would find it much amiss
To lose their lives, as well as spoil their diet;
That even the able seaman, deeming his
Days nearly o'er, might be disposed to riot,
As upon such occasions tars will ask
For grog, and sometimes drink rum from the cask.
XXXIV.
There's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As rum and true religion: thus it was,
Some plundered, some drank spirits, some sung psalms,
The high wind made the treble, and as bass
The hoarse harsh waves kept time; fright cured the qualms
Of all the luckless landsmen's sea-sick maws:
Strange sounds of wailing, blasphemy, devotion,
Clamoured in chorus to the roaring Ocean.
XXXV.
Perhaps more mischief had been done, but for[bc]
Our Juan, who, with sense beyond his years,
Got to the spirit-room, and stood before
It with a pair of pistols;[104] and their fears,
As if Death were more dreadful by his door
Of fire than water, spite of oaths and tears,
Kept still aloof the crew, who, ere they sunk,
Thought it would be becoming to die drunk.
XXXVI.
"Give us more grog," they cried, "for it will be
All one an hour hence." Juan answered, "No!
'T is true that Death awaits both you and me,
But let us die like men, not sink below
Like brutes:"--and thus his dangerous post kept he,
And none liked to anticipate the blow;
And even Pedrillo, his most reverend tutor,
Was for some rum a disappointed suitor.
XXXVII.
The good old gentleman was quite aghast,
And made a loud and pious lamentation;
Repented all his sins, and made a last
Irrevocable vow of reformation;
Nothing should tempt him more (this peril past)
To quit his academic occupation,
In cloisters of the classic Salamanca,
To follow Juan's wake, like Sancho Panca.
XXXVIII.
But now there came a flash of hope once more;
Day broke, and the wind lulled: the masts were gone
The leak increased; shoals round her, but no shore,
The vessel swam, yet still she held her own.[105]
They tried the pumps again, and though before
Their desperate efforts seemed all useless grown,
A glimpse of sunshine set some hands to bale--
The stronger pumped, the weaker thrummed a sail.
XXXIX.
Under the vessel's keel the sail was passed,
And for the moment it had some effect;
But with a leak, and not a stick of mast,
Nor rag of canvas, what could they expect?
But still 't is best to struggle to the last,
'T is never too late to be wholly wrecked:
And though 't is true that man can only die once,
'T is not so pleasant in the Gulf of Lyons.[bd]
XL.
There winds and waves had hurled them, and from thence,
Without their will, they carried them away;
For they were forced with steering to dispense,
And never had as yet a quiet day
On which they might repose, or even commence
A jurymast or rudder, or could say
The ship would swim an hour, which, by good luck,
Still swam--though not exactly like a duck.
XLI.
The wind, in fact, perhaps, was rather less,
But the ship laboured so, they scarce could hope
To weather out much longer; the distress
Was also great with which they had to cope
For want of water, and their solid mess
Was scant enough: in vain the telescope
Was used--nor sail nor shore appeared in sight,
Nought but the heavy sea, and coming night.
XLII.
Again the weather threatened,--again blew
A gale, and in the fore and after hold
Water appeared; yet, though the people knew
All this, the most were patient, and some bold,
Until the chains and leathers were worn through
Of all our pumps:--a wreck complete she rolled,
At mercy of the waves, whose mercies are
Like human beings during civil war.
XLIII.
Then came the carpenter, at last, with tears
In his rough eyes, and told the captain, he
Could do no more: he was a man in years,
And long had voyaged through many a stormy sea,
And if he wept at length they were not fears
That made his eyelids as a woman's be,
But he, poor fellow, had a wife and children,--
Two things for dying people quite bewildering.
XLIV.
The ship was evidently settling now
Fast by the head; and, all distinction gone,
Some went to prayers again, and made a vow
Of candles to their saints[106]--but there were none
To pay them with; and some looked o'er the bow;
Some hoisted out the boats; and there was one
That begged Pedrillo for an absolution,
Who told him to be damned--in his confusion.[107]
XLV.
Some lashed them in their hammocks; some put on
Their best clothes, as if going to a fair;
Some cursed the day on which they saw the Sun,
And gnashed their teeth, and, howling, tore their hair;
And others went on as they had begun,
Getting the boats out, being well aware
That a tight boat will live in a rough sea,
Unless with breakers close beneath her lee.[108]
XLVI.
The worst of all was, that in their condition,
Having been several days in great distress,
'T was difficult to get out such provision
As now might render their long suffering less:
Men, even when dying, dislike inanition;[be]
Their stock was damaged by the weather's stress:
Two casks of biscuit, and a keg of butter,
Were all that could be thrown into the cutter.
XLVII.
But in the long-boat they contrived to stow
Some pounds of bread, though injured by the wet;
Water, a twenty-gallon cask or so;
Six flasks of wine; and they contrived to get
A portion of their beef up from below,[109]
And with a piece of pork, moreover, met,
But scarce enough to serve them for a luncheon--
Then there was rum, eight gallons in a puncheon.
XLVIII.
The other boats, the yawl and pinnace, had
Been stove in the beginning of the gale;[110]
And the long-boat's condition was but bad,
As there were but two blankets for a sail,[111]
And one oar for a mast, which a young lad
Threw in by good luck over the ship's rail;
And two boats could not hold, far less be stored,
To save one half the people then on board.
XLIX.
'T was twilight, and the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters; like a veil,
Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown[bf]
Of one whose hate is masked but to assail.
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,
And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale,
And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear[bg]
Been their familiar, and now Death was here.
L.
Some trial had been making at a raft,
With little hope in such a rolling sea,
A sort of thing at which one would have laughed,[112]
If any laughter at such times could be,
Unless with people who too much have quaffed,
And have a kind of wild and horrid glee,
Half epileptical, and half hysterical:--
Their preservation would have been a miracle.
LI.
At half-past eight o'clock, booms, hencoops, spars,
And all things, for a chance, had been cast loose,
That still could keep afloat the struggling tars,[113]
For yet they strove, although of no great use:
There was no light in heaven but a few stars,
The boats put off o'ercrowded with their crews;
She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port,
And, going down head foremost--sunk, in short.[114]
LII.
Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell--
Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave,--
Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,[115]
As eager to anticipate their grave;
And the sea yawned around her like a hell,
And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,
Like one who grapples with his enemy,
And strives to strangle him before he die.
LIII.
And first one universal shriek there rushed,
Louder than the loud Ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hushed,
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gushed,
Accompanied by a convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.
LIV.
The boats, as stated, had got off before,
And in them crowded several of the crew;
And yet their present hope was hardly more
Than what it had been, for so strong it blew
There was slight chance of reaching any shore;
And then they were too many, though so few--
Nine in the cutter, thirty in the boat,
Were counted in them when they got afloat.
LV.
All the rest perished; near two hundred souls
Had left their bodies; and what's worse, alas!
When over Catholics the Ocean rolls,
They must wait several weeks before a mass
Takes off one peck of purgatorial coals,
Because, till people know what's come to pass,
They won't lay out their money on the dead--
It costs three francs for every mass that's said.
LVI.
Juan got into the long-boat, and there
Contrived to help Pedrillo to a place;
It seemed as if they had exchanged their care,
For Juan wore the magisterial face
Which courage gives, while poor Pedrillo's pair
Of eyes were crying for their owner's case:
Battista, though, (a name called shortly Tita),
Was lost by getting at some aqua-vita.
LVII.
Pedro, his valet, too, he tried to save,
But the same cause, conducive to his loss,
Left him so drunk, he jumped into the wave,
As o'er the cutter's edge he tried to cross,
And so he found a wine-and-watery grave;
They could not rescue him although so close,
Because the sea ran higher every minute,
And for the boat--the crew kept crowding in it.
LVIII.
A small old spaniel,--which had been Don Jose's,
His father's, whom he loved, as ye may think,
For on such things the memory reposes
With tenderness--stood howling on the brink,
Knowing, (dogs have such intellectual noses!)
No doubt, the vessel was about to sink;
And Juan caught him up, and ere he stepped
Off threw him in, then after him he leaped.[116]
LIX.
He also stuffed his money where he could
About his person, and Pedrillo's too,
Who let him do, in fact, whate'er he would,
Not knowing what himself to say, or do,
As every rising wave his dread renewed;
But Juan, trusting they might still get through,
And deeming there were remedies for any ill,
Thus re-embarked his tutor and his spaniel.
LX.
'T was a rough night, and blew so stiffly yet,
That the sail was becalmed between the seas,[117]
Though on the wave's high top too much to set,
They dared not take it in for all the breeze:
Each sea curled o'er the stern, and kept them wet,
And made them bale without a moment's ease,[118]
So that themselves as well as hopes were damped,
And the poor little cutter quickly swamped.
LXI.
Nine souls more went in her: the long-boat still
Kept above water, with an oar for mast,
Two blankets stitched together, answering ill
Instead of sail, were to the oar made fast;
Though every wave rolled menacing to fill,
And present peril all before surpassed,[119]
They grieved for those who perished with the cutter,
And also for the biscuit-casks and butter.
LXII.
The sun rose red and fiery, a sure sign
Of the continuance of the gale: to run
Before the sea until it should grow fine,
Was all that for the present could be done:
A few tea-spoonfuls of their rum and wine
Were served out to the people, who begun[120]
To faint, and damaged bread wet through the bags,
And most of them had little clothes but rags.
LXIII.
They counted thirty, crowded in a space
Which left scarce room for motion or exertion;
They did their best to modify their case,
One half sate up, though numbed with the immersion,
While t' other half were laid down in their place,
At watch and watch; thus, shivering like the tertian
Ague in its cold fit, they filled their boat,
With nothing but the sky for a great coat.[121]
LXIV.
'T is very certain the desire of life
Prolongs it: this is obvious to physicians,
When patients, neither plagued with friends nor wife,
Survive through very desperate conditions,
Because they still can hope, nor shines the knife
Nor shears of Atropos before their visions:
Despair of all recovery spoils longevity,
And makes men's misery of alarming brevity.
LXV.
'T is said that persons living on annuities
Are longer lived than others,--God knows why,
Unless to plague the grantors,--yet so true it is,
That some, I really think, _do_ never die:
Of any creditors the worst a Jew it is,
And _that's_ their mode of furnishing supply:
In my young days they lent me cash that way,
Which I found very troublesome to pay.[122]
LXVI.
'T is thus with people in an open boat,
They live upon the love of Life, and bear
More than can be believed, or even thought,
And stand like rocks the tempest's wear and tear;
And hardship still has been the sailor's lot,
Since Noah's ark went cruising here and there;
She had a curious crew as well as cargo,
Like the first old Greek privateer, the Argo.
LXVII.
But man is a carnivorous production,
And must have meals, at least one meal a day;
He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction,
But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey;
Although his anatomical construction
Bears vegetables, in a grumbling way,
Your labouring people think, beyond all question,
Beef, veal, and mutton, better for digestion.
LXVIII.
And thus it was with this our hapless crew;
For on the third day there came on a calm,
And though at first their strength it might renew,
And lying on their weariness like balm,
Lulled them like turtles sleeping on the blue
Of Ocean, when they woke they felt a qualm,
And fell all ravenously on their provision,
Instead of hoarding it with due precision.
LXIX.
The consequence was easily foreseen--
They ate up all they had, and drank their wine,
In spite of all remonstrances, and then
On what, in fact, next day were they to dine?
They hoped the wind would rise, these foolish men!
And carry them to shore; these hopes were fine,
But as they had but one oar, and that brittle,
It would have been more wise to save their victual.
LXX.
The fourth day came, but not a breath of air,
And Ocean slumbered like an unweaned child:
The fifth day, and their boat lay floating there,
The sea and sky were blue, and clear, and mild--
With their one oar (I wish they had had a pair)
What could they do? and Hunger's rage grew wild:
So Juan's spaniel, spite of his entreating,
Was killed, and portioned out for present eating.[123]
LXXI.
On the sixth day they fed upon his hide,
And Juan, who had still refused, because
The creature was his father's dog that died,
Now feeling all the vulture in his jaws,
With some remorse received (though first denied)
As a great favour one of the fore-paws,[124]
Which he divided with Pedrillo, who
Devoured it, longing for the other too.
LXXII.
The seventh day, and no wind--the burning sun
Blistered and scorched, and, stagnant on the sea,
They lay like carcasses; and hope was none,
Save in the breeze that came not: savagely
They glared upon each other--all was done,
Water, and wine, and food,--and you might see
The longings of the cannibal arise
(Although they spoke not) in their wolfish eyes.
LXXIII.
At length one whispered his companion, who
Whispered another, and thus it went round,
And then into a hoarser murmur grew,
An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound;
And when his comrade's thought each sufferer knew,
'T was but his own, suppressed till now, he found:
And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood,
And who should die to be his fellow's food.
LXXIV.
But ere they came to this, they that day shared
Some leathern caps, and what remained of shoes;
And then they looked around them, and despaired,
And none to be the sacrifice would choose;
At length the lots were torn up,[125] and prepared,
But of materials that must shock the Muse--
Having no paper, for the want of better,
They took by force from Juan Julia's letter.
LXXV.
The lots were made, and marked, and mixed, and handed,
In silent horror,[126] and their distribution
Lulled even the savage hunger which demanded,
Like the Promethean vulture, this pollution;
None in particular had sought or planned it,
'T was Nature gnawed them to this resolution,
By which none were permitted to be neuter--
And the lot fell on Juan's luckless tutor.
LXXVI.
He but requested to be bled to death:
The surgeon had his instruments, and bled[127]
Pedrillo, and so gently ebbed his breath,
You hardly could perceive when he was dead.
He died as born, a Catholic in faith,
Like most in the belief in which they're bred,
And first a little crucifix he kissed,
And then held out his jugular and wrist.
LXXVII.
The surgeon, as there was no other fee,
Had his first choice of morsels for his pains;
But being thirstiest at the moment, he
Preferred a draught from the fast-flowing veins:[128]
Part was divided, part thrown in the sea,
And such things as the entrails and the brains
Regaled two sharks, who followed o'er the billow--
The sailors ate the rest of poor Pedrillo.
LXXVIII.
The sailors ate him, all save three or four,
Who were not quite so fond of animal food;
To these was added Juan, who, before
Refusing his own spaniel, hardly could
Feel now his appetite increased much more;
'T was not to be expected that he should,
Even in extremity of their disaster,
Dine with them on his pastor and his master.
LXXIX.
'T was better that he did not; for, in fact,
The consequence was awful in the extreme;
For they, who were most ravenous in the act,
Went raging mad[129]--Lord! how they did blaspheme!
And foam, and roll, with strange convulsions racked,
Drinking salt-water like a mountain-stream,
Tearing, and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing,
And, with hyaena-laughter, died despairing.
LXXX.
Their numbers were much thinned by this infliction,
And all the rest were thin enough, Heaven knows;
And some of them had lost their recollection,
Happier than they who still perceived their woes;
But others pondered on a new dissection,
As if not warned sufficiently by those
Who had already perished, suffering madly,
For having used their appetites so sadly.
LXXXI.
And next they thought upon the master's mate,
As fattest; but he saved himself, because,
Besides being much averse from such a fate,
There were some other reasons: the first was,
He had been rather indisposed of late;
And--that which chiefly proved his saving clause--
Was a small present made to him at Cadiz,
By general subscription of the ladies.
LXXXII.
Of poor Pedrillo something still remained,
But was used sparingly,--some were afraid,
And others still their appetites constrained,
Or but at times a little supper made;
All except Juan, who throughout abstained,
Chewing a piece of bamboo, and some lead:[130]
At length they caught two Boobies, and a Noddy,[131]
And then they left off eating the dead body.
LXXXIII.
And if Pedrillo's fate should shocking be,
Remember Ugolino[132] condescends
To eat the head of his arch-enemy
The moment after he politely ends
His tale: if foes be food in Hell, at sea
'T is surely fair to dine upon our friends,
When Shipwreck's short allowance grows too scanty,
Without being much more horrible than Dante.
LXXXIV.
And the same night there fell a shower of rain,
For which their mouths gaped, like the cracks of earth
When dried to summer dust; till taught by pain,
Men really know not what good water's worth;
If you had been in Turkey or in Spain,
Or with a famished boat's-crew had your berth,
Or in the desert heard the camel's bell,
You'd wish yourself where Truth is--in a well.
LXXXV.
It poured down torrents, but they were no richer
Until they found a ragged piece of sheet,
Which served them as a sort of spongy pitcher,
And when they deemed its moisture was complete,
They wrung it out, and though a thirsty ditcher[133]
Might not have thought the scanty draught so sweet
As a full pot of porter, to their thinking
They ne'er till now had known the joys of drinking.
LXXXVI.
And their baked lips, with many a bloody crack,[134]
Sucked in the moisture, which like nectar streamed;
Their throats were ovens, their swoln tongues were black,
As the rich man's in Hell, who vainly screamed
To beg the beggar, who could not rain back
A drop of dew, when every drop had seemed
To taste of Heaven--If this be true, indeed,
Some Christians have a comfortable creed.
LXXXVII.
There were two fathers in this ghastly crew,
And with them their two sons, of whom the one
Was more robust and hardy to the view,
But he died early; and when he was gone,
His nearest messmate told his sire, who threw
One glance at him, and said, "Heaven's will be done!
I can do nothing," and he saw him thrown
Into the deep without a tear or groan.[135]
LXXXVIII.
The other father had a weaklier child,
Of a soft cheek, and aspect delicate;[136]
But the boy bore up long, and with a mild
And patient spirit held aloof his fate;
Little he said, and now and then he smiled,
As if to win a part from off the weight
He saw increasing on his father's heart,
With the deep deadly thought, that they must part.
LXXXIX.
And o'er him bent his sire, and never raised
His eyes from off his face, but wiped the foam
From his pale lips, and ever on him gazed,
And when the wished-for shower at length was come,
And the boy's eyes, which the dull film half glazed,
Brightened, and for a moment seemed to roam,
He squeezed from out a rag some drops of rain
Into his dying child's mouth--but in vain.[137]
XC.
The boy expired--the father held the clay,
And looked upon it long, and when at last
Death left no doubt, and the dead burthen lay
Stiff on his heart, and pulse and hope were past,
He watched it wistfully, until away
'T was borne by the rude wave wherein't was cast;[138]
Then he himself sunk down all dumb and shivering,
And gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering.
XCI.
Now overhead a rainbow, bursting through
The scattering clouds, shone, spanning the dark sea,
Resting its bright base on the quivering blue;
And all within its arch appeared to be
Clearer than that without, and its wide hue
Waxed broad and waving, like a banner free,
Then changed like to a bow that's bent, and then
Forsook the dim eyes of these shipwrecked men.
XCII.
It changed, of course; a heavenly Chameleon,
The airy child of vapour and the sun,
Brought forth in purple, cradled in vermilion,
Baptized in molten gold, and swathed in dun,
Glittering like crescents o'er a Turk's pavilion,
And blending every colour into one,
Just like a black eye in a recent scuffle
(For sometimes we must box without the muffle).
XCIII.
Our shipwrecked seamen thought it a good omen--
It is as well to think so, now and then;
'T was an old custom of the Greek and Roman,
And may become of great advantage when
Folks are discouraged; and most surely no men
Had greater need to nerve themselves again
Than these, and so this rainbow looked like Hope--
Quite a celestial Kaleidoscope.
XCIV.
About this time a beautiful white bird,
Webfooted, not unlike a dove in size
And plumage (probably it might have erred
Upon its course), passed oft before their eyes,
And tried to perch, although it saw and heard
The men within the boat, and in this guise
It came and went, and fluttered round them till
Night fell:--this seemed a better omen still.[139]
XCV.
But in this case I also must remark,
'T was well this bird of promise did not perch,
Because the tackle of our shattered bark
Was not so safe for roosting as a church;
And had it been the dove from Noah's ark,
Returning there from her successful search,
Which in their way that moment chanced to fall,
They would have eat her, olive-branch and all.
XCVI.
With twilight it again came on to blow,
But not with violence; the stars shone out,
The boat made way; yet now they were so low,
They knew not where nor what they were about;
Some fancied they saw land, and some said "No!"
The frequent fog-banks gave them cause to doubt--
Some swore that they heard breakers, others guns,[140]
And all mistook about the latter once.
XCVII.
As morning broke, the light wind died away,
When he who had the watch sung out and swore,
If 't was not land that rose with the Sun's ray,
He wished that land he never might see more;[141]
And the rest rubbed their eyes and saw a bay,
Or thought they saw, and shaped their course for shore;
For shore it was, and gradually grew
Distinct, and high, and palpable to view.
XCVIII.
And then of these some part burst into tears,
And others, looking with a stupid stare,[142]
Could not yet separate their hopes from fears,
And seemed as if they had no further care;
While a few prayed--(the first time for some years)--
And at the bottom of the boat three were
Asleep: they shook them by the hand and head,
And tried to awaken them, but found them dead.
XCIX.
The day before, fast sleeping on the water,
They found a turtle of the hawk's-bill kind,
And by good fortune, gliding softly, caught her,[143]
Which yielded a day's life, and to their mind
Proved even still a more nutritious matter,
Because it left encouragement behind:
They thought that in such perils, more than chance
Had sent them this for their deliverance.
C.
The land appeared a high and rocky coast,
And higher grew the mountains as they drew,
Set by a current, toward it: they were lost
In various conjectures, for none knew
To what part of the earth they had been tost,
So changeable had been the winds that blew;
Some thought it was Mount AEtna, some the highlands
Of Candia, Cyprus, Rhodes, or other islands.
CI.
Meantime the current, with a rising gale,
Still set them onwards to the welcome shore,
Like Charon's bark of spectres, dull and pale:
Their living freight was now reduced to four,
And three dead, whom their strength could not avail
To heave into the deep with those before,
Though the two sharks still followed them, and dashed
The spray into their faces as they splashed.
CII.
Famine--despair--cold--thirst and heat, had done
Their work on them by turns, and thinned them to
Such things a mother had not known her son
Amidst the skeletons of that gaunt crew;[144]
By night chilled, by day scorched, thus one by one
They perished, until withered to these few,
But chiefly by a species of self-slaughter,
In washing down Pedrillo with salt water.
CII.
As they drew nigh the land, which now was seen
Unequal in its aspect here and there,
They felt the freshness of its growing green,
That waved in forest-tops, and smoothed the air,
And fell upon their glazed eyes like a screen
From glistening waves, and skies so hot and bare--
Lovely seemed any object that should sweep
Away the vast--salt--dread--eternal Deep.
CIV.
The shore looked wild, without a trace of man,
And girt by formidable waves; but they
Were mad for land, and thus their course they ran,
Though right ahead the roaring breakers lay:
A reef between them also now began
To show its boiling surf and bounding spray,
But finding no place for their landing better,
They ran the boat for shore,--and overset her.[145]
CV.
But in his native stream, the Guadalquivir,
Juan to lave his youthful limbs was wont;
And having learnt to swim in that sweet river,
Had often turned the art to some account:
A better swimmer you could scarce see ever,
He could, perhaps, have passed the Hellespont,
As once (a feat on which ourselves we prided)
Leander, Mr. Ekenhead, and I did.[146]
CVI.
So here, though faint, emaciated, and stark,
He buoyed his boyish limbs, and strove to ply
With the quick wave, and gain, ere it was dark,
The beach which lay before him, high and dry:
The greatest danger here was from a shark,
That carried off his neighbour by the thigh;
As for the other two, they could not swim,
So nobody arrived on shore but him.
CVII.
Nor yet had he arrived but for the oar,
Which, providentially for him, was washed
Just as his feeble arms could strike no more,
And the hard wave o'erwhelmed him as 't was dashed
Within his grasp; he clung to it, and sore
The waters beat while he thereto was lashed;
At last, with swimming, wading, scrambling, he
Rolled on the beach, half-senseless, from the sea:
CVIII.
There, breathless, with his digging nails he clung
Fast to the sand, lest the returning wave,
From whose reluctant roar his life he wrung,
Should suck him back to her insatiate grave:
And there he lay, full length, where he was flung,
Before the entrance of a cliff-worn cave,
With just enough of life to feel its pain,
And deem that it was saved, perhaps, in vain.
CIX.
With slow and staggering effort he arose,
But sunk again upon his bleeding knee
And quivering hand; and then he looked for those
Who long had been his mates upon the sea;
But none of them appeared to share his woes,
Save one, a corpse, from out the famished three,
Who died two days before, and now had found
An unknown barren beach for burial ground.
CX.
And as he gazed, his dizzy brain spun fast,
And down he sunk; and as he sunk, the sand
Swam round and round, and all his senses passed:
He fell upon his side, and his stretched hand
Drooped dripping on the oar (their jury-mast),
And, like a withered lily, on the land
His slender frame and pallid aspect lay,
As fair a thing as e'er was formed of clay.
CXI.
How long in his damp trance young Juan lay[147]
He knew not, for the earth was gone for him,
And Time had nothing more of night nor day
For his congealing blood, and senses dim;
And how this heavy faintness passed away
He knew not, till each painful pulse and limb,
And tingling vein, seemed throbbing back to life,
For Death, though vanquished, still retired with strife.
CXII.
His eyes he opened, shut, again unclosed,
For all was doubt and dizziness; he thought
He still was in the boat, and had but dozed,
And felt again with his despair o'erwrought,
And wished it Death in which he had reposed,
And then once more his feelings back were brought,
And slowly by his swimming eyes was seen
A lovely female face of seventeen.
CXIII.
'T was bending close o'er his, and the small mouth
Seemed almost prying into his for breath;
And chafing him, the soft warm hand of youth
Recalled his answering spirits back from Death:
And, bathing his chill temples, tried to soothe
Each pulse to animation, till beneath
Its gentle touch and trembling care, a sigh
To these kind efforts made a low reply.
CXIV.
Then was the cordial poured, and mantle flung
Around his scarce-clad limbs; and the fair arm
Raised higher the faint head which o'er it hung;
And her transparent cheek, all pure and warm,
Pillowed his death-like forehead; then she wrung
His dewy curls, long drenched by every storm;
And watched with eagerness each throb that drew
A sigh from his heaved bosom--and hers, too.
CXV.
And lifting him with care into the cave,
The gentle girl, and her attendant,--one
Young, yet her elder, and of brow less grave,
And more robust of figure,--then begun
To kindle fire, and as the new flames gave
Light to the rocks that roofed them, which the sun
Had never seen, the maid, or whatsoe'er
She was, appeared distinct, and tall, and fair.
CXVI.
Her brow was overhung with coins of gold,
That sparkled o'er the auburn of her hair--
Her clustering hair, whose longer locks were rolled
In braids behind; and though her stature were
Even of the highest for a female mould,
They nearly reached her heel; and in her air
There was a something which bespoke command,
As one who was a Lady in the land.
CXVII.
Her hair, I said, was auburn; but her eyes
Were black as Death, their lashes the same hue,
Of downcast length, in whose silk shadow lies
Deepest attraction; for when to the view
Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies,
Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew;
'T is as the snake late coiled, who pours his length,
And hurls at once his venom and his strength.
CXVIII.
Her brow was white and low, her cheek's pure dye
Like twilight rosy still with the set sun;
Short upper lip--sweet lips! that make us sigh
Ever to have seen such; for she was one[bh]
Fit for the model of a statuary
(A race of mere impostors, when all's done--
I've seen much finer women, ripe and real,
Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal).[bi][148]
CXIX.
I'll tell you why I say so, for 't is just
One should not rail without a decent cause:
There was an Irish lady,[149] to whose bust
I ne'er saw justice done, and yet she was
A frequent model; and if e'er she must
Yield to stern Time and Nature's wrinkling laws,
They will destroy a face which mortal thought
Ne'er compassed, nor less mortal chisel wrought.
CXX.
And such was she, the lady of the cave:
Her dress was very different from the Spanish,
Simpler, and yet of colours not so grave;
For, as you know, the Spanish women banish
Bright hues when out of doors, and yet, while wave
Around them (what I hope will never vanish)
The basquina and the mantilla, they
Seem at the same time mystical and gay.[150]
CXXI.
But with our damsel this was not the case:
Her dress was many-coloured, finely spun;
Her locks curled negligently round her face,
But through them gold and gems profusely shone:
Her girdle sparkled, and the richest lace
Flowed in her veil, and many a precious stone
Flashed on her little hand; but, what was shocking,
Her small snow feet had slippers, but no stocking.
CXXII.
The other female's dress was not unlike,
But of inferior materials: she
Had not so many ornaments to strike,
Her hair had silver only, bound to be
Her dowry; and her veil, in form alike,
Was coarser; and her air, though firm, less free;
Her hair was thicker, but less long; her eyes
As black, but quicker, and of smaller size.
CXXIII.
And these two tended him, and cheered him both
With food and raiment, and those soft attentions,
Which are--as I must own--of female growth,
And have ten thousand delicate inventions:
They made a most superior mess of broth,
A thing which poesy but seldom mentions,
But the best dish that e'er was cooked since Homer's
Achilles ordered dinner for new comers.[151]
CXXIV.
I'll tell you who they were, this female pair,
Lest they should seem Princesses in disguise;
Besides, I hate all mystery, and that air
Of clap-trap, which your recent poets prize;
And so, in short, the girls they really were
They shall appear before your curious eyes,
Mistress and maid; the first was only daughter
Of an old man, who lived upon the water.
CXXV.
A fisherman he had been in his youth,
And still a sort of fisherman was he;
But other speculations were, in sooth,
Added to his connection with the sea,
Perhaps not so respectable, in truth:
A little smuggling, and some piracy,
Left him, at last, the sole of many masters
Of an ill-gotten million of piastres.
CXXVI.
A fisher, therefore, was he,--though of men,
Like Peter the Apostle, and he fished
For wandering merchant-vessels, now and then,
And sometimes caught as many as he wished;
The cargoes he confiscated, and gain
He sought in the slave-market too, and dished
Full many a morsel for that Turkish trade,
By which, no doubt, a good deal may be made.
CXXVII.
He was a Greek, and on his isle had built
(One of the wild and smaller Cyclades)
A very handsome house from out his guilt,
And there he lived exceedingly at ease;
Heaven knows what cash he got, or blood he spilt,
A sad old fellow was he, if you please;
But this I know, it was a spacious building,
Full of barbaric carving, paint, and gilding.
CXXVIII.
He had an only daughter, called Haidee,
The greatest heiress of the Eastern Isles;
Besides, so very beautiful was she,
Her dowry was as nothing to her smiles:
Still in her teens, and like a lovely tree
She grew to womanhood, and between whiles
Rejected several suitors, just to learn
How to accept a better in his turn.
CXXIX.
And walking out upon the beach, below
The cliff, towards sunset, on that day she found,
Insensible,--not dead, but nearly so,--
Don Juan, almost famished, and half drowned;
But being naked, she was shocked, you know,
Yet deemed herself in common pity bound,
As far as in her lay, "to take him in,
A stranger" dying--with so white a skin.
CXXX.
But taking him into her father's house
Was not exactly the best way to save,
But like conveying to the cat the mouse,
Or people in a trance into their grave;
Because the good old man had so much [Greek: "nous"],
Unlike the honest Arab thieves so brave,
He would have hospitably cured the stranger,
And sold him instantly when out of danger.
CXXXI.
And therefore, with her maid, she thought it best
(A virgin always on her maid relies)
To place him in the cave for present rest:
And when, at last, he opened his black eyes,
Their charity increased about their guest;
And their compassion grew to such a size,
It opened half the turnpike-gates to Heaven--
(St. Paul says, 't is the toll which must be given).
CXXXII.
They made a fire,--but such a fire as they
Upon the moment could contrive with such
Materials as were cast up round the bay,--
Some broken planks, and oars, that to the touch
Were nearly tinder, since, so long they lay,
A mast was almost crumbled to a crutch;
But, by God's grace, here wrecks were in such plenty,
That there was fuel to have furnished twenty.
CXXXIII.
He had a bed of furs, and a pelisse,[bj]
For Haidee stripped her sables off to make
His couch; and, that he might be more at ease,
And warm, in case by chance he should awake,
They also gave a petticoat apiece,
She and her maid,--and promised by daybreak
To pay him a fresh visit, with a dish
For breakfast, of eggs, coffee, bread, and fish.
CXXXIV.
And thus they left him to his lone repose:
Juan slept like a top, or like the dead,
Who sleep at last, perhaps (God only knows),
Just for the present; and in his lulled head
Not even a vision of his former woes
Throbbed in accursed dreams, which sometimes spread[bk]
Unwelcome visions of our former years,
Till the eye, cheated, opens thick with tears.
CXXXV.
Young Juan slept all dreamless:--but the maid,
Who smoothed his pillow, as she left the den
Looked back upon him, and a moment stayed,
And turned, believing that he called again.
He slumbered; yet she thought, at least she said
(The heart will slip, even as the tongue and pen),
He had pronounced her name--but she forgot
That at this moment Juan knew it not.
CXXXVI.
And pensive to her father's house she went,
Enjoining silence strict to Zoe, who
Better than her knew what, in fact, she meant,
She being wiser by a year or two:
A year or two's an age when rightly spent,
And Zoe spent hers, as most women do,
In gaining all that useful sort of knowledge
Which is acquired in Nature's good old college.
CXXXVII.
