provincial gang of scribblers gathered round him.
Dedication
1
Bob Southey! You’re a poet, poet laureate,
And representative of all the race.
Although’tis true that you turned out a Tory at
Last, yours has lately been a common case.
And now my epic renegade, what are ye at
With all the lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like ‘four and twenty blackbirds in a pye,
2
‘Which pye being opened they began to sing’
(This old song and new simile holds good),
‘A dainty dish to set before the King’
Or Regent, who admires such kind of food.
And Coleridge too has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,
Explaining metaphysics to the nation.
I wish he would explain his explanation.
3
You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,
And be the only blackbird in the dish.
And then you overstrain yourself, or so,
And tumble downward like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall for lack of moisture quite a dry Bob.
4
And Wordsworth in a rather long Excursion
(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages)
Has given a sample from the vasty version
Of his new system to perplex the sages.
’Tis poetry, at least by his assertion,
And may appear so when the Dog Star rages,
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story to the tower of Babel.
5
You gentlemen, by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick, and through still continued fusion
Of one another’s minds at last have grown
To deem, as a most logical conclusion,
That poesy has wreaths for you alone.
There is a narrowness in such a notion,
Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean.
6
I would not imitate the petty thought,
Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,
For all the glory your conversion brought,
Since gold alone should not have been its price.
You have your salary; was’t for that you wrought?
And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.
You’re shabby fellows – true – but poets still
And duly seated on the immortal hill.
7
Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows,
Perhaps some virtuous blushes; let them go.
To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs,
And for the fame you would engross below,
The field is universal and allows
Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow.
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try
’Gainst you the question with posterity.
8
For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
Contend not with you on the wingèd steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The feme you envy and the skill you need.
And recollect a poet nothing loses
In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of merit, and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.
9
He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he
Being only injured by his own assertion.
And although here and there some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea’s immersion,
The major part of such appellants go
To – God knows where – for no one else can know.
10
If fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
Milton appealed to the avenger, Time,
If Time, the avenger, execrates his wrongs
And makes the word Miltonic mean sublime,
He deigned not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime.
He did not loathe the sire to laud the son,
But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.
11
Think’st thou, could he, the blind old man, arise
Like Samuel from the grave to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,
Or be alive again – again all hoar
With time and trials, and those helpless eyes
And heartless daughters – worn and pale and poor,
Would he adore a sultan? He obey
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?
12
Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin’s gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore,
The vulgarest tool that tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fixed
And offer poison long already mixed.
13
An orator of such set trash of phrase,
Ineffably, legitimately vile,
That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes – all nations – condescend to smile.
Not even a sprightly blunder’s spark can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone’s ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.
14
A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid,
States to be curbed and thoughts to be confined,
Conspiracy or congress to be made,
Cobbling at manacles for all mankind,
A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
With God and man’s abhorrence for its gains.
15
If we may judge of matter by the mind,
Emasculated to the marrow, it
Hath but two objects, how to serve and bind,
Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
Eutropius of its many masters, blind
To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,
Fearless, because no feeling dwells in ice;
Its very courage stagnates to a vice.
16
Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,
For I will never feel them. Italy,
Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds
Beneath the lie this state-thing breathed o’er thee.
Thy clanking chain and Erin’s yet green wounds
Have voices, tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves, allies, kings, armies still,
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.
17
Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate
In honest simple verse this song to you.
And if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
’Tis that I still retain my buff and blue;
My politics as yet are all to educate.
Apostasy’s so fashionable too,
To keep one creed’s a task grown quite Herculean.
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?
Canto I
1
I want a hero, an uncommon want,
When every year an
d 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
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.
2
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk
And filled their signposts then, like Wellesley now.
Each in their turn like Banquo’s monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, ‘nine farrow’ of that sow.
France too had Buonaparte and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.
3
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette
Were French, and famous people as we know;
And there were others scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Dessaix, Moreau,
With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.
4
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;
’Tis 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.
5
Brave men were living before Agamemnon
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.
6
Most epic poets plunge in medias res
(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.
7
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.
8
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, 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.
9
His father’s name was JÓse – 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 Jóse, who begot our hero, who
Begot – but that’s to come. Well, to renew:
10
His mother was a learnèd 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.
11
Her memory was a mine; she knew by heart
All Calderón and greater part of Lopè,
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,
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.
12
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.
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.
13
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.
14
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 judgements lean’em,
‘’Tis strange, the Hebrew noun which means “I am”,
The English always use to govern damn.’
15
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,
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’).
16
In short she was a walking calculation,
Miss Edgeworth’s novels stepping from their covers,
Or Mrs Trimmer’s books on education,
Or Coelebs’ Wife 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’,
For she had not even one – the worst of all.
17
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 timepiece made by Harrison.
In virtues nothing earthly could surpass her,
Save thine ‘incomparable oil’, Macassar.
18
Perfect she was, but as perfection is
Insipid in this naughty world of ours,
Where our first parents never learned to kiss
Till they wer
e exiled from their earlier bowers,
Where all was peace and innocence and bliss
(I wonder how they got through the twelve hours).
Don Jóse, like a lineal son of Eve,
Went plucking various fruit without her leave.
19
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.
20
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.
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.
21
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’.
And sometimes ladies hit exceeding hard,
And fans turn into falchions in fair hands,
And why and wherefore no one understands.
22
’Tis pity learned virgins ever wed
With persons of no sort of education,
Or gentlemen, who, though well-born and bred,
Grow tired of scientific conversation.
I don’t choose to say much upon this head,
I’m a plain man and in a single station,
But – oh ye lords of ladies intellectual!
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?
23
Don Jóse and his lady quarrelled. Why,
Not any of the many could divine,
Though several thousand people chose to try.
’Twas surely no concern of theirs nor mine.
I loathe that low vice curiosity,
But if there’s anything in which I shine,
’Tis in arranging all my friends’ affairs,
Not having, of my own, domestic cares.
24
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, downstairs,
A pail of housemaid’s water unawares.
25
A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,
Don Juan Page 7