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.

LXIII.

"No,"

Such is your cold coquette, who can't say
And won't say "Yes," and keeps you on and off-ing
On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow – [scoffing

Then sees your heart wreck'd, with an inward

This works a world of sentimental woe,

And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin; But yet is merely innocent flirtation,

Not quite adultery, but adulteration.

LXIV.

"Ye gods, I grow a talker!" Let us prate. The next of perils, though I place it sternest, Is when, without regard to " church or state,"

A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest. Abroad, such things decide few women's fate (Such, early traveller! is the truth thou learnest) -But in old England, when a young bride errs, Poor thing! Eve's was a trifling case to hers.

LXV.

For 'tis a low, newspaper, humdrum, lawsuit
Country, where a young couple of the same ages
Can't form a friendship, but the world o'erawes it.
Then there'sthe vulgar trick of those d-d damages!
A verdict-grievous foe to those who cause it!
Forms a sad climax to romantic homages;
Besides those soothing speeches of the pleaders,
And evidences which regale all readers.

LXVI.

But they who blunder thus are raw beginners;
A little genial sprinkling of hypocrisy
Has saved the fame of thousand splendid sinners,
The loveliest oligarchs of our gynocracy;
You may see such at all the balls and dinners,
Among the proudest of our aristocracy,
So gentle, charming, charitable, chaste-
And all by having tact as well as taste.

LXVII.

Juan, who did not stand in the predicament
Of a mere novice, had one safeguard more ;
For he was sick. -no, 'twas not the word sick I

meant

But he had seen so much good love before, That he was not in heart so very weak ;-I meant

But thus much, and no sneer against the shore Of white cliffs, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings, Tithes, taxes, duns, and doors with double knockings.

LXVIII.

But coming young from lands and scenes romantic,
Where lives, not lawsuits, must be risk'd for Passion
And Passion's self must have a spice of frantic,
Into a country where 'tis half a fashion,
Seem'd to him half commercial, half pedantic,
Howe'er he might esteem this moral nation:
Besides (alas! his taste-forgive and pity!)
At first he did not think the women pretty.

I

say

LXIX.

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 haste;
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 With such a chart as may be safely stuck to

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

LXXI.

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. You'll attack
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 (1) Are they, at bottom virtuous even when vicious: They warm into a scrape, but keep of course, As a reserve, a plunge into remorse.

(1) 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.

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 pity—
And 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,
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.