The morn broke, and found Juan slumbering still
Fast in his cave, and nothing clashed upon
His rest; the rushing of the neighbouring rill,
And the young beams of the excluded Sun,
Troubled him not, and he might sleep his fill;
And need he had of slumber yet, for none
Had suffered more--his hardships were comparative[bl]
To those related in my grand-dad's "Narrative."[152]
CXXXVIII.
Not so Haidee: she sadly tossed and tumbled,
And started from her sleep, and, turning o'er,
Dreamed of a thousand wrecks, o'er which she stumbled,
And handsome corpses strewed upon the shore;
And woke her maid so early that she grumbled,
And called her father's old slaves up, who swore
In several oaths--Armenian, Turk, and Greek--
They knew not what to think of such a freak.
CXXXIX.
But up she got, and up she made them get,
With some pretence about the Sun, that makes
Sweet skies just when he rises, or is set;
And 't is, no doubt, a sight to see when breaks
Bright Phoebus, while the mountains still are wet
With mist, and every bird with him awakes,
And night is flung off like a mourning suit
Worn for a husband,--or some other brute.[bm]
CXL.
I say, the Sun is a most glorious sight,
I've seen him rise full oft, indeed of late
I have sat up on purpose all the night,[bn][153]
Which hastens, as physicians say, one's fate;
And so all ye, who would be in the right
In health and purse, begin your day to date
From daybreak, and when coffined at fourscore,
Engrave upon the plate, you rose at four.
CXLI.
And Haidee met the morning face to face;
Her own was freshest, though a feverish flush
Had dyed it with the headlong blood, whose race
From heart to cheek is curbed into a blush,
Like to a torrent which a mountain's base,
That overpowers some Alpine river's rush,
Checks to a lake, whose waves in circles spread;
Or the Red Sea--but the sea is not red.[154]
CXLII.
And down the cliff the island virgin came,
And near the cave her quick light footsteps drew,
While the Sun smiled on her with his first flame,
And young Aurora kissed her lips with dew,
Taking her for a sister; just the same
Mistake you would have made on seeing the two,
Although the mortal, quite as fresh and fair,
Had all the advantage, too, of not being air.[bo]
CXLIII.
And when into the cavern Haidee stepped
All timidly, yet rapidly, she saw
That like an infant Juan sweetly slept;
And then she stopped, and stood as if in awe
(For sleep is awful), and on tiptoe crept
And wrapped him closer, lest the air, too raw,
Should reach his blood, then o'er him still as Death
Bent, with hushed lips, that drank his scarce-drawn breath.
CXLIV.
And thus like to an Angel o'er the dying
Who die in righteousness, she leaned; and there
All tranquilly the shipwrecked boy was lying,
As o'er him lay the calm and stirless air:
But Zoe the meantime some eggs was frying,
Since, after all, no doubt the youthful pair
Must breakfast--and, betimes, lest they should ask it,
She drew out her provision from the basket.
CXLV.
She knew that the best feelings must have victual,
And that a shipwrecked youth would hungry be;
Besides, being less in love, she yawned a little,
And felt her veins chilled by the neighbouring sea;
And so, she cooked their breakfast to a tittle;
I can't say that she gave them any tea,
But there were eggs, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, honey,
With Scio wine,--and all for love, not money.
CXLVI.
And Zoe, when the eggs were ready, and
The coffee made, would fain have wakened Juan;
But Haidee stopped her with her quick small hand,
And without word, a sign her finger drew on
Her lip, which Zoe needs must understand;
And, the first breakfast spoilt, prepared a new one,
Because her mistress would not let her break
That sleep which seemed as it would ne'er awake.
CXLVII.
For still he lay, and on his thin worn cheek
A purple hectic played like dying day
On the snow-tops of distant hills; the streak
Of sufferance yet upon his forehead lay,
Where the blue veins looked shadowy, shrunk, and weak;
And his black curls were dewy with the spray,
Which weighed upon them yet, all damp and salt,
Mixed with the stony vapours of the vault.
CXLVIII.
And she bent o'er him, and he lay beneath,
Hushed as the babe upon its mother's breast,
Drooped as the willow when no winds can breathe,
Lulled like the depth of Ocean when at rest,
Fair as the crowning rose of the whole wreath,
Soft as the callow cygnet in its nest;[bp]
In short, he was a very pretty fellow,
Although his woes had turned him rather yellow.
CXLIX.
He woke and gazed, and would have slept again,
But the fair face which met his eyes forbade
Those eyes to close, though weariness and pain
Had further sleep a further pleasure made:
For Woman's face was never formed in vain
For Juan, so that even when he prayed
He turned from grisly saints, and martyrs hairy,
To the sweet portraits of the Virgin Mary.
CL.
And thus upon his elbow he arose,
And looked upon the lady, in whose cheek
The pale contended with the purple rose,
As with an effort she began to speak;
Her eyes were eloquent, her words would pose,
Although she told him, in good modern Greek,
With an Ionian accent, low and sweet,
That he was faint, and must not talk, but eat.
CLI.
Now Juan could not understand a word,
Being no Grecian; but he had an ear,
And her voice was the warble of a bird,[155]
So soft, so sweet, so delicately clear,
That finer, simpler music ne'er was heard;[bq]
The sort of sound we echo with a tear,
Without knowing why--an overpowering tone,
Whence Melody descends as from a throne.
CLII.
And Juan gazed as one who is awoke
By a distant organ, doubting if he be
Not yet a dreamer, till the spell is broke
By the watchman, or some such reality,
Or by one's early valet's cursed knock;
At least it is a heavy sound to me,
Who like a morning slumber--for the night
Shows stars and women in a better light.
CLIII.
And Juan, too, was helped out from his dream,
Or sleep, or whatsoe'er it was, by feeling
A most prodigious appetite; the steam
Of Zoe's cookery no doubt was stealing
Upon his senses, and the kindling beam
Of the new fire, which Zoe kept up, kneeling,
To stir her viands, made him quite awake
And long for food, but chiefly a beef-steak.
CLIV.
But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
Goat's flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton,
And, when a holiday upon them smiles,
A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on:
But this occurs but seldom, between whiles,
For some of these are rocks with scarce a hut on;
Others are fair and fertile, among which
This, though not large, was one of the most rich.
CLV.
I say that beef is rare, and can't help thinking
That the old fable of the Minotaur--From
which our modern morals, rightly shrinking,
Condemn the royal lady's taste who wore
A cow's shape for a mask--was only (sinking
The allegory) a mere type, no more,
That Pasiphae promoted breeding cattle,
To make the Cretans bloodier in battle.
CLVI.
For we all know that English people are
Fed upon beef--I won't say much of beer,
Because 't is liquor only, and being far
From this my subject, has no business here;
We know, too, they are very fond of war,
A pleasure--like all pleasures--rather dear;
So were the Cretans--from which I infer,
That beef and battles both were owing to her.
CLVII.
But to resume. The languid Juan raised
His head upon his elbow, and he saw
A sight on which he had not lately gazed,
As all his latter meals had been quite raw,
Three or four things, for which the Lord he praised,
And, feeling still the famished vulture gnaw,
He fell upon whate'er was offered, like
A priest, a shark, an alderman, or pike.
CLVIII.
He ate, and he was well supplied; and she,
Who watched him like a mother, would have fed
Him past all bounds, because she smiled to see
Such appetite in one she had deemed dead:
But Zoe, being older than Haidee,
Knew (by tradition, for she ne'er had read)
That famished people must be slowly nurst,
And fed by spoonfuls, else they always burst.
CLIX.
And so she took the liberty to state,
Rather by deeds than words, because the case
Was urgent, that the gentleman, whose fate
Had made her mistress quit her bed to trace
The sea-shore at this hour, must leave his plate,
Unless he wished to die upon the place--
She snatched it, and refused another morsel,
Saying, he had gorged enough to make a horse ill.
CLX.
Next they--he being naked, save a tattered
Pair of scarce decent trowsers--went to work,
And in the fire his recent rags they scattered,
And dressed him, for the present, like a Turk,
Or Greek--that is, although it not much mattered,
Omitting turban, slippers, pistol, dirk,--
They furnished him, entire, except some stitches,
With a clean shirt, and very spacious breeches.
CLXI.
And then fair Haidee tried her tongue at speaking,
But not a word could Juan comprehend,
Although he listened so that the young Greek in
Her earnestness would ne'er have made an end;
And, as he interrupted not, went eking
Her speech out to her protege and friend,
Till pausing at the last her breath to take,
She saw he did not understand Romaic.
CLXII.
And then she had recourse to nods, and signs,
And smiles, and sparkles of the speaking eye,
And read (the only book she could) the lines
Of his fair face, and found, by sympathy,
The answer eloquent, where the Soul shines
And darts in one quick glance a long reply;
And thus in every look she saw expressed
A world of words, and things at which she guessed.
CLXIII.
And now, by dint of fingers and of eyes,
And words repeated after her, he took
A lesson in her tongue; but by surmise,
No doubt, less of her language than her look:
As he who studies fervently the skies
Turns oftener to the stars than to his book,
Thus Juan learned his _alpha beta_ better
From Haidee's glance than any graven letter.
CLXIV.
'T is pleasing to be schooled in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes--that is, I mean,
When both the teacher and the taught are young,
As was the case, at least, where I have been;[156]
They smile so when one's right, and when one's wrong
They smile still more, and then there intervene
Pressure of hands, perhaps even a chaste kiss;--[br]
I learned the little that I know by this:
CLXV.
That is, some words of Spanish, Turk, and Greek,
Italian not at all, having no teachers;[bs]
Much English I cannot pretend to speak,
Learning that language chiefly from its preachers,
Barrow, South, Tillotson, whom every week
I study, also Blair--the highest reachers
Of eloquence in piety and prose--
I hate your poets, so read none of those.
CLXVI.
As for the ladies, I have nought to say,
A wanderer from the British world of Fashion,[157]
Where I, like other "dogs, have had my day,"
Like other men, too, may have had my passion--
But that, like other things, has passed away,
And all her fools whom I _could_ lay the lash on:
Foes, friends, men, women, now are nought to me
But dreams of what has been, no more to be.[bt]
CLXVII.
Return we to Don Juan. He begun[158]
To hear new words, and to repeat them; but
Some feelings, universal as the Sun,
Were such as could not in his breast be shut
More than within the bosom of a nun:
He was in love,--as you would be, no doubt,
With a young benefactress,--so was she,
Just in the way we very often see.
CLXVIII.
And every day by daybreak--rather early
For Juan, who was somewhat fond of rest--
She came into the cave, but it was merely
To see her bird reposing in his nest;[159]
And she would softly stir his locks so curly,
Without disturbing her yet slumbering guest,
Breathing all gently o'er his cheek and mouth,[bu]
As o'er a bed of roses the sweet South.
CLXIX.
And every morn his colour freshlier came,
And every day helped on his convalescence;
'T was well, because health in the human frame
Is pleasant, besides being true Love's essence,
For health and idleness to Passion's flame
Are oil and gunpowder; and some good lessons
Are also learnt from Ceres and from Bacchus,
Without whom Venus will not long attack us.[160]
CLXX.
While Venus fills the heart, (without heart really
Love, though good always, is not quite so good,)
Ceres presents a plate of vermicelli,--
For Love must be sustained like flesh and blood,--While
Bacchus pours out wine, or hands a jelly:
Eggs, oysters, too, are amatory food;[bv]
But who is their purveyor from above
Heaven knows,--it may be Neptune, Pan, or Jove.
CLXXI.
When Juan woke he found some good things ready,
A bath, a breakfast, and the finest eyes
That ever made a youthful heart less steady,
Besides her maid's, as pretty for their size;
But I have spoken of all this already--
A repetition's tiresome and unwise,--
Well--Juan, after bathing in the sea,
Came always back to coffee and Haidee.
CLXXII.
Both were so young, and one so innocent,
That bathing passed for nothing; Juan seemed
To her, as 't were, the kind of being sent,
Of whom these two years she had nightly dreamed,
A something to be loved, a creature meant
To be her happiness, and whom she deemed
To render happy; all who joy would win
Must share it,--Happiness was born a Twin.
CLXXIII.
It was such pleasure to behold him, such
Enlargement of existence to partake
Nature with him, to thrill beneath his touch,
To watch him slumbering, and to see him wake:
To live with him for ever were too much;
But then the thought of parting made her quake;
He was her own, her ocean-treasure, cast
Like a rich wreck--her first love, and her last.[bw]
CLXXIV.
And thus a moon rolled on, and fair Haidee
Paid daily visits to her boy, and took
Such plentiful precautions, that still he
Remained unknown within his craggy nook;
At last her father's prows put out to sea,
For certain merchantmen upon the look,
Not as of yore to carry off an Io,
But three Ragusan vessels, bound for Scio.
CLXXV.
Then came her freedom, for she had no mother,
So that, her father being at sea, she was
Free as a married woman, or such other
Female, as where she likes may freely pass,
Without even the encumbrance of a brother,
The freest she that ever gazed on glass:
I speak of Christian lands in this comparison,
Where wives, at least, are seldom kept in garrison.
CLXXVI.
Now she prolonged her visits and her talk
(For they must talk), and he had learnt to say
So much as to propose to take a walk,--
For little had he wandered since the day
On which, like a young flower snapped from the stalk,
Drooping and dewy on the beach he lay,--
And thus they walked out in the afternoon,
And saw the sun set opposite the moon.[bx]
CLXXVII.
It was a wild and breaker-beaten coast,
With cliffs above, and a broad sandy shore,
Guarded by shoals and rocks as by an host,
With here and there a creek, whose aspect wore
A better welcome to the tempest-tost;
And rarely ceased the haughty billow's roar,
Save on the dead long summer days, which make
The outstretched Ocean glitter like a lake.
CLXXVIII.
And the small ripple spilt upon the beach
Scarcely o'erpassed the cream of your champagne,
When o'er the brim the sparkling bumpers reach,
That spring-dew of the spirit! the heart's rain!
Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach
Who please,--the more because they preach in vain,--
Let us have Wine and Woman,[161] Mirth and Laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.
CLXXIX.
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of Life is but intoxication:
Glory, the Grape, Love, Gold, in these are sunk
The hopes of all men, and of every nation;
Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk
Of Life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion!
But to return,--Get very drunk, and when
You wake with headache--you shall see what then!
CLXXX.
Ring for your valet--bid him quickly bring
Some hock and soda-water,[162] then you'll know
A pleasure worthy Xerxes the great king;
For not the blest sherbet, sublimed with snow,[163]
Nor the first sparkle of the desert-spring,
Nor Burgundy in all its sunset glow,[by]
After long travel, Ennui, Love, or Slaughter,
Vie with that draught of hock and soda-water!
CLXXXI.
The coast--I think it was the coast that I
Was just describing--Yes, it _was_ the coast--
Lay at this period quiet as the sky,
The sands untumbled, the blue waves untossed,
And all was stillness, save the sea-bird's cry,
And dolphin's leap, and little billow crossed
By some low rock or shelve, that made it fret
Against the boundary it scarcely wet.
CLXXXII.
And forth they wandered, her sire being gone,
As I have said, upon an expedition;
And mother, brother, guardian, she had none,
Save Zoe, who, although with due precision
She waited on her lady with the Sun,
Thought daily service was her only mission,
Bringing warm water, wreathing her long tresses,
And asking now and then for cast-off dresses.
CLXXXIII.
It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded
Red sun sinks down behind the azure hill,
Which then seems as if the whole earth it bounded,
Circling all Nature, hushed, and dim, and still,
With the far mountain-crescent half surrounded
On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill
Upon the other, and the rosy sky
With one star sparkling through it like an eye.
CLXXXIV.
And thus they wandered forth, and hand in hand,
Over the shining pebbles and the shells,
Glided along the smooth and hardened sand,
And in the worn and wild receptacles
Worked by the storms, yet worked as it were planned
In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells,
They turned to rest; and, each clasped by an arm,
Yielded to the deep Twilight's purple charm.
CLXXXV.
They looked up to the sky, whose floating glow
Spread like a rosy Ocean, vast and bright;[bz]
They gazed upon the glittering sea below,
Whence the broad Moon rose circling into sight;
They heard the waves' splash, and the wind so low,
And saw each other's dark eyes darting light
Into each other--and, beholding this,
Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss;
CLXXXVI.
A long, long kiss, a kiss of Youth, and Love,
And Beauty, all concentrating like rays
Into one focus, kindled from above;
Such kisses as belong to early days,
Where Heart, and Soul, and Sense, in concert move,
And the blood's lava, and the pulse a blaze,
Each kiss a heart-quake,--for a kiss's strength,
I think, it must be reckoned by its length.
CLXXXVII.
By length I mean duration; theirs endured
Heaven knows how long--no doubt they never reckoned;
And if they had, they could not have secured
The sum of their sensations to a second:
They had not spoken, but they felt allured,
As if their souls and lips each other beckoned,
Which, being joined, like swarming bees they clung--
Their hearts the flowers from whence the honey sprung.[ca]
CLXXXVIII.
They were alone, but not alone as they
Who shut in chambers think it loneliness;
The silent Ocean, and the starlight bay,
The twilight glow, which momently grew less,
The voiceless sands, and dropping caves, that lay
Around them, made them to each other press,
As if there were no life beneath the sky
Save theirs, and that their life could never die.
CLXXXIX.
They feared no eyes nor ears on that lone beach;
They felt no terrors from the night; they were
All in all to each other: though their speech
Was broken words, they _thought_ a language there,--
And all the burning tongues the Passions teach[cb]
Found in one sigh the best interpreter
Of Nature's oracle--first love,--that all
Which Eve has left her daughters since her fall.
CXC.
Haidee spoke not of scruples, asked no vows,
Nor offered any; she had never heard
Of plight and promises to be a spouse,
Or perils by a loving maid incurred;
She was all which pure Ignorance allows,
And flew to her young mate like a young bird;
And, never having dreamt of falsehood, she
Had not one word to say of constancy.
CXCI.
She loved, and was beloved--she adored,
And she was worshipped after Nature's fashion--
Their intense souls, into each other poured,
If souls could die, had perished in that passion,--
But by degrees their senses were restored,
Again to be o'ercome, again to dash on;
And, beating 'gainst _his_ bosom, Haidee's heart
Felt as if never more to beat apart.
CXCII.
Alas! they were so young, so beautiful,
So lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour
Was that in which the Heart is always full,
And, having o'er itself no further power,
Prompts deeds Eternity can not annul,
But pays off moments in an endless shower
Of hell-fire--all prepared for people giving
Pleasure or pain to one another living.
CXCIII.
Alas! for Juan and Haidee! they were
So loving and so lovely--till then never,
Excepting our first parents, such a pair
Had run the risk of being damned for ever:
And Haidee, being devout as well as fair,
Had, doubtless, heard about the Stygian river,
And Hell and Purgatory--but forgot
Just in the very crisis she should not.
CXCIV.
They look upon each other, and their eyes
Gleam in the moonlight; and her white arm clasps
Round Juan's head, and his around her lies
Half buried in the tresses which it grasps;
She sits upon his knee, and drinks his sighs,
He hers, until they end in broken gasps;
And thus they form a group that's quite antique,
Half naked, loving, natural, and Greek.
CXCV.
And when those deep and burning moments passed,
And Juan sunk to sleep within her arms,
She slept not, but all tenderly, though fast,
Sustained his head upon her bosom's charms;
And now and then her eye to Heaven is cast,
And then on the pale cheek her breast now warms,
Pillowed on her o'erflowing heart, which pants
With all it granted, and with all it grants.[cc]
CXCVI.
An infant when it gazes on a light,
A child the moment when it drains the breast,
A devotee when soars the Host in sight,
An Arab with a stranger for a guest,
A sailor when the prize has struck in fight,
A miser filling his most hoarded chest,
Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping
As they who watch o'er what they love while sleeping.
CXCVII.
For there it lies so tranquil, so beloved,
All that it hath of Life with us is living;
So gentle, stirless, helpless, and unmoved,
And all unconscious of the joy 't is giving;
All it hath felt, inflicted, passed, and proved,
Hushed into depths beyond the watcher's diving:
There lies the thing we love with all its errors
And all its charms, like Death without its terrors.
CXCVIII.
The Lady watched her lover--and that hour
Of Love's, and Night's, and Ocean's solitude
O'erflowed her soul with their united power;
Amidst the barren sand and rocks so rude
She and her wave-worn love had made their bower,
Where nought upon their passion could intrude,
And all the stars that crowded the blue space
Saw nothing happier than her glowing face.
CXCIX.
Alas! the love of Women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing;
For all of theirs upon that die is thrown,
And if 't is lost, Life hath no more to bring
To them but mockeries of the past alone,
And their revenge is as the tiger's spring,
Deadly, and quick, and crushing; yet, as real
Torture is theirs--what they inflict they feel.
CC.
They are right; for Man, to man so oft unjust,
Is always so to Women: one sole bond
Awaits them--treachery is all their trust;
Taught to conceal their bursting hearts despond
Over their idol, till some wealthier lust
Buys them in marriage--and what rests beyond?
A thankless husband--next, a faithless lover--
Then dressing, nursing, praying--and all's over.
CCI.
Some take a lover, some take drams or prayers,
Some mind their household, others dissipation,
Some run away, and but exchange their cares,
Losing the advantage of a virtuous station;
Few changes e'er can better their affairs,
Theirs being an unnatural situation,
From the dull palace to the dirty hovel:[cd]
Some play the devil, and then write a novel.[164]
CCII.
Haidee was Nature's bride, and knew not this;
Haidee was Passion's child, born where the Sun
Showers triple light, and scorches even the kiss
Of his gazelle-eyed daughters; she was one
Made but to love, to feel that she was his
Who was her chosen: what was said or done
Elsewhere was nothing. She had nought to fear,
Hope, care, nor love, beyond,--her heart beat _here_.
CCIII.
And oh! that quickening of the heart, that beat!
How much it costs us! yet each rising throb
Is in its cause as its effect so sweet,
That Wisdom, ever on the watch to rob
Joy of its alchemy, and to repeat
Fine truths; even Conscience, too, has a tough job
To make us understand each good old maxim,
So good--I wonder Castlereagh don't tax 'em.
CCIV.
And now 't was done--on the lone shore were plighted
Their hearts; the stars, their nuptial torches, shed
Beauty upon the beautiful they lighted:
Ocean their witness, and the cave their bed,
By their own feelings hallowed and united,
Their priest was Solitude, and they were wed:[ce]
And they were happy--for to their young eyes
Each was an angel, and earth Paradise.
CCV.
Oh, Love! of whom great Caesar was the suitor,
Titus the master,[165] Antony the slave,
Horace, Catullus, scholars--Ovid tutor--
Sappho the sage blue-stocking, in whose grave
All those may leap who rather would be neuter--
(Leucadia's rock still overlooks the wave)--
Oh, Love! thou art the very God of evil,
For, after all, we cannot call thee Devil.
CCVI.
Thou mak'st the chaste connubial state precarious,
And jestest with the brows of mightiest men:
Caesar and Pompey, Mahomet, Belisarius,[166]
Have much employed the Muse of History's pen:
Their lives and fortunes were extremely various,
Such worthies Time will never see again;
Yet to these four in three things the same luck holds,
They all were heroes, conquerors, and cuckolds.
CCVII.
Thou mak'st philosophers; there's Epicurus
And Aristippus, a material crew!
Who to immoral courses would allure us
By theories quite practicable too;
If only from the Devil they would insure us,
How pleasant were the maxim (not quite new),
"Eat, drink, and love, what can the rest avail us?"
So said the royal sage Sardanapalus.[167]
CCVIII.
But Juan! had he quite forgotten Julia?
And should he have forgotten her so soon?
I can't but say it seems to me most truly a
Perplexing question; but, no doubt, the moon
Does these things for us, and whenever newly a
Strong palpitation rises, 't is her boon,
Else how the devil is it that fresh features
Have such a charm for us poor human creatures?
CCIX.
I hate inconstancy--I loathe, detest,
Abhor, condemn, abjure the mortal made
Of such quicksilver clay that in his breast
No permanent foundation can be laid;
Love, constant love, has been my constant guest,
And yet last night, being at a masquerade,
I saw the prettiest creature, fresh from Milan,
Which gave me some sensations like a villain.
CCX.
But soon Philosophy came to my aid,
And whispered, "Think of every sacred tie!"
"I will, my dear Philosophy!" I said,
"But then her teeth, and then, oh, Heaven! her eye!
I'll just inquire if she be wife or maid,
Or neither--out of curiosity."
"Stop!" cried Philosophy, with air so Grecian,
(Though she was masqued then as a fair Venetian;)
CCXI.
"Stop!" so I stopped.--But to return: that which
Men call inconstancy is nothing more
Than admiration due where Nature's rich
Profusion with young beauty covers o'er
Some favoured object; and as in the niche
A lovely statue we almost adore,
This sort of adoration of the real
Is but a heightening of the _beau ideal_.
CCXII.
'T is the perception of the Beautiful,
A fine extension of the faculties,
Platonic, universal, wonderful,
Drawn from the stars, and filtered through the skies,
Without which Life would be extremely dull;
In short, it is the use of our own eyes,
With one or two small senses added, just
To hint that flesh is formed of fiery dust.[cf]
CCXIII.
Yet 't is a painful feeling, and unwilling,
For surely if we always could perceive
In the same object graces quite as killing
As when she rose upon us like an Eve,
'T would save us many a heartache, many a shilling,
(For we must get them anyhow, or grieve),
Whereas if one sole lady pleased for ever,
How pleasant for the heart, as well as liver!
CCXIV.
The Heart is like the sky, a part of Heaven,
But changes night and day, too, like the sky;
Now o'er it clouds and thunder must be driven,
And Darkness and Destruction as on high:
But when it hath been scorched, and pierced, and riven,
Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye
Pours forth at last the Heart's blood turned to tears,
Which make the English climate of our years.
CCXV.
The liver is the lazaret of bile,
But very rarely executes its function,
For the first passion stays there such a while,
That all the rest creep in and form a junction,
Like knots of vipers on a dunghill's soil--[168]
Rage, fear, hate, jealousy, revenge, compunction--
So that all mischiefs spring up from this entrail,
Like Earthquakes from the hidden fire called "central."
CCXVI.
In the mean time, without proceeding more
In this anatomy, I've finished now
Two hundred and odd stanzas as before,[cg]
That being about the number I'll allow
Each canto of the twelve, or twenty-four;
And, laying down my pen, I make my bow,
Leaving Don Juan and Haidee to plead
For them and theirs with all who deign to read.
FOOTNOTES:
[96] Begun at Venice, December 13, 1818,-finished January 20, 1819.
{81}[ay] _Lost that most precious stone of stones--his modesty_.--[MS.]
{82}[97] [Compare "The Girl of Cadiz," _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 1,
and note 1.
[az] _But d----n me if I ever saw the like_.--[MS.]
{83}[98] _Fazzioli_--literally, little handkerchiefs--the veils most
availing of St. Mark.
["_I fazzioli_, or kerchiefs (a white kind of veil which the lower orders
wear upon their heads)."--Letter to Rogers, March 3, 1818, _Letters,_ 1900,
iv. 208.]
[ba]
_Their manners mending, and their morals curing.
She taught them to suppress their vice--and urine_.--[MS.]
{84}[99] [Compare--
"And fast the white rocks faded from his view
* * * * *
And then, it may be, of his wish to roam
Repented he."
_Childe Harold_, Canto I. stanza xii. lines 3-6,
_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 24.]
{87}[100] ["To breathe a vein ... to lance it so as to let blood."
Compare--
"_Rosalind_. Is the fool sick?
_Biron_. Sick at heart.
_Ros_. Alack, let it blood."
_Love's Labour's Lost_, act ii. sc. I, line 185.]
[bb]
_Sea-sickness death; then pardon Juan--how else_
_Keep down his stomach ne'er at sea before_?--[MS. M.]
[101] ["With regard to the charges about the Shipwreck, I think that I
told you and Mr. Hobhouse, years ago, that there was not a _single
circumstance_ of it _not_ taken from _fact_: not, indeed, from any
_single_ shipwreck, but all from _actual_ facts of different
wrecks."---Letter to Murray, August 23, 1821. In the _Monthly Magazine_,
vol. liii. (August, 1821, pp. 19-22, and September, 1821, pp. 105-109),
Byron's indebtedness to Sir G. Dalzell's _Shipwrecks and Disasters at
Sea_ (1812, 8vo) is pointed out, and the parallel passages are printed
in full.]
[102] ["Night came on worse than the day had been; and a _sudden shift
of wind,_ about midnight, _threw the ship into the trough of the sea,
which struck her aft, tore away the rudder, started the stern-post, and
shattered the whole of her stern-frame. The pumps_ were _immediately
sounded,_ and in the course of a few minutes the water had increased to
_four feet_....
_"One gang was instantly put on them, and the remainder of the people
employed in getting up_ rice from the run of the ship, and heaving it
over, _to come at the leak,_ if possible. After three or four hundred
bags were thrown into the sea, _we did get at it,_ and found _the water
rushing_ into the ship with astonishing rapidity; therefore we _thrust
sheets, shirts, jackets, tales of muslin,_ and everything of the like
description that could be got, _into the opening._
"Notwithstanding the pumps _discharged fifty tons of water an hour,_ the
ship certainly _must have gone down,_ had not our _expedients_ been
attended with some success. _The pumps,_ to the excellent construction
of which I owe the preservation of my life, _were made by Mr. Mann of
London. As the next day advanced, the weather appeared to moderate,_ the
men continued incessantly at the pumps, and every exertion was made to
_keep the ship afloat._"--See "Loss of the American ship _Hercules,_
Captain Benjamin Stout, June 16, 1796," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at
Sea,_ 1812, iii. 316, 317.]
{90}[103] ["Scarce was this done, when _a gust, exceeding in violence
everything of the kind I had ever seen, or could conceive, laid the ship
on her beam ends_....
"The ship _lay motionless_, and, to all appearance, irrevocably
overset.... _The water forsook the hold_, and appeared between decks....
"Immediate directions were given _to cut away the main and mizen masts_,
trusting when the ship righted, to be able to wear her. On cutting one
or two lanyards, the _mizen-mast went first over_, but without producing
the smallest effect on the ship, and, on cutting the lanyard of one
shroud, the _main-mast followed_. I had next the mortification to see
the _foremast and bowsprit also go over_. On this, _the ship immediately
righted with great violence_."--"Loss of the _Centaur_ Man-of-War, 1782,
by Captain Inglefield," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii.
41.]
[bc] _Perhaps the whole would have got drunk, but for_.--[MS.]
{91}[104] ["A midshipman was appointed to guard the spirit-room, to
repress that unhappy desire of a devoted crew _to die in a state of
intoxication._ The sailors, though in other respects orderly in conduct,
here pressed eagerly upon him.
"_'Give us some grog,'_ they exclaimed, _'it will be all one an hour
hence.'--'I know we must die,'_ replied the gallant officer, coolly,
_'but let us die like men!'--Armed with a brace of pistols,_ he kept his
post, even while the ship was sinking."--"Loss of the _Earl of
Abergavenny,_ February 5, 1805," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_,
1812, iii. 418. John Wordsworth, the poet's brother, was captain of the
_Abergavenny_. See _Life of William Wordsworth_, by Professor Knight,
1889, i. 370-380; see, too, Coleridge's _Anima Poetae_, 1895, p. 132. For
a contemporary report, see a Maltese paper, _Il Cartaginense_, April 17,
1805.]
[105] ["However, by great exertions of the chain-pumps, we _held our
own_.... All who were not seamen by profession, had been employed in
_thrumming a sail which was passed under the ship's bottom, and I
thought_ had some effect....
"_The Centaur laboured so much_, that I _could scarce hope she would
swim_ till morning: ... our sufferings _for want of water_ were very
great....
"_The weather again threatened_, and by noon _it blew a storm_. The ship
laboured greatly; _the water appeared in the fore and after-hold_. I was
informed by the carpenter also that _the leathers_ were nearly consumed,
and the _chains of the pumps_, by constant exertion, and friction of the
coils, were rendered almost useless....
"At this period the carpenter acquainted me that the well was stove
in.... and the chain-pumps displaced and totally useless.... Seeing
their efforts useless, many of them [the people] burst into tears, and
wept like children....
"I perceived _the ship settling by the head._"--"Loss of the _Centaur_,"
_Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. pp. 45-49.]
{92}[bd] _'T is ugly dying in the Gulf of Lyons_.--[MS.]
{93}[106] [Byron may have had in mind the story of the half-inaudible
vow of a monster wax candle, to be offered to St. Christopher of Paris,
which Erasmus tells in his _Naufragium_. The passage is scored with a
pencil-mark in his copy of the _Colloquies_.]
[107] [Stanza xliv. recalls Cardinal de Retz's description of the storm
at sea in the Gulf of Lyons: "Everybody were at their prayers, or were
confessing themselves.... The private captain of the galley caused, in
the greatest height of the danger, _his embroidered coat and his red
scarf_ to be brought to him, saying, that a true Spaniard ought to die
bearing his King's Marks of distinction. He sat himself down in a great
elbow chair, and with his foot struck a poor Neapolitan in the chops,
who, not being able to stand upon the Coursey of the Galley, was
crawling along, crying out aloud, _'Sennor Don Fernando, por l'amor de
Dios, Confession.'_ The captain, when he struck him, said to him,
_'Inimigo de Dios piedes Confession!'_ And as I was representing to him,
that his inference was not right, he said that that old man gave offence
to the whole galley. You can't imagine the horror of a great storm; you
can as little imagine the Ridicule mixed with it. A Sicilian
Observantine monk was preaching at the foot of the great mast, that St.
