DON JUAN JUNIOR 
 
 BYRON'S GHOST! 
 
 EDITED BY G. R. WYTHEN BAXTER, Eso. 
 
 FOUR SHILLINGS. 
 
DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Treasure %oom 
 
5»( 
 
DON JUAN JUNIOR 
 
 A POEM. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://archive.org/details/donjuanjuniorpoe01baxt 
 
DON JUAN JUNIOR : 
 
 A POEM, 
 
 BY BYRON'S GHOST. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 G. R. WYTHEN BAXTER, 
 
 Author of " Humour and Pathos, 1 ' " Poor Law Papers," %-c. 
 
 " It is called Don Juan, and it is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon everything- ; 
 but I doubt whether it is not — at least, as far as it has yet gone — too free for these very 
 modest days. However, I shall try the experiment anonymously, and if it don't take, it 
 will be discontinued." 
 
 Moore's "Notices." 
 
 " If it don't take, I will leave it off where it is, with all due respect to the public ; but if 
 continued, it must be in my own way. ***** j) y OU 
 
 suppose that I could have aDy intention but to giggle ?— A playful satire, with as little 
 poetry as could be helped, was what I meant." 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 LONDON : 
 JOSEPH THOMAS, 1, FINCH LANE, CORNHILL. 
 
 AND 
 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL AND CO., STATIONERS' COURT; 
 JOHN SUTHERLAND, EDINBURGH : GEORGE YOUNG, DUBLIN. 
 
 MDCCCXXXIX. 
 
 15971R 
 
LONDON : 
 WILLO'JGHBY AND CO, PRINTERS, 109, GOSWELL STB BET. 
 
TV. £- 
 PROEM TO THE POEM. 
 
 CONCEIVED BY A FAIR GIRL. 
 
 lJ&TI t S j-j" 01 p , retty ? you would think ^ sti11 prettier, if you had 
 am it, as 1 did two^ours ago, from the lips of a Venetian girl, with large 
 
 Pr,^L ey6S ' a o aC ^ hke Fau ? tina ' s > a «d the figure of a Juno-tall and 
 energetic as a Pythoness, with eyes flashing, and her dark hair streaming 
 in the moonlight— one of those women who may be made anything. I 
 
 ,WW t 1 J? a P ° ni , ard int0 the hand of this one > she would plunge 
 it where I told her— and into me, if I offended her." 
 
 Moore's " Notices." 
 
 The attempt in this ordinary age, when so much is slight and 
 slothful, not only to imitate the style, peculiarities, and eccen- 
 tricities — but at the same time, to endeavour to revive from 
 the cerecloth of the tomb, and to perpetuate the characteristic 
 prejudices, sympathies, and antipathies of the most remarkable 
 mental hero that ever lived, as embodied in his poetic warfare 
 witn his kind, must and will necessarily, be considered an am- 
 bitious and a bold attempt.— The present presumes to be that 
 attempt. 
 
 Here, peradventure, a certain leaven of what Voltaire ap- 
 propriately designates "la canaille de la Litterature," who live 
 upon pamphlets and iniquity, and who are known to walk 
 o'er beds of lilies and hold their noses, will with a "large 
 utterance," enquire : " who is he who has had the exceeding 
 temerity to hazard that attempt ; and compete with one, in his 
 loftiest eagle flights, who in his lowest, hitherto has been 
 
 159716 
 
VI PROEM. 
 
 deemed a world beyond competition ? " A man, in all the stern 
 endurance of the word — suffering, and who has suffered, is his 
 response. But a lion's roar, say they, asks a lion's prowess too : 
 is he then, one of the very gods of intellect, who whisper 
 melody like words, and afterwards let it fall on the ears of 
 ecstatic thousands, as " pearl beads dropping sudden from 
 their string," — Moore, Wordsworth, Campbell ? — His answer is, 
 he is not unknown to fame and fame's white-cheeked children ; 
 for ere now, both have looked on him regardfully ; and in many- 
 hearts, the wise, the witty, the patriot's, and the beauty's, 
 his soul's breath, short but sweet, has made him not a stranger ! 
 Enough : but what is his name ? he must have one, if he be so 
 honoured. Ask those who, with open mouth and poisoned 
 snaky hiss, have done their worst to brand, to blast, to blight 
 it, and make it what it is — a calumny ! Where dwells he ? 
 Sometimes, (Ah, would he could do so for ever !) in imagina- 
 tion's sunny palaces, where flock around him, visions of fair 
 spirits, in graceful groupings, — natural and unattired, — with lips 
 so rosy, and eyes that wish, who beckon him to their joys, and 
 smother his brow with burning kisses ; but too often in the 
 desolate chamber, walled in with thoughts, ghast as skulls, of 
 his own heart. 
 
