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LXXVIII.

Where is Lord This? And where my Lady That?

The Honourable Mistresses and Misses? Some laid aside like an old Opera hat,

Married, unmarried, and remarried: (this is An evolution oft performed of late.)

Where are the Dublin shouts-and London hisses? Where are the Grenvilles? Turn'd as usual. Where My friends the Whigs? Exactly where they were.

LXXIX.

Where are the Lady Carolines and Franceses?
Divorced or doing thereanent. Ye annals
So brilliant, where the list of routs and dances is,—
Thou Morning Post, sole record of the panels
Broken in carriages, and all the phantasies

say what streams now fill those

Of fashion, channels?

Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent, Because the times have hardly left them one tenant.

LXXX.

Some who once set their caps at cautious dukes, Have taken up at length with younger brothers: Some heiresses have bit at sharpers' hooks:

Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers;

Others have lost their fresh and fairy looks:

In short, the list of alterations bothers.

There's little strange in this, but something strange is

The unusual quickness of these common changes.

LXXXI.

Talk not of seventy years as age; in seven

I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to The humblest individual under heaven,

Than might suffice a moderate century through. I knew that nought was lasting, but now even Change grows too changeable, without being new : Nought's permanent among the human race, Except the Whigs not getting into place.

LXXXII.

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

If that can well be, than his wooden look. But it is time that I should hoist my “ blue Peter,”

And sail for a new theme:-I have seen - and To see it—the king hiss'd, and then carest; [shook But don't pretend to settle which was best.

LXXXIII.

I have seen the Landholders without a rap -
I have seen Joanna Southcote-I have seen
The House of Commons turn'd to a tax-trap-
I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen-
I have seen crowns worn instead of a fool's cap—
I have seen a Congress (1) doing all that's mean
I have seen some nations like o'erloaded asses
Kick off their burthens-meaning the high classes.

(1) [The Congress at Verona, in 1822. See antè, Vol. XIV. p. 281.]

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LXXXIV.

I have seen small poets, and great prosers, and
Interminable—not eternal.

-

· speakers—

I have seen the funds at war with house and land-
I have seen the country gentlemen turn squeakers-
I have seen the people ridden o'er like sand

By slaves on horseback—I have seen malt liquors Exchanged for "thin potations" (1) by John BullI have seen John half detect himself a fool.

LXXXV.

But" carpe diem," Juan, " carpe, carpe !" (2)
To-morrow sees another race as gay

And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy.
"Life's a poor player," then "play out the play, (3)
Ye villains!" and above all keep a sharp eye

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

Not what you seem, but always what you see.

LXXXVI.

But how shall I relate in other cantos

Of what befell our hero in the land,
Which 'tis the common cry and lie to vaunt as
A moral country? But I hold

hand my

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(1) ["If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack."— SHAKSP. Henry IV.]

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(2) Carpe diem, quàm minimum credula postero."— HOR.]

(3) ["Out, you rogue! play out the play." - Henry IV.]

For I disdain to write an Atalantis ;(1)

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

LXXXVII.

What Juan saw and underwent shall be
My topic, with of course the due restriction
Which is required by proper courtesy;

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

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

LXXXVIII.

Whether he married with the third or fourth Offspring of some sage husband-hunting countess Or whether with some virgin of more worth

(I mean in Fortune's matrimonial bounties)

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

"As long as Atalantis shall be read,

Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed,

While nymphs take treats or assignations give,
So long my honour, name, and praise shall live,"

And Swift, in his ballad on "Corinna : "

"Her common-place book all gallant is;
Of scandal now a cornucopia -

She pours it out in Atalantis,
Or memoirs of the New Utopia."]

He took to regularly peopling Earth,

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

LXXXIX.

Is yet within the unread events of time

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Thus far, go forth, thou lay, which I will back Against the same given quantity of rhyme, For being as much the subject of attack As ever yet was any work sublime,

By those who love to say that white is black. So much the better!-I may stand alone,

But would not change my free thoughts for a throne.

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