Francis had appeared to him, and had assured him that we should not
perish. I should never have done, should I undertake to describe all the
ridiculous frights that are seen on these occasions."--_Memoirs of
Cardinal de Retz_, 1723, iii. 353.]
{94}[108] ["Some appeared perfectly resigned, _went to their hammocks,_
and desired their messmates _to lash them in_; others were securing
themselves to gratings and small rafts; but the most predominant idea
was that _of putting on their best_ and _cleanest clothes_. The boats
... were got over the side."--"Loss of the _Centaur_," _Shipwrecks and
Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 49, 50.]
[be] _Men will prove hungry, even when next perdition_.--[MS.]
{95}[109] ["Eight bags of rice, _six casks of water_, and a _small
quantity of salted beef and pork_, were put into the long-boat, as
provisions for the whole."--"Wreck of the _Sidney_, 1806," _Shipwrecks
and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 434.]
[110] ["The _yawl was stove_ alongside and sunk."--"Loss of the
_Centaur_," _ibid._, iii. 50.]
[111] ["_One oar_ was erected for a _main-mast_, and the other broke to
the breadth of the _blankets for a yard_."--"Loss of the _Duke William_
Transport, 1758," _ibid_., ii. 387.]
[bf] _Which being withdrawn, discloses but the frown_.--[MS. erased.]
[bg]
_Of one who hates us, so the night was shown_
_And grimly darkled o'er their faces pale_,
_And hopeless eyes, which o'er the deep alone_
_Gazed dim and desolate_----.--[MS.]
{96}[112] ["As _rafts_ had been mentioned by the carpenter, I thought it
right _to make the attempt_.... It was impossible for any man to deceive
himself with the hopes of being saved on a raft in such a sea."--"Loss
of the _Centaur_," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 50.
51.]
[113] ["_Spars, booms, hencoops_, and _every thing_ buoyant, was
therefore _cast loose_, that the men might have some chance to save
themselves."--"Loss of the _Pandora_," ibid., iii. 197.]
[114] ["We had scarce quitted the ship, when she gave a heavy _lurch to
port_, and _then went down, head foremost._"--"Loss of the _Lady
Hobart_," ibid., iii. 378.]
[115] ["At this moment, one of the officers told the captain that she
was going down.... and bidding him farewell, leapt overboard: ... the
crew had just time to _leap overboard_, which they did, uttering _a most
dreadful yell_."--"Loss of the _Pandora_," ibid., iii. 198.]
{98}[116] ["The boat, being fastened to the rigging, was no sooner
cleared of the greatest part of the water, than a dog of mine came to me
running along the gunwale. _I took him in_."--"Shipwreck of the Sloop
_Betsy_, on the Coast of Dutch Guiana, August 5, 1756 (Philip Aubin,
Commander)," _Remarkable Shipwrecks_, Hartford, 1813, p. 175.]
[117] [Qy. "My good Sir! when the sea runs very high this is the case,
as _I know_, but if _my authority_ is not enough, see Bligh's account of
his run to Timor, after being cut adrift by the mutineers headed by
Christian."--[B.]
"Pray tell me who was the Lubber who put the query? surely not _you_,
Hobhouse! We have both of us seen too much of the sea for that. You may
rely on my using no nautical word not founded on authority, and no
circumstances not grounded in reality."]
{99}[118] ["It blew a violent storm, and the sea ran very high, so that
between the seas the sail was becalmed; and when _on the top of the sea,
it was too much to have set_, but I was obliged to carry it, for we were
now in very imminent danger and distress; _the sea curling over the
stern_ of the boat, which obliged us _to bale with all our might_."--_A
Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty_, by William Bligh, 1790, p. 23.]
[119] ["Before it was dark, _a blanket_ was discovered in the boat. This
was immediately bent to one of the stretchers, and under it, _as a
sail_, we scudded all night, in expectation of being _swallowed up by
every wave._"--"Loss of the _Centaur_," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at
Sea_, 1812, iii. 52.]
[120] ["_The sun rose very fiery and red, a sure indication of a severe
gale of wind_.--We could do nothing more than keep before the sea.--_I
now served a tea-spoonful of rum to each person_, ... with a quarter of
a bread-fruit, which was scarce eatable, for dinner."--_A Narrative,
etc._, by W. Bligh, 1790, pp. 23, 24.]
{100}[121] ["[As] our lodgings were very miserable and confined, I had
only in my power to remedy the latter defect, by putting ourselves _at
watch and watch_; so that _one half_ always sat up, while the other half
_lay down_ on the boat's bottom, with _nothing to cover us but the
heavens."--A Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty_, by William Bligh,
1790, p. 28.]
[122] [For Byron's debts to Mrs. Massingberd, "Jew" King, etc., and for
money raised on annuities, see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 174, note 2, and
letter to Hanson, December 11, 1817, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 187, "The list
of annuities sent by Mr. Kinnaird, including Jews and Sawbridge, amounts
to twelve thousand eight hundred and some odd pounds."]
{101}[123] ["The third day we began to suffer exceedingly ... from
hunger and thirst. I then seized my dog, and plunged the knife in his
throat. We caught his blood in the hat, receiving in our hands and
drinking what ran over; we afterwards drank in turn out of the hat, and
felt ourselves refreshed."--"Shipwreck of the _Betsy_," _Remarkable
Shipwrecks_, Hartford, 1813, p. 177.]
{102}[124] ["One day, when I was at home in my hut with my Indian dog, a
party came to my door, and told me their necessities were such that they
must eat the creature or starve. Though their plea was urgent, I could
not help using some arguments to endeavour to dissuade them from killing
him, as his faithful services and fondness deserved it at my hands; but,
without weighing my arguments, they took him away by force and killed
him.... Three weeks after that I was glad to make a meal of his paws and
skin which, upon recollecting the spot where they had killed him, I
found thrown aside and rotten."--_The Narrative of the Honourable John
Byron, etc._, 1768, pp. 47, 48.]
{103}[125] [Being driven to distress for want of food, "they _soaked
their shoes_, and two _hairy caps_ in water; and when sufficiently
softened ate portions of the leather." But day after day having passed,
and the cravings of hunger pressing hard upon them, they fell upon the
horrible and dreadful expedient of eating each other; and in order to
prevent any contention about who should become the food of the others,
"they cast lots to determine the sufferer."--"Sufferings of the Crew of
the _Thomas_ [Twelve Men in an Open Boat, 1797]," _Shipwrecks and
Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii 356.]
[126] ["_The lots were drawn_: 'the captain, summoning all his strength,
wrote upon slips of paper the name of each man, folded them up, put them
into a hat, and shook them together. The crew, meanwhile, preserved _an
awful silence_; each eye was fixed and each mouth open, while terror was
strongly impressed upon every countenance.' The unhappy person, with
manly fortitude, resigned himself to his miserable associates."--"Famine
in the American Ship _Peggy_, 1765," _Remarkable Shipwrecks_, Hartford,
1813, pp. 358, 359.]
[127] ["_He requested to be bled to death, the surgeon_ being with them,
and having _his case of instruments_ in his pocket when he quitted the
vessel."--"Sufferings of the Crew of the _Thomas," Shipwrecks, etc._,
1812, iii. 357.]
{104}[128] ["Yet scarce was the vein divided when the operator, applying
his own parched lips, _drank the stream as it flowed_, and his comrades
anxiously watched the last breath of the victim, that they might prey
upon his flesh."--_Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 357.]
[129] ["Those who indulged their cannibal appetite to excess speedily
perished in _raging madness_," etc.--_Ibid_.]
{105}[130] ["Another expedient we had frequent recourse to, on finding
it supplied our mouths with temporary moisture, was _chewing_ any
substance we could find, generally a bit of canvas, or even
_lead_."--"The Shipwreck of the _Juno_ on the Coast of Aracan," 1795,
_Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 270.]
[131] ["At noon, some noddies came so near to us that one of them was
caught by hand.... I divided it into eighteen portions. In the evening
we saw several _boobies_."--_A Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty_,
by William Bligh, 1790, p. 41.]
[132]
["Quand' ebbe detto cio, con gli occhi torti
Riprese il teschio misero coi denti,
Che furo all' osso, come d'un can forti."
Dante, _Inferno_, canto xxxiii. lines 76-78.]
{106}[133] ["Whenever a heavy shower afforded us a few mouthfuls of
fresh water, either by catching the drops as they fell or by squeezing
them out of our clothes, it infused new life and vigour into us, and for
a while we had almost forgot our misery."--_Shipwrecks and Disasters at
Sea_, 1812, iii. 270. Compare _The Island_, Canto I. stanza ix. lines
193, 194, _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 595.]
[134] [Compare--
"With throats unslaked, with black lips baked."
_Ancient Mariner_, Part III. line 157.]
{107}[135] ["Mr. Wade's boy, a _stout healthy lad, died early_, and
almost without a groan; while another, of the same age, but of a less
promising appearance, held out much longer. Their fathers were both in
the fore-top, when the boys were taken ill. [Wade], hearing of his son's
illness, answered, with indifference, that _he could do nothing for
him_, and left him to his fate."--"Narrative of the Shipwreck of the
_Juno_, 1795," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 273.]
[136] ["_The other [Father]_ hurried down.... By that time only three or
four planks of the quarter-deck remained, just over the quarter gallery.
To this spot the unhappy man led his son, making him fast to the rail,
to prevent his being washed away."--_Ibid_.]
[137] ["Whenever the _boy was seized_ with a fit of retching, the father
lifted him up and _wiped away the foam from his lips_; and if a _shower
came_, he made him open his mouth to _receive the drops_, or gently
_squeezed them into it from a rag."--Ibid_.]
{108}[138] ["In this affecting situation both remained four or five
days, till _the boy expired_. The unfortunate parent, as if unwilling to
believe the fact, raised the body, looked _wistfully_ at it, and when he
could no _longer entertain any doubt_, watched it in silence _until_ it
was carried _off by sea_; then wrapping himself in a piece of canvas,
_sunk down_, and rose no more; though he must have lived two days
longer, as we judged from the _quivering of his limbs_ when a wave broke
over him."--"Narrative of the Shipwreck of the _Juno_, 1795,"
_Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, p. 274.]
{109}[139] [_"About this time a beautiful white bird, web-footed, and
not unlike a dove in size and plumage_, hovered over the mast-head of
the cutter, and, notwithstanding the pitching of the boat, frequently
_attempted to perch on it_, and continued _fluttering there till dark_.
Trifling as such an incident may appear, we all considered it a
_propitious omen_."--"Loss of the _Lady Hobart_, 1803," _Shipwrecks and
Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 389.]
[140] ["I found it necessary to caution the people against being
deceived by the _appearance of land_, or calling out till we were quite
convinced of its reality, more especially as _fog-banks_ are often
mistaken for land: several of the poor fellows nevertheless repeatedly
exclaimed _they heard breakers_, and some the _firing of guns_."--"Loss
of the _Lady Hobart," Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 391.]
{110}[141] ["_At length one of them broke out into a most immoderate
swearing fit of joy_, which I could not restrain, and declared, that _he
had never seen land in his life, if what he now saw was not so_."--"Loss
of the _Centaur," ibid_., p. 55.]
[142] ["The joy at a speedy relief affected us all in a most remarkable
way. Many _burst into tears; some looked at each other with a stupid
stare, as if doubtful_ of the reality of what they saw; while several
were in such a lethargic condition, that no animating words could rouse
them to exertion. At this affecting period, I proposed offering up our
solemn thanks to Heaven for the miraculous deliverance."--"Loss of the
_Lady Hobart," ibid_., p. 391.]
[143] [After having suffered the horrors of hunger and thirst for many
days, "they accidentally descried a _small_ turtle _floating on the
surface of the water asleep_."--"Sufferings of the Crew of the _Thomas,"
ibid_., p. 356.]
{111}[144] ["An indifferent spectator would have been at a loss which
most to admire; the eyes of famine sparkling at immediate relief, or the
horror of their preservers at the sight of so many spectres, whose
ghastly countenances, if the cause had been unknown, would rather have
excited terror than pity. Our bodies were nothing but skin and bones,
our limbs were full of sores, and we were clothed in rags."--_Narrative
of the Mutiny of the Bounty_, by William Bligh, 1790, p. 80. Compare
_The Siege of Corinth_, lines 1048, 1049, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii.
494, note 3.]
{112}[145] ["They discovered land _right ahead_, and steered for it.
There being a very _heavy surf_, they endeavoured to turn the boat's
head to it, which, from weakness, they were unable to accomplish, and
soon afterwards _the boat upset_."--"Sufferings of Six Deserters from
St. Helena, 1799," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii, 371.]
[146] [Compare lines "Written after swimming from Sestos to Abydos,"
_Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 13, note 1; see, too, _Letters_, 1898, i.
262, 263, note 1.]
{114}[147] [Compare--
"How long in that same fit I lay
I have not to declare."
_The Ancient Mariner_, Part V. lines 393, 394.]
{115}[bh] ---- _in short she's one_.--[MS.]
{116}[bi]
_A set of humbug rascals, when all's done_--
_I've seen much finer women, ripe and real_,
_Than all the nonsense of their d----d ideal_.--[MS.]
[148] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza 1. lines 6-9, _Poetical
Works_, 1899, ii. 366, note 1.]
[149] [Probably that "Alpha and Omega of Beauty," Lady Adelaide Forbes
(daughter of George, sixth Earl of Granard), whom Byron compared to the
Apollo Belvidere. See _Letters_, 1898, ii. 230, note 3.]
[150] ["The _saya_ or _basquina_ ... the outer petticoat ... is always
black, and is put over the indoor dress on going out." Compare [Greek:
Melanei/mones a(/pantes t ople/on e)n sa/gois,] Strabo, lib. iii. ed.
1807, i. 210. Ford's _Handbook for Spain_, 1855, i. 111.]
{117}[151] ["When Ajax, Ulysses, and Phoenix stand before Achilles, he
rushes forth to greet them, brings them into the tent, directs Patroclus
to mix the wine, cuts up the meat, dresses it, and sets it before the
ambassadors." (_Iliad_, ix. 193, sq.)--_Study of the Classics_, by H.N.
Coleridge, 1830, p, 71]
{119}[bj] _And such a bed of furs, and a pelisse_.--[MS.]
{120}[bk]
---- _which often spread_,
_And come like opening Hell upon the mind_,
_No "baseless fabric" but "a wrack behind."_--[MS.]
{121}[bl]
_Had e'er escaped more dangers on the deep_;--
_And those who are not drowned, at least may sleep_.--[MS.]
[152] [Entitled "_A Narrative of the Honourable John Byron_ (Commodore
in a late expedition round the world), containing an account of the
great distresses suffered by himself and his companions on the coast of
Patagonia, from the year 1740, till their arrival in England, 1746.
Written by Himself," London, 1768, 40. For the Hon. John Byron, 1723-86,
younger brother of William, fifth Lord Byron, see _Letters_, 1898, i.
3.]
[bm] _Wore for a husband--or some such like brute_.--[MS.]
[bn]
---- _although of late_
_I've changed, for some few years, the day to night_.--[MS.]
[153] [The second canto of _Don Juan_ was finished in January, 1819,
when the Venetian Carnival was at its height.]
{122}[154] [Strabo (lib. xvi. ed. 1807, p. 1106) gives various
explanations of the name, assigning the supposed redness to the
refraction of the rays of the vertical sun; or to the shadow of the
scorched mountain-sides which form its shores; or, as Ctesias would have
it, to a certain fountain which discharged red oxide of lead into its
waters. "Abyssinian" Bruce had no doubt that "large trees or plants of
coral spread everywhere over the bottom," made the sea "red," and
accounted for the name. But, according to Niebuhr, the Red Sea is the
Sea of Edom, which, being interpreted, is "Red."]
[bo]
---- _just the same_
_As at this moment I should like to do;--_
_But I have done with kisses--having kissed_
_All those that would--regretting those I missed_.--[MS.]
{124}[bp]
_Fair as the rose just plucked to crown the wreath_,
_Soft as the unfledged birdling when at rest_.--[MS.]
[155] [Compare _Mazeppa_, lines 829, sq., _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv.
232.]
{125}[bq]
_That finer melody was never heard_,
_The kind of sound whose echo is a tear_,
_Whose accents are the steps of Music's throne_.[*]--[MS.]
[*] ["To the Publisher. Take of these varieties which is thought best. I
have no choice."]
{128}[156] [Moore, quoting from memory from one of Byron's MS. journals,
says that he speaks of "making earnest love to the younger of his fair
hostesses at Seville, with the help of a dictionary."--_Life,_ p. 93.
See, too, letter to his mother, August 11, 1809, _Letters,_ 1898, i.
240.]
[br] _Pressure of hands, et cetera--or a kiss_.--[MS. Alternative
reading.]
[bs] _Italian rather more, having more teachers_.--[MS. erased.]
[157] ["In 1813 ... in the fashionable world of London, of which I then
formed an item, a fraction, the segment of a circle, the unit of a
million, the nothing of something.... I had been the lion of
1812."--Extracts from a Diary, January 19, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v.
177, 178.]
[bt]
_foes, friends, sex, kind, are nothing more to me_
_Than a mere dream of something o'er the sea_.--[MS.]
{129}[158] [For the same archaism or blunder, compare _Manfred_, act i.
sc. 4, line 19, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 132.]
[159] [Compare _The Prisoner of Chillon_, line 78, _ibid_., p. 16.]
[bu]
_Holding her sweet breath o'er his cheek and mouth_,
_As o'er a bed of roses, etc_.--[MS.]
[160] [_Vide post_, Canto XVI. stanza lxxxvi. line 6, p. 598, note 1.]
{130}[bv]
_For without heart Love is not quite so good_;
_Ceres is commissary to our bellies_,
_And Love, which also much depends on food_:
_While Bacchus will provide with wine and jellies_--
_Oysters and eggs are also living food_.--[MS.]
[bw]
_He was her own, her Ocean lover, cast_
_To be her soul's first idol, and its last_.--[MS.]
{131}[bx] _And saw the sunset and the rising moon_.--[MS.]
{132}[161] [The MS. and the editions of 1819, 1823, 1828, read "woman."
The edition of 1833 reads "women." The text follows the MS. and the
earlier editions.]
[162] [Compare stanza prefixed to Dedication, vide ante, p. 2.]
[163] [Compare--
"Yes! thy Sherbet to-night will sweetly flow,
See how it sparkles in its vase of snow!"
_Corsair_, Canto I. lines 427, 428, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 242.]
[by]
_A pleasure naught but drunkenness can bring:_
_For not the blest sherbet all chilled with snow._
_Nor the full sparkle of the desert-spring,_
_Nor wine in all the purple of its glow_.--[MS.]
{134}[bz] _Spread like an Ocean, varied, vast, and bright._--[MS.]
[ca]
_---- I'm sure they never reckoned;_
_And being joined--like swarming bees they clung,_
_And mixed until the very pleasure stung._
or,
_And one was innocent, but both too young,_
_Their hearts the flowers, etc_.--[MS.]
{135}[cb]
_In all the burning tongues the Passions teach_
_They had no further feeling, hope, nor care_
_Save one, and that was Love_.--[MS. erased.]
{136}[cc]
_Pillowed upon her beating heart--which panted
With the sweet memory of all it granted_.--[MS.]
{138}[cd] _Some drown themselves, some in the vices grovel_.--[MS.]
[164] [Lady Caroline Lamb's _Glenarvon_ was published in 1816. For
Byron's farewell letter of dismissal, which Lady Caroline embodied in
her novel (vol. iii. chap. ix.), see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 135, note 1.
According to Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 274), Madame de Stael
catechized Byron with regard to the relation of the story to fact.]
{139}[ce]
_In their sweet feelings holily united,_
_By Solitude (soft parson) they were wed_.--[MS.]
[165] [Titus forebore to marry "Incesta" Berenice (see Juv., _Sat_. vi.
158), the daughter of Agrippa I., and wife of Herod, King of Chalcis,
out of regard to the national prejudice against intermarriage with an
alien.]
[166] [Caesar's third wife, Pompeia, was suspected of infidelity with
Clodius (see Langhorne's _Plutarch_, 1838, p. 498); Pompey's third wife,
Mucia, intrigued with Caesar (_vide ibid_., p. 447); Mahomet's favourite
wife, Ayesha, on one occasion incurred suspicion; Antonina, the wife of
Belisarius, was notoriously profligate (see Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_,
1825, iii. 432, 102).]
{140}[167] [Compare _Sardanapalus_, act i. sc. 2, line 252, _Poetical
Works_, 1901, v. 23, note 1.]
{141}[cf] _--of ticklish dust_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]
{142}[168] ["Mr. Hobhouse is at it again about indelicacy. There is _no
indelicacy_. If he wants _that_, let him read Swift, his great idol; but
his imagination must be a dunghill, with a viper's nest in the middle,
to engender such a supposition about this poem."--Letter to Murray, May
15, 1819, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 295.]
[cg] _Two hundred stanzas reckoned as before._--[MS.]
CANTO THE THIRD.[169]
I.
HAIL, Muse! _et cetera._--We left Juan sleeping,
Pillowed upon a fair and happy breast,
And watched by eyes that never yet knew weeping,
And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest
To feel the poison through her spirit creeping,
Or know who rested there, a foe to rest,
Had soiled the current of her sinless years,
And turned her pure heart's purest blood to tears!
II.
Oh, Love! what is it in this world of ours
Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah why
With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers,
And made thy best interpreter a sigh?
As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers,
And place them on their breast--but place to die--
Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish
Are laid within our bosoms but to perish.
III.
In her first passion Woman loves her lover,
In all the others all she loves is Love,
Which grows a habit she can ne'er get over,
And fits her loosely--like an easy glove,[ch]
As you may find, whene'er you like to prove her:
One man alone at first her heart can move;
She then prefers him in the plural number,
Not finding that the additions much encumber.
IV.
I know not if the fault be men's or theirs;
But one thing's pretty sure; a woman planted
(Unless at once she plunge for life in prayers)--
After a decent time must be gallanted;
Although, no doubt, her first of love affairs
Is that to which her heart is wholly granted;
Yet there are some, they say, who have had _none_,
But those who have ne'er end with only _one_.[170]
V.
'T is melancholy, and a fearful sign
Of human frailty, folly, also crime,
That Love and Marriage rarely can combine,
Although they both are born in the same clime;
Marriage from Love, like vinegar from wine--
A sad, sour, sober beverage--by Time
Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour
Down to a very homely household savour.
VI.
There's something of antipathy, as 't were,
Between their present and their future state;
A kind of flattery that's hardly fair
Is used until the truth arrives too late--
Yet what can people do, except despair?
The same things change their names at such a rate;
For instance--Passion in a lover's glorious,
But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.
VII.
Men grow ashamed of being so very fond;
They sometimes also get a little tired
(But that, of course, is rare), and then despond:
The same things cannot always be admired,
Yet 't is "so nominated in the bond,"[171]
That both are tied till one shall have expired.
Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorning
Our days, and put one's servants into mourning.
VIII.
There's doubtless something in domestic doings
Which forms, in fact, true Love's antithesis;
Romances paint at full length people's wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages;
For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,
There's nothing wrong in a connubial kiss:
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?[ci]
IX.
All tragedies are finished by a death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage;
The future states of both are left to faith,
For authors fear description might disparage
The worlds to come of both, or fall beneath,
And then both worlds would punish their miscarriage;
So leaving each their priest and prayer-book ready,
They say no more of Death or of the Lady.[172]
X.
The only two that in my recollection,
Have sung of Heaven and Hell, or marriage, are
Dante[173] and Milton,[174] and of both the affection
Was hapless in their nuptials, for some bar
Of fault or temper ruined the connection
(Such things, in fact, it don't ask much to mar);
But Dante's Beatrice and Milton's Eve
Were not drawn from their spouses, you conceive.
XI.
Some persons say that Dante meant Theology
By Beatrice, and not a mistress--I,
Although my opinion may require apology,
Deem this a commentator's phantasy,
Unless indeed it was from his own knowledge he
Decided thus, and showed good reason why;
I think that Dante's more abstruse ecstatics
Meant to personify the Mathematics.[175]
XII.
Haidee and Juan were not married, but
The fault was theirs, not mine: it is not fair,
Chaste reader, then, in any way to put
The blame on me, unless you wish they were;
Then if you'd have them wedded, please to shut
The book which treats of this erroneous pair,
Before the consequences grow too awful;
'T is dangerous to read of loves unlawful.
XIII.
Yet they were happy,--happy in the illicit
Indulgence of their innocent desires;
But more imprudent grown with every visit,
Haidee forgot the island was her Sire's;
When we have what we like 't is hard to miss it,
At least in the beginning, ere one tires;
Thus she came often, not a moment losing,
Whilst her piratical papa was cruising.
XIV.
Let not his mode of raising cash seem strange,
Although he fleeced the flags of every nation,
For into a Prime Minister but change
His title, and 't is nothing but taxation;
But he, more modest, took an humbler range
Of Life, and in an honester vocation
Pursued o'er the high seas his watery journey,[cj]
And merely practised as a sea-attorney.
XV.
The good old gentleman had been detained
By winds and waves, and some important captures;
And, in the hope of more, at sea remained,
Although a squall or two had damped his raptures,
By swamping one of the prizes; he had chained
His prisoners, dividing them like chapters
In numbered lots; they all had cuffs and collars,
And averaged each from ten to a hundred dollars.
XVI.
Some he disposed of off Cape Matapan,
Among his friends the Mainots; some he sold
To his Tunis correspondents, save one man
Tossed overboard unsaleable (being old);
The rest--save here and there some richer one,
Reserved for future ransom--in the hold,
Were linked alike, as, for the common people, he
Had a large order from the Dey of Tripoli.
XVII.
The merchandise was served in the same way,
Pieced out for different marts in the Levant,
Except some certain portions of the prey,
Light classic articles of female want,
French stuffs, lace, tweezers, toothpicks, teapot, tray,[ck]
Guitars and castanets from Alicant,
All which selected from the spoil he gathers,
Robbed for his daughter by the best of fathers.
XVIII.
A monkey, a Dutch mastiff, a mackaw,[176]
Two parrots, with a Persian cat and kittens,
He chose from several animals he saw--
A terrier, too, which once had been a Briton's,
Who dying on the coast of Ithaca,
The peasants gave the poor dumb thing a pittance:
These to secure in this strong blowing weather,
He caged in one huge hamper altogether.
XIX.
Then, having settled his marine affairs,
Despatching single cruisers here and there,
His vessel having need of some repairs,
He shaped his course to where his daughter fair
Continued still her hospitable cares;
But that part of the coast being shoal and bare,
And rough with reefs which ran out many a mile,
His port lay on the other side o' the isle.
XX.
And there he went ashore without delay,
Having no custom-house nor quarantine
To ask him awkward questions on the way,
About the time and place where he had been:
He left his ship to be hove down next day,
With orders to the people to careen;
So that all hands were busy beyond measure,
In getting out goods, ballast, guns, and treasure.
XXI.
Arriving at the summit of a hill
Which overlooked the white walls of his home,
He stopped.--What singular emotions fill
Their bosoms who have been induced to roam!
With fluttering doubts if all be well or ill--
With love for many, and with fears for some;
All feelings which o'erleap the years long lost,
And bring our hearts back to their starting-post.
XXII.
The approach of home to husbands and to sires,
After long travelling by land or water,
Most naturally some small doubt inspires--
A female family's a serious matter,
(None trusts the sex more, or so much admires--
But they hate flattery, so I never flatter);
Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler,
And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.
XXIII.
An honest gentleman at his return
May not have the good fortune of Ulysses;
Not all lone matrons for their husbands mourn,
Or show the same dislike to suitors' kisses;
The odds are that he finds a handsome urn
To his memory--and two or three young misses
Born to some friend, who holds his wife and riches--
And that _his_ Argus[177]--bites him by the breeches.
XXIV.
If single, probably his plighted Fair
Has in his absence wedded some rich miser;
But all the better, for the happy pair
May quarrel, and, the lady growing wiser,
He may resume his amatory care
As cavalier servente, or despise her;
And that his sorrow may not be a dumb one,
Writes odes on the Inconstancy of Woman.
XXV.
And oh! ye gentlemen who have already
Some chaste _liaison_ of the kind--I mean
An honest friendship with a married lady--
The only thing of this sort ever seen
To last--of all connections the most steady,
And the true Hymen, (the first's but a screen)--
Yet, for all that, keep not too long away--
I've known the absent wronged four times a day.[cl]
XXVI.
Lambro, our sea-solicitor, who had
Much less experience of dry land than Ocean,
On seeing his own chimney-smoke, felt glad;
But not knowing metaphysics, had no notion
Of the true reason of his not being sad,
Or that of any other strong emotion;
He loved his child, and would have wept the loss of her,
But knew the cause no more than a philosopher.
XXVII.
He saw his white walls shining in the sun,
His garden trees all shadowy and green;
He heard his rivulet's light bubbling run,
The distant dog-bark; and perceived between
The umbrage of the wood, so cool and dun,
The moving figures, and the sparkling sheen
Of arms (in the East all arm)--and various dyes
Of coloured garbs, as bright as butterflies.
XXVIII.
And as the spot where they appear he nears,
Surprised at these unwonted signs of idling,
He hears--alas! no music of the spheres,
But an unhallowed, earthly sound of fiddling!
A melody which made him doubt his ears,
The cause being past his guessing or unriddling;
A pipe, too, and a drum, and shortly after--
A most unoriental roar of laughter.
XXIX.
And still more nearly to the place advancing,
Descending rather quickly the declivity,
Through the waved branches o'er the greensward glancing,
'Midst other indications of festivity,
Seeing a troop of his domestics dancing
Like Dervises, who turn as on a pivot, he
Perceived it was the Pyrrhic dance[178] so martial,
To which the Levantines are very partial.
XXX.
And further on a troop of Grecian girls,[179]
The first and tallest her white kerchief waving,
Were strung together like a row of pearls,
Linked hand in hand, and dancing; each too having
Down her white neck long floating auburn curls--
(The least of which would set ten poets raving);[cm]
Their leader sang--and bounded to her song
With choral step and voice the virgin throng.
XXXI.
And here, assembled cross-legged round their trays,
Small social parties just begun to dine;
Pilaus and meats of all sorts met the gaze,
And flasks of Samian and of Chian wine,
And sherbet cooling in the porous vase;
Above them their dessert grew on its vine;--
The orange and pomegranate nodding o'er,
Dropped in their laps, scarce plucked, their mellow store.
XXXII.
A band of children, round a snow-white ram,[180]
There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers;
While peaceful as if still an unweaned lamb,
The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers
His sober head, majestically tame,
Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers
His brow, as if in act to butt, and then
Yielding to their small hands, draws back again.
XXXIII.
Their classical profiles, and glittering dresses,
Their large black eyes, and soft seraphic cheeks,
Crimson as cleft pomegranates, their long tresses,
The gesture which enchants, the eye that speaks,
The innocence which happy childhood blesses,
Made quite a picture of these little Greeks;
So that the philosophical beholder
Sighed for their sakes--that they should e'er grow older.
XXXIV.
Afar, a dwarf buffoon stood telling tales
To a sedate grey circle of old smokers,
Of secret treasures found in hidden vales,
Of wonderful replies from Arab jokers,
Of charms to make good gold and cure bad ails,
Of rocks bewitched that open to the knockers,
Of magic ladies who, by one sole act,
Transformed their lords to beasts (but that's a fact).
XXXV.
Here was no lack of innocent diversion
For the imagination or the senses,
Song, dance, wine, music, stories from the Persian,
All pretty pastimes in which no offence is;
But Lambro saw all these things with aversion,
Perceiving in his absence such expenses,
Dreading that climax of all human ills,
The inflammation of his weekly bills.
XXXVI.
Ah! what is man? what perils still environ[181]
The happiest mortals even after dinner!
A day of gold from out an age of iron
Is all that Life allows the luckiest sinner;
Pleasure (whene'er she sings, at least) 's a Siren,
That lures, to flay alive, the young beginner;
Lambro's reception at his people's banquet
Was such as fire accords to a wet blanket.
XXXVII.
He--being a man who seldom used a word
Too much, and wishing gladly to surprise
(In general he surprised men with the sword)
His daughter--had not sent before to advise
Of his arrival, so that no one stirred;
And long he paused to re-assure his eyes,
In fact much more astonished than delighted,
To find so much good company invited.
XXXVIII.
He did not know (alas! how men will lie)
That a report (especially the Greeks)
Avouched his death (such people never die),
And put his house in mourning several weeks,--
But now their eyes and also lips were dry;
The bloom, too, had returned to Haidee's cheeks:
Her tears, too, being returned into their fount,
She now kept house upon her own account.
XXXIX.
Hence all this rice, meat, dancing, wine, and fiddling,
Which turned the isle into a place of pleasure;
The servants all were getting drunk or idling,
A life which made them happy beyond measure.
Her father's hospitality seemed middling,
Compared with what Haidee did with his treasure;
'T was wonderful how things went on improving,
While she had not one hour to spare from loving.[cn]
XL.
