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Don Juan
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CANTO THE
FIRST
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 Buonaparté[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 José-_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 José, who begot our hero, who
Begot--but that's to come----Well, to renew:
X.[25]
His mother was a
learnéd 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 Lopé;
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 José, 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 learnéd
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 José 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 José 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 José died.
XXXIII.
He died: and most
unluckily, because,
According to all hints I could collect
From Counsel learnéd 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 José 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 learnéd 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 Æneids, 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 aërial 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 juventâ
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
Molière'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 (Eugène 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
François Duperier Dumouriez (1739-1823) defeated
the
Austrians at Jemappes, November 6, 1792, etc. He
published his
_Mémoires_ (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 mémoire lu par M. Dumourier le
13 Juin à l'Assemblée
Nationale; Bibiothèque Historique de la
Révolution_, "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.
Honoré Gabriel
Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, born March 9, 1749,
died
April 2, 1791.
Jérôme 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] [Barthélemi
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 Suvóroff, 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 £20,000
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 mê\ e(/n ti peri\
au)tê\n
pa/thos phai/nêtai, pathôn 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 kênos 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
Glück and Rossini.]
[49]§35§ _Thinking
God might not understand the case_.--[MS. M.,
Revise.]
{36}[50] ["Quel
giorno più 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
præmium 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 à la petite Vérole."--[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 Tirée 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 Staël, 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 à la guerre,
d'exposer leur
vie, de se livrer à 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 Staël, 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 _protégé_ 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 sérieux_.]
{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.)]
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CANTO THE
SECOND
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)--
Belovéd 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 José'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 hyæna-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 Ætna, 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 basquiña 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 Haidée,
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 Haidée 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 accurséd 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 Haidée: 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 Haidée 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 Haidée 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 Haidée 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 curséd 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 Haidée,
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 Haidée
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 protégé 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 Haidée'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 Haidée.
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 Haidée
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.
Haidée 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
belovéd--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, Haidée'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
Haidée! 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 Haidée, 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.
Haidée was Nature's
bride, and knew not this;
Haidée 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 Cæsar 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:
Cæsar 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 Haidée 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
Poetæ_, 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
ciò, 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 _basquiña_ ... 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 Staël
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] [Cæsar's third
wife, Pompeia, was suspected of infidelity with
Clodius (see Langhorne's _Plutarch_, 1838, p.
498); Pompey's third wife,
Mucia, intrigued with Cæsar (_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.]
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CANTO THE
THIRD
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.
Haidée 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,
Haidée 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 Haidée'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 Haidée 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 Haidée 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 Haidée'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 belovéd 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.
Haidée 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 Haidée'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 refinéd 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 Haidée'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 "Ça 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
Staël);[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 Thermopylæ!
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 Cæsar'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 _Epopée_,
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! blesséd
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 Cæsarean 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."--_Réflexions_ ... 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
Loutráki.]
[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 più 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 più 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
Haidée'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 Haidée 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 f | |
