79
Perhaps this is as it should be. It is
A comment on the Gospel’s ‘Sin no more,
And be thy sins forgiven’, but upon this
I leave the saints to settle their own score.
Abroad, though doubtless they do much amiss,
An erring woman finds an opener door
For her return to Virtue, as they call
That lady who should be at home to all.
80
For me, I leave the matter where I find it,
Knowing that such uneasy virtue leads
People some ten times less in fact to mind it
And care but for discoveries and not deeds.
And as for chastity, you’ll never bind it
By all the laws the strictest lawyer pleads,
But aggravate the crime you have not prevented,
By rendering desperate those who had else repented.
81
But Juan was no casuist nor had pondered
Upon the moral lessons of mankind.
Besides, he had not seen of several hundred
A lady altogether to his mind.
A little blasé,’tis not to be wondered
At, that his heart had got a tougher rind.
And though not vainer from his past success,
No doubt his sensibilities were less.
82
He also had been busy seeing sights,
The Parliament and all the other houses,
Had sate beneath the gallery at nights
To hear debates whose thunder roused (not rouses)
The world to gaze upon those northern lights,
Which flashed as far as where the musk bull browses.
He had also stood at times behind the throne,
But Grey was not arrived, and Chatham gone.
83
He saw however at the closing session
That noble sight, when really free the nation,
A King in constitutional possession
Of such a throne as is the proudest station,
Though despots know it not till the progression
Of freedom shall complete their education.
’Tis not mere splendour makes the show august
To eye or heart – it is the people’s trust.
84
There too he saw (whate’er he may be now)
A Prince, the prince of princes at the time
With fascination in his very bow
And full of promise as the spring of prime.
Though royalty was written on his brow,
He had then the grace too, rare in every clime,
Of being without alloy of fop or beau
A finished gentleman from top to toe.
85
And Juan was received, as hath been said,
Into the best society, and there
Occurred what often happens, I’m afraid.
However disciplined and debonair,
The talent and good humour he displayed,
Besides the marked distinction of his air,
Exposed him, as was natural, to temptation,
Even though himself avoided the occasion.
86
But what and where, with whom and when and why
Is not to be put hastily together.
And as my object is morality
(Whatever people say) I don’t know whether
I’ll leave a single reader’s eyelid dry,
But harrow up his feelings till they wither
And hew out a huge monument of pathos,
As Philip’s son proposed to do with Athos.
87
Here the twelfth canto of our introduction
Ends. When the body of the book’s begun,
You’ll find it of a different construction
From what some people say’twill be when done.
The plan at present’s simply in concoction.
I can’t oblige you, reader, to read on;
That’s your affair, not mine. A real spirit
Should neither court neglect nor dread to bear it.
88
And if my thunderbolt not always rattles,
Remember, reader, you have had before
The worst of tempests and the best of battles
That e’er were brewed from elements or gore,
Besides the most sublime of – heaven knows what else.
An usurer could scarce expect much more,
But my best canto, save one on astronomy,
Will turn upon political economy.
89
That is your present theme for popularity.
Now that the public hedge hath scarce a stake,
It grows an act of patriotic charity
To show the people the best way to break.
My plan (but I, if but for singularity,
Reserve it) will be very sure to take.
Meantime read all the national debt sinkers
And tell me what you think of your great thinkers.
Canto XIII
1
I now mean to be serious; it is time,
Since laughter nowadays is deemed too serious.
A jest at vice by virtue’s called a crime
And critically held as deleterious.
Besides the sad’s a source of the sublime,
Although when long a little apt to weary us,
And therefore shall my lay soar high and solemn,
As an old temple dwindled to a column.
2
The Lady Adeline Amundeville
(’Tis an old Norman name and to be found
In pedigrees by those who wander still
Along the last fields of that Gothic ground)
Was highborn, wealthy by her father’s will,
And beauteous, even where beauties most abound:
In Britain, which of course true patriots find
The goodliest soil of body and of mind.
3
I’ll not gainsay them; it is not my cue.
I leave them to their taste, no doubt the best.
An eye’s an eye and whether black or blue
Is no great matter, so’tis in request
’Tis nonsense to dispute about a hue;
The kindest may be taken as a test.
The fair sex should be always fair, and no man
Till thirty should perceive there’s a plain woman.