Perhaps you think, in stumbling on this feast,
He flew into a passion, and in fact
There was no mighty reason to be pleased;
Perhaps you prophesy some sudden act,
The whip, the rack, or dungeon at the least,
To teach his people to be more exact,
And that, proceeding at a very high rate,
He showed the royal _penchants_ of a pirate.
XLI.
You're wrong.--He was the mildest mannered man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat;
With such true breeding of a gentleman,
You never could divine his real thought;
No courtier could, and scarcely woman can
Gird more deceit within a petticoat;
Pity he loved adventurous life's variety,
He was so great a loss to good society.
XLII.
Advancing to the nearest dinner tray,
Tapping the shoulder of the nighest guest,
With a peculiar smile, which, by the way,
Boded no good, whatever it expressed,
He asked the meaning of this holiday;
The vinous Greek to whom he had addressed
His question, much too merry to divine
The questioner, filled up a glass of wine,
XLIII.
And without turning his facetious head,
Over his shoulder, with a Bacchant air,
Presented the o'erflowing cup, and said,
"Talking's dry work, I have no time to spare."
A second hiccuped, "Our old Master's dead,
You'd better ask our Mistress who's his heir."
"Our Mistress!" quoth a third: "Our Mistress!--pooh!--
You mean our Master--not the old, but new."
XLIV.
These rascals, being new comers, knew not whom
They thus addressed--and Lambro's visage fell--
And o'er his eye a momentary gloom
Passed, but he strove quite courteously to quell
The expression, and endeavouring to resume
His smile, requested one of them to tell
The name and quality of his new patron,
Who seemed to have turned Haidee into a matron.
XLV.
"I know not," quoth the fellow, "who or what
He is, nor whence he came--and little care;
But this I know, that this roast capon's fat,
And that good wine ne'er washed down better fare;
And if you are not satisfied with that,
Direct your questions to my neighbour there;
He'll answer all for better or for worse,
For none likes more to hear himself converse."[182]
XLVI.
I said that Lambro was a man of patience,
And certainly he showed the best of breeding,
Which scarce even France, the Paragon of nations,
E'er saw her most polite of sons exceeding;
He bore these sneers against his near relations,
His own anxiety, his heart, too, bleeding,
The insults, too, of every servile glutton,
Who all the time was eating up his mutton.
XLVII.
Now in a person used to much command--
To bid men come, and go, and come again--
To see his orders done, too, out of hand--
Whether the word was death, or but the chain--
It may seem strange to find his manners bland;
Yet such things are, which I cannot explain,
Though, doubtless, he who can command himself
Is good to govern--almost as a Guelf.
XLVIII.
Not that he was not sometimes rash or so,
But never in his real and serious mood;
Then calm, concentrated, and still, and slow,
He lay coiled like the Boa in the wood;
With him it never was a word and blow,
His angry word once o'er, he shed no blood,
But in his silence there was much to rue,
And his _one_ blow left little work for _two_.
XLIX.
He asked no further questions, and proceeded
On to the house, but by a private way,
So that the few who met him hardly heeded,
So little they expected him that day;
If love paternal in his bosom pleaded
For Haidee's sake, is more than I can say,
But certainly to one deemed dead returning,
This revel seemed a curious mode of mourning.
L.
If all the dead could now return to life,
(Which God forbid!) or some, or a great many,
For instance, if a husband or his wife[co]
(Nuptial examples are as good as any),
No doubt whate'er might be their former strife,
The present weather would be much more rainy--
Tears shed into the grave of the connection
Would share most probably its resurrection.
LI.
He entered in the house no more his home,
A thing to human feelings the most trying,
And harder for the heart to overcome,
Perhaps, than even the mental pangs of dying;
To find our hearthstone turned into a tomb,
And round its once warm precincts palely lying
The ashes of our hopes, is a deep grief,
Beyond a _single gentleman's_ belief.
LII.
He entered in the house--his home no more,
For without hearts there is no home;--and felt
The solitude of passing his own door
Without a welcome: _there_ he long had dwelt,
There his few peaceful days Time had swept o'er,
There his worn bosom and keen eye would melt
Over the innocence of that sweet child,
His only shrine of feelings undefiled.
LIII.
He was a man of a strange temperament,
Of mild demeanour though of savage mood,
Moderate in all his habits, and content
With temperance in pleasure, as in food,
Quick to perceive, and strong to bear, and meant
For something better, if not wholly good;
His Country's wrongs and his despair to save her
Had stung him from a slave to an enslaver.
LIV.
The love of power, and rapid gain of gold,
The hardness by long habitude produced,
The dangerous life in which he had grown old,
The mercy he had granted oft abused,
The sights he was accustomed to behold,
The wild seas, and wild men with whom he cruised,
Had cost his enemies a long repentance,
And made him a good friend, but bad acquaintance.
LV.
But something of the spirit of old Greece
Flashed o'er his soul a few heroic rays,
Such as lit onward to the Golden Fleece
His predecessors in the Colchian days;
'T is true he had no ardent love for peace--
Alas! his country showed no path to praise:
Hate to the world and war with every nation
He waged, in vengeance of her degradation.
LVI.
Still o'er his mind the influence of the clime
Shed its Ionian elegance, which showed
Its power unconsciously full many a time,--
A taste seen in the choice of his abode,
A love of music and of scenes sublime,
A pleasure in the gentle stream that flowed
Past him in crystal, and a joy in flowers,
Bedewed his spirit in his calmer hours.
LVII.
But whatsoe'er he had of love reposed
On that beloved daughter; she had been
The only thing which kept his heart unclosed
Amidst the savage deeds he had done and seen,
A lonely pure affection unopposed:
There wanted but the loss of this to wean
His feelings from all milk of human kindness,
And turn him like the Cyclops mad with blindness.[cp]
LVIII.
The cubless tigress in her jungle raging
Is dreadful to the shepherd and the flock;
The Ocean when its yeasty war is waging
Is awful to the vessel near the rock;
But violent things will sooner bear assuaging,
Their fury being spent by its own shock,
Than the stern, single, deep, and wordless ire[cq]
Of a strong human heart, and in a Sire.
LIX.
It is a hard although a common case
To find our children running restive--they
In whom our brightest days we would retrace,
Our little selves re-formed in finer clay,
Just as old age is creeping on apace,
And clouds come o'er the sunset of our day,
They kindly leave us, though not quite alone,
But in good company--the gout or stone.
LX.
Yet a fine family is a fine thing
(Provided they don't come in after dinner);
'T is beautiful to see a matron bring
Her children up (if nursing them don't thin her);
Like cherubs round an altar-piece they cling
To the fire-side (a sight to touch a sinner).
A lady with her daughters or her nieces
Shine like a guinea and seven-shilling pieces.
LXI.
Old Lambro passed unseen a private gate,
And stood within his hall at eventide;
Meantime the lady and her lover sate
At wassail in their beauty and their pride:
An ivory inlaid table spread with state
Before them, and fair slaves on every side;[183]
Gems, gold, and silver, formed the service mostly,
Mother of pearl and coral the less costly.
LXII.
The dinner made about a hundred dishes;
Lamb and pistachio nuts--in short, all meats,
And saffron soups, and sweetbreads; and the fishes
Were of the finest that e'er flounced in nets,
Dressed to a Sybarite's most pampered wishes;
The beverage was various sherbets
Of raisin, orange, and pomegranate juice,
Squeezed through the rind, which makes it best for use.
LXIII.
These were ranged round, each in its crystal ewer,
And fruits, and date-bread loaves closed the repast,
And Mocha's berry, from Arabia pure,
In small fine China cups, came in at last;
Gold cups of filigree, made to secure
The hand from burning, underneath them placed;
Cloves, cinnamon, and saffron too were boiled
Up with the coffee, which (I think) they spoiled.
LXIV.
The hangings of the room were tapestry, made
Of velvet panels, each of different hue,
And thick with damask flowers of silk inlaid;
And round them ran a yellow border too;
The upper border, richly wrought, displayed,
Embroidered delicately o'er with blue,
Soft Persian sentences, in lilac letters,
From poets, or the moralists their betters.
LXV.
These Oriental writings on the wall,
Quite common in those countries, are a kind
Of monitors adapted to recall,
Like skulls at Memphian banquets, to the mind,
The words which shook Belshazzar in his hall,
And took his kingdom from him: You will find,
Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure,
There is no sterner moralist than Pleasure.
LXVI.
A Beauty at the season's close grown hectic,
A Genius who has drunk himself to death,
A Rake turned methodistic, or Eclectic--[184]
(For that's the name they like to pray beneath)--[cr]
But most, an Alderman struck apoplectic,
Are things that really take away the breath,--
And show that late hours, wine, and love are able
To do not much less damage than the table.
LXVII.
Haidee and Juan carpeted their feet
On crimson satin, bordered with pale blue;
Their sofa occupied three parts complete
Of the apartment--and appeared quite new;
The velvet cushions (for a throne more meet)
Were scarlet, from whose glowing centre grew
A sun embossed in gold, whose rays of tissue,
Meridian-like, were seen all light to issue.[cs]
LXVIII.
Crystal and marble, plate and porcelain,
Had done their work of splendour; Indian mats
And Persian carpets, which the heart bled to stain,
Over the floors were spread; gazelles and cats,
And dwarfs and blacks, and such like things, that gain
Their bread as ministers and favourites (that's
To say, by degradation) mingled there
As plentiful as in a court, or fair.
LXIX.
There was no want of lofty mirrors, and
The tables, most of ebony inlaid
With mother of pearl or ivory, stood at hand,
Or were of tortoise-shell or rare woods made,
Fretted with gold or silver:--by command
The greater part of these were ready spread
With viands and sherbets in ice--and wine--
Kept for all comers at all hours to dine.
LXX.
Of all the dresses I select Haidee's:
She wore two jelicks--one was of pale yellow;
Of azure, pink, and white was her chemise--
'Neath which her breast heaved like a little billow:
With buttons formed of pearls as large as peas,
All gold and crimson shone her jelick's fellow,
And the striped white gauze baracan that bound her,
Like fleecy clouds about the moon, flowed round her.
LXXI.
One large gold bracelet clasped each lovely arm,
Lockless--so pliable from the pure gold
That the hand stretched and shut it without harm,
The limb which it adorned its only mould;
So beautiful--its very shape would charm,
And clinging, as if loath to lose its hold,
The purest ore enclosed the whitest skin
That e'er by precious metal was held in.[185]
LXXII.
Around, as Princess of her father's land,
A like gold bar above her instep rolled[186]
Announced her rank; twelve rings were on her hand;
Her hair was starred with gems; her veil's fine fold
Below her breast was fastened with a band
Of lavish pearls, whose worth could scarce be told;
Her orange silk full Turkish trousers furled
About the prettiest ankle in the world.
LXXIII.
Her hair's long auburn waves down to her heel
Flowed like an Alpine torrent which the sun
Dyes with his morning light,--and would conceal
Her person[187] if allowed at large to run,
And still they seemed resentfully to feel
The silken fillet's curb, and sought to shun
Their bonds whene'er some Zephyr caught began
To offer his young pinion as her fan.
LXXIV.
Round her she made an atmosphere of life,[188]
The very air seemed lighter from her eyes,
They were so soft and beautiful, and rife
With all we can imagine of the skies,
And pure as Psyche ere she grew a wife--
Too pure even for the purest human ties;
Her overpowering presence made you feel
It would not be idolatry to kneel.[189]
LXXV.
Her eyelashes, though dark as night, were tinged
(It is the country's custom, but in vain),
For those large black eyes were so blackly fringed,
The glossy rebels mocked the jetty stain,
And in their native beauty stood avenged:
Her nails were touched with henna; but, again,
The power of Art was turned to nothing, for
They could not look more rosy than before.
LXXVI.
The henna should be deeply dyed to make
The skin relieved appear more fairly fair;
She had no need of this, day ne'er will break
On mountain tops more heavenly white than her:
The eye might doubt if it were well awake,
She was so like a vision; I might err,
But Shakespeare also says, 't is very silly
"To gild refined gold, or paint the lily."[190]
LXXVII.
Juan had on a shawl of black and gold,
But a white baracan, and so transparent
The sparkling gems beneath you might behold,
Like small stars through the milky way apparent;
His turban, furled in many a graceful fold,
An emerald aigrette, with Haidee's hair in 't,
Surmounted as its clasp--a glowing crescent,
Whose rays shone ever trembling, but incessant.
LXXVIII.
And now they were diverted by their suite,
Dwarfs, dancing girls, black eunuchs, and a poet,
Which made their new establishment complete;
The last was of great fame, and liked to show it;
His verses rarely wanted their due feet--
And for his theme--he seldom sung below it,
He being paid to satirise or flatter,
As the Psalm says, "inditing a good matter."
LXXIX.
He praised the present, and abused the past,
Reversing the good custom of old days,
An Eastern anti-jacobin at last
He turned, preferring pudding to _no_ praise--
For some few years his lot had been o'ercast
By his seeming independent in his lays,
But now he sung the Sultan and the Pacha--
With truth like Southey, and with verse[191] like Crashaw.[ct]
LXXX.
He was a man who had seen many changes,
And always changed as true as any needle;
His Polar Star being one which rather ranges,
And not the fixed--he knew the way to wheedle:
So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges;
And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill),
He lied with such a fervour of intention--
There was no doubt he earned his laureate pension.
LXXXI.
But _he_ had genius,--when a turncoat has it,
The _Vates irritabilis_[192] takes care
That without notice few full moons shall pass it;
Even good men like to make the public stare:--
But to my subject--let me see--what was it?--
Oh!--the third canto--and the pretty pair--
Their loves, and feasts, and house, and dress, and mode
Of living in their insular abode.
LXXXII.
Their poet, a sad trimmer, but, no less,[cu]
In company a very pleasant fellow,
Had been the favourite of full many a mess
Of men, and made them speeches when half mellow;[cv]
And though his meaning they could rarely guess,
Yet still they deigned to hiccup or to bellow
The glorious meed of popular applause,
Of which the first ne'er knows the second cause.[cw]
LXXXIII.
But now being lifted into high society,
And having picked up several odds and ends
Of free thoughts in his travels for variety,
He deemed, being in a lone isle, among friends,
That, without any danger of a riot, he
Might for long lying make himself amends;
And, singing as he sung in his warm youth,
Agree to a short armistice with Truth.
LXXXIV.
He had travelled 'mongst the Arabs, Turks, and Franks,
And knew the self-loves of the different nations;
And having lived with people of all ranks,
Had something ready upon most occasions--
Which got him a few presents and some thanks.
He varied with some skill his adulations;
To "do at Rome as Romans do,"[193] a piece
Of conduct was which _he_ observed in Greece.
LXXXV.
Thus, usually, when _he_ was asked to sing,
He gave the different nations something national;
'T was all the same to him--"God save the King,"
Or "Ca ira," according to the fashion all:
His Muse made increment of anything,
From the high lyric down to the low rational;[cx][194]
If Pindar sang horse-races, what should hinder
Himself from being as pliable as Pindar?
LXXXVI.
In France, for instance, he would write a chanson;
In England a six canto quarto tale;
In Spain he'd make a ballad or romance on
The last war--much the same in Portugal;
In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on
Would be old Goethe's--(see what says De Stael);[195]
In Italy he'd ape the "Trecentisti;"
In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t' ye:[196]
1.
The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of War and Peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their Sun, is set.
2.
The Scian and the Teian muse,
The Hero's harp, the Lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse:
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your Sires' "Islands of the Blest."[197]
3.
The mountains look on Marathon--[cy]
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
4.[198]
A King sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;--all were his!
He counted them at break of day--
And, when the Sun set, where were they?
5.
And where are they? and where art thou,
My Country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now--
The heroic bosom beats no more![cz]
And must thy Lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
6.
'T is something, in the dearth of Fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush--for Greece a tear.
7.
Must _we_ but weep o'er days more blest?
Must _we_ but blush?--Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!
8.
What, silent still? and silent all?
Ah! no;--the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, "Let one living head,
But one arise,--we come, we come!"
'T is but the living who are dumb.
9.
In vain--in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call--
How answers each bold Bacchanal!
10.
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,[199]
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave--
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
11.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon's song divine:
He served--but served Polycrates--[200]
A Tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.
12.
The Tyrant of the Chersonese
Was Freedom's best and bravest friend;
_That_ tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh! that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.
13.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.[da]
14.
Trust not for freedom to the Franks--[201]
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords, and native ranks,
The only hope of courage dwells;
But Turkish force, and Latin fraud,
Would break your shield, however broad.
15.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade--
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
16.
Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,[202]
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine--
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!
LXXXVII.
Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung,
The modern Greek, in tolerable verse;
If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young,
Yet in these times he might have done much worse:
His strain displayed some feeling--right or wrong;
And feeling,[203] in a poet, is the source
Of others' feeling; but they are such liars,
And take all colours--like the hands of dyers.
LXXXVIII.
But words are things,[204] and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;
'T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper--even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his!
LXXXIX.
And when his bones are dust, his grave a blank,
His station, generation, even his nation,
Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank
In chronological commemoration,
Some dull MS. Oblivion long has sank,
Or graven stone found in a barrack's station
In digging the foundation of a closet,[db]
May turn his name up, as a rare deposit.
XC.
And Glory long has made the sages smile;
'T is something, nothing, words, illusion, wind--
Depending more upon the historian's style
Than on the name a person leaves behind:
Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle:[205]
The present century was growing blind
To the great Marlborough's skill in giving knocks,
Until his late Life by Archdeacon Coxe.[206]
XCI.
Milton's the Prince of poets--so we say;
A little heavy, but no less divine:
An independent being in his day--
Learned, pious, temperate in love and wine;
But, his life falling into Johnson's way,
We're told this great High Priest of all the Nine
Was whipped at college--a harsh sire--odd spouse,
For the first Mrs. Milton left his house.[207]
XCII.
All these are, _certes_, entertaining facts,
Like Shakespeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes;
Like Titus' youth, and Caesar's earliest acts;[208]
Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes);[209]
Like Cromwell's pranks;[210]--but although Truth exacts
These amiable descriptions from the scribes,
As most essential to their Hero's story,
They do not much contribute to his glory.
XCIII.
All are not moralists, like Southey, when
He prated to the world of "Pantisocracy;"[211]
Or Wordsworth unexcised,[212] unhired, who then
Seasoned his pedlar poems with Democracy;[dc]
Or Coleridge[213] long before his flighty pen
Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy;[dd]
When he and Southey, following the same path,
Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).[214]
XCIV.
Such names at present cut a convict figure,
The very Botany Bay in moral geography;
Their loyal treason, renegado rigour,
Are good manure for their more bare biography;
Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger
Than any since the birthday of typography;
A drowsy, frowzy poem, called the "Excursion,"
Writ in a manner which is my aversion.
XCV.
He there builds up a formidable dyke
Between his own and others' intellect;
But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like
Joanna Southcote's Shiloh[215] and her sect,
Are things which in this century don't strike
The public mind,--so few are the elect;
And the new births of both their stale Virginities
Have proved but Dropsies, taken for Divinities.
XCVI.
But let me to my story: I must own,
If I have any fault, it is digression,
Leaving my people to proceed alone,
While I soliloquize beyond expression:
But these are my addresses from the throne,
Which put off business to the ensuing session:
Forgetting each omission is a loss to
The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.
XCVII.
I know that what our neighbours call _"longueurs,"_
(We've not so good a _word_, but have the _thing_,
In that complete perfection which insures
An epic from Bob Southey every spring--)
Form not the true temptation which allures
The reader; but 't would not be hard to bring
Some fine examples of the _Epopee_,
To prove its grand ingredient is _Ennui_.[216]
XCVIII.
We learn from Horace, "Homer sometimes sleeps;"[217]
We feel without him,--Wordsworth sometimes wakes,--
To show with what complacency he creeps,
With his dear "_Waggoners_," around his lakes.[218]
He wishes for "a boat" to sail the deeps--
Of Ocean?--No, of air; and then he makes
Another outcry for "a little boat,"
And drivels seas to set it well afloat.[219]
XCIX.
If he must fain sweep o'er the ethereal plain,
And Pegasus runs restive in his "Waggon,"
Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain?
Or pray Medea for a single dragon?[220]
Or if, too classic for his vulgar brain,
He feared his neck to venture such a nag on,
And he must needs mount nearer to the moon,
Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon?
C.
"Pedlars," and "Boats," and "Waggons!" Oh! ye shades
Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this?
That trash of such sort not alone evades
Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss
Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades
Of sense and song above your graves may hiss--
The "little boatman" and his _Peter Bell_
Can sneer at him who drew "Achitophel!"[221]
CI.
T' our tale.--The feast was over, the slaves gone,
The dwarfs and dancing girls had all retired;
The Arab lore and Poet's song were done,
And every sound of revelry expired;
The lady and her lover, left alone,
The rosy flood of Twilight's sky admired;--
Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea,
That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee!
CII.
Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!
The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o'er the earth--so beautiful and soft--
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,[de]
Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,
And not a breath crept through the rosy air,
And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer.
CIII.
Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! 't is the hour of Love!
Ave Maria! may our spirits dare
Look up to thine and to thy Son's above!
Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!
Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty Dove--
What though 't is but a pictured image?--strike--
That painting is no idol,--'t is too like.
CIV.
Some kinder casuists are pleased to say,
In nameless print[df]--that I have no devotion;
But set those persons down with me to pray,
And you shall see who has the properest notion
Of getting into Heaven the shortest way;
My altars are the mountains and the Ocean,
Earth--air--stars,[222]--all that springs from the great Whole,
Who hath produced, and will receive the Soul.
CV.
Sweet Hour of Twilight!--in the solitude
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er,
To where the last Caesarean fortress stood,[223]
Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore
And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee![224]
CVI.
The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,
Making their summer lives one ceaseless song,
Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine,
And Vesper bell's that rose the boughs along;
The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,
His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng
Which learned from this example not to fly
From a true lover,--shadowed my mind's eye.[225]
CVII.
Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things--[226]
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlaboured steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.
CVIII.
Soft Hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day
When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way
As the far bell of Vesper makes him start,
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay;[227]
Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
Ah! surely Nothing dies but Something mourns!
CIX.
When Nero perished by the justest doom
Which ever the Destroyer yet destroyed,
Amidst the roar of liberated Rome,
Of nations freed, and the world overjoyed,
Some hands unseen strewed flowers upon his tomb:[228]
Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void
Of feeling for some kindness done, when Power
Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour.
CX.
But I'm digressing; what on earth has Nero,
Or any such like sovereign buffoons,[dg]
To do with the transactions of my hero,
More than such madmen's fellow man--the moon's?
Sure my invention must be down at zero,
And I grown one of many "Wooden Spoons"
Of verse, (the name with which we Cantabs please
To dub the last of honours in degrees).
CXI.
I feel this tediousness will never do--
T' is being _too_ epic, and I must cut down
(In copying) this long canto into two;
They'll never find it out, unless I own
The fact, excepting some experienced few;
And then as an improvement 't will be shown:
I'll prove that such the opinion of the critic is
From Aristotle _passim_.--See [Greek: POIAETIKAES].[229]
FOOTNOTES:
[169] [November 30, 1819. Copied in 1820 (MS.D.). Moore (_Life_, 421)
says that Byron was at work on the third canto when he stayed with him
at Venice, in October, 1819. "One day, before dinner, [he] read me two
or three hundred lines of it; beginning with the stanzas "Oh
Wellington," etc., which, at the time, formed the opening of the third
canto, but were afterwards reserved for the commencement of the ninth."
The third canto, as it now stands, was completed by November 8, 1819;
see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 375. The date on the MS. may refer to the first
fair copy.]
{144}[ch] _And fits her like a stocking or a glove_.--[MS. D.]
[170] ["On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu de galanterie,
mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en aient jamais eu
qu'une."--_Reflexions_ ... du Duc de la Rochefoucauld, No. lxxiii.
Byron prefixed the maxim as a motto to his "Ode to a Lady whose Lover
was killed by a Ball, which at the same time shivered a Portrait next
his Heart."--_Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 552.]
{145}[171] [_Merchant of Venice_, act iv. sc. 1, line 254.]
[ci]
_Had Petrarch's passion led to Petrarch's wedding,_
_How many sonnets had ensued the bedding?_--[MS.]
[172] [The Ballad of "Death and the Lady" was printed in a small volume,
entitled _A Guide to Heaven_, 1736, 12mo. It is mentioned in _The Vicar
of Wakefield_ (chap. xvii.), _Works of Oliver Goldsmith_, 1854, i. 369.
See _Old English Popular Music_, by William Chappell, F.S.A., 1893, ii.
170, 171.]
{146}[173] [See _The Prophecy of Dante,_ Canto I. lines 172-174,
_Poetical Works,_ 1901, iv. 253, note 1.]
[174] Milton's first wife ran away from him within the first month. If
she had not, what would John Milton have done?
[Mary Powell did not "run away," but at the end of the honeymoon
obtained her husband's consent to visit her family at Shotover, "upon a
promise of returning at Michaelmas." "And in the mean while his studies
went on very vigorously; and his chief diversion, after the business of
the day, was now and then in an evening to visit the Lady Margaret
Lee.... This lady, being a woman of excellent wit and understanding, had
a particular honour for our author, and took great delight in his
conversation; as likewise did her husband, Captain Hobson." See, too,
his sonnet "To the Lady Margaret Ley."--_The Life of Milton_ (by Thomas
Newton, D.D.), _Paradise Regained,_ ed. (Baskerville), 1758, pp. xvii.,
xviii.]
[175] ["Yesterday a very pretty letter from Annabella.... She is a
poetess--a mathematician--a metaphysician."--_Journal_ November 30,
1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 357.]
{147}[cj]
_Displayed much more of nerve, perhaps, of wit,_
_Than any of the parodies of Pitt_.--[MS.]
{148}[ck] _---- toothpicks, a bidet_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]
"_Dr. Murray--As you are squeamish you may put 'teapot, tray,' in case
the other piece of feminine furniture frightens you.--B._"
[176] [For Byron's menagerie, see _Werner_, act i. sc. 1, line 216,
_Poetical Works_, 1902, v. 348, note 1.]
{149}[177] ["But as for canine recollections ... I had one (half a
_wolf_ by the she-side) that doted on me at ten years old, and very
nearly ate me at twenty. When I thought he was going to enact Argus, he
bit away the backside of my breeches, and never would consent to any
kind of recognition, in despite of all kinds of bones which I offered
him."--Letter to Moore, January 19, 1815, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 171,
172. Compare, too, _Childe Harold_, Canto I. Song, stanza ix., _Poetical
Works_, 1899, ii. 30.]
{150}[cl]
_Yet for all that don't stay away too long,_
_A sofa, like a bed, may come by wrong_.--[MS.]
_I've known the friend betrayed_----.--[MS. D.]
{151}[178] [The Pyrrhic war-dance represented "by rapid movements of the
body, the way in which missiles and blows from weapons were avoided, and
also the mode in which the enemy was attacked" (_Dict. of Ant._).
Dodwell (_Tour through Greece_, 1819, ii. 21, 22) observes that in
Thessaly and Macedon dances are performed at the present day by men
armed with their musket and sword. See, too, Hobhouse's description
(_Travels in Albania_, 1858, i. 166, 167) of the Albanian war-dance at
Loutraki.]
[179] ["Their manner of dancing is certainly the same that Diana is
_sung_ to have danced on the banks of Eurotas. The great lady still
leads the dance, and is followed by a troop of young girls, who imitate
her steps, and, if she sings, make up the chorus. The tunes are
extremely gay and lively, yet with something in them wonderfully soft.
The steps are varied according to the pleasure of her that leads the
dance, but always in exact time, and infinitely more agreeable than any
of our dances."--Lady M.W. Montagu to Pope, April 1, O.S., 1817,
_Letters, etc._, 1816, p. 138. The "kerchief-waving" dance is the
_Romaika_. See _The Waltz_, line 125, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 492,
note 1. See, too, _Voyage Pittoresque_ ... by the Comte de
Choiseul-Gouffier, 1782, vol. i. Planche 33.]
[cm] _That would have set Tom Moore, though married, raving._--[MS.]
{152}[180] ["Upon the whole, I think the part of _Don Juan_ in which
Lambro's return to his home, and Lambro himself are described, is the
best, that is, the most individual, thing in all I know of Lord B.'s
works. The festal abandonment puts one in mind of Nicholas Poussin's
pictures."--_Table Talk_ of S.T. Coleridge, June 7, 1824.]
{153}[181] [Compare _Hudibras_, Part I. canto iii. lines 1, 2--
"Ay me! what perils do environ
The man that meddles with cold iron!"
Byron's friend, C.S. Matthews, shouted these lines, _con intenzione_,
under the windows of a Cambridge tradesman named Hiron, who had been
instrumental in the expulsion from the University of Sir Henry Smyth, a
riotous undergraduate. (See letter to Murray, October 19, 1820.)]
{154}[cn]
_All had been open, heart, and open house,_
_Ever since Juan served her for a spouse._--[MS.]
{155}[182]
["Rispose allor Margutte: a dirtel tosto,
Io non credo piu al nero ch' all' azzurro;
Ma nel cappone, o lesso, o vuogli arrosto,
E credo alcuna volta anche nel burro;
Nella cervogia, e quando io n' ho nel mosto,
E molto piu nell' aspro che il mangurro;
Ma sopra tutto nel buon vino ho fede,
E credo che sia salvo chi gli crede."
Pulci, _Morgante Maggiore_, Canto XVIII. stanza cxv.]
{157}[co] _For instance, if a first or second wife._--[MS.]
{159}[cp]
_And send him forth like Samson strong in blindness_.--[MS. D.]
_And make him Samson-like--more fierce with blindness_.--[MS. M.]
[cq]
_Not so the single, deep, and wordless ire,_
_Of a strong human heart_--.--[MS.]
{160}[183] ["Almost all _Don Juan_ is _real_ life, either my own, or
from people I knew. By the way, much of the description of the
_furniture_, in Canto Third, is taken from _Tully's Tripoli_ (pray _note
this_), and the rest from my own observation. Remember, I never meant to
conceal this at all, and have only not stated it, because _Don Juan_ had
no preface, nor name to it."--Letter to Murray, August 23, 1821,
_Letters_, 1901, v. 346.
The first edition of _"Tully's Tripoli"_ is entitled _Narrative of a Ten
Years' Residence in Tripoli In Africa: From the original correspondence
in the possession of the Family of the late Richard Tully, Esq., the
British Consul_, 1816, 410. The book is in the form of letters (so says
the _Preface_) written by the Consul's sister. The description of
Haidee's _dress_ is taken from the account of a visit to Lilla Kebbiera,
the wife of the Bashaw (p. 30); the description of the furniture and
refreshments from the account of a visit to "Lilla Amnani," Hadgi
Abderrahmam's Greek wife (pp. 132-137). It is evident that the "Chiel"
who took _these_ "notes" was the Consul's _sister_, not the Consul:
"Lilla Aisha, the Bey's wife, is thought to be very sensible, though
rather haughty. Her apartments were grand, and herself superbly habited.
Her chemise was covered with gold embroidery at the neck; over it she
wore a gold and silver tissue _jileck_, or jacket without sleeves, and
over that another of purple velvet richly laced with gold, with coral
and pearl buttons set quite close together down the front; it had short
sleeves finished with a gold band not far below the shoulder, and
discovered a wide loose chemise of transparent gauze, with gold, silver,
and ribband strips. She wore round her ancles ... a sort of fetter made
of a thick bar of gold so fine that they bound it round the leg with one
hand; it is an inch and a half wide, and as much in thickness: each of
these weighs four pounds. Just above this a band three inches wide of
gold thread finished the ends of a pair of trousers made of pale yellow
and white silk."
Page 132. "[Lilla] rose to take coffee, which was served in very small
china cups, placed in silver filigree cups; and gold filigree cups were
put under those presented to the married ladies. They had introduced
cloves, cinnamon, and saffron into the coffee, which was abundantly
sweetened; but this mixture was very soon changed, and replaced by
excellent simple coffee for the European ladies...."
Page 133. "The Greek then shewed us the gala furniture of her own
room.... The hangings of the room were of tapestry, made in pannels of
different coloured velvets, thickly inlaid with flowers of silk damask;
a yellow border, of about a foot in depth, finished the tapestry at top
and bottom, the upper border being embroidered with Moorish sentences
from the Koran in lilac letters. The carpet was of crimson satin, with a
deep border of pale blue quilted; this is laid over Indian mats and
other carpets. In the best part of the room the sofa is placed, which
occupies three sides in an alcove, the floor of which is raised. The
sofa and the cushions that lay around were of crimson velvet, the centre
cushions were embroidered with a sun in gold of highly embossed work,
the rest were of gold and silver tissue. The curtains of the alcove were
made to match those before the bed. A number of looking-glasses, and a
profusion of fine china and chrystal completed the ornaments and
furniture of the room, in which were neither tables nor chairs. A small
table, about six inches high, is brought in when refreshments are
served; it is of ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell,
ivory, gold and silver, of choice woods, or of plain mahogany, according
to the circumstances of the proprietor."
Page 136. "On the tables were placed all sorts of refreshments, and
thirty or forty dishes of meat and poultry, dressed different ways;
there were no knives nor forks, and only a few spoons of gold, silver,
ivory, or coral...."
