That I dissert, like grace before a feast:
For like an aged aunt, or tiresome friend,
A rigid guardian, or a zealous priest,

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

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

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

XLI.

But first of little Leila we'll dispose;

For like a day-dawn she was young and pure,
Or like the old comparison of snows,
Which are more pure than pleasant, to be sure.
Like many people every body knows,

Don Juan was delighted to secure
A goodly guardian for his infant charge,
Who might not profit much by being at large.
XLII.

Besides, he had found out he was no tutor

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

XLIII.

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

In fact, there's nothing makes me so much grie
As that abominable tittle-tattle,
Which is the cud eschew'd by human cattle.

XLIV.

Moreover I've remark'd (and I was once
A slight observer in a modest way),
And so may every one except a dunce,

That ladies in their youth a little gay,
Besides their knowledge of the world, and sense
Of the sad consequence of going astray,
Are wiser in their warnings 'gainst the woe
Which the mere passionless can never know.

XLV.

While the harsh prude indemnifies her virtue
By railing at the unknown and envied passion,
Seeking far less to save you than to hurt you,
Or, what's still worse, to put you out of fashion,—
The kinder veteran with calm words will court you,
Entreating you to pause before you dash on;
Expounding and illustrating the riddle
Of epic Love's beginning, end, and middle.

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

LVIII.

A young unmarried man, with a good name
And fortune, has an awkward part to play;
For good society is but a game,

"The royal game of Goose," (1) as I may say, Where every body has some separate aim,

An end to answer, or a plan to lay-
The single ladies wishing to be double,
The married ones to save the virgins trouble.

LIX.

I don't mean this as general, but particular
Examples may be found of such pursuits:
Though several also keep their perpendicular

Like poplars, with good principles for roots; Yet many have a method more reticular

"Fishers for men," like sirens with soft lutes: For, talk six times with the same single lady, And you may get the wedding-dresses ready.

LX.

Perhaps you'll have a letter from the mother,
To say her daughter's feelings are trepann'd;
Perhaps you'll have a visit from the brother,

All strut, and stays, and whiskers, to demand
What "your intentions are?"-One way or other
It seems the virgin's heart expects your hand:
And between pity for her case and yours,
You'll add to Matrimony's list of cures.

LXI.

I've known a dozen weddings made even thus,
And some of them high names: I have also known
Young men who-though they hated to discuss
Pretensions which they never dream'd to have shown,
Yet neither frighten'd by a female fuss,

Nor by mustachios moved, were let alone,
And lived, as did the broken-hearted fair,
In happier plight than if they form'd a pair.
LXII.

There's also nightly, to the uninitiated,

A peril-not indeed like love or marriage, But not the less for this to be depreciated:

It is I meant and mean not to disparage The show of virtue even in the vitiated

It adds an outward grace unto their carriageBut to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot, "Couleur de rose," who's neither white nor scarlet.

I say at first-for he found out at last,
But by degrees, that they were fairer far
Than the more glowing dames whose lot is cast
Beneath the influence of the Eastern star.
A further proof we should not judge in haşte;
Yet inexperience could not be his bar
To taste:-the truth is, if men would confess,
That novelties please less than they impress.

LXX

Though travell'd, I have never had the luck to
Trace up those shuffling negroes, Nile or Niger,
To that impracticable place Timbuctoo,
Where Geography finds no one to oblige her

compartment of the table in succession a po is depicted; and if the cast thrown by the player falls up on a goose, be

moves forward double the number of his throw." Strait. -L. E.

With such a chart as may be safely stuck toFor Europe ploughs in Afric like "bos piger: " But if I had been at Timbuctoo, there

No doubt I should be told that black is fair.(1)

LXXI.

You'll attack,

It is. I will not swear that black is white;
But I suspect in fact that white is black,
And the whole matter rests upon eye-sight:
Ask a blind man, the best judge.
Perhaps, this new position-but I'm right;
Or if I'm wrong, I'll not be ta'en aback:-
He hath no morn nor night, but all is dark
Within; and what seest thou? A dubious spark.
LXXII.

But I'm relapsing into metaphysics,

That labyrinth, whose clue is of the same Construction as your cures for hectic phthisics, Those bright moths fluttering round a dying flame; And this reflection brings me to plain physics, And to the beauties of a foreign dame, Compared with those of our pure pearls of price, Those polar summers, all sun, and some ice.