4
And after that serene and somewhat dull
Epoch, that awkward corner turned for days
More quiet, when our moon’s no more at full,
We may presume to criticize or praise,
Because indifference begins to lull
Our passions and we walk in wisdom’s ways;
Also because the figure and the face
Hint that’tis time to give the younger place.
5
I know that some would fain postpone this era,
Reluctant as all placemen to resign
Their post, but theirs is merely a chimera,
For they have passed life’s equinoctial line.
But then they have their claret and madeira
To irrigate the dryness of decline,
And county meetings and the Parliament
And debt and what not for their solace sent.
6
And is there not religion and reform,
Peace, war, the taxes, and what’s called the ‘nation’?
The struggle to be pilots in a storm?
The landed and the monied speculation?
The joys of mutual hate to keep them warm,
Instead of love, that mere hallucination?
Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
7
Rough Johnson, the great moralist, professed
Right honestly ‘he liked an honest hater’,
The only truth that yet has been con
fest
Within these latest thousand years or later.
Perhaps the fine old fellow spoke in jest;
For my part, I am but a mere spectator
And gaze where’er the palace or the hovel is,
Much in the mode of Goethe’s Mephistopheles,
8
But neither love nor hate in much excess,
Though ‘twas not once so. If I sneer sometimes,
It is because I cannot well do less
And now and then it also suits my rhymes.
I should be very willing to redress
Men’s wrongs and rather check than punish crimes,
Had not Cervantes in that too true tale
Of Quixote shown how all such efforts fail.
9
Of all tales’tis the saddest, and more sad,
Because it makes us smile. His hero’s right
And still pursues the right: to curb the bad
His only object, and ‘gainst odds to fight
His guerdon.’Tis his virtue makes him mad.
But his adventures form a sorry sight;
A sorrier still is the great moral taught
By that real epic unto all who have thought.
10
Redressing injury, revenging wrong,
To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff,
Opposing singly the united strong,
From foreign yoke to free the helpless native.
Alas, must noblest views like an old song
Be for mere Fancy’s sport a theme creative,
A jest, a riddle, fame through thin and thick sought?
And Socrates himself but Wisdom’s Quixote?
11
Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away;
A single laugh demolished the right arm
Of his own country. Seldom since that day
Has Spain had heroes. While romance could charm,
The world gave ground before her bright array,
And therefore have his volumes done such harm
That all their glory as a composition
Was dearly purchased by his land’s perdition.
12
I’m ‘at my old lunes’ – digression – and forget
The Lady Adeline Amundeville,
The fair most fatal Juan ever met,
Although she was not evil nor meant ill,
But destiny and passion spread the net
(Fate is a good excuse for our own will)
And caught them. What do they not catch, methinks?
But I’m not Oedipus and life’s a Sphinx.
13
I tell the tale as it is told, nor dare
To venture a solution – Davus sum –
And now I will proceed upon the pair.
Sweet Adeline, amidst the gay world’s hum,
Was the queen bee, the glass of all that’s fair,
Whose charms made all men speak and women dumb;
The last’s a miracle and such was reckoned,
And since that time there has not been a second.
14
Chaste was she to detraction’s desperation
And wedded unto one she had loved well,
A man known in the councils of the nation,
Cool and quite English, imperturbable,
Though apt to act with fire upon occasion,
Proud of himself and her. The world could tell
Nought against either and both seemed secure –
She in her virtue, he in his hauteur.
15
It chanced some diplomatical relations,
Arising out of business, often brought
Himself and Juan in their mutual stations
Into close contact. Though reserved nor caught
By specious seeming, Juan’s youth and patience
And talent on his haughty spirit wrought
And formed a basis of esteem, which ends
In making men what courtesy calls friends.
16
And thus Lord Henry, who was cautious as
Reserve and pride could make him and full slow
In judging men, when once his judgement was
Determined, right or wrong on friend or foe,
Had all the pertinacity pride has,
Which knows no ebb to its imperious flow
And loves or hates, disdaining to be guided,
Because its own good pleasure hath decided.
17
His friendships therefore and no less aversions,
Though oft well founded, which confirmed but more
His prepossessions, like the laws of Persians
And Medes, would ne’er revoke what went before.