Page 137. "The beverage was various sherbets, some composed of the juice
of boiled raisins, very sweet; some of the juice of pomegranates
squeezed through the rind; and others of the pure juice of oranges.
These sherbets were copiously supplied in high glass ewers, placed in
great numbers on the ground.... After the dishes of meat were removed, a
dessert of Arabian fruits, confectionaries, and sweetmeats was served;
among the latter was the date-bread. This sweetmeat is made in
perfection only by the blacks at Fezzan, of the ripe date of the
country.... They make it in the shape of loaves, weighing from twenty to
thirty pounds; the stones of the fruit are taken out, and the dates
simply pressed together with great weights; thus preserved, it keeps
perfectly good for a year."]
{162}[184] ["He writes like a man who has that clear perception of the
truth of things which is the result of the guilty knowledge of good and
evil; and who, by the light of that knowledge, has deliberately
preferred the evil with a proud malignity of purpose, which would seem
to leave little for the last consummating change to accomplish. When he
calculates that the reader is on the verge of pitying him, he takes care
to throw him back the defiance of laughter, as if to let him know that
all the Poet's pathos is but the sentimentalism of the drunkard between
his cups, or the relenting softness of the courtesan, who the next
moment resumes the bad boldness of her degraded character. With such a
man, who would wish either to laugh or to weep?"--_Eclectic Review_
(Lord Byron's _Mazeppa_), August, 1819, vol. xii. p. 150.]
[cr] _For that's the name they like to cant beneath._--[MS.]
{163}[cs] _The upholsterer's_ "fiat lux" _had bade to issue._--[MS.]
{164}[185] This dress is Moorish, and the bracelets and bar are worn in
the manner described. The reader will perceive hereafter, that as the
mother of Haidee was of Fez, her daughter wore the garb of the country.
[_Vide ante, p. 160, note 1._]
[186] The bar of gold above the instep is a mark of sovereign rank in
the women of the families of the Deys, and is worn as such by their
female relatives. [_Vide ibid._]
[187] This is no exaggeration: there were four women whom I remember to
have seen, who possessed their hair in this profusion; of these, three
were English, the other was a Levantine. Their hair was of that length
and quantity, that, when let down, it almost entirely shaded the person,
so as nearly to render dress a superfluity. Of these, only one had dark
hair; the Oriental's had, perhaps, the lightest colour of the four.
[188] [Compare--
"Yet there was round thee such a dawn
Of Light ne'er seen before,
As Fancy never could have drawn,
And never can restore."
Song by Rev. C. Wolfe (1791-1823).
Compare, too--
"She was a form of Life and Light
That, seen, became a part of sight."
_The Giaour_, lines 1127, 1128.]
{165}[189]
[" ... but Psyche owns no lord--
She walks a goddess from above;
All saw, all praised her, all adored,
But no one ever dared to love."
_The Golden Ass of Apuleius; in English verse, entitled Cupid and
Psyche_, by Hudson Gurney, 1799.]
[190] [_King John_, act iv. sc. 2, line 11.]
{166}[191] ["Richard Crashaw (died 1650), the friend of Cowley, was
honoured," says Warton, "with the praise of Pope; who both read his
poems and borrowed from them. After he was ejected from his Fellowship
at Peterhouse for denying the covenant, he turned Roman Catholic, and
died canon of the church at Loretto." Cowley sang his _In Memoriam_--
"_Angels_ (they say) brought the famed _Chappel_ there;
And bore the sacred Load in Triumph through the air:--
'T is surer much they brought thee there, and _They_,
And _Thou_, their charge, went _singing_ all the way."
_The Works, etc._, 1668, pp. 29, 30.]
[ct] _Believed like Southey--and perused like Crashaw._--[MS.]
{167}[192] [The second chapter of Coleridge's _Biographia Literaria_ is
on the "supposed irritability of men of genius." Ed. 1847, i. 29.]
[cu] _Their poet a sad Southey_.--[MS. D.]
[cv] _Of rogues_--.--[MS. D.]
[cw] _Of which the causers never know the cause_.--[MS. D.]
{168}[193] [_Vide St. August. Epist._, xxxvi., cap. xiv., "Ille
[Ambrosius, Mediolanensis Episcopus] adjecit; Quando hic sum, non jejuno
sabbato; quando Romae sum, jejuno sabbato."--Migne's _Patrologiae
Cursus_, 1845, xxxiii. 151.]
[cx] _From the high lyrical to the low rational_.--[MS.D.]
[194] [The allusion is to Coleridge's eulogy of Southey in the
Biographia Literaria (ed. 1847, i. 61): "In poetry he has attempted
almost every species of composition known before, and he has added new
ones; and if we except the very highest lyric ... he has attempted every
species successfully." But the satire, primarily and ostensibly aimed at
Southey, now and again glances at Southey's eulogist.]
[195] ["Goethe pourroit representer la litterature allemande toute
entiere."--_De L'Allemagne_, par Mme. la Baronne de Stael-Holstein,
1818, i. 227.]
[196] [The poet is not "a sad Southey," but is sketched from memory.
"Lord Byron," writes Finlay (_History of Greece_, vi. 335, note), "used
to describe an evening passed in the company of Londos [a Morean
landowner, who took part in the first and second Greek Civil Wars], at
Vostitza (in 1809), when both were young men, with a spirit that
rendered the scene worthy of a place in _Don Juan_. After supper Londos,
who had the face and figure of a chimpanzee, sprang upon a table, ...
and commenced singing through his nose Rhiga's Hymn to Liberty. A new
cadi, passing near the house, inquired the cause of the discordant
hubbub. A native Mussulman replied, 'It is only the young primate
Londos, who is drunk, and is singing hymns to the new panaghia of the
Greeks, whom they call Eleutheria.'" (See letter to Andreas Londos
(undated), _Letters_, 1901, vi. 320, note 1.)]
{169}[197] The [Greek: Maka/ron nesoi] [Hesiod, _Works and Days_, line
169] of the Greek poets were supposed to have been the Cape de Verd
Islands, or the Canaries.
[cy]
_Euboea looks on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea, etc._--[MS.]
[198] [See AEschylus, _Persae_, 463, sq.; and Herodotus, viii. 90.
Harpocration records the preservation, in the Acropolis, of the
silver-footed throne on which Xerxes sat when he watched the battle of
Salamis from the slope of Mount AEgaleos.]
{170}[cz] _The Heroic heart awakes no more_.--[MS. D.]
{171}[199] [For "that most ancient military dance, the _Pyrrhica_," see
_Travels_, by E.D. Clarke, 1814, part ii. sect. 11, p. 641; and for
specimens of "Cadmean characters," _vide ibid._, p. 593.]
[200] [After his birthplace Teos was taken by the Persians, B.C. 510,
Anacreon migrated to Abdera, but afterwards lived at Samos, under the
protection of Polycrates.]
[da] _Which Hercules might deem his own._--[MS.]
{172}[201] [See the translation of a speech delivered to the Pargiots,
in 1815, by an aged citizen: "I exhort you well to consider, before you
yield yourselves up to the English, that the King of England now has in
his pay all the kings of Europe--obtaining money for this purpose from
his merchants; whence, should it become advantageous to the merchants to
sell you, in order to conciliate Ali, and obtain certain commercial
advantages in his harbours, the _English will sell you to Ali._"
--"Parga," _Edinburgh Review_, October, 1819. vol. 32, pp. 263-293.
Here, perhaps, the "Franks" are the Russians. Compare--
"Greeks only should free Greece,
Not the barbarian with his masque of peace."
_The Age of Bronze_, lines 298, 299, _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 557,
note 1.]
[202]
[Greek: Genoi/man, i(/n' y(laen e)/pesti po/n-]
[Greek: tou pro/blem' a(likyston, a)/-]
[Greek: kran y(po\ pla/ka Souni/ou, k.t.l.]
Sophocles, _Ajax_, lines 1190-1192.]
{173}[203] [Compare--
"What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in _its_ turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating."
Matthew Arnold (Motto to _Poems_, 1869, vol. i. Fly-leaf).]
[204] [For this "sentence," see _Journal_, November 16, 1813, _Letters_,
1898, ii. 320, note 1; see, too, letter to Rogers, 1814, _Letters_,
1899, iii. 89, note 1.]
[db] _In digging drains for a new water-closet._--[MS.]
[205] [For Edmund Hoyle (1672-1769), see _English Bards, etc._, lines
966-968, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 372, note 4.]
{174}[206] [William Coxe (1747-1828), Archdeacon of Wilts, a voluminous
historian and biographer, published _Memoirs of John, Duke of
Marlborough_, in 1817-1819.]
[207] [See _Life of Milton, Works_ of Samuel Johnson, 1825, vii. pp. 67,
68, 80, _et vide ante_, p. 146, note 2.]
[208] [According to Suetonius, the youthful Titus amused himself by
copying handwriting, and boasted that he could have made a first-rate
_falsarius_. One of Caesar's "earliest acts" was to crucify some jovial
pirates, who had kidnapped him, and with whom he pretended to be on
pleasant if not friendly terms.]
[209] [James Currie, M.D. (1756-1805), published, anonymously, the
_Works of Robert Burns, with an account of his Life, etc._, in 1800.]
[210] ["He [Cromwell] was very notorious for robbing orchards, a puerile
crime ... but grown so scandalous and injurious by the frequent spoyls
and damages of Trees, breaking of Hedges, and Inclosures, committed by
this _Apple-Dragon_, that many solemn complaints were made both to his
Father and Mother for redresse thereof; which missed not their
satisfaction and expiation out of his hide," etc.--_Flagellum_, by James
Heath, 1663, p. 5. See, too, for his "name of a Royster" at Cambridge,
_A Short View of the Late Troubles in England_, by Sir William Dugdale,
1681, p. 459.]
{175}[211] [In _The Friend_, 1818, ii. 38, Coleridge refers to "a plan
... of trying the experiment of human perfectibility on the banks of the
Susquehanna;" and Southey, in his _Letter to William Smith, Esq._
(1817), (_Essays Moral and Political_, by Robert Southey, 1832, ii. 17),
speaks of his "purpose to retire with a few friends into the wilds of
America, and there lay the foundations of a community," etc.; but the
word "_Pantisocracy_" is not mentioned. It occurs, perhaps, for the
first time in print, in George Dyer's biographical sketch of Southey,
which he contributed to _Public Characters of 1799-1800_, p. 225,
"Coleridge, no less than Southey, possessed a strong passion for poetry.
They commenced, like two young poets, an enthusiastic friendship, and in
connection with others, struck out a plan for settling in America, and
for having all things in common. This scheme they called Pantisocracy."
Hence, the phrase must have "caught on," for, in a footnote to his
review of Coleridge's _Literary Life_ (_Edin. Rev._, August, 1817, vol.
xxviii. p. 501), Jeffrey speaks of "the Pantisocratic or Lake School."]
[212] [Wordsworth _was_ "hired," but not, like Burns, "excised." Hazlitt
(_Lectures on the English Poets_, 1870, p. 174) is responsible for the
epithet: "Mr. Wordsworth might have shown the incompatibility between
the Muse and the Excise," etc.]
[dc] _Confined his pedlar poems to democracy._--[MS.]
[213] [Coleridge began his poetical contributions to the _Morning Post_
in January, 1798; his poetical articles in 1800.]
[dd] _Flourished its sophistry for aristocracy._--[MS.]
[214] [Coleridge was married to Sarah Fricker, October 5; Southey to her
younger sister Edith, November 15, 1795. Their father, Stephen Fricker,
who had been an innkeeper, and afterwards a potter at Bristol, migrated
to Bath about the year 1780. For the last six years of his life he was
owner and manager of a coal wharf. He had inherited a small fortune, and
his wife brought him money, but he died bankrupt, and left his family
destitute. His widow returned to Bristol, and kept a school. In a letter
to Murray, dated September 11, 1822 (_Letters_, 1901, vi. 113), Byron
quotes the authority of "Luttrell," and "his friend Mr. Nugent," for the
statement that Mrs. Southey and "Coleridge's Sara ... before they were
married ... were milliner's or dressmaker's apprentices." The story
rests upon their evidence. It is certain that in 1794, when Coleridge
appeared upon the scene, the sisters earned their living by going out to
work in the houses of friends, and were not, at that time, "milliners of
Bath."]
{176}[215] [For Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), see _Letters_, 1899, iii.
128-130, note 2.]
[216] [Here follows, in the original MS.--
"Time has approved Ennui to be the best
Of friends, and opiate draughts; your love and wine,
Which shake so much the human brain and breast,
Must end in languor;--men must sleep like swine:
The happy lover and the welcome guest
Both sink at last into a swoon divine;
Full of deep raptures and of bumpers, they
Are somewhat sick and sorry the next day."]
{177}[217] ["Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus."--Hor., _Epist. Ad
Pisones_, line 359.]
[218] [Wordsworth's _Benjamin the Waggoner_, was written in 1805, but
was not published till 1819. "Benjamin" was servant to William Jackson,
a Keswick carrier, who built Greta Hall, and let off part of the house
to Coleridge.]
[219]
["There's something in a flying horse,
There's something in a huge balloon;
But through the clouds I'll never float
Until I have a little Boat,
Shaped like the crescent-moon."
Wordsworth's _Peter Bell_, stanza i.]
[220] [For Medea's escape from the wrath of Jason, "Titaniacis ablata
draconibus," see Ovid., _Met._, vii. 398.]
[221] [In his "Essay, Supplementary to the Preface," to his "Poems" of
1815, Wordsworth, commenting on a passage on Night in Dryden's _Indian
Emperor_, says, "Dryden's lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless....
The verses of Dryden once celebrated are forgotten." He is not passing
any general criticism on "him who drew _Achitophel_." In a letter to Sir
Walter Scott (November 7, 1805), then engaged on his great edition of
Dryden's _Works_, he admits that Dryden is not "as a poet any great
favourite of mine. I admire his talents and genius highly, but he is not
a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find in Dryden that are
_essentially_ poetical, are a certain ardour and impetuosity of mind,
with an excellent ear" (_Life of Wordsworth_, by W. Knight, 1889, ii.
26-29). Scott may have remarked on Wordsworth's estimate of Dryden in
conversation with Byron.]
{178}[de] _While swung the signal from the sacred tower._--[MS.]
{179}[df]
_Are not these pretty stanzas?--some folks say--_
_Downright in print_--.--[MS.]
[222] [Compare Coleridge's _Lines to Nature_, which were published in
the _Morning Herald_, in 1815, but must have been unknown to Byron--
"So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be."]
[223] ["As early as the fifth or sixth century of the Christian era, the
port of Augustus was converted into pleasant orchards, and a lovely
grove of pines covered the ground where the Roman fleet once rode at
anchor.... This advantageous situation was fortified by art and
_labour_, and in the twentieth year of his age, the Emperor of the West
... retired to ... the walls and morasses of Ravenna."--Gibbon's
_Decline and Fall_, 1825, ii. 244, 245.]
[224] ["The first time I had a conversation with Lord Byron on the
subject of religion was at Ravenna, my native country, in 1820, while we
were riding on horseback in an extensive solitary wood of pines. The
scene invited to religious meditation. It was a fine day in spring.
'How,' he said, 'raising our eyes to heaven, or directing them to the
earth, can we doubt of the existence of God?--or how, turning them to
what is within us, can we doubt that there is something more noble and
durable than the clay of which we are formed?'"--Count Gamba.]
{180}[225] [If the _Pineta_ of Ravenna, _bois funebre_, invited Byron
"to religious meditation," the mental picture of the "spectre huntsman"
pursuing his eternal vengeance on "the inexorable dame"--"that fatal
she," who had mocked his woes--must have set in motion another train of
thought. Such lines as these would "speak comfortably" to him--
"Because she deem'd I well deserved to die,
And _made a merit_ of her cruelty, ...
Mine is the ungrateful maid by heaven design'd:
Mercy she would not give, nor mercy shall she find."
"By her example warn'd, the rest beware;
More easy, less imperious, were the fair;
And that one hunting, which the Devil design'd
For one fair female, lost him half the kind."
Dryden's _Theodore and Honoria_ (_sub fine_).]
[226]
[Greek: Espere panta phereis]
[Greek: Phereis oinon--phereis aiga,]
[Greek: Phereis materi paida.]
_Fragment of Sappho._
[Greek: We/spere, pa/nta phe/ron, o(/sa phai/nolis e)ske/das' au)/os]
[Greek: Phe/reis oi)/n phe/reis ai~)ga, Phe/reis a)/py mate/ri pai~da.]
_Sappho_, Memoir, Text, by Henry Thornton Wharton, 1895, p. 136.
"Evening, all things thou bringest
Which dawn spread apart from each other;
The lamb and the kid thou bringest,
Thou bringest the boy to his mother."
J.A. Symonds.
Compare Tennyson's _Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After_--"Hesper, whom the
poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things."]
{181}[227]
"Era gia l'ora che volge il disio
Ai naviganti, e intenerisce il cuore;
Lo di ch' han detto ai dolci amici addio;
E che lo nuovo peregrin' damore
Punge, se ode squilla di lontano,
Che paia il giorno pianger che si more."
Dante's _Purgatory_, canto viii., lines 1-6.
This last line is the first of Gray's Elegy, taken by him without
acknowledgment.
[228] See Suetonius for this fact.
["The public joy was so great upon the occasion of his death, that the
common people ran up and down with caps upon their heads. And yet there
were some, who for a long time trimmed up his tomb with spring and
summer flowers, and, one while, placed his image upon his rostra dressed
up in state robes, another while published proclamations in his name, as
if he was yet alive, and would shortly come to Rome again, with a
vengeance to all his enemies."--_De XII. Caes._, lib. vi. cap. lvii.]
[dg]
_But I'm digressing--what on earth have Nero
And Wordsworth--both poetical buffoons, etc._--[MS.]
{182}[229] [See _De Poetica_, cap. xxiv. See, too, the Preface to
Dryden's "Dedication" of the _AEneis_ (_Works_ of John Dryden, 1821, xiv.
130-134). Dryden is said to have derived his knowledge of Aristotle from
Dacier's translation, and it is probable that Byron derived his from
Dryden. See letter to Hodgson (_Letters_, 1891, v. 284), in which he
quotes Aristotle as quoted in Johnson's _Life of Dryden_.]
CANTO THE FOURTH.
I.
NOTHING so difficult as a beginning
In poesy, unless perhaps the end;
For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning
The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend,
Like Lucifer when hurled from Heaven for sinning;
Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend,
Being Pride,[230] which leads the mind to soar too far,
Till our own weakness shows us what we are.
II.
But Time, which brings all beings to their level,
And sharp Adversity, will teach at last
Man,--and, as we would hope,--perhaps the Devil,
That neither of their intellects are vast:
While Youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel,
We know not this--the blood flows on too fast;
But as the torrent widens towards the Ocean,
We ponder deeply on each past emotion.[231]
III.
As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow,
And wished that others held the same opinion;
They took it up when my days grew more mellow,
And other minds acknowledged my dominion:
Now my sere Fancy "falls into the yellow
Leaf,"[232] and Imagination droops her pinion,
And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.
IV.
And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'T is that I may not weep; and if I weep,
'T is that our nature cannot always bring
Itself to apathy, for we must steep[dh]
Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe's spring,[di]
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep:
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx;
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix.
V.
Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land,
And trace it in this poem every line:
I don't pretend that I quite understand
My own meaning when I would be _very_ fine;
But the fact is that I have nothing planned,
Unless it were to be a moment merry--
A novel word in my vocabulary.
VI.
To the kind reader of our sober clime
This way of writing will appear exotic;
Pulci[233] was sire of the half-serious rhyme,[dj]
Who sang when Chivalry was more quixotic,
And revelled in the fancies of the time,
True Knights, chaste Dames, huge Giants, Kings despotic;
But all these, save the last, being obsolete,
I chose a modern subject as more meet.
VII.
How I have treated it, I do not know;
Perhaps no better than _they_ have treated me,
Who have imputed such designs as show
Not what they saw, but what they wished to see:
But if it gives them pleasure, be it so;
This is a liberal age, and thoughts are free:
Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear,
And tells me to resume my story here.[234]
VIII.
Young Juan and his lady-love were left
To their own hearts' most sweet society;
Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft
With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms; he
Sighed to behold them of their hours bereft,
Though foe to Love; and yet they could not be
Meant to grow old, but die in happy Spring,
Before one charm or hope had taken wing.
IX.
Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their
Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail;
The blank grey was not made to blast their hair,
But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail,
They were all summer; lightning might assail
And shiver them to ashes, but to trail
A long and snake-like life of dull decay
Was not for them--they had too little clay.
X.
They were alone once more; for them to be
Thus was another Eden; they were never
Weary, unless when separate: the tree
Cut from its forest root of years--the river
Dammed from its fountain--the child from the knee
And breast maternal weaned at once for ever,--
Would wither less than these two torn apart;[dk]
Alas! there is no instinct like the Heart--
XI.
The Heart--which may be broken: happy they!
Thrice fortunate! who of that fragile mould,
The precious porcelain of human clay,
Break with the first fall: they can ne'er behold
The long year linked with heavy day on day,
And all which must be borne, and never told;
While Life's strange principle will often lie
Deepest in those who long the most to die.
XII.
"Whom the gods love die young," was said of yore,[235]
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends, and that which slays even more--
The death of Friendship, Love, Youth, all that is,
Except mere breath; and since the silent shore
Awaits at last even those who longest miss
The old Archer's shafts, perhaps the early grave[236]
Which men weep over may be meant to save.
XIII.
Haidee and Juan thought not of the dead--
The Heavens, and Earth, and Air, seemed made for them:
They found no fault with Time, save that he fled;
They saw not in themselves aught to condemn:
Each was the other's mirror, and but read
Joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem.
And knew such brightness was but the reflection
Of their exchanging glances of affection.
XIV.
The gentle pressure, and the thrilling touch,
The least glance better understood than words,
Which still said all, and ne'er could say too much;
A language,[237] too, but like to that of birds,
Known but to them, at least appearing such
As but to lovers a true sense affords;
Sweet playful phrases, which would seem absurd
To those who have ceased to hear such, or ne'er heard--
XV.
All these were theirs, for they were children still,
And children still they should have ever been;
They were not made in the real world to fill
A busy character in the dull scene,
But like two beings born from out a rill,
A Nymph and her beloved, all unseen
To pass their lives in fountains and on flowers,
And never know the weight of human hours.
XVI.
Moons changing had rolled on, and changeless found
Those their bright rise had lighted to such joys
As rarely they beheld throughout their round;
And these were not of the vain kind which cloys,
For theirs were buoyant spirits, never bound
By the mere senses; and that which destroys[dl]
Most love--possession--unto them appeared
A thing which each endearment more endeared.
XVII.
Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful!
But theirs was Love in which the Mind delights
To lose itself, when the old world grows dull,
And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights,
Intrigues, adventures of the common school,
Its petty passions, marriages, and flights,
Where Hymen's torch but brands one strumpet more,
Whose husband only knows her not a whore.
XVIII.
Hard words--harsh truth! a truth which many know.
Enough.--The faithful and the fairy pair,
Who never found a single hour too slow,
What was it made them thus exempt from care?
Young innate feelings all have felt below,
Which perish in the rest, but in them were
Inherent--what we mortals call romantic,
And always envy, though we deem it frantic.
XIX.
This is in others a factitious state,
An opium dream[238] of too much youth and reading,
But was in them their nature or their fate:
No novels e'er had set their young hearts bleeding,[dm]
For Haidee's knowledge was by no means great,
And Juan was a boy of saintly breeding;
So that there was no reason for their loves
More than for those of nightingales or doves.
XX.
They gazed upon the sunset; 't is an hour
Dear unto all, but dearest to _their_ eyes,
For it had made them what they were: the power
Of Love had first o'erwhelmed them from such skies,
When Happiness had been their only dower,
And Twilight saw them linked in Passion's ties;
Charmed with each other, all things charmed that brought
The past still welcome as the present thought.
XXI.
I know not why, but in that hour to-night,
Even as they gazed, a sudden tremor came,
And swept, as 't were, across their hearts' delight,
Like the wind o'er a harp-string, or a flame,
When one is shook in sound, and one in sight:
And thus some boding flashed through either frame,
And called from Juan's breast a faint low sigh,
While one new tear arose in Haidee's eye.
XXII.
That large black prophet eye seemed to dilate
And follow far the disappearing sun,
As if their last day of a happy date
With his broad, bright, and dropping orb were gone;
Juan gazed on her as to ask his fate--
He felt a grief, but knowing cause for none,
His glance inquired of hers for some excuse
For feelings causeless, or at least abstruse.
XXIII.
She turned to him, and smiled, but in that sort
Which makes not others smile; then turned aside:
Whatever feeling shook her, it seemed short,
And mastered by her wisdom or her pride;
When Juan spoke, too--it might be in sport--
Of this their mutual feeling, she replied--
"If it should be so,--but--it cannot be--
Or I at least shall not survive to see."
XXIV.
Juan would question further, but she pressed
His lip to hers, and silenced him with this,
And then dismissed the omen from her breast,
Defying augury with that fond kiss;
And no doubt of all methods 't is the best:
Some people prefer wine--'t is not amiss;
I have tried both--so those who would a part take
May choose between the headache and the heartache.
XXV.
One of the two, according to your choice,
Woman or wine, you'll have to undergo;
Both maladies are taxes on our joys:
But which to choose, I really hardly know;
And if I had to give a casting voice,
For both sides I could many reasons show,
And then decide, without great wrong to either,
It were much better to have both than neither.
XXVI.
Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other
With swimming looks of speechless tenderness,
Which mixed all feelings--friend, child, lover, brother--
All that the best can mingle and express
When two pure hearts are poured in one another,
And love too much, and yet can not love less;
But almost sanctify the sweet excess
By the immortal wish and power to bless.
XXVII.
Mixed in each other's arms, and heart in heart,
Why did they not then die?--they had lived too long
Should an hour come to bid them breathe apart;
Years could but bring them cruel things or wrong;
The World was not for them--nor the World's art
For beings passionate as Sappho's song;
Love was born _with_ them, _in_ them, so intense,
It was their very Spirit--not a sense.
XXVIII.
They should have lived together deep in woods,
Unseen as sings the nightingale;[239] they were
Unfit to mix in these thick solitudes
Called social, haunts of Hate, and Vice, and Care:[dn]
How lonely every freeborn creature broods!
The sweetest song-birds nestle in a pair;
The eagle soars alone; the gull and crow
Flock o'er their carrion, just like men below.
XXIX.
Now pillowed cheek to cheek, in loving sleep,
Haidee and Juan their siesta took,
A gentle slumber, but it was not deep,
For ever and anon a something shook
Juan, and shuddering o'er his frame would creep;
And Haidee's sweet lips murmured like a brook
A wordless music, and her face so fair
Stirred with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air.[do]
XXX.
Or as the stirring of a deep clear stream
Within an Alpine hollow, when the wind
Walks o'er it, was she shaken by the dream,
The mystical Usurper of the mind--
O'erpowering us to be whate'er may seem
Good to the soul which we no more can bind;
Strange state of being! (for 't is still to be)
Senseless to feel, and with sealed eyes to see.[dp]
XXXI.
She dreamed of being alone on the sea-shore,
Chained to a rock; she knew not how, but stir
She could not from the spot, and the loud roar
Grew, and each wave rose roughly, threatening her;
And o'er her upper lip they seemed to pour,
Until she sobbed for breath, and soon they were
Foaming o'er her lone head, so fierce and high--
Each broke to drown her, yet she could not die.
XXXII.
Anon--she was released, and then she strayed
O'er the sharp shingles with her bleeding feet,
And stumbled almost every step she made:
And something rolled before her in a sheet,
Which she must still pursue howe'er afraid:
'T was white and indistinct, nor stopped to meet
Her glance nor grasp, for still she gazed and grasped,
And ran, but it escaped her as she clasped.
XXXIII.
The dream changed:--in a cave[240] she stood, its walls
Were hung with marble icicles; the work
Of ages on its water-fretted halls,
Where waves might wash, and seals might breed and lurk;
Her hair was dripping, and the very balls
Of her black eyes seemed turned to tears, and mirk
The sharp rocks looked below each drop they caught,
Which froze to marble as it fell,--she thought.[dq]
XXXIV.
And wet, and cold, and lifeless at her feet,
Pale as the foam that frothed on his dead brow,
Which she essayed in vain to clear, (how sweet
Were once her cares, how idle seemed they now!)
Lay Juan, nor could aught renew the beat
Of his quenched heart: and the sea dirges low
Rang in her sad ears like a Mermaid's song,
And that brief dream appeared a life too long.
XXXV.
And gazing on the dead, she thought his face
Faded, or altered into something new--
Like to her Father's features, till each trace
More like and like to Lambro's aspect grew--
With all his keen worn look and Grecian grace;
And starting, she awoke, and what to view?
Oh! Powers of Heaven! what dark eye meets she there?
'T is--'t is her Father's--fixed upon the pair!
XXXVI.
Then shrieking, she arose, and shrieking fell,
With joy and sorrow, hope and fear, to see
Him whom she deemed a habitant where dwell
The ocean-buried, risen from death, to be
Perchance the death of one she loved too well:
Dear as her father had been to Haidee,
It was a moment of that awful kind--
I have seen such--but must not call to mind.
XXXVII.
Up Juan sprang to Haidee's bitter shriek,
And caught her falling, and from off the wall
Snatched down his sabre, in hot haste to wreak
Vengeance on him who was the cause of all:
Then Lambro, who till now forbore to speak,
Smiled scornfully, and said, "Within my call,
A thousand scimitars await the word;
Put up, young man, put up your silly sword."
XXXVIII.
And Haidee clung around him; "Juan, 't is--
'T is Lambro--'t is my father! Kneel with me--
He will forgive us--yes--it must be--yes.
Oh! dearest father, in this agony
Of pleasure and of pain--even while I kiss
Thy garment's hem with transport, can it be
That doubt should mingle with my filial joy?
Deal with me as thou wilt, but spare this boy."
XXXIX.
High and inscrutable the old man stood,
Calm in his voice, and calm within his eye--
Not always signs with him of calmest mood:
He looked upon her, but gave no reply;
Then turned to Juan, in whose cheek the blood
Oft came and went, as there resolved to die;
In arms, at least, he stood, in act to spring
On the first foe whom Lambro's call might bring.
XL.
"Young man, your sword;" so Lambro once more said:
Juan replied, "Not while this arm is free."
The old man's cheek grew pale, but not with dread,
And drawing from his belt a pistol he
Replied, "Your blood be then on your own head."
Then looked close at the flint, as if to see
'T was fresh--for he had lately used the lock--
And next proceeded quietly to cock.
XLI.
It has a strange quick jar upon the ear,
That cocking of a pistol, when you know
A moment more will bring the sight to bear
Upon your person, twelve yards off, or so;
A gentlemanly distance, not too near,
If you have got a former friend for foe;
But after being fired at once or twice,
The ear becomes more Irish, and less nice.
XLII.
Lambro presented, and one instant more
Had stopped this Canto, and Don Juan's breath,
When Haidee threw herself her boy before;
Stern as her sire: "On me," she cried, "let Death
Descend--the fault is mine; this fatal shore
He found--but sought not. I have pledged my faith;
I love him--I will die with him: I knew
Your nature's firmness--know your daughter's too."
XLIII.
A minute past, and she had been all tears,
And tenderness, and infancy; but now
She stood as one who championed human fears--
Pale, statue-like, and stern, she wooed the blow;
And tall beyond her sex, and their compeers,
She drew up to her height, as if to show
A fairer mark; and with a fixed eye scanned
Her Father's face--but never stopped his hand.
XLIV.
He gazed on her, and she on him; 't was strange
How like they looked! the expression was the same;
Serenely savage, with a little change
In the large dark eye's mutual--darted flame;
For she, too, was as one who could avenge,
If cause should be--a Lioness, though tame.
Her Father's blood before her Father's face
Boiled up, and proved her truly of his race.
XLV.
I said they were alike, their features and
Their stature, differing but in sex and years;
Even to the delicacy of their hand[241]
There was resemblance, such as true blood wears;
And now to see them, thus divided, stand
In fixed ferocity, when joyous tears
And sweet sensations should have welcomed both,
Shows what the passions are in their full growth.
XLVI.
The father paused a moment, then withdrew
His weapon, and replaced it; but stood still,
And looking on her, as to look her through,
"Not _I_," he said, "have sought this stranger's ill;
Not _I_ have made this desolation: few
Would bear such outrage, and forbear to kill;
But I must do my duty--how thou hast
Done thine, the present vouches for the past.[dr]
XLVII.
"Let him disarm; or, by my father's head,
His own shall roll before you like a ball!"
He raised his whistle, as the word he said,
And blew; another answered to the call,
And rushing in disorderly, though led,
And armed from boot to turban, one and all,
Some twenty of his train came, rank on rank;
He gave the word,--"Arrest or slay the Frank."
XLVIII.
Then, with a sudden movement, he withdrew
His daughter; while compressed within his clasp,
Twixt her and Juan interposed the crew;
In vain she struggled in her father's grasp--
His arms were like a serpent's coil: then flew
Upon their prey, as darts an angry asp,
The file of pirates--save the foremost, who
Had fallen, with his right shoulder half cut through.