LXXIII.

Or say they are like virtuous mermaids, whose Beginnings are fair faces, ends mere fishes;— Not that there's not a quantity of those

Who have a due respect for their own wishes. Like Russians rushing from hot baths to snows (2) Are they, at bottom virtuous even when vicious: They warm into a scrape, but keep of course, As a reserve, a plunge into remorse.

LXXIV.

But this has nought to do with their outsides. I said that Juan did not think them pretty At the first blush; for a fair Briton hides

Half her attractions-probably from pityAnd rather calmly into the heart glides,

Than storms it as a foe would take a city; But once there (if you doubt this, prithee try) She keeps it for you like a true ally.

LXXV.

She cannot step as does an Arab barb,
Or Andalusian girl from mass returning,
Nor wear as gracefully as Gauls her garb,

Nor in her eye Ausonia's glance is burning;
Her voice, though sweet, is not so fit to warb-
le those bravuras (which I still am learning
To like, though I have been seven years in Italy,
And have, or had, an ear that served me prettily);—
LXXVI.

She cannot do these things, nor one or two
Others, in that off-hand and dashing style
Which takes so much-to give the devil his due;
Nor is she quite so ready with her smile,

(1) Major Denham says, that when he first saw European women after his travels in Africa, they appeared to him to have unnatural sickly countenances.-L. E.

(2) The Russians, as is well known, run out from their hot baths to plunge into the Neva; a pleasant practical antithesis, which it seems does them no harm.

(3) "A Gaalish or German soldier, sent to arrest him, overawed by his aspect, recoiled from the task; and the

Nor settles all things in one interview

(A thing approved as saving time and toil);But though the soil may give you time and trouble, Well cultivated, it will render double.

LXXVII.

And if in fact she takes to a "grande passion,"
It is a very serious thing indeed:

Nine times in ten 'tis but caprice or fashion,
Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead,
The pride of a mere child with a new sash on,
Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed:
But the tenth instance will be a tornado,
For there's no saying what they will or may do.
LXXVIII.

The reason's obvious; if there's an éclat,

They lose their caste at once, as do the Parias; And when the delicacies of the law

Have fill'd their papers with their comments various, Society, that china without flaw,

(The hypocrite!) will banish them like Marius, To sit amidst the ruins of their guilt: (3) For Fame's a Carthage not so soon rebuilt.

LXXIX.

Perhaps this is as it should be;-it is

A comment on the Gospel's "Sin no more, And be thy sins forgiven: "--but upon this

I leave the saints to settle their own score. Abroad, though doubtless they do much amiss,

An erring woman finds an open door For her return to Virtue-as they call That lady who should be at home to all.

LXXX.

For me, I leave the matter where I find it,
Knowing that such uneasy virtue leads
People some ten times less in fact to mind it,
And care but for discoveries and not deeds.
And as for chastity, you'll never bind it

By all the laws the strictest lawyer pleads,
But aggravate the crime you have not prevented,
By rendering desperate those who had else repented.

LXXXI.

But Juan was no casuist, nor had ponder'd Upon the moral lessons of mankind: Besides, he had not seen, of several hundred, A lady altogether to his mind.

A little "blasé"-'tis not to be wonder'd

At, that his heart had got a tougher rind: And though not vainer from his past success, No doubt his sensibilities were less.

LXXXII.

He also had been busy seeing sights

The Parliament and all the other houses; Had sat beneath the gallery at nights,

To hear debates whose thunder roused (not rouses)

people of the place, as if moved by the miracle, concurred in aiding his escape. The presence of such an exile on the ground where Carthage had stood was supposed to increase the majesty and the melancholy of the scene. 'Go,' he said to the lictor who brought him the orders of the prætor to depart, tell him that you have seen Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage.'" Ferguson.-L. E.

The world to gaze upon those northern lights
Which flash'd as far as where the musk-bull
browses; (1)

He had also stood at times behind the throne-
But Grey (2) was not arrived, and Chatham gone.(3)
LXXXIII.

He saw, however, at the closing session,

That noble sight, when really free the nation,
A king in constitutional possession

Of such a throne as is the proudest station,
Though despots know it not-till the progression
Of freedom shall complete their education.
"T is not mere splendour makes the show august
To eye or heart-it is the people's trust.
LXXXIV.