 Many and piteous are an author's sorrows, — his aches, his 
 disappointments — how came he to write ? Was it for the chink 
 of gold pieces jingling in a purse, or that whistled mock which 
 hath led many to their graves too soon — the ideal ravishment 
 
PROEM. Vll 
 
 of a name ? Perchance, he does not choose to fructify to that 
 demand ; — or perchance, a kindred spirit once so passionful, 
 and now a star, severe with light of satisfied thought*, hath 
 done so for him, and that mournfully, — " 
 
 -most wretched men 
 
 Are cradled into poetry by wrong, — 
 
 They learn in suffering, what they teach in song ! " 
 
 Such, on the appearance of" Don Juan Junior," — rising like 
 a young and lusty sun to lucifer with his numbers, bespank 
 with warm and yellow luscious sheen, the dark and dreary night, 
 unillumined, save but by a few " dim religious lights," 
 (Montgomery, etc.) and they burning "pale and dreadful;" and 
 those interstellar cressets, whose beams are violet-scented as 
 they shine, (Landon, f Norton, etc. etc.) which has so long 
 overshadowed the realms of God's poesy in England. Such, 
 in all probability, will be the frequent and loud notes, of inqui- 
 sition, — and in anticipation thereof, and that its author, may 
 not hereafter be fretted spectre thin, and " anger'd worse," by 
 curious worded speculations, and conjectures convulsed with 
 torture, concerning his identity ; — the foregoing respondence, 
 considerately for him, and not for them, has, by a fond girl, 
 (who looks most beautiful beneath her long dark hair,) been, 
 cunningly prepared. Is the catechise completed, — or must he 
 yet, have his ear ground with the harsh resound of further 
 
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
 f Alas ! now no more ! 
 
Vlll PROEM. 
 
 question ? — He must :— Why was written the present piece of 
 rhyme, gushing forth thoughts so wild, so wilful, and so brilliant ; 
 and fashioned after the denounced model of one, whom decent 
 sinners hate, because he mouthed their practices too publicly ? 
 Must he then discuss unto that likewise ? exclaims his guard- 
 ian sylph, with a voice, fresh as a spring flower bedewed 
 but lately ; and who — 
 
 " When every tongue his follies nam'd, 
 
 Fled the unwelcome story ; 
 Or, found in ev'n the faults they blam'd 
 
 Some gleams of future glory. 
 She still was true, when nearer friends 
 
 Conspired to wrong — to slight him." 
 
 Well then, it may be, in its composition, he followed sportively 
 the example of his noble progenitor, the " Childe ;" and 
 penned this Danny Johnny, the younger, as he previously did 
 his : — i. e. " principally to shock " (his meaning was good) those 
 immaculates, who " hate us youth ;" and are " all clergy and 
 loyalty, mirth and innocence, milk and water." — Or it may be, 
 though he chronicles no admission, he did it to cause maidens, 
 coy as summer roses when they are young, to blush and pout 
 . their joined lips, think them kisses — and long for lovers. For 
 as old Hesperidean Herrick warbles : — 
 
 " To read his booke, the virgin shie 
 May blush, while Brutus standeth by ; 
 But, when he's gone, read thro' what's writ, 
 And never staine a cheek for it." 
 
 Or it may be, he was actuated in its conception, by motives 
 not so pretty, but less naughty — viz : to amuse and instruct, 
 
PROEM. IX 
 
 " cum grano salis," his brother man and sister woman. But 
 there, whichever of these motives — if either impelled the task 
 — what is writ is writ, and the pensive public, at any rate, will 
 be the gainer. 
 
 Truth, by lawyers, from their parchment lips, is esteemed a 
 libel ; — by army men, from their " lungs military," a lie ; — by 
 church-men, from their clergy tongues, infidelity — by statesmen, 
 from their protocol jaws, sedition — by monarchs, from their 
 luxurious mouths, treason — by authors, from their " sweet 
 voices," fiction — by dealers and chapmen, from their narrow 
 throats, foolishness — by respectable men, from their moral 
 speeches, bad taste — and by all other kinds of folk, in all other 
 kinds of sayings, an exceeding useless and disreputable com- 
 modity. Now, as there happens to be a pretty considerable 
 sprinkling of this said useless and disreputable commodity — and 
 that of the right homely sort too — squeezed in it, as 
 from a lemon fruit, in the fantasia of the present moral 
 divertimento, what has its author to expect from the revulsion 
 of the world and the world's men ? Indubitably, persecution, 
 " desperate revenge, and battle dangerous," heralded and pro- 
 claimed from all its humanity, sacred and profane. — Be it so,- 
 is his quiet retort — he is prepared ; only, here, he would out of 
 charity prefix, that if he is once forced to draw his mind's 
 sharp claymore, the scabbard's thrown away, and he afterwards 
 neither takes nor gives quarter. — If then, in some future en- 
 counter, he shall put his blade well in, and thereby force their 
 
X PROEM. 
 