XLIX.
The second had his cheek laid open; but
The third, a wary, cool old sworder, took
The blows upon his cutlass, and then put
His own well in; so well, ere you could look,
His man was floored, and helpless at his foot,
With the blood running like a little brook
From two smart sabre gashes, deep and red--
One on the arm, the other on the head.
L.
And then they bound him where he fell, and bore
Juan from the apartment: with a sign
Old Lambro bade them take him to the shore,
Where lay some ships which were to sail at nine.[ds]
They laid him in a boat, and plied the oar
Until they reached some galliots, placed in line;
On board of one of these, and under hatches,
They stowed him, with strict orders to the watches.
LI.
The world is full of strange vicissitudes,
And here was one exceedingly unpleasant:
A gentleman so rich in the world's goods,
Handsome and young, enjoying all the present,[dt]
Just at the very time when he least broods
On such a thing, is suddenly to sea sent,
Wounded and chained, so that he cannot move,
And all because a lady fell in love.
LII.
Here I must leave him, for I grow pathetic,
Moved by the Chinese nymph of tears, green tea!
Than whom Cassandra was not more prophetic;
For if my pure libations exceed three,
I feel my heart become so sympathetic,
That I must have recourse to black Bohea:
'T is pity wine should be so deleterious,
For tea and coffee leave us much more serious,
LIII.
Unless when qualified with thee, Cogniac!
Sweet Naiad of the Phlegethontic rill!
Ah! why the liver wilt thou thus attack,[du]--
And make, like other nymphs, thy lovers ill?
I would take refuge in weak punch, but _rack_
(In each sense of the word), whene'er I fill
My mild and midnight beakers to the brim,
Wakes me next morning with its synonym.[242]
LIV.
I leave Don Juan for the present, safe--
Not sound, poor fellow, but severely wounded;
Yet could his corporal pangs amount to half
Of those with which his Haidee's bosom bounded?
She was not one to weep, and rave, and chafe,
And then give way, subdued because surrounded;
Her mother was a Moorish maid from Fez,
Where all is Eden, or a wilderness.
LV.
There the large olive rains its amber store
In marble fonts; there grain, and flower, and fruit,
Gush from the earth until the land runs o'er;[243]
But there, too, many a poison-tree has root,
And Midnight listens to the lion's roar,
And long, long deserts scorch the camel's foot,
Or heaving whelm the helpless caravan;
And as the soil is, so the heart of man.
LVI.
Afric is all the Sun's, and as her earth
Her human clay is kindled; full of power
For good or evil, burning from its birth,
The Moorish blood partakes the planet's hour,
And like the soil beneath it will bring forth:
Beauty and love were Haidee's mother's dower;
But her large dark eye showed deep Passion's force,
Though sleeping like a lion near a source.[dv]
LVII.
Her daughter, tempered with a milder ray,
Like summer clouds all silvery, smooth, and fair,
Till slowly charged with thunder they display
Terror to earth, and tempest to the air,
Had held till now her soft and milky way;
But overwrought with Passion and Despair,
The fire burst forth from her Numidian veins,
Even as the Simoom[244] sweeps the blasted plains.
LVIII.
The last sight which she saw was Juan's gore,
And he himself o'ermastered and cut down;
His blood was running on the very floor
Where late he trod, her beautiful, her own;
Thus much she viewed an instant and no more,--
Her struggles ceased with one convulsive groan;
On her Sire's arm, which until now scarce held
Her writhing, fell she like a cedar felled.
LIX.
A vein had burst, and her sweet lips' pure dyes[dw]
Were dabbled with the deep blood which ran o'er;[245]
And her head drooped, as when the lily lies
O'ercharged with rain: her summoned handmaids bore
Their lady to her couch with gushing eyes;
Of herbs and cordials they produced their store,
But she defied all means they could employ,
Like one Life could not hold, nor Death destroy.
LX.
Days lay she in that state unchanged, though chill--
With nothing livid, still her lips were red;
She had no pulse, but Death seemed absent still;
No hideous sign proclaimed her surely dead;
Corruption came not in each mind to kill
All hope; to look upon her sweet face bred
New thoughts of Life, for it seemed full of soul--
She had so much, Earth could not claim the whole.
LXI.
The ruling passion, such as marble shows
When exquisitely chiselled, still lay there,
But fixed as marble's unchanged aspect throws
O'er the fair Venus, but for ever fair;[246]
O'er the Laocoon's all eternal throes,
And ever-dying Gladiator's air,
Their energy like life forms all their fame,
Yet looks not life, for they are still the same.--[dx]
LXII.
She woke at length, but not as sleepers wake,
Rather the dead, for Life seemed something new,
A strange sensation which she must partake
Perforce, since whatsoever met her view
Struck not on memory, though a heavy ache
Lay at her heart, whose earliest beat still true
Brought back the sense of pain without the cause,
For, for a while, the Furies made a pause.
LXIII.
She looked on many a face with vacant eye,
On many a token without knowing what:
She saw them watch her without asking why,
And recked not who around her pillow sat;
Not speechless, though she spoke not--not a sigh
Relieved her thoughts--dull silence and quick chat
Were tried in vain by those who served; she gave
No sign, save breath, of having left the grave.
LXIV.
Her handmaids tended, but she heeded not;
Her Father watched, she turned her eyes away;
She recognised no being, and no spot,
However dear or cherished in their day;
They changed from room to room--but all forgot--
Gentle, but without memory she lay;
At length those eyes, which they would fain be weaning
Back to old thoughts, waxed full of fearful meaning.
LXV.
And then a slave bethought her of a harp;
The harper came, and tuned his instrument;
At the first notes, irregular and sharp,
On him her flashing eyes a moment bent,
Then to the wall she turned as if to warp
Her thoughts from sorrow through her heart re-sent;
And he began a long low island-song
Of ancient days, ere Tyranny grew strong.
LXVI.
Anon her thin wan fingers beat the wall
In time to his old tune: he changed the theme,
And sung of Love; the fierce name struck through all
Her recollection; on her flashed the dream
Of what she was, and is, if ye could call
To be so being; in a gushing stream
The tears rushed forth from her o'erclouded brain,
Like mountain mists at length dissolved in rain.
LXVII.
Short solace, vain relief!--Thought came too quick,
And whirled her brain to madness; she arose
As one who ne'er had dwelt among the sick,
And flew at all she met, as on her foes;
But no one ever heard her speak or shriek,
Although her paroxysm drew towards its close;--
Hers was a frenzy which disdained to rave,
Even when they smote her, in the hope to save.
LXVIII.
Yet she betrayed at times a gleam of sense;
Nothing could make her meet her Father's face,
Though on all other things with looks intense
She gazed, but none she ever could retrace;
Food she refused, and raiment; no pretence
Availed for either; neither change of place,
Nor time, nor skill, nor remedy, could give her
Senses to sleep--the power seemed gone for ever.
LXIX.
Twelve days and nights she withered thus; at last,
Without a groan, or sigh, or glance, to show
A parting pang, the spirit from her passed:
And they who watched her nearest could not know
The very instant, till the change that cast
Her sweet face into shadow, dull and slow,[dy]
Glazed o'er her eyes--the beautiful, the black--
Oh! to possess such lustre--and then lack!
LXX.
She died, but not alone; she held, within,
A second principle of Life, which might
Have dawned a fair and sinless child of sin;[dz]
But closed its little being without light,
And went down to the grave unborn, wherein
Blossom and bough lie withered with one blight;
In vain the dews of Heaven descend above
The bleeding flower and blasted fruit of Love.
LXXI.
Thus lived--thus died she; never more on her
Shall Sorrow light, or Shame. She was not made
Through years or moons the inner weight to bear,
Which colder hearts endure till they are laid
By age in earth: her days and pleasures were
Brief, but delightful--such as had not staid
Long with her destiny; but she sleeps well[247]
By the sea-shore, whereon she loved to dwell.
LXXII.
That isle is now all desolate and bare,
Its dwellings down, its tenants passed away;
None but her own and Father's grave is there,
And nothing outward tells of human clay;
Ye could not know where lies a thing so fair,
No stone is there to show, no tongue to say,
What was; no dirge, except the hollow sea's,[ea]
Mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades.
LXXIII.
But many a Greek maid in a loving song
Sighs o'er her name; and many an islander
With her Sire's story makes the night less long;
Valour was his, and Beauty dwelt with her:
If she loved rashly, her life paid for wrong--
A heavy price must all pay who thus err,
In some shape; let none think to fly the danger,
For soon or late Love is his own avenger.
LXXIV.
But let me change this theme, which grows too sad,
And lay this sheet of sorrows on the shelf;
I don't much like describing people mad,
For fear of seeming rather touched myself--
Besides, I've no more on this head to add;
And as my Muse is a capricious elf,
We'll put about, and try another tack
With Juan, left half-killed some stanzas back.
LXXV.
Wounded and fettered, "cabined, cribbed, confined,"[248]
Some days and nights elapsed before that he
Could altogether call the past to mind;
And when he did, he found himself at sea,
Sailing six knots an hour before the wind;
The shores of Ilion lay beneath their lee--
Another time he might have liked to see 'em,
But now was not much pleased with Cape Sigeum.
LXXVI.
There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is
(Flanked by the Hellespont, and by the sea)
Entombed the bravest of the brave, Achilles;
They say so--(Bryant[249] says the contrary):
And further downward, tall and towering still, is
The tumulus--of whom? Heaven knows! 't may be
Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus--
All heroes, who if living still would slay us.[eb]
LXXVII.
High barrows, without marble, or a name,
A vast, untilled, and mountain-skirted plain,[ec]
And Ida in the distance, still the same,
And old Scamander (if 't is he) remain;
The situation seems still formed for fame--
A hundred thousand men might fight again,
With ease; but where I sought for Ilion's walls,
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise[250] crawls;[ed]
LXXVIII.
Troops of untended horses; here and there
Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth;
Some shepherds (unlike Paris) led to stare
A moment at the European youth
Whom to the spot their school-boy feelings bear;[ee]
A Turk, with beads in hand, and pipe in mouth,
Extremely taken with his own religion,
Are what I found there--but the devil a Phrygian.
LXXIX.
Don Juan, here permitted to emerge
From his dull cabin, found himself a slave;
Forlorn, and gazing on the deep blue surge,
O'ershadowed there by many a Hero's grave;
Weak still with loss of blood, he scarce could urge
A few brief questions; and the answers gave
No very satisfactory information
About his past or present situation.
LXXX.
He saw some fellow captives, who appeared
To be Italians (as they were in fact)--
From them, at least, _their_ destiny he heard,
Which was an odd one; a troop going to act
In Sicily--all singers, duly reared
In their vocation, had not been attacked
In sailing from Livorno by the pirate,
But sold by the _impresario_ at no high rate.[251]
LXXXI.
By one of these, the _buffo_[252] of the party,
Juan was told about their curious case;
For although destined to the Turkish mart, he
Still kept his spirits up--at least his face;
The little fellow really looked quite hearty,
And bore him with some gaiety and grace,
Showing a much more reconciled demeanour,
Than did the prima donna and the tenor.
LXXXII.
In a few words he told their hapless story,
Saying, "Our Machiavelian _impresario_,
Making a signal off some promontory,
Hailed a strange brig--_Corpo di Caio Mario!_
We were transferred on board her in a hurry,
Without a single scudo of _salario_;
But if the Sultan has a taste for song,
We will revive our fortunes before long.
LXXXIII.
"The prima donna, though a little old,
And haggard with a dissipated life,
And subject, when the house is thin, to cold,
Has some good notes; and then the tenor's wife,
With no great voice, is pleasing to behold;
Last carnival she made a deal of strife,
By carrying off Count Cesare Cicogna
From an old Roman Princess at Bologna.
LXXXIV.
"And then there are the dancers; there's the Nini,
With more than one profession gains by all;
Then there's that laughing slut the Pelegrini,
She, too, was fortunate last Carnival,
And made at least five hundred good _zecchini_,
But spends so fast, she has not now a paul;
And then there's the Grotesca--such a dancer!
Where men have souls or bodies she must answer.
LXXXV.
"As for the _figuranti_,[253] they are like
The rest of all that tribe; with here and there
A pretty person, which perhaps may strike--
The rest are hardly fitted for a fair;
There's one, though tall and stiffer than a pike,
Yet has a sentimental kind of air
Which might go far, but she don't dance with vigour--
The more's the pity, with her face and figure.
LXXXVI.
"As for the men, they are a middling set;
The _musico_ is but a cracked old basin,
But, being qualified in one way yet,
May the seraglio do to set his face in,[ef]
And as a servant some preferment get;
His singing I no further trust can place in:
From all the Pope[254] makes yearly 't would perplex
To find three perfect pipes of the _third_ sex.
LXXXVII.
"The tenor's voice is spoilt by affectation;
And for the bass, the beast can only bellow--
In fact, he had no singing education,
An ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow;
But being the prima donna's near relation,
Who swore his voice was very rich and mellow,
They hired him, though to hear him you'd believe
An ass was practising recitative.
LXXXVIII.
"'T would not become myself to dwell upon
My own merits, and though young--I see, Sir--you
Have got a travelled air, which speaks you one
To whom the opera is by no means new:
You've heard of Raucocanti?--I'm the man;
The time may come when you may hear me too;
You was[255] not last year at the fair of Lugo,
But next, when I'm engaged to sing there--do go.
LXXXIX.
"Our baritone I almost had forgot,
A pretty lad, but bursting with conceit;
With graceful action, science not a jot,
A voice of no great compass, and not sweet,
He always is complaining of his lot,
Forsooth, scarce fit for ballads in the street;
In lovers' parts his passion more to breathe,
Having no heart to show, he shows his teeth."[eg]
XC.
Here Raucocanti's eloquent recital
Was interrupted by the pirate crew,
Who came at stated moments to invite all
The captives back to their sad berths; each threw
A rueful glance upon the waves, (which bright all
From the blue skies derived a double blue,
Dancing all free and happy in the sun,)
And then went down the hatchway one by one.
XCI.
They heard next day--that in the Dardanelles,
Waiting for his Sublimity's firman,[256]
The most imperative of sovereign spells,
Which everybody does without who can,
More to secure them in their naval cells,
Lady to lady, well as man to man,
Were to be chained and lotted out per couple,
For the slave market of Constantinople.
XCII.
It seems when this allotment was made out,
There chanced to be an odd male, and odd female,
Who (after some discussion and some doubt,
If the soprano might be deemed to be male,
They placed him o'er the women as a scout)
Were linked together, and it happened the male
Was Juan,--who, an awkward thing at his age,
Paired off with a Bacchante blooming visage.
XCIII.
With Raucocanti lucklessly was chained
The tenor; these two hated with a hate
Found only on the stage, and each more pained
With this his tuneful neighbour than his fate;
Sad strife arose, for they were so cross-grained,
Instead of bearing up without debate,
That each pulled different ways with many an oath,
"Arcades ambo," _id est_--blackguards both.[eh]
XCIV.
Juan's companion was a Romagnole,
But bred within the march of old Ancona,
With eyes that looked into the very soul
(And other chief points of a _bella donna_),
Bright--and as black and burning as a coal;
And through her clear brunette complexion shone a
Great wish to please--a most attractive dower,
Especially when added to the power.
XCV.
But all that power was wasted upon him,
For Sorrow o'er each sense held stern command;
Her eye might flash on his, but found it dim:
And though thus chained, as natural her hand
Touched his, nor that--nor any handsome limb
(And she had some not easy to withstand)
Could stir his pulse, or make his faith feel brittle;
Perhaps his recent wounds might help a little.
XCVI.
No matter; we should ne'er too much inquire,
But facts are facts: no Knight could be more true,
And firmer faith no Ladye-love desire;
We will omit the proofs, save one or two:
'T is said no one in hand "can hold a fire
By thought of frosty Caucasus"[257]--but few,
I really think--yet Juan's then ordeal
Was more triumphant, and not much less real.
XCVII.
Here I might enter on a chaste description,
Having withstood temptation in my youth,[ei]
But hear that several people take exception
At the first two books having too much truth;
Therefore I'll make Don Juan leave the ship soon,
Because the publisher declares, in sooth,
Through needles' eyes it easier for the camel is
To pass, than those two cantos into families.
XCVIII.
'T is all the same to me; I'm fond of yielding,
And therefore leave them to the purer page
Of Smollett, Prior, Ariosto, Fielding,
Who say strange things for so correct an age;[258]
I once had great alacrity in wielding
My pen, and liked poetic war to wage,
And recollect the time when all this cant
Would have provoked remarks--which now it shan't.
XCIX.
As boys love rows, my boyhood liked a squabble;
But at this hour I wish to part in peace,
Leaving such to the literary rabble;
Whether my verse's fame be doomed to cease
While the right hand which wrote it still is able,
Or of some centuries to take a lease,
The grass upon my grave will grow as long,
And sigh to midnight winds, but not to song.
C.
Of poets who come down to us through distance
Of time and tongues, the foster-babes of Fame,
Life seems the smallest portion of existence;
Where twenty ages gather o'er a name,
'T is as a snowball which derives assistance
From every flake, and yet rolls on the same,
Even till an iceberg it may chance to grow;
But, after all, 't is nothing but cold snow.
CI.
And so great names are nothing more than nominal,
And love of Glory's but an airy lust,
Too often in its fury overcoming all
Who would as 't were identify their dust
From out the wide destruction, which, entombing all,
Leaves nothing till "the coming of the just"--
Save change: I've stood upon Achilles' tomb,
And heard Troy doubted;[259] Time will doubt of Rome.
CII.
The very generations of the dead
Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb,
Until the memory of an Age is fled,
And, buried, sinks beneath its offspring's doom:
Where are the epitaphs our fathers read?
Save a few gleaned from the sepulchral gloom
Which once-named myriads nameless lie beneath,
And lose their own in universal Death.
CIII.
I canter by the spot each afternoon
Where perished in his fame the hero-boy,
Who lived too long for men, but died too soon
For human vanity, the young De Foix!
A broken pillar, not uncouthly hewn,
But which Neglect is hastening to destroy,
Records Ravenna's carnage on its face,
While weeds and ordure rankle round the base.[260]
CIV.
I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid:[261]
A little cupola, more neat than solemn,
Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid[ej]
To the Bard's tomb, and not the Warrior's column:
The time must come, when both alike decayed,
The Chieftain's trophy, and the Poet's volume,
Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth,
Before Pelides' death, or Homer's birth.
CV.
With human blood that column was cemented,
With human filth that column is defiled,
As if the peasant's coarse contempt were vented
To show his loathing of the spot he soiled:[ek]
Thus is the trophy used, and thus lamented
Should ever be those blood-hounds, from whose wild
Instinct of gore and glory Earth has known
Those sufferings Dante saw in Hell alone.[el]
CVI.
Yet there will still be bards: though Fame is smoke,
Its fumes are frankincense to human thought;
And the unquiet feelings, which first woke
Song in the world, will seek what then they sought;[em]
As on the beach the waves at last are broke,
Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought
Dash into poetry, which is but Passion,
Or, at least, was so ere it grew a fashion.
CVII.
If in the course of such a life as was
At once adventurous and contemplative,
Men who partake all passions as they pass,
Acquire the deep and bitter power to give[en]
Their images again as in a glass,
And in such colours that they seem to live;
You may do right forbidding them to show 'em,
But spoil (I think) a very pretty poem.[262]
CVIII.
Oh! ye, who make the fortunes of all books!
Benign Ceruleans of the second sex!
Who advertise new poems by your looks,
Your "Imprimatur" will ye not annex?
What! must I go to the oblivious cooks,[eo]
Those Cornish plunderers of Parnassian wrecks?
Ah! must I then the only minstrel be,
Proscribed from tasting your Castalian tea![263]
CIX.
What! can I prove "a lion" then no more?
A ball-room bard, a foolscap, hot-press darling?
To bear the compliments of many a bore,
And sigh, "I can't get out," like Yorick's starling;[264]
Why then I'll swear, as poet Wordy swore
(Because the world won't read him, always snarling),
That Taste is gone, that Fame is but a lottery,
Drawn by the blue-coat misses of a coterie.[265]
CX.
Oh! "darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"[266]
As some one somewhere sings about the sky,
And I, ye learned ladies, say of you;
They say your stockings are so--(Heaven knows why,
I have examined few pair of that hue);
Blue as the garters which serenely lie
Round the Patrician left-legs, which adorn
The festal midnight, and the levee morn.[ep]
CXI.
Yet some of you are most seraphic creatures--
But times are altered since, a rhyming lover,
You read my stanzas, and I read your features:
And--but no matter, all those things are over;
Still I have no dislike to learned natures,
For sometimes such a world of virtues cover;
I knew one woman of that purple school,
The loveliest, chastest, best, but--quite a fool.[267]
CXIII.
Humboldt, "the first of travellers," but not
The last, if late accounts be accurate,
Invented, by some name I have forgot,
As well as the sublime discovery's date,
An airy instrument, with which he sought
To ascertain the atmospheric state,
By measuring "the _intensity of blue:_"[268]
Oh, Lady Daphne! let me measure you![eq]
CXIII.
But to the narrative:--The vessel bound
With slaves to sell off in the capital,
After the usual process, might be found
At anchor under the seraglio wall;
Her cargo, from the plague being safe and sound,
Were landed in the market,[269] one and all;
And, there, with Georgians, Russians, and Circassians,
Bought up for different purposes and passions.
CXIV.
Some went off dearly; fifteen hundred dollars
For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given,
Warranted virgin; Beauty's brightest colours
Had decked her out in all the hues of heaven:
Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers,
Who bade on till the hundreds reached eleven;
But when the offer went beyond, they knew
'T was for the Sultan, and at once withdrew.
CXV.
Twelve negresses from Nubia brought a price
Which the West Indian market scarce could bring--
Though Wilberforce, at last, has made it twice
What 't was ere Abolition; and the thing
Need not seem very wonderful, for Vice
Is always much more splendid than a King:
The Virtues, even the most exalted, Charity,
Are saving--Vice spares nothing for a rarity.
CXVI.
But for the destiny of this young troop,
How some were bought by Pachas, some by Jews,
How some to burdens were obliged to stoop,
And others rose to the command of crews
As renegadoes; while in hapless group,
Hoping no very old Vizier might choose,
The females stood, as one by one they picked 'em,
To make a mistress, or fourth wife, or victim:[er]
CXVII.
All this must be reserved for further song;
Also our Hero's lot, howe'er unpleasant
(Because this Canto has become too long),[es]
Must be postponed discreetly for the present;
I'm sensible redundancy is wrong,
But could not for the Muse of me put less in 't:
And now delay the progress of Don Juan,
Till what is called in Ossian the fifth Duan.
Written Nov. 1819. Copied January, 1820.
FOOTNOTES:
{183}[230]
["Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down,
Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King."
_Paradise Lost_, iv. 40, 41.]
[231]
["Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy,
And shuts up all the passages of joy:
In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour,
The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow'r;
With listless eyes the dotard views the store,
He views, and wonders that they please no more."
Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes._]
{184}[232]
[" ... my May of Life
Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf."
_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 3, lines 22, 23.]
[dh] _Itself to that fit apathy whose deed._--[MS.]
[di] _First in the icy depths of Lethe's spring._--[MS.]
[233] [See "Introduction to the _Morgante Maggiore_," _Poetical Works_,
1901, iv. 280.]
[dj] _Pulci being Father_--.--[MS. Alternative reading.]
{185}[234] ["Cum canerem reges et praelia, Cynthius aurem Vellit, et
admonuit." Virgil, _Ecl._ vi. lines 3, 4.]
{186}[dk]
---- _from its mother's knee_
_When its last weaning draught is drained for ever_,
_The child divided--it were less to see_,
_Than these two from each other torn apart_.--[MS.]
[235] [See Herodotus (_Cleobis and Biton_), i. 31. The sentiment is in a
fragment of Menander.
[Greek: O)/n oi( theoi\ philou~sin a)pothne)skei ne/os]
or
[Greek: O)/n ga\r philei~ theo\s a)pothne)skei ne/os.]
_Menandri at Philomenis reliquiae_, edidit Augustus Meineke, p. 48.
See _Letters_, 1898, ii. 22, note 1. Byron applied the saying to
Allegra in a letter to Sir Walter Scott, dated May 4, 1822, _Letters_,
1901, vi. 57.]
[236] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xcvi. line 7. Compare,
too, Young's _Night Thoughts_ ("The Complaint," Night I. ed. 1825, p.
5)]
{187}[237] [Compare Swift's "little language" in his letter to Stella:
_Podefar_, for instance, which is supposed to stand for "Poor dear
foolish rogue," and Ppt., which meant "Poor pretty thing."--See _The
Journal of Stella_, edited by G.A. Aitken, 1901, xxxv. note 1, and
"Journal: March, 1710-11," 165, note 2.]
[dl]
_For theirs were buoyant spirits, which would bound_
'_Gainst common failings, etc_.--[MS.]
{188}[238] [The reference may be to Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_, which, to
Medwin's wonderment, "delighted" Byron (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 264).
De Quincy's _Confessions of an English Opium Eater_ appeared in the
_London Magazine_, October, November, 1821, after Cantos III., IV., V.,
of _Don Juan_ were published. But, perhaps, he was contrasting the
"simpler blisses" of Juan and Haidee with Shelley's mystical affinities
and divagations.]
[dm] _---- had set their hearts a bleeding._--[MS.]
{190}[239]
["The shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:
There can I sit alone, unseen of any,
And to the nightingale's complaining notes
Tune my distresses, and record, my woes."
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act v. sc. 4, lines 2-6.]
{191}[dn] _Called social, where all Vice and Hatred are._--[MS.]
[do] _Moved with her dream----._--[MS.]
[dp]
_Strange state of being!--for 't is still to be--_
_And who can know all false what then we see?_--[MS.]
{192}[240] [Compare the description of the "spacious cave," in _The
Island_, Canto IV. lines 121, _sq., Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 629,
note 1.]
[dq]---- _methought_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]
{195}[241] [The reader will observe a curious mark of propinquity which
the poet notices, with respect to the hands of the father and daughter.
Lord Byron, we suspect, is indebted for the first hint of this to Ali
Pacha, who, by the bye, is the original of Lambro; for, when his
lordship was introduced, with his friend Hobhouse, to that agreeable
mannered tyrant, the Vizier said that he knew he was the _Megalos
Anthropos_ (i.e. the great Man), by the smallness of his ears and
hands.--Galt. See Byron's letter to his mother, November 12, 1809,
_Letters_, 1898, i. 251.]
[dr]
_And if_ I _did my duty as_ thou _hast_,
_This hour were thine, and thy young minions last_.--[MS.]
{196}[ds] _Till further orders should his doom assign_.--[MS.]
[dt] _Loving and loved_--.--[MS.]
{197}[du]
_But thou, sweet fury of the fiery rill,_
_Makest on the liver a still worse attack;_
_Besides, thy price is something dearer still_.--[MS.]
[242] ["As squire Sullen says, '\My head aches consumedly,' 'Scrub,
bring me a dram!' Drank some Imola wine, and some punch!"--_Extracts
from a Diary_, February 25, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 209. For rack or
"arrack" punch, see Thackeray's _Vanity Fair, A Novel without a Hero_,
chap. vi. ed. 1892, p. 44.]
{198}[243] ["At Fas [Fez] the houses of the great and wealthy have,
within-side, spacious courts, adorned with sumptuous galleries,
fountains, basons of fine marble, and fish-ponds, shaded with orange,
lemon, pomegranate, and fig trees, abounding with fruit, and ornamented
with roses, hyacinths, jasmine, violets, and orange flowers, emitting a
delectable fragrance."--_Account of the Empire of Marocco and Suez_, by
James Grey Jackson, 1811, pp. 69, 70.]
[dv]
_Beauty and Passion were the natural dower_
_Of Haidee's mother, but her climate's force_
_Lay at her heart, though sleeping at the source_.
or, _But in her large eye lay deep Passion's force_,
_Like to a lion sleeping by a source_.
or, _But in her large eye lay deep Passion's force_,
_As sleeps a lion by a river's source_.--[MS.]
[244] [Compare _Manfred_, act iii. sc. 1, line 128, _Poetical Works_,
1901, iv. 125.]
{199}[dw]
_The blood gushed from her lips, and ears, and eyes:_
_Those eyes, so beautiful--beheld no more_.--[MS.]
[245] This is no very uncommon effect of the violence of conflicting and
different passions. The Doge Francis Foscari, on his deposition in 1457,
hearing the bells of St. Mark announce the election of his successor,
"mourut subitement d'une hemorragie causee par une veine qui s'eclata
dans sa poitrine" [see Sismondi, 1815, x. 46, and Daru, 1821, ii. 536;
see, too, _The Two Foscari_, act v. sc. i, line 306, and Introduction to
the _Two Foscari_, _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 118, 193], at the age of
eighty years, when "_Who would have thought the old man had so much
blood in him?_" (_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 1, lines 34-36.) Before I was
sixteen years of age I was witness to a melancholy instance of the same
effect of mixed passions upon a young person, who, however, did not die
in consequence, at that time, but fell a victim some years afterwards to
a seizure of the same kind, arising from causes intimately connected
with agitation of mind.
{200}[246] [The view of the Venus of Medici instantly suggests the lines
in the "Seasons" [the description of "Musidora bathing" in _Summer_]--
" ... With wild surprise,
As if to marble struck, devoid of sense,
A stupid moment motionless she stood:
So stands the statue that enchants the world."
Hobhouse.
A still closer parallel to this stanza, and to _Childe Harold_, Canto
IV. stanzas xlix., cxl., cxli., clx., clxi., is to be found in Thomson's
_Liberty_, pt. iv. lines 131-206, where the "Farnese Hercules," the
"Dying Gladiator," the "Venus of Medici," and the "Laocoon" group, are
commemorated as typical works of art.]
[dx] _Distinct from life, as being still the same_.--[MS.]
{202}[dy] _--working slow._--[MS.]
[dz] _Have dawned a child of beauty, though of sin._--[MS.]
[247]
[" ... Duncan is in his grave:
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."
_Macbeth_, act iii. sc. 2., lines 22, 23.]
{203}[ea]
_No stone is there to read, nor tongue to say_,
_No dirge--save when arise the stormy seas_.--[MS.]
[248] ["But now I am cabined, cribbed," etc. _Macbeth_, act iii. sc. 4,
line 24.]
{204}[249] [Jacob Bryant (1715-1804) published his _Dissertation
concerning the War of Troy, etc._, in 1796. See _The Bride of Abydos_,
Canto II. lines 510, sq., _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 179, note 1. See,
too, _Extracts from a Diary_, January 11, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 165,
166, "I have stood upon that plain [of Troy] _daily_, for more than a
month, in 1810; and if anything diminished my pleasure, it was that the
blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity." Hobhouse, in his _Travels
in Albania_, 1858, ii. 93, sq., discusses at length the identity of the
barrows of the Troad with the _tumuli_ of Achilles, Ajax, and
Protesilaus, and refutes Bryant's arguments against the identity of Cape
Janissary and the Sigean promontory.
[eb]
/ who alive perhaps \
_All heroes_ < >--[MS. Alternative reading.]
\ if still alive /
[ec]
/ _and mountain-bounded \
---- < > plain_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]
\ _and mountain-outlined /
[250] ["The whole region was, in a manner, in possession of the
_Salsette's_ crew, parties of whom, in their white summer dresses, might
be seen scattered over the plains collecting the tortoises, which swarm
on the sides of the rivulets, and are found under every
furze-bush."--_Travels in Albania_, 1858, ii. 116. See, too, for mention
of "hundreds of tortoises" falling "from the overhanging branches, and
thick underwood," into the waters of the Mender, _Travels, etc._, by
E.D. Clarke, 1812, Part II. sect. i. p. 96.]
[ed]---- _and land tortoise crawls_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]
{205}[ee] --_their learned researches bear_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]
[251] This is a fact. A few years ago a man engaged a company for some
foreign theatre, embarked them at an Italian port, and carrying them to
Algiers, sold them all. One of the women, returned from her captivity, I
heard sing, by a strange coincidence, in Rossini's opera of _L'Italiana
in Algieri_, at Venice, in the beginning of 1817.
[We have reason to believe that the following, which we take from the
MS. journal of a highly respectable traveller, is a more correct
account: "In 1812 a Signor Guariglia induced several young persons of
both sexes--none of them exceeding fifteen years of age--to accompany
him on an operatic excursion; part to form the opera, and part the
ballet. He contrived to get them on board a vessel, which took them to
Janina, where he sold them for the basest purposes. Some died from the
effect of the climate, and some from suffering. Among the few who
returned were a Signor Molinari, and a female dancer named Bonfiglia,
who afterwards became the wife of Crespi, the tenor singer. The wretch
who so basely sold them was, when Lord Byron resided at Venice, employed
as _capo de' vestarj_, or head tailor, at the Fenice."--Maria Graham
(Lady Callcot). Ed. 1832.]
{206}[252] [A comic singer in the _opera buffa_. The Italians, however,
distinguish the _buffo cantante_, which requires good singing, from the
_buffo comico_, in which there is more acting.--Ed. 1832.]
{207}[253] [The figuranti are those dancers of a ballet who do not dance
singly, but many together, and serve to fill up the background during
the exhibition of individual performers. They correspond to the chorus
in the opera.--Maria Graham.]