There, too, he saw (whate'er he may be now)
A Prince, the prince of princes at the time,(4)
With fascination in his very bow,

And full of promise, as the spring of prime.
Though royalty was written on his brow,

He had then the grace, too, rare in every clime,
Of being, without alloy of fop or beau,
A finish'd gentleman from top to toe.(5)
LXXXV.

And Juan was received, as hath been said,
Into the best society: and there
Occurr'd what often happens, I'm afraid,

However disciplined and debonnaire:--
The talent and good humour he display'd,

Besides the mark'd distinction of his air, Exposed him, as was natural, to temptation, Even though himself avoided the occasion.

LXXXVI.

You'll find it of a different construction

From what some people say 't will be when done: The plan at present's simply in concoction. I can't oblige you, reader, to read on; That's your affair, not mine: a real spirit Should neither court neglect, nor dread to bear it. LXXXVIII.

And if my thunderbolt not always rattles,

Remember, reader! you have had before The worst of tempests and the best of battles That e'er were brew'd from elements or gore, Besides the most sublime of-Heaven knows what else: A usurer could scarce expect much more— But my best canto, save one on astronomy, Will turn upon "political economy."

LXXXIX.

That is your present theme for popularity:
Now that the public hedge hath scarce a stake,
It grows an act of patriotic charity,
To show the people the best way to break.
My plan (but I, if but for singularity,

Reserve it) will be very sure to take. Meantime, read all the national debt-sinkers, And tell me what you think of your great thinkers.

CANTO XIII.

I.

I NOW mean to be serious;-it is time,
Since laughter now-a-days is deem'd too serions.
A jest at Vice by Virtue's call'd a crime,
And critically held as deleterious:

Is not to be put hastily together;

And as my object is morality

(Whatever people say), I don't know whether I'll leave a single reader's eyelid dry,

But harrow up his feelings till they wither,
And hew out a huge monument of pathos,
As Philip's son proposed to do with Athos. (6)
LXXXVII.

Here the twelfth Canto of our introduction
Ends.

When the body of the book 's begun,

(1) For a description and print of this inhabitant of the polar region and native country of the Aurora Boreales, see Parry's Voyage in search of a North-west Passage. [See ante, p. 400.-P. E.]

(2) Charles, second Earl Grey, succeeded to the peerage in 1807.-L. E.

(3) William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, died in May, 1778, after having been carried home from the House of Lords, where he had fainted away at the close of a remarkable speech on the American war.-L. E.

(4) "Nature had bestowed uncommon graces on his figure and person. Convivial as well as social in his temper, destitute of all reserve, and affable even to familiarity in his reception of every person who had the honour to approach him; endued with all the aptitudes to profit of instruction, his mind had been cultivated with great care; and he was probably the only prince in Europe, heir to a powerful monarchy, competent to peruse the Greek as well as the Roman poets and historians in their own language. Humane and compassionate, his purse was open to every application of distress; nor was it ever shut against genius or merit." Wraxall, 1783.-L. E.

(5) "Waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Re

Although when long a little apt to weary us; And therefore shall my lay soar high and solemn, As an old temple dwindled to a column.

JI.

The Lady Adeline Amundeville

('T is an old Norman name, and to be found In pedigrees by those who wander still

Along the last fields of that Gothic ground) Was high-born, wealthy by her father's will,

And beauteous, even where beauties most abound,

gent. He ordered me to be presented to him at a ball; an after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your in mortalities: he preferred you to every other bard past and present. He spoke alternately of Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both. All this was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners certainly superior to those of any living gentleman." Lord B. to sur Walter Scott, July, 1812.-L. E.

(6) A sculptor projected to hew Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander, with a city in one hand, and, I believe. a river in his pocket, with various other similar devices. But Alexander's gone, and Athos remains, I trust ere long to look over a nation of freemen.-["Strasicrates, an eng neer in the service of Alexander, offered to convert the whit mountain into a statue of that prince. The enormous figure was to hold a city in his left hand, containing ten thousand inhabitants, and in the right, an immense basin, whence the collected torrents of the mountain should issue in a mighty river. But the project was thought to be too extravagant, even by Alexander." Beloe.-L. E.