His feelings had not those strange fits, like tertians,
Of common likings, which make some deplore
What they should laugh at – the mere ague still
Of men’s regard, the fever or the chill.
18
‘’Tis not in mortals to command success,
But do you more, Sempronius, don’t deserve it,’
And take my word, you won’t have any less.
Be wary, watch the time and always serve it,
Give gently way when there’s too great a press.
And for your conscience, only learn to nerve it,
For like a racer or a boxer training,
‘Twill make, if proved, vast efforts without paining.
19
Lord Henry also liked to be superior
As most men do, the little or the great.
The very lowest find out an inferior,
At least they think so, to exert their state
Upon, for there are very few things wearier
Than solitary pride’s oppressive weight,
Which mortals generously would divide
By bidding others carry while they ride.
20
In birth, in rank, in fortune likewise equal,
O’er Juan he could no distinction claim.
In years he had the advantage of time’s sequel,
And, as he thought, in country much the same,
Because bold Britons have a tongue and free quill,
At which all modern nations vainly aim.
And the Lord Henry was a great debater,
So that few members kept the House up later.
21
These were advantages, and then he thought –
It was his foible, but by no means sinister –
That few or none more than himself had caught
Court mysteries, having been himself a minister.
He liked to teach that which he had been taught
And greatly shone whenever there had been a stir
And reconciled all qualities which grace man,
Always a patriot and sometimes a placeman.
22
He liked the gentle Spaniard for his gravity,
He almost honoured him for his docility,
Because, though young, he acquiesced with suavity
Or contradicted but with proud humility.
He knew the world and would not see depravity
In faults which sometimes show the soil’s fertility,
If that the weeds o’erlive not the first crop,
For then they are very difficult to stop.
23
And then he talked with him about Madrid,
Constantinople, and such distant places,
Where people always did as they were bid
Or did what they should not with foreign graces.
Of coursers also spake they. Henry rid
Well like most Englishmen and loved the races,
And Juan like a true born Andalusian
Could back a horse, as despots ride a Russian.
24
And thus acquaintance grew at noble routs
And diplomatic dinners or at other –
For Juan stood well both with Ins and Outs,
As in Fre
emasonry a higher brother.
Upon his talent Henry had no doubts.
His manner showed him sprung from a high mother,
And all men like to show their hospitality
To him whose breeding marches with his quality.
25
At Blank Blank Square; for we will break no squares
By naming streets. Since men are so censorious
And apt to sow an author’s wheat with tares,
Reaping allusions private and inglorious,
Where none were dreamt of, unto love’s affairs,
Which were or are or are to be notorious,
That therefore do I previously declare,
Lord Henry’s mansion was in Blank Blank Square.
26
Also there bin another pious reason
For making squares and streets anonymous,
Which is that there is scarce a single season
Which doth not shake some very splendid house
With some slight heartquake of domestic treason,
A topic scandal doth delight to rouse.
Such I might stumble over unawares,
Unless I knew the very chastest squares.
27
’Tis true I might have chosen Piccadilly,
A place where peccadilloes are unknown,
But I have motives, whether wise or silly,
For letting that pure sanctuary alone.
Therefore I name not square, street, place, until I
Find one where nothing naughty can be shown,
A vestal shrine of innocence of heart.
Such are – but I have lost the London chart.
28
At Henry’s mansion then in Blank Blank Square
Was Juan a recherché welcome guest,
As many other noble scions were,
And some who had but talent for their crest,
Or wealth, which is a passport everywhere,
Or even mere fashion, which indeed’s the best
Recommendation, and to be well drest
Will very often supersede the rest.
29
And since ‘there’s safety in a multitude
Of counsellors’, as Solomon has said,
Or some one for him in some sage, grave mood;
Indeed we see the daily proof displayed
In senates, at the bar in wordy feud,
Where’er collective wisdom can parade,
Which is the only cause that we can guess
Of Britain’s present wealth and happiness;
30
But as ‘there’s safety grafted in the number
Of counsellors’ for men, thus for the sex
A large acquaintance lets not virtue slumber,
Or should it shake, the choice will more perplex.
Variety itself will more encumber.
’Midst many rocks we guard more against wrecks,
And thus with women: howsoe’er it shocks some’s
Self-love, there’s safety in a crowd of coxcombs.
31
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