[ef] _To help the ladies in their dress and lacing_.--[MS.]
[254] It is strange that it should be the Pope and the Sultan, who are
the chief encouragers of this branch of trade--women being prohibited as
singers at St. Peter's, and not deemed trustworthy as guardians of the
harem.
["Scarcely a soul of them can read. Pacchierotti was one of the best
informed of the _castrati_ ... Marchesi is so grossly ignorant that he
wrote the word opera, _opperra_, but Nature has been so bountiful to the
animal, that his ignorance and insolence were forgotten the moment he
sang."--_Venice, etc._, by a Lady of Rank, 1824, ii. 86.]
{208}[255] [The N. Engl. Dict. cites Bunyan, Walpole, Fielding, Miss
Austen, and Dickens as authorities for the plural "was." See art. "be."
Here, as elsewhere, Byron wrote as he spoke.]
[eg] _He never shows his feelings, but his teeth_.--[MS. Alternative
reading.]
[256] ["Our firman arrived from Constantinople on the 30th of April
(1810)."--Travels in Albania, 1858, ii. 186.]
{209}[eh]
_That each pulled, different ways--and waxing rough_,
_Had cuffed each other, only for the cuff_.--[MS.]
{210}[257]
["O, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?"
_Richard II.,_ act i. sc. 3, lines 294, 295.]
[ei] _Having had some experience in my youth_.--[MS. erased.]
[258] ["_Don Juan_ will be known, _by and by_, for what it is
intended--a Satire on abuses in the present states of society, and not
an eulogy of vice. It may be now and then voluptuous:--I can't help
that. Ariosto is worse. Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2^nd^ of
_R_[_oderick_] _R_[_andom_][1793, pp. 119-127]) ten times worse; and
Fielding no better."--Letter to Murray, December 25, 1822, _Letters_,
1901, vi. 155, 156.]
{211}[259] [Vide ante, p. 204, note 1. "It seems hardly to admit of
doubt, that the plain of Anatolia, watered by the Mender, and backed by
a mountainous ridge, of which Kazdaghy is the summit, offers the precise
territory alluded to by Homer. The long controversy, excited by Mr.
Bryant's publication, and since so vehemently agitated, would probably
never have existed, had it not been for the erroneous maps of the
country which, even to this hour, disgrace our geographical knowledge of
that part of Asia."--_Travels, etc._, by E.D. Clarke, 1812, Part II.
sect, i. p. 78.]
{212}[260] The pillar which records the battle of Ravenna is about two
miles from the city, on the opposite side of the river to the road
towards Forli. Gaston de Foix [(1489-1512) Duc de Nemours, nephew of
Louis XII.], who gained the battle, was killed in it: there fell on both
sides twenty thousand men. The present state of the pillar and its site
is described in the text.
[Beyond the Porta Sisi, about two miles from Ravenna, on the banks of
the Ronco, is a square pillar (_La Colonna de Francesi_), erected in
1557 by Pietro Cesi, president of Romagna, as a memorial of the battle
gained by the combined army of Louis XII. and the Duke of Ferrara over
the troops of Julius II. and the King of Spain, April 11
1512.--_Handbook of Northern Italy_, p. 548.]
[261] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza lvii. line i, _Poetical
Works_, 1899, ii. 371, note i. See, too, Preface to the _Prophecy of
Dante, ibid_., iv. 243.]
[ej] _Protects his tomb, but greater care is paid_.--[MS.]
{213}[ek]
_With human ordure is it now defiled_,
_As if the peasant's scorn this mode invented_
_To show his loathing of the thing he soiled_.--[MS.]
[el] _Those sufferings once reserved for Hell alone._--[MS.]
[em]
_Its fumes are frankincense; and were there nought_
_Even of this vapour, still the chilling yoke_
_Of silence would not long be borne by Thought_.--[MS.]
[en]
_I have drunk deep of passions as they pass,_
_And dearly bought the bitter power to give_.--[MS.]
[262] [See, for instance, Wilson's review of _Don Juan_, in _Blackwood's
Edinburgh Magazine_, August, 1819, vol. v. p. 512, _sq._: "To confess
... to his Maker, and to weep over in secret agonies the wildest and
most fantastic transgressions of heart and mind, is the part of a
conscious sinner, in whom sin has not become the sole principle of life
and action.... But to lay bare to the eye of man--and of _woman_--all
the hidden convulsions of a wicked spirit," etc.]
{214}[eo]
_What! must I go with Wordy to the cooks?_
_Read--were it but your Grandmother's to vex--_
_And let me not the only minstrel be_
_Cut off from tasting your Castalian tea_.--[MS.]
[263] [Compare--
"I leave them to their daily 'tea is ready,'
Snug coterie, and literary lady."
_Beppo_, stanza lxxvi. lines 7, 8, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 184,
note.]
[264] [The caged starling, by its repeated cry, "I can't get out! I
can't get out!" cured Yorick of his sentimental yearnings for
imprisonment in the Bastille. See Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_, ed.
1804, pp. 100-106.]
[265] [In his _Essay, Supplement to the Preface_ (_Poems by William
Wordsworth_, ed. 1820, iii. 315-348), Wordsworth maintains that the
appreciation of great poetry is a plant of slow growth, that immediate
recognition is a mark of inferiority, or is to be accounted for by the
presence of adventitious qualities: "So strange, indeed, are the
obliquities of admiration, that they whose opinions are much influenced
by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed
principles in human nature for this art to rest upon.... Away, then,
with the senseless iteration of the word _popular!_ ... The voice that
issues from this spirit [of human knowledge] is that _Vox Populi_ which
the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local
acclamation, or a transitory outcry--transitory though it be for years,
local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can
believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in this clamour
of that small though loud portion of the community ever governed by
factitious influence, which under the name of the PUBLIC, passes itself
upon the unthinking for the PEOPLE." Naturally enough Byron regarded
this pronouncement as a taunt if not as a challenge. Wordsworth's noble
appeal from a provincial to an imperial authority, from the present to
the future, is not strengthened by the obvious reference to the
popularity of contemporaries.]
{215}[266] [Southey's _Madoc in Wales, Poetical Works_, Part I. Canto V.
Ed. 1838, v. 39.]
[ep]
_Not having looked at many of that hue,_
_Nor garters--save those of the_ "honi soit"--_which lie_
_Round the Patrician legs which walk about,_
_The ornaments of levee and of rout_.--[M.S.]
[267] [Probably Lady Charlemont. See "Journal," November 22, 1813.]
{216}[268] [The cyanometer, an instrument for ascertaining the intensity
of the blue colour of the sky, was invented by Horace Benedict de
Saussure (1740-1799); see his _Essai sur l'Hygrometrie_. F.H. Alexander
von Humboldt (1769-1859) "made great use of his instrument on his
voyages, and ascertained by the colour the degree of blueness, the
accumulation and the nature of the non-transparent exhalations of the
air."--_Alexander von Humboldt_, by Professor Klencke, translated by
Juliette Bauer, 1852, pp. 45, 46.]
[eq]
_I'll back a London_ "Bas" _against Peru_.
or, _I'll bet some pair of stocking beat Peru_.
or, _And so, old Sotheby, we'll measure you_.--[MS.]
[269] ["The slave-market is a quadrangle, surrounded by a covered
gallery, and ranges of small and separate apartments." Here the poor
wretches sit in a melancholy posture. "Before they cheapen 'em, they
turn 'em about from this side to that, survey 'em from top to bottom....
Such of 'em, both men and women, to whom Dame Nature has been niggardly
of her charms, are set apart for the vilest services: but such girls as
have youth and beauty pass their time well enough.... The retailers of
this human ware are the Jews, who take good care of their slaves'
education, that they may sell the better: their choicest they keep at
home, and there you must go, if you would have better than ordinary; for
'tis here, as 'tis in markets for horses, the handsomest don't always
appear, but are kept within doors."--_A Voyage into the Levant_, by M.
Tournefort, 1741, ii. 198, 199. See, too, for the description of the
sale of two Circassians and one Georgian, _Voyage de Vienne a Belgrade_,
... par N.E. Kleeman, 1780, pp. 141, 142. The "lowest offer for the
prize Circassian was 4000 piastres."]
[er]
_The females stood, till chosen each as victim_
_To the soft oath of "Ana seing Siktum!"_[*]--[MS.]
[[*]If the Turkish words are correctly given, "the oath" may be an
imprecation on "your mother's" chastity.]
[es] _For fear the Canto should become too long._--[MS.]
CANTO THE FIFTH.[270]
I.
WHEN amatory poets sing their loves
In liquid lines mellifluously bland,
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves,
They little think what mischief is in hand;
The greater their success the worse it proves,
As Ovid's verse may give to understand;
Even Petrarch's self, if judged with due severity,
Is the Platonic pimp of all posterity.
II.
I therefore do denounce all amorous writing,
Except in such a way as not to attract;
Plain--simple--short, and by no means inviting,
But with a moral to each error tacked,
Formed rather for instructing than delighting,
And with all passions in their turn attacked;
Now, if my Pegasus should not be shod ill,
This poem will become a moral model.
III.
The European with the Asian shore
Sprinkled with palaces--the Ocean stream[271]
Here and there studded with a seventy-four,
Sophia's Cupola with golden gleam,[272]
The cypress groves, Olympus high and hoar,
The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream,
Far less describe, present the very view
Which charmed the charming Mary Montagu.
IV.
I have a passion for the name of "Mary,"[273]
For once it was a magic sound to me;
And still it half calls up the realms of Fairy,
Where I beheld what never was to be;
All feelings changed, but this was last to vary,
A spell from which even yet I am not quite free:
But I grow sad--and let a tale grow cold,
Which must not be pathetically told.
V.
The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave
Broke foaming o'er the blue Symplegades;
'T is a grand sight from off "the Giant's Grave"[274]
To watch the progress of those rolling seas
Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave
Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease:
There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in,
Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.
VI.
'T was a raw day of Autumn's bleak beginning,
When nights are equal, but not so the days;
The Parcae then cut short the further spinning
Of seamen's fates, and the loud tempests raise[et]
The waters, and repentance for past sinning
In all, who o'er the great deep take their ways:
They vow to amend their lives, and yet they don't;
Because if drowned, they can't--if spared, they won't.
VII.
A crowd of shivering slaves of every nation,
And age, and sex, were in the market ranged;
Each bevy with the merchant in his station:
Poor creatures! their good looks were sadly changed.
All save the blacks seemed jaded with vexation,
From friends, and home, and freedom far estranged;
The negroes more philosophy displayed,--
Used to it, no doubt, as eels are to be flayed.
VIII.
Juan was juvenile, and thus was full,
As most at his age are, of hope, and health;
Yet I must own, he looked a little dull,
And now and then a tear stole down by stealth;
Perhaps his recent loss of blood might pull
His spirit down; and then the loss of wealth,
A mistress, and such comfortable quarters,
To be put up for auction amongst Tartars,
IX.
Were things to shake a Stoic; ne'ertheless,
Upon the whole his carriage was serene:
His figure, and the splendour of his dress,
Of which some gilded remnants still were seen,
Drew all eyes on him, giving them to guess
He was above the vulgar by his mien;
And then, though pale, he was so very handsome;
And then--they calculated on his ransom.[eu]
X.
Like a backgammon board the place was dotted
With whites and blacks, in groups on show for sale,
Though rather more irregularly spotted:
Some bought the jet, while others chose the pale.
It chanced amongst the other people lotted,[ev]
A man of thirty, rather stout and hale,
With resolution in his dark grey eye,
Next Juan stood, till some might choose to buy.
XI.
He had an English look; that is, was square
In make, of a complexion white and ruddy,
Good teeth, with curling rather dark brown hair,
And, it might be from thought, or toil, or study,
An open brow a little marked with care:
One arm had on a bandage rather bloody;
And there he stood with such _sang froid,_ that greater
Could scarce be shown even by a mere spectator.
XII.
But seeing at his elbow a mere lad,
Of a high spirit evidently, though
At present weighed down by a doom which had
O'erthrown even men, he soon began to show
A kind of blunt compassion for the sad
Lot of so young a partner in the woe,
Which for himself he seemed to deem no worse
Than any other scrape, a thing of course.
XIII.
"My boy!"--said he, "amidst this motley crew
Of Georgians, Russians, Nubians, and what not,
All ragamuffins differing but in hue,
With whom it is our luck to cast our lot,
The only gentlemen seem I and you;
So let us be acquainted, as we ought:
If I could yield you any consolation,
'T would give me pleasure.--Pray, what is your nation?"
XIV.
When Juan answered--"Spanish!" he replied,
"I thought, in fact, you could not be a Greek;
Those servile dogs are not so proudly eyed:
Fortune has played you here a pretty freak,
But that's her way with all men, till they're tried;
But never mind,--she'll turn, perhaps, next week;
She has served me also much the same as you,
Except that I have found it nothing new."
XV.
"Pray, sir," said Juan, "if I may presume,
_What_ brought you here?"--"Oh! nothing very rare--
Six Tartars and a drag-chain----"--"To this doom
But what conducted, if the question 's fair,
Is that which I would learn."--"I served for some
Months with the Russian army here and there;
And taking lately, by Suwarrow's bidding,
A town, was ta'en myself instead of Widdin."[275]
XVI.
"Have you no friends?"--"I had--but, by God's blessing,
Have not been troubled with them lately. Now
I have answered all your questions without pressing,
And you an equal courtesy should show."
"Alas!" said Juan, "'t were a tale distressing,
And long besides."--"Oh! if 't is really so,
You're right on both accounts to hold your tongue;
A sad tale saddens doubly when 't is long.
XVII.
"But droop not: Fortune at your time of life,
Although a female moderately fickle,
Will hardly leave you (as she's not your wife)
For any length of days in such a pickle.
To strive, too, with our fate were such a strife
As if the corn-sheaf should oppose the sickle:
Men are the sport of circumstances, when
The circumstances seem the sport of men."
XVIII.
"'T is not," said Juan, "for my present doom
I mourn, but for the past;--I loved a maid:"--
He paused, and his dark eye grew full of gloom;
A single tear upon his eyelash staid
A moment, and then dropped; "but to resume,
'Tis not my present lot, as I have said,
Which I deplore so much; for I have borne
Hardships which have the hardiest overworn,
XIX.
"On the rough deep. But this last blow--" and here
He stopped again, and turned away his face.
"Aye," quoth his friend, "I thought it would appear
That there had been a lady in the case;
And these are things which ask a tender tear,
Such as I, too, would shed if in your place:
I cried upon my first wife's dying day,
And also when my second ran away:
XX.
"My third----"--"Your third!" quoth Juan, turning round;
"You scarcely can be thirty: have you three?"
"No--only two at present above ground:
Surely 't is nothing wonderful to see
One person thrice in holy wedlock bound!"
"Well, then, your third," said Juan; "what did she?
She did not run away, too,--did she, sir?"
"No, faith."--"What then?"--"I ran away from her."
XXI.
"You take things coolly, sir," said Juan. "Why,"
Replied the other, "what can a man do?
There still are many rainbows in your sky,
But mine have vanished. All, when Life is new,
Commence with feelings warm, and prospects high;
But Time strips our illusions of their hue,
And one by one in turn, some grand mistake
Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake.
XXII.
"'T is true, it gets another bright and fresh,
Or fresher, brighter; but the year gone through,
This skin must go the way, too, of all flesh,
Or sometimes only wear a week or two;--
Love's the first net which spreads its deadly mesh;
Ambition, Avarice, Vengeance, Glory, glue
The glittering lime-twigs of our latter days,
Where still we flutter on for pence or praise."
XXIII.
"All this is very fine, and may be true,"
Said Juan; "but I really don't see how
It betters present times with me or you."
"No?" quoth the other; "yet you will allow
By setting things in their right point of view,
Knowledge, at least, is gained; for instance, now,
We know what slavery is, and our disasters
May teach us better to behave when masters."
XXIV.
"Would we were masters now, if but to try
Their present lessons on our Pagan friends here,"
Said Juan,--swallowing a heart-burning sigh:
"Heaven help the scholar, whom his fortune sends here!"
"Perhaps we shall be one day, by and by,"
Rejoined the other, "when our bad luck mends here;
Meantime (yon old black eunuch seems to eye us)
I wish to G--d that somebody would buy us.
XXV.
"But after all, what _is_ our present state?
'T is bad, and may be better--all men's lot:
Most men are slaves, none more so than the great,
To their own whims and passions, and what not;
Society itself, which should create
Kindness, destroys what little we had got:
To feel for none is the true social art
Of the world's Stoics--men without a heart."
XXVI.
Just now a black old neutral personage
Of the third sex stepped up, and peering over
The captives seemed to mark their looks and age,
And capabilities, as to discover
If they were fitted for the purposed cage:
No lady e'er is ogled by a lover,
Horse by a blackleg, broadcloth by a tailor,
Fee by a counsel, felon by a jailor,
XXVII.
As is a slave by his intended bidder.
'T is pleasant purchasing our fellow-creatures;
And all are to be sold, if you consider
Their passions, and are dext'rous; some by features
Are bought up, others by a warlike leader,
Some by a place--as tend their years or natures:
The most by ready cash--but all have prices,
From crowns to kicks, according to their vices.
XXVIII.
The eunuch, having eyed them o'er with care,
Turned to the merchant, and began to bid
First but for one, and after for the pair;
They haggled, wrangled, swore, too--so they did!
As though they were in a mere Christian fair,
Cheapening an ox, an ass, a lamb, or kid;
So that their bargain sounded like a battle
For this superior yoke of human cattle.
XXIX.
At last they settled into simple grumbling,
And pulling out reluctant purses, and
Turning each piece of silver o'er, and tumbling
Some down, and weighing others in their hand,
And by mistake sequins[276] with paras jumbling,
Until the sum was accurately scanned,
And then the merchant giving change, and signing
Receipts in full, began to think of dining.
XXX.
I wonder if his appetite was good?
Or, if it were, if also his digestion?
Methinks at meals some odd thoughts might intrude,
And Conscience ask a curious sort of question,
About the right divine how far we should
Sell flesh and blood. When dinner has oppressed one,
I think it is perhaps the gloomiest hour
Which turns up out of the sad twenty-four.
XXXI.
Voltaire says "No:" he tells you that Candide
Found life most tolerable after meals;[277]
He's wrong--unless man were a pig, indeed,
Repletion rather adds to what he feels,
Unless he's drunk, and then no doubt he's freed
From his own brain's oppression while it reels.
Of food I think with Philip's son[278] or rather
Ammon's (ill pleased with one world and one father);[ew]
XXXII.
I think with Alexander, that the act
Of eating, with another act or two,
Makes us feel our mortality in fact
Redoubled; when a roast and a ragout,
And fish, and soup, by some side dishes backed,
Can give us either pain or pleasure, who
Would pique himself on intellects, whose use
Depends so much upon the gastric juice?
XXXIII.
The other evening ('t was on Friday last)--
This is a fact, and no poetic fable--
Just as my great coat was about me cast,
My hat and gloves still lying on the table,
I heard a shot--'t was eight o'clock scarce past--
And, running out as fast as I was able,[279]
I found the military commandant
Stretched in the street, and able scarce to pant.
XXXIV.
Poor fellow! for some reason, surely bad,
They had slain him with five slugs; and left him there
To perish on the pavement: so I had
Him borne into the house and up the stair,
And stripped, and looked to[ex]----But why should I add
More circumstances? vain was every care;
The man was gone--in some Italian quarrel
Killed by five bullets from an old gun-barrel.
XXXV.
I gazed upon him, for I knew him well;
And though I have seen many corpses, never
Saw one, whom such an accident befell,
So calm; though pierced through stomach, heart, and liver,
He seemed to sleep,--for you could scarcely tell
(As he bled inwardly, no hideous river
Of gore divulged the cause) that he was dead:
So as I gazed on him, I thought or said--
XXXVI.
"Can this be Death? then what is Life or Death?
Speak!" but he spoke not: "wake!" but still he slept:--
"But yesterday and who had mightier breath?
A thousand warriors by his word were kept
In awe: he said, as the Centurion saith,
'Go,' and he goeth; 'come,' and forth he stepped.
The trump and bugle till he spake were dumb--
And now nought left him but the muffled drum."[ey]
XXXVII.
And they who waited once and worshipped--they
With their rough faces thronged about the bed
To gaze once more on the commanding clay
Which for the last, though not the first, time bled;
And such an end! that he who many a day
Had faced Napoleon's foes until they fled,--
The foremost in the charge or in the sally,
Should now be butchered in a civic alley.
XXXVIII.
The scars of his old wounds were near his new,
Those honourable scars which brought him fame;
And horrid was the contrast to the view----
But let me quit the theme; as such things claim
Perhaps even more attention than is due
From me: I gazed (as oft I have gazed the same)
To try if I could wrench aught out of Death
Which should confirm, or shake, or make a faith;
XXXIX.
But it was all a mystery. Here we are,
And there we go:--but _where_? five bits of lead,
Or three, or two, or one, send very far!
And is this blood, then, formed but to be shed?
Can every element our elements mar?
And Air--Earth--Water--Fire live--and we dead?
_We_, whose minds comprehend all things? No more;
But let us to the story as before.
XL.
The purchaser of Juan and acquaintance
Bore off his bargains to a gilded boat,
Embarked himself and them, and off they went thence
As fast as oars could pull and water float;
They looked like persons being led to sentence,
Wondering what next, till the caique[280] was brought
Up in a little creek below a wall
O'ertopped with cypresses, dark-green and tall.
XLI.
Here their conductor tapping at the wicket
Of a small iron door, 't was opened, and
He led them onward, first through a low thicket
Flanked by large groves, which towered on either hand:
They almost lost their way, and had to pick it--
For night was closing ere they came to land.
The eunuch made a sign to those on board,
Who rowed off, leaving them without a word.
XLII.
As they were plodding on their winding way
Through orange bowers, and jasmine, and so forth:
(Of which I might have a good deal to say,
There being no such profusion in the North
Of oriental plants, _et cetera_,
But that of late your scribblers think it worth
Their while to rear whole hotbeds in _their_ works,
Because _one_ poet travelled 'mongst the Turks:)[281]
XLIII.
As they were threading on their way, there came
Into Don Juan's head a thought, which he
Whispered to his companion:--'t was the same
Which might have then occurred to you or me.
"Methinks,"--said he,--"it would be no great shame
If we should strike a stroke to set us free;
Let's knock that old black fellow on the head,
And march away--'t were easier done than said."
XLIV.
"Yes," said the other, "and when done, what then?
_How_ get out? how the devil got we in?
And when we once were fairly out, and when
From Saint Bartholomew we have saved our skin,[282][ez]
To-morrow'd see us in some other den,
And worse off than we hitherto have been;
Besides, I'm hungry, and just now would take,
Like Esau, for my birthright a beef-steak.
XLV.
"We must be near some place of man's abode;--
For the old negro's confidence in creeping,
With his two captives, by so queer a road,
Shows that he thinks his friends have not been sleeping;
A single cry would bring them all abroad:
'T is better therefore looking before leaping--
And there, you see, this turn has brought us through,
By Jove, a noble palace!--lighted too."
XLVI.
It was indeed a wide extensive building
Which opened on their view, and o'er the front
There seemed to be besprent a deal of gilding
And various hues, as is the Turkish wont,--
A gaudy taste; for they are little skilled in
The arts of which these lands were once the font:
Each villa on the Bosphorus looks a screen
New painted, or a pretty opera-scene.[283]
XLVII.
And nearer as they came, a genial savour
Of certain stews, and roast-meats, and pilaus,
Things which in hungry mortals' eyes find favour,
Made Juan in his harsh intentions pause,
And put himself upon his good behaviour:
His friend, too, adding a new saving clause,
Said, "In Heaven's name let's get some supper now,
And then I'm with you, if you're for a row."
XLVIII.
Some talk of an appeal unto some passion,
Some to men's feelings, others to their reason;
The last of these was never much the fashion,
For Reason thinks all reasoning out of season:
Some speakers whine, and others lay the lash on,
But more or less continue still to tease on,
With arguments according to their "forte:"
But no one ever dreams of being short.--
XLIX.
But I digress: of all appeals,--although
I grant the power of pathos, and of gold,
Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,--no
Method's more sure at moments to take hold[fa]
Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow
More tender, as we every day behold,
Than that all-softening, overpowering knell,
The Tocsin of the Soul--the dinner-bell.
L.
Turkey contains no bells, and yet men dine;
And Juan and his friend, albeit they heard
No Christian knoll to table, saw no line
Of lackeys usher to the feast prepared,
Yet smelt roast-meat, beheld a huge fire shine,
And cooks in motion with their clean arms bared,
And gazed around them to the left and right,
With the prophetic eye of appetite.
LI.
And giving up all notions of resistance,
They followed close behind their sable guide,
Who little thought that his own cracked existence
Was on the point of being set aside:
He motioned them to stop at some small distance,
And knocking at the gate, 't was opened wide,
And a magnificent large hall displayed
The Asian pomp of Ottoman parade.
LII.
I won't describe; description is my "forte,"
But every fool describes in these bright days
His wondrous journey to some foreign court,
And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise--
Death to his publisher, to him 't is sport;
While Nature, tortured twenty thousand ways,
Resigns herself with exemplary patience
To guide-books, rhymes, tours, sketches, illustrations.[284]
LIII.
Along this hall, and up and down, some, squatted
Upon their hams, were occupied at chess;
Others in monosyllable talk chatted,
And some seemed much in love with their own dress;
And divers smoked superb pipes decorated
With amber mouths of greater price or less;
And several strutted, others slept, and some
Prepared for supper with a glass of rum.[285]
LIV.
As the black eunuch entered with his brace
Of purchased Infidels, some raised their eyes
A moment, without slackening from their pace;
But those who sate ne'er stirred in any wise:
One or two stared the captives in the face,
Just as one views a horse to guess his price;
Some nodded to the negro from their station,
But no one troubled him with conversation.[286]
LV.
He leads them through the hall, and, without stopping,
On through a farther range of goodly rooms,
Splendid, but silent, save in _one_, where dropping[287]
A marble fountain echoes through the glooms
Of night which robe the chamber, or where popping
Some female head most curiously presumes
To thrust its black eyes through the door or lattice,
As wondering what the _devil_ noise that is!
LVI.
Some faint lamps gleaming from the lofty walls
Gave light enough to hint their farther way,
But not enough to show the imperial halls
In all the flashing of their full array;
Perhaps there's nothing--I'll not say appals,
But saddens more by night as well as day,
Than an enormous room without a soul[288]
To break the lifeless splendour of the whole.
LVII.
Two or three seem so little, _one_ seems nothing:
In deserts, forests, crowds, or by the shore,
_There_ Solitude, we know, has her full growth in
The spots which were her realms for evermore;
But in a mighty hall or gallery, both in
More modern buildings and those built of yore,
A kind of Death comes o'er us all alone,
Seeing what's meant for many with but one.
LVIII.
A neat, snug study on a winter's night,[fb]
A book, friend, single lady, or a glass
Of claret, sandwich, and an appetite,
Are things which make an English evening pass--
Though _certes_ by no means so grand a sight
As is a theatre lit up by gas--
_I_ pass my evenings in long galleries solely,[fc][289]
And that's the reason I'm so melancholy.
LIX.
Alas! Man makes that great which makes him little--
I grant you in a church 't is very well:
What speaks of Heaven should by no means be brittle,
But strong and lasting, till no tongue can tell
Their names who reared it; but huge houses fit ill,
And huge tombs, worse, Mankind--since Adam fell:
Methinks the story of the tower of Babel
Might teach them this much better than I'm able.
LX.
Babel was Nimrod's hunting-box, and then
A town of gardens, walls, and wealth amazing,
Where Nabuchadonosor,[290] King of men,
Reigned, till one summer's day he took to grazing,
And Daniel tamed the lions in their den,
The people's awe and admiration raising;
'T was famous, too, for Thisbe and for Pyramus,[291]
And the calumniated queen Semiramis--
LXI.
That injured Queen, by chroniclers[292] so coarse,
Has been accused (I doubt not by conspiracy)
Of an improper friendship for her horse
(Love, like Religion, sometimes runs to heresy):
This monstrous tale had probably its source
(For such exaggerations here and there I see)
In writing "Courser" by mistake for "Courier:"[fd]
I wish the case could come before a jury here.[293]
LXII.
But to resume,--should there be (what may not
Be in these days?) some infidels, who don't,
Because they can't find out the very spot
Of that same Babel, or because they won't
(Though Claudius Rich, Esquire, some bricks has got,
And written lately two memoirs upon't),[294]
Believe the Jews, those unbelievers, who
Must be believed, though they believe not you:
LXIII.
Yet let them think that Horace has expressed
Shortly and sweetly the masonic folly
Of those, forgetting the great place of rest,
Who give themselves to Architecture wholly;
We know where things and men must end at best:
A moral (like all morals) melancholy,
And "Et sepulchri immemor struis domos"
Shows that we build when we should but entomb us.
LXIV.
At last they reached a quarter most retired,
Where Echo woke as if from a long slumber;
Though full of all things which could be desired,
One wondered what to do with such a number
Of articles which nobody required;
Here Wealth had done its utmost to encumber
With furniture an exquisite apartment,
Which puzzled Nature much to know what Art meant.
LXV.
It seemed, however, but to open on
A range or suite of further chambers, which
Might lead to Heaven knows where; but in this one
The moveables were prodigally rich:
Sofas 't was half a sin to sit upon,
So costly were they; carpets every stitch
Of workmanship so rare, they made you wish
You could glide o'er them like a golden fish.
LXVI.
The black, however, without hardly deigning
A glance at that which wrapped the slaves in wonder,
Trampled what they scarce trod for fear of staining,
As if the milky way their feet was under
With all its stars; and with a stretch attaining
A certain press or cupboard niched in yonder,
In that remote recess which you may see--
Or if you don't the fault is not in me,--
LXVII.
I wish to be perspicuous--and the black,
I say, unlocking the recess, pulled forth
A quantity of clothes fit for the back
Of any Mussulman, whate'er his worth:
And of variety there was no lack--
And yet, though I have said there was no dearth,--
He chose himself to point out what he thought
Most proper for the Christians he had bought.
LXVIII.
The suit he thought most suitable to each
Was, for the elder and the stouter, first
A Candiote cloak, which to the knee might reach,
And trousers not so tight that they would burst,
But such as fit an Asiatic breech;
A shawl, whose folds in Cashmire had been nursed,
Slippers of saffron, dagger rich and handy;
In short, all things which form a Turkish Dandy.
LXIX.
While he was dressing, Baba, their black friend,
Hinted the vast advantages which they
Might probably attain both in the end,
If they would but pursue the proper way
Which Fortune plainly seemed to recommend;
And then he added, that he needs must say,
"'T would greatly tend to better their condition,
If they would condescend to circumcision.
LXX.
"For his own part, he really should rejoice
To see them true believers, but no less
Would leave his proposition to their choice."
The other, thanking him for this excess
Of goodness, in thus leaving them a voice
In such a trifle, scarcely could express
"Sufficiently" (he said) "his approbation
Of all the customs of this polished nation.
LXXI.
"For his own share--he saw but small objection
To so respectable an ancient rite;
And, after swallowing down a slight refection,
For which he owned a present appetite,
He doubted not a few hours of reflection
Would reconcile him to the business quite."
"Will it?" said Juan, sharply: "Strike me dead,
But they as soon shall circumcise my head![fe]
LXXII.
"Cut off a thousand heads, before----"--"Now, pray,"
Replied the other, "do not interrupt:
You put me out in what I had to say.
Sir!--as I said, as soon as I have supped,
I shall perpend if your proposal may
Be such as I can properly accept;
Provided always your great goodness still
Remits the matter to our own free-will."
LXXIII.
Baba eyed Juan, and said, "Be so good
As dress yourself--" and pointed out a suit
In which a Princess with great pleasure would
Array her limbs; but Juan standing mute,
As not being in a masquerading mood,
Gave it a slight kick with his Christian foot;
And when the old negro told him to "Get ready,"
Replied, "Old gentleman, I'm not a lady."
LXXIV.
"What you may be, I neither know nor care,"
Said Baba; "but pray do as I desire:
I have no more time nor many words to spare."
"At least," said Juan, "sure I may inquire
The cause of this odd travesty?"--"Forbear,"
Said Baba, "to be curious; 't will transpire,
No doubt, in proper place, and time, and season:
I have no authority to tell the reason."
LXXV.
"Then if I do," said Juan, "I'll be----"--"Hold!"
Rejoined the negro, "pray be not provoking;
This spirit's well, but it may wax too bold,
And you will find us not too fond of joking."
"What, sir!" said Juan, "shall it e'er be told
That I unsexed my dress?" But Baba, stroking
The things down, said, "Incense me, and I call
Those who will leave you of no sex at all.
LXXVI.
"I offer you a handsome suit of clothes:
A woman's, true; but then there is a cause
Why you should wear them."--"What, though my soul loathes
The effeminate garb?"--thus, after a short pause,
Sighed Juan, muttering also some slight oaths,
"What the devil shall I do with all this gauze?"
Thus he profanely termed the finest lace
Which e'er set off a marriage-morning face.
LXXVII.