 (his~assailants') " seated hearts," in agony, (as he has done, before 
 now) to knock against their ribs to be let out — and, that not 
 being allowed — for the rest of their natural lives their 
 familiar speech shall be howling, let them not blame him — he 
 gave them warning. 
 
 "War to the knife!" in the political patois of the day, is 
 his literary onslaught cry. "No surrender !" when in the blood 
 heat of the engagement, his battle word. In the meanwhile, 
 he must and will be read. 
 
 Written, for " Byron's Ghost," ' 
 
 by 
 
 Martha Maria B . 
 
 Churchyard, Newstead .- 
 
 March, 14, 1839- 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 TO CRITICS, REVIEWERS, ETC., ETC. 
 
 In the mechanism of the present Poem, the author has, without 
 scruple, overstepped the narrow boundaries hitherto allowed 
 to builders of rhyme — justly considering, that the metrical 
 enactments are too exactive, and apt, by their Draconic severity, 
 to cramp and confine a poet's expression of his thoughts ; — in 
 short, that by their coercive rigour, they incite him to attend 
 more to the mechanical arrangement and systematical jingle, 
 than to the developement of new thoughts and modes of 
 expression. Thus, the public are incessantly inundated with a 
 sort of correct, though perfectly uninteresting verse-mongers, 
 whose prime and sovereign endeavour is to please the ear, 
 altogether regardless of the mind. 
 
 In the present attempt, that the free expression of sentiment 
 might not in the least, be " cabin'd," and bound in by saucy 
 rules and laws, — the author, inattentive to the wisdom of our 
 
Xll ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 ancestral rhymesters, has liberally availed himself of the most 
 extreme metrical license, and indeed, in some instances, that 
 the thought might not be Burked, has, perhaps, cashiered metre 
 altogether : — and in this, he has not only taken advantage of 
 the poetical liberties allowed to the tuners of English measure, 
 but, at the same time, has had recourse to those of the Latins ; 
 and, " more Quiritium," has bountifully used the figure 
 synalepha when occasion required. 
 
 In publishing this acknowledgement, he has no doubt, like 
 other Reformers, he shall meet with unqualified opposition from 
 those, who prejudiced and bigoted, favour the old style, which 
 awards approbation to sound, not sense ; and prefers " ten low 
 words," duly counted on the fingers, systematically to run in 
 the " dull line," instead of one " wild chaos, and heap of wit." 
 
 He can only asseverate, — such is not his taste. 
 
 (Signed) *" Byron's Ghost." 
 
 Churchyard, Newstead : 
 March, 12, 1839. 
 
 Night, 12 o'Clock. 
 
CANTO I. 
 
DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 CANTO I. 
 
 I. 
 
 Some sing of shipwrecks 1 , some of blood and 'ouns 2 ;" 
 Some of our Mother Eve and her green apple 3 ; 
 
 Some of Cassandra, when the lady swoons 
 
 At Greeks, cutting great Hector's brawny thrapple : 
 
 And some of " blue Moselles," and "bonnie Doons;" 
 And some of themes like Sancho and his " dapple ; " 
 
 But I mean in this my poetic brewing, 
 
 To add a few wild slips of love and ruin. 
 
 II. 
 
 Not that I promise you much variety — 
 
 That, if you look, you'll find in Byron's Juan ; 
 
 Yet I may, en passant, slap society, 
 
 Which is, you must confess, a sad great Bruin, 
 
 And not o'er honest, or too fond of piety — 
 Being I fear more partial to fresh sewin 4 ! — 
 
 But there, as love is now my story's hero, 
 
 I must, at once, apostrophise that Nero : — 
 
4 
 
 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 III. 
 
 Hail Love ! splitter of hearts — et cetera — 
 
 Pet of the dear petticoats, and the " first Lord" 
 
 Of woman's " Treasury," — as people say — 
 
 I don't know where 'tis true, but upon my word, 
 
 I've been inform'd you do not keep the kay 5 
 O' the casket, where 'tis caged like a bird : 
 
 In short, boy Dan, not to be uncivil, 
 
 