And then he swore; and, sighing, on he slipped
A pair of trousers of flesh-coloured silk;[ff]
Next with a virgin zone he was equipped,
Which girt a slight chemise as white as milk;
But tugging on his petticoat, he tripped,
Which--as we say--or as the Scotch say, _whilk_.[295]
(The rhyme obliges me to this; sometimes
Monarchs are less imperative than rhymes)--[fg]
LXXVIII.
Whilk, which (or what you please), was owing to
His garment's novelty, and his being awkward:
And yet at last he managed to get through
His toilet, though no doubt a little backward:
The negro Baba helped a little too,
When some untoward part of raiment stuck hard;
And, wrestling both his arms into a gown,
He paused, and took a survey up and down.
LXXIX.
One difficulty still remained--his hair
Was hardly long enough; but Baba found
So many false long tresses all to spare,
That soon his head was most completely crowned,
After the manner then in fashion there;
And this addition with such gems was bound
As suited the _ensemble_ of his toilet,
While Baba made him comb his head and oil it.
LXXX.
And now being femininely all arrayed,
With some small aid from scissors, paint, and tweezers,
He looked in almost all respects a maid,[fh]
And Baba smilingly exclaimed, "You see, sirs,
A perfect transformation here displayed;
And now, then, you must come along with me, sirs,
That is--the Lady:" clapping his hands twice,
Four blacks were at his elbow in a trice.
LXXXI.
"You, sir," said Baba, nodding to the one,
"Will please to accompany those gentlemen
To supper; but you, worthy Christian nun,
Will follow me: no trifling, sir; for when
I say a thing, it must at once be done.
What fear you? think you this a lion's den?
Why, 't is a palace; where the truly wise
Anticipate the Prophet's paradise.
LXXXII.
"You fool! I tell you no one means you harm."
"So much the better," Juan said, "for them;
Else they shall feel the weight of this my arm,
Which is not quite so light as you may deem.
I yield thus far; but soon will break the charm,
If any take me for that which I seem:
So that I trust for every body's sake,
That this disguise may lead to no mistake."
LXXXIII.
"Blockhead! come on, and see," quoth Baba; while
Don Juan, turning to his comrade, who
Though somewhat grieved, could scarce forbear a smile
Upon the metamorphosis in view,--
"Farewell!" they mutually exclaimed: "this soil
Seems fertile in adventures strange and new;
One's turned half Mussulman, and one a maid,
By this old black enchanter's unsought aid."
LXXXIV.
"Farewell!" said Juan: "should we meet no more,
I wish you a good appetite."--"Farewell!"
Replied the other; "though it grieves me sore:
When we next meet, we'll have a tale to tell:
We needs must follow when Fate puts from shore.
Keep your good name; though Eve herself once fell."
"Nay," quoth the maid, "the Sultan's self shan't carry me,
Unless his Highness promises to marry me."
LXXXV.
And thus they parted, each by separate doors;
Baba led Juan onward, room by room,
Through glittering galleries, and o'er marble floors,
Till a gigantic portal through the gloom,
Haughty and huge, along the distance lowers;
And wafted far arose a rich perfume:
It seemed as though they came upon a shrine,
For all was vast, still, fragrant, and divine.
LXXXVI.
The giant door was broad, and bright, and high,
Of gilded bronze, and carved in curious guise;
Warriors thereon were battling furiously;
Here stalks the victor, there the vanquished lies;
There captives led in triumph droop the eye,
And in perspective many a squadron flies:
It seems the work of times before the line
Of Rome transplanted fell with Constantine.
LXXXVII.
This massy portal stood at the wide close
Of a huge hall, and on its either side
Two little dwarfs, the least you could suppose,
Were sate, like ugly imps, as if allied
In mockery to the enormous gate which rose
O'er them in almost pyramidic pride:
The gate so splendid was in all its _features_,[296]
You never thought about those little creatures,
LXXXVIII.
Until you nearly trod on them, and then
You started back in horror to survey
The wondrous hideousness of those small men,
Whose colour was not black, nor white, nor grey,
But an extraneous mixture, which no pen
Can trace, although perhaps the pencil may;
They were mis-shapen pigmies, deaf and dumb--
Monsters, who cost a no less monstrous sum.
LXXXIX.
Their duty was--for they were strong, and though
They looked so little, did strong things at times--
To ope this door, which they could really do,
The hinges being as smooth as Rogers' rhymes;
And now and then, with tough strings of the bow,
As is the custom of those Eastern climes,
To give some rebel Pacha a cravat--
For mutes are generally used for that.
XC.
They spoke by signs--that is, not spoke at all;
And looking like two Incubi, they glared
As Baba with his fingers made them fall
To heaving back the portal folds: it scared
Juan a moment, as this pair so small,
With shrinking serpent optics on him stared;[297]
It was as if their little looks could poison
Or fascinate whome'er they fixed their eyes on.
XCI.
Before they entered, Baba paused to hint
To Juan some slight lessons as his guide:
"If you could just contrive," he said, "to stint
That somewhat manly majesty of stride,
'T would be as well, and--(though there's not much in 't)
To swing a little less from side to side,
Which has at times an aspect of the oddest;--
And also could you look a little modest,
XCII.
"'T would be convenient; for these mutes have eyes
Like needles, which may pierce those petticoats;
And if they should discover your disguise,
You know how near us the deep Bosphorus floats;
And you and I may chance, ere morning rise,
To find our way to Marmora without boats,
Stitched up in sacks--a mode of navigation
A good deal practised here upon occasion."[298]
XCIII.
With this encouragement he led the way
Into a room still nobler than the last;
A rich confusion formed a disarray
In such sort, that the eye along it cast
Could hardly carry anything away,
Object on object flashed so bright and fast;
A dazzling mass of gems, and gold, and glitter,
Magnificently mingled in a litter.
XCIV.
Wealth had done wonders--taste not much; such things
Occur in Orient palaces, and even
In the more chastened domes of Western kings
(Of which I have also seen some six or seven),
Where I can't say or gold or diamond flings
Great lustre, there is much to be forgiven;
Groups of bad statues, tables, chairs, and pictures,
On which I cannot pause to make my strictures.
XCV.
In this imperial hall, at distance lay
Under a canopy, and there reclined
Quite in a confidential queenly way,
A lady; Baba stopped, and kneeling signed
To Juan, who though not much used to pray,
Knelt down by instinct, wondering in his mind
What all this meant: while Baba bowed and bended
His head, until the ceremony ended.
XCVI.
The lady rising up with such an air
As Venus rose with from the wave, on them
Bent like an antelope a Paphian pair[fi]
Of eyes, which put out each surrounding gem;
And raising up an arm as moonlight fair,
She signed to Baba, who first kissed the hem
Of her deep purple robe, and, speaking low,
Pointed to Juan who remained below.
XCVII.
Her presence was as lofty as her state;
Her beauty of that overpowering kind,
Whose force Description only would abate:
I'd rather leave it much to your own mind,
Than lessen it by what I could relate
Of forms and features; it would strike you blind
Could I do justice to the full detail;
So, luckily for both, my phrases fail.
XCVIII.
Thus much however I may add,--her years
Were ripe, they might make six-and-twenty springs,
But there are forms which Time to touch forbears,
And turns aside his scythe to vulgar things:[fj]
Such as was Mary's, Queen of Scots; true--tears
And Love destroy; and sapping Sorrow wrings
Charms from the charmer, yet some never grow
Ugly; for instance--Ninon de l'Enclos.[299]
XCIX.
She spake some words to her attendants, who
Composed a choir of girls, ten or a dozen,
And were all clad alike; like Juan, too,
Who wore their uniform, by Baba chosen:
They formed a very nymph-like looking crew,[300]
Which might have called Diana's chorus "cousin,"
As far as outward show may correspond--
I won't be bail for anything beyond.
C.
They bowed obeisance and withdrew, retiring,
But not by the same door through which came in
Baba and Juan, which last stood admiring,
At some small distance, all he saw within
This strange saloon, much fitted for inspiring
Marvel and praise; for both or none things win;
And I must say, I ne'er could see the very
Great happiness of the "Nil admirari."[301]
CI.
"Not to admire is all the art I know
(Plain truth, dear Murray, needs few flowers of speech)--
To make men happy, or to keep them so"
(So take it in the very words of Creech)--
Thus Horace wrote we all know long ago;
And thus Pope[302] quotes the precept to re-teach
From his translation; but had _none admired_,
Would Pope have sung, or Horace been inspired?[303]
CII.
Baba, when all the damsels were withdrawn,
Motioned to Juan to approach, and then
A second time desired him to kneel down,
And kiss the lady's foot; which maxim when
He heard repeated, Juan with a frown
Drew himself up to his full height again,
And said, "It grieved him, but he could not stoop
To any shoe, unless it shod the Pope."
CII.
Baba, indignant at this ill-timed pride,
Made fierce remonstrances, and then a threat
He muttered (but the last was given aside)
About a bow-string--quite in vain; not yet
Would Juan bend, though 't were to Mahomet's bride:
There's nothing in the world like _etiquette_
In kingly chambers or imperial halls,
As also at the Race and County Balls.
CIV.
He stood like Atlas, with a world of words
About his ears, and nathless would not bend;
The blood of all his line's Castilian lords
Boiled in his veins, and, rather than descend
To stain his pedigree, a thousand swords
A thousand times of him had made an end;
At length perceiving the "_foot_" could not stand,
Baba proposed that he should kiss the hand,
CV.
Here was an honourable compromise,
A half-way house of diplomatic rest,
Where they might meet in much more peaceful guise;
And Juan now his willingness expressed
To use all fit and proper courtesies,
Adding, that this was commonest and best,
For through the South, the custom still commands
The gentleman to kiss the lady's hands.
CVI.
And he advanced, though with but a bad grace,
Though on more _thorough-bred_[304] or fairer fingers
No lips e'er left their transitory trace:
On such as these the lip too fondly lingers,
And for one kiss would fain imprint a brace,
As you will see, if she you love shall bring hers
In contact; and sometimes even a fair stranger's
An almost twelvemonth's constancy endangers.
CVII.
The lady eyed him o'er and o'er, and bade
Baba retire, which he obeyed in style,
As if well used to the retreating trade;
And taking hints in good part all the while,
He whispered Juan not to be afraid,
And looking on him with a sort of smile,
Took leave, with such a face of satisfaction,
As good men wear who have done a virtuous action.
CVIII.
When he was gone, there was a sudden change:
I know not what might be the lady's thought,
But o'er her bright brow flashed a tumult strange,
And into her clear cheek the blood was brought,
Blood-red as sunset summer clouds which range
The verge of Heaven; and in her large eyes wrought,
A mixture of sensations might be scanned,
Of half voluptuousness and half command.
CIX.
Her form had all the softness of her sex,
Her features all the sweetness of the Devil,
When he put on the Cherub to perplex[305]
Eve, and paved (God knows how) the road to evil;
The Sun himself was scarce more free from specks
Than she from aught at which the eye could cavil;
Yet, somehow, there was something somewhere wanting,
As if she rather _ordered_ than was _granting_.--
CX.
Something imperial, or imperious, threw
A chain o'er all she did; that is, a chain
Was thrown as 't were about the neck of you,--
And Rapture's self will seem almost a pain
With aught which looks like despotism in view;
Our souls at least are free, and 't is in vain
We would against them make the flesh obey--
The spirit in the end will have its way.
CXI.
Her very smile was haughty, though so sweet;
Her very nod was not an inclination;
There was a self-will even in her small feet,
As though they were quite conscious of her station--
They trod as upon necks; and to complete
Her state (it is the custom of her nation),
A poniard decked her girdle, as the sign
She was a Sultan's bride (thank Heaven, not mine!).
CXII.
"To hear and to obey" had been from birth
The law of all around her; to fulfil
All phantasies which yielded joy or mirth,
Had been her slaves' chief pleasure, as her will;
Her blood was high, her beauty scarce of earth:
Judge, then, if her caprices e'er stood still;
Had she but been a Christian, I've a notion
We should have found out the "perpetual motion."
CXIII.
Whate'er she saw and coveted was brought;
Whate'er she did _not_ see, if she supposed
It might be seen, with diligence was sought,
And when 't was found straightway the bargain closed:
There was no end unto the things she bought,
Nor to the trouble which her fancies caused;
Yet even her tyranny had such a grace,
The women pardoned all except her face.[fk]
CXIV.
Juan, the latest of her whims, had caught
Her eye in passing on his way to sale;
She ordered him directly to be bought,
And Baba, who had ne'er been known to fail
In any kind of mischief to be wrought,
At all such auctions knew how to prevail:[fl]
She had no prudence, but he had--and this
Explains the garb which Juan took amiss.
CXV.
His youth and features favoured the disguise,
And should you ask how she, a Sultan's bride,
Could risk or compass such strange phantasies,
This I must leave sultanas to decide:
Emperors are only husbands in wives' eyes,
And kings and consorts oft are mystified,[fm]
As we may ascertain with due precision,
Some by experience, others by tradition.
CXVI.
But to the main point, where we have been tending:--
She now conceived all difficulties past,
And deemed herself extremely condescending
When, being made her property at last,
Without more preface, in her blue eyes blending
Passion and power, a glance on him she cast,
And merely saying, "Christian, canst thou love?"
Conceived that phrase was quite enough to move.
CXVII.
And so it was, in proper time and place;
But Juan, who had still his mind o'erflowing
With Haidee's isle and soft Ionian face,
Felt the warm blood, which in his face was glowing
Rush back upon his heart, which filled apace,
And left his cheeks as pale as snowdrops blowing:
These words went through his soul like Arab spears,[306]
So that he spoke not, but burst into tears.
CXVIII.
She was a good deal shocked; not shocked at tears,
For women shed and use them at their liking;
But there is something when man's eye appears
Wet, still more disagreeable and striking:
A woman's tear-drop melts, a man's half sears,
Like molten lead, as if you thrust a pike in
His heart to force it out, for (to be shorter)
To them 't is a relief, to us a torture.
CXIX.
And she would have consoled, but knew not how:
Having no equals, nothing which had e'er
Infected her with sympathy till now,
And never having dreamt what 't was to bear
Aught of a serious, sorrowing kind, although
There might arise some pouting petty care
To cross her brow, she wondered how so near
Her eyes another's eye could shed a tear.
CXX.
But Nature teaches more than power can spoil,[fn]
And, when a strong although a strange sensation
Moves--female hearts are such a genial soil
For kinder feelings, whatso'er their nation,
They naturally pour the "wine and oil,"
Samaritans in every situation;
And thus Gulbeyaz, though she knew not why,
Felt an odd glistening moisture in her eye.
CXXI.
But tears must stop like all things else; and soon
Juan, who for an instant had been moved
To such a sorrow by the intrusive tone
Of one who dared to ask if "he _had_ loved,"
Called back the Stoic to his eyes, which shone
Bright with the very weakness he reproved;
And although sensitive to beauty, he
Felt most indignant still at not being free.
CXXII.
Gulbeyaz, for the first time in her days,
Was much embarrassed, never having met
In all her life with aught save prayers and praise;
And as she also risked her life to get
Him whom she meant to tutor in love's ways
Into a comfortable tete-a-tete,
To lose the hour would make her quite a martyr,
And they had wasted now almost a quarter.
CXXIII.
I also would suggest the fitting time
To gentlemen in any such like case,
That is to say in a meridian clime--
With us there is more law given to the chase,
But here a small delay forms a great crime:
So recollect that the extremest grace
Is just two minutes for your declaration--
A moment more would hurt your reputation.
CXXIV.
Juan's was good; and might have been still better,
But he had got Haidee into his head:
However strange, he could not yet forget her,
Which made him seem exceedingly ill-bred.
Gulbeyaz, who looked on him as her debtor
For having had him to her palace led,
Began to blush up to the eyes, and then
Grow deadly pale, and then blush back again.
CXXV.
At length, in an imperial way, she laid
Her hand on his, and bending on him eyes
Which needed not an empire to persuade,
Looked into his for love, where none replies:
Her brow grew black, but she would not upbraid,
That being the last thing a proud woman tries;
She rose, and pausing one chaste moment threw
Herself upon his breast, and there she grew.
CXXVI.
This was an awkward test, as Juan found,
But he was steeled by Sorrow, Wrath, and Pride:
With gentle force her white arms he unwound,
And seated her all drooping by his side,
Then rising haughtily he glanced around,
And looking coldly in her face he cried,
"The prisoned eagle will not pair, nor I
Serve a Sultana's sensual phantasy.
CXXVII.
"Thou ask'st, if I can love? be this the proof
How much I _have_ loved--that I love not _thee!_
In this vile garb, the distaff, web, and woof,
Were fitter for me: Love is for the free!
I am not dazzled by this splendid roof;
Whate'er thy power, and great it seems to be,
Heads bow, knees bend, eyes watch around a throne,
And hands obey--our hearts are still our own."
CXXVIII.
This was a truth to us extremely trite;
Not so to her, who ne'er had heard such things:
She deemed her least command must yield delight,
Earth being only made for Queens and Kings.
If hearts lay on the left side or the right
She hardly knew, to such perfection brings
Legitimacy its born votaries, when
Aware of their due royal rights o'er men.
CXXIX.
Besides, as has been said, she was so fair
As even in a much humbler lot had made
A kingdom or confusion anywhere,
And also, as may be presumed, she laid
Some stress on charms, which seldom are, if e'er,
By their possessors thrown into the shade:
She thought hers gave a double "right divine;"
And half of that opinion's also mine.
CXXX.
Remember, or (if you can not) imagine,
Ye! who have kept your chastity when young,
While some more desperate dowager has been waging
Love with you, and been in the dog-days stung[fo]
By your refusal, recollect her raging!
Or recollect all that was said or sung
On such a subject; then suppose the face
Of a young downright beauty in this case!
CXXXI.
Suppose,--but you already have supposed,
The spouse of Potiphar, the Lady Booby,[307]
Phaedra,[308] and all which story has disclosed
Of good examples; pity that so few by
Poets and private tutors are exposed,[fp]
To educate--ye youth of Europe--you by!
But when you have supposed the few we know,
You can't suppose Gulbeyaz' angry brow.
CXXXII.
A tigress robbed of young, a lioness,
Or any interesting beast of prey,
Are similes at hand for the distress
Of ladies who can _not_ have their own way;
But though my turn will not be served with less,
These don't express one half what I should say:
For what is stealing young ones, few or many,
To cutting short their hope of having _any?_
CXXXIII.
The love of offspring's Nature's general law,
From tigresses and cubs to ducks and ducklings;
There's nothing whets the beak, or arms the claw
Like an invasion of their babes and sucklings;
And all who have seen a human nursery, saw
How mothers love their children's squalls and chucklings:
This strong extreme effect (to tire no longer
Your patience) shows the cause must still be stronger.[fq]
CXXXIV.
If I said fire flashed from Gulbeyaz' eyes,
'T were nothing--for her eyes flashed always fire;
Or said her cheeks assumed the deepest dyes,
I should but bring disgrace upon the dyer,
So supernatural was her passion's rise;
For ne'er till now she knew a checked desire:
Even ye who know what a checked woman is
(Enough, God knows!) would much fall short of this.
CXXXV.
Her rage was but a minute's, and 't was well--
A moment's more had slain her; but the while
It lasted 't was like a short glimpse of Hell:
Nought's more sublime than energetic bile,
Though horrible to see, yet grand to tell,
Like Ocean warring 'gainst a rocky isle;
And the deep passions flashing through her form
Made her a beautiful embodied storm.
CXXXVI.
A vulgar tempest 't were to a typhoon
To match a common fury with her rage,
And yet she did not want to reach the moon,[309]
Like moderate Hotspur on the immortal page;[fr]
Her anger pitched into a lower tune,
Perhaps the fault of her soft sex and age--
Her wish was but to "kill, kill, kill," like Lear's,[310]
And then her thirst of blood was quenched in tears.
CXXXVII.
A storm it raged, and like the storm it passed,
Passed without words--in fact she could not speak;
And then her sex's shame[311] broke in at last,
A sentiment till then in her but weak,
But now it flowed in natural and fast,
As water through an unexpected leak;
For she felt humbled--and humiliation
Is sometimes good for people in her station.
CXXXVIII.
It teaches them that they are flesh and blood,
It also gently hints to them that others,
Although of clay, are yet not quite of mud;
That urns and pipkins are but fragile brothers,
And works of the same pottery, bad or good,
Though not all born of the same sires and mothers;
It teaches--Heaven knows only what it teaches,
But sometimes it may mend, and often reaches.
CXXXIX.
Her first thought was to cut off Juan's head;
Her second, to cut only his--acquaintance;
Her third, to ask him where he had been bred;
Her fourth, to rally him into repentance;
Her fifth, to call her maids and go to bed;
Her sixth, to stab herself; her seventh, to sentence
The lash to Baba:--but her grand resource
Was to sit down again, and cry--of course.
CXL.
She thought to stab herself, but then she had
The dagger close at hand, which made it awkward;
For Eastern stays are little made to pad,
So that a poniard pierces if 't is struck hard:
She thought of killing Juan--but, poor lad!
Though he deserved it well for being so backward,
The cutting off his head was not the art
Most likely to attain her aim--his heart.
CXLI.
Juan was moved: he had made up his mind
To be impaled, or quartered as a dish
For dogs, or to be slain with pangs refined,
Or thrown to lions, or made baits for fish,
And thus heroically stood resigned,
Rather than sin--except to his own wish:
But all his great preparatives for dying
Dissolved like snow before a woman crying.
CXLII.
As through his palms Bob Acres' valour oozed,[312]
So Juan's virtue ebbed, I know not how;
And first he wondered why he had refused;
And then, if matters could be made up now;
And next his savage virtue he accused,
Just as a friar may accuse his vow,
Or as a dame repents her of her oath,
Which mostly ends in some small breach of both.
CXLIII.
So he began to stammer some excuses;
But words are not enough in such a matter,
Although you borrowed all that e'er the Muses
Have sung, or even a Dandy's dandiest chatter,
Or all the figures Castlereagh abuses;[fs]
Just as a languid smile began to flatter
His peace was making, but, before he ventured
Further, old Baba rather briskly entered.
CXLIV.
"Bride of the Sun! and Sister of the Moon!"
('T was thus he spake,) "and Empress of the Earth!
Whose frown would put the spheres all out of tune,
Whose smile makes all the planets dance with mirth,
Your slave brings tidings--he hopes not too soon--
Which your sublime attention may be worth:
The Sun himself has sent me like a ray,
To hint that he is coming up this way."
CXLV.
"Is it," exclaimed Gulbeyaz, "as you say?
I wish to heaven he would not shine till morning!
But bid my women form the milky way.
Hence, my old comet! give the stars due warning--[ft]
And, Christian! mingle with them as you may,
And as you'd have me pardon your past scorning-----"
Here they were interrupted by a humming
Sound, and then by a cry, "The Sultan's coming!"
CXLVI.
First came her damsels, a decorous file,
And then his Highness' eunuchs, black and white;
The train might reach a quarter of a mile:
His Majesty was always so polite
As to announce his visits a long while
Before he came, especially at night;
For being the last wife of the Emperor,
She was of course the favourite of the four.
CXLVII.
His Highness was a man of solemn port,
Shawled to the nose, and bearded to the eyes,
Snatched from a prison to preside at court,
His lately bowstrung brother caused his rise;
He was as good a sovereign of the sort
As any mentioned in the histories
Of Cantemir, or Kn[-o]ll[)e]s, where few shine[fu]
Save Solyman, the glory of their line.[313]
CXLVIII.
He went to mosque in state, and said his prayers
With more than "Oriental scrupulosity;"[314]
He left to his vizier all state affairs,
And showed but little royal curiosity:
I know not if he had domestic cares--
No process proved connubial animosity;
Four wives and twice five hundred maids, unseen,
Were ruled as calmly as a Christian queen.[fv]
CXLIX.
If now and then there happened a slight slip,
Little was heard of criminal or crime;
The story scarcely passed a single lip--
The sack and sea had settled all in time,
From which the secret nobody could rip:
The public knew no more than does this rhyme;
No scandals made the daily press a curse--
Morals were better, and the fish no worse.[fw]
CL.
He saw with his own eyes the moon was round,
Was also certain that the earth was square,
Because he had journeyed fifty miles, and found
No sign that it was circular anywhere;[fx]
His empire also was without a bound:
'T is true, a little troubled here and there,
By rebel pachas, and encroaching giaours,
But then they never came to "the Seven Towers;"[315]
CLI.
Except in shape of envoys, who were sent
To lodge there when a war broke out, according
To the true law of nations, which ne'er meant
Those scoundrels, who have never had a sword in
Their dirty diplomatic hands, to vent
Their spleen in making strife, and safely wording
Their lies, yclept despatches, without risk or
The singeing of a single inky whisker.
CLII.
He had fifty daughters and four dozen sons,
Of whom all such as came of age were stowed,
The former in a palace, where like nuns
They lived till some Bashaw was sent abroad,
When she, whose turn it was, was wed at once,
Sometimes at six years old[316]--though this seems odd,
'T is true; the reason is, that the Bashaw
Must make a present to his sire-in-law.
CLIII.
His sons were kept in prison, till they grew
Of years to fill a bowstring or the throne,
One or the other, but which of the two
Could yet be known unto the fates alone;
Meantime the education they went through
Was princely, as the proofs have always shown;
So that the heir apparent still was found
No less deserving to be hanged than crowned.
CLIV.
His Majesty saluted his fourth spouse
With all the ceremonies of his rank,
Who cleared her sparkling eyes and smoothed her brows,
As suits a matron who has played a prank;
These must seem doubly mindful of their vows,
To save the credit of their breaking bank:
To no men are such cordial greetings given
As those whose wives have made them fit for Heaven.[317]
CLV.
His Highness cast around his great black eyes,
And looking, as he always looked, perceived
Juan amongst the damsels in disguise,
At which he seemed no whit surprised nor grieved,
But just remarked with air sedate and wise,[fy]
While still a fluttering sigh Gulbeyaz heaved,
"I see you've bought another girl; 't is pity
That a mere Christian should be half so pretty."
CLVI.
This compliment, which drew all eyes upon
The new-bought virgin, made her blush and shake.
Her comrades, also, thought themselves undone:
Oh! Mahomet! that his Majesty should take
Such notice of a giaour, while scarce to one
Of them his lips imperial ever spake!
There was a general whisper, toss, and wriggle,
But etiquette forbade them all to giggle.
CLVII.
The Turks do well to shut--at least, sometimes--
The women up--because, in sad reality,
Their chastity in these unhappy climes[fz]
Is not a thing of that astringent quality
Which in the North prevents precocious crimes,
And makes our snow less pure than our morality;
The Sun, which yearly melts the polar ice,
Has quite the contrary effect--on vice.
CLVIII.
Thus in the East they are extremely strict,
And wedlock and a padlock mean the same:
Excepting only when the former's picked
It ne'er can be replaced in proper frame;
Spoilt, as a pipe of claret is when pricked:
But then their own polygamy's to blame;
Why don't they knead two virtuous souls for life
Into that moral centaur, man and wife?[318]
CLIX.
Thus far our chronicle; and now we pause,
Though not for want of matter; but 't is time,
According to the ancient epic laws,
To slacken sail, and anchor with our rhyme.
Let this fifth canto meet with due applause,
The sixth shall have a touch of the sublime;
Meanwhile, as Homer sometimes sleeps, perhaps
You'll pardon to my muse a few short naps.[ga]
End of Canto 5^th^ Finished Ravenna, Nov. 27^th^ 1820.
Begun Oct. 16, 1820.
and finished copying out, Dec. 26.
with some intermediate additions, 1820.
B.
FOOTNOTES:
{218}[270] [Canto V. was begun at Ravenna, October the 16th, and
finished November the 20th, 1820. It was published August 8, 1821,
together with Cantos III. and IV.]
[271] This expression of Homer has been much criticized. It hardly
answers to our Atlantic ideas of the ocean, but is sufficiently
applicable to the Hellespont, and the Bosphorus, with the Aegean
intersected with islands.
[Vide Iliad, xiv. 245, etc. Homer's "ocean-stream" was not the
Hellespont, but the rim of waters which encircled the disk of the
world.]
{219}[272] ["The pleasure of going in a barge to Chelsea is not
comparable to that of rowing upon the canal of the sea here, where, for
twenty miles together, down the Bosphorus, the most beautiful variety of
prospects present themselves. The Asian side is covered with fruit
trees, villages, and the most delightful landscapes in nature; on the
European stands Constantinople, situated on seven hills; showing an
agreeable mixture of gardens, pine and cypress trees, palaces, mosques,
and public buildings, raised one above another, with as much beauty and
appearance of symmetry as your ladyship ever saw in a cabinet adorned by
the most skilful hands, where jars show themselves above jars, mixed
with canisters, babies, and candlesticks. This is a very odd comparison:
but it gives me an exact idea of the thing."--See letter to Mr. Pope,
No. xl. June 17, 1717, and letter to the Countess of Bristol, No. xlvi.
n.d., _Letters of the Lady Mary Worthy Montagu,_ 1816, pp. 183-219. See,
too, letter to Mrs. Byron, June 28, 1810, _Letters,_ 1890, i. 280,
note 1.]
[273] [For Byron's "Marys," see _Poetical Works,_ 1898, i. 192, note
2.]
[274] The "Giant's Grave" is a height on the Asiatic shore of the
Bosphorus, much frequented by holiday parties; like Harrow and Highgate.
["The Giant's Mountain, 650 feet high, is almost exactly opposite
Buyukdereh ... It is called by the Turks Yoshadagh, _Mountain of
Joshua,_ because the _Giant's Grave_ on the top is, according to the
Moslem legend, the grave of Joshua. The grave was formerly called the
_Couch of Hercules;_ but the classical story is that it was the tomb of
Amycus, king of the Bebryces [on his grave grew the _laurus insana_, a
branch of which caused strife (Plin., _Hist. Nat.,_ lib. xvi. cap. xliv.
ed. 1593, ii. 198)]. The grave is 20 feet long, and 5 feet broad; it is
within a stone enclosure, and is planted with flowers and
bushes."--_Handbook for Constantinople,_ p. 103.]
{220}[et]
_For then the Parca are most busy spinning_
_The fates of seamen, and the loud winds raise_.--[MS.]
{221}[eu]
_That he a man of rank and birth had been_,
_And then they calculated on his ransom_,
_And last not least--he was so very handsome_.--[MS.]
[ev]
_It chanced that near him, separately lotted_,
_From out the group of slaves put up for sale_,
_A man of middle age, and_----.--[MS.]
{222}[275] [The object of Suwarof's campaign of 1789 was the conquest of
Belgrade and Servia, that of Wallachia by the Austrians, etc. Neither of
these plans succeeded."--_The Life of Field-Marshal Suwarof,_ by L.M.P.
Tranchant de Laverne, 1814, pp. 105, 106.]
{226}[276] [The Turkish zecchino is a gold coin, worth about seven
shillings and sixpence. The para is not quite equal to an English
halfpenny.]
[277] [Candide's increased satisfaction with life is implied in the
narrative. For example, in chap, xviii., where Candide visits
Eldorado:--"Never was there a better entertainment, and never was more
wit shown at table than that which fell from His Majesty. Cacambo
explained the king's _bons mots_ to Candide, and notwithstanding they
were translated, they still appeared _bons mots._" This was after
supper. See, too, Part II. chap, ii.]
[278] See Plutarch in _Alex._, Q. Curt. _Hist. Alexand._, and Sir
Richard Clayton's "Critical Inquiry into the Life of Alexander the
Great," 1763 [from the _Examen Critique, etc._, of Guilhem de
Clermont-Lodeve, Baron de Sainte Croix, 1775.]
["He used to say that sleep and the commerce with the sex were the
things that made him most sensible of his mortality, ... He was also
very temperate in eating."--Plutarch's _Alexander_, Langhorne, 1838, p.
473.]
[ew]
_But for mere food, I think with Philip's son_,
_Or Ammon's--for two fathers claimed this one_.--[MS.]
{227}[279] The assassination alluded to took place on the 8th of
December, 1820, in the streets of Ravenna, not a hundred paces from the
residence of the writer. The circumstances were as described.
["December 9, 1820. I open my letter to tell you a fact, which will show
the state of this country better than I can. The commandant of the
troops is _now_ lying _dead_ in my house. He was shot at a little past
eight o'clock, about two hundred paces from my door. I was putting on my
great coat to visit Madame la Comtessa G., when I heard the shot. On
coming into the hall, I found all my servants on the balcony, exclaiming
that a man was murdered. I immediately ran down, calling on Tita (the
bravest of them) to follow me. The rest wanted to hinder us from going,
as it is the custom for everybody here, it seems, to run away from 'the
stricken deer.' ... we found him lying on his back, almost, if not
quite, dead, with five wounds; one in the heart, two in the stomach, one
in the finger, and the other in the arm. Some soldiers cocked their
guns, and wanted to hinder me from passing. However, we passed, and I
found Diego, the adjutant, crying over him like a child--a surgeon, who
said nothing of his profession--a priest, sobbing a frightened
prayer--and the commandant, all this time, on his back, on the hard,
cold pavement, without light or assistance, or anything around him but
confusion and dismay. As nobody could, or would, do anything but howl
and pray, and as no one would stir a finger to move him, for fear of
consequences, I lost my patience--made my servant and a couple of the
mob take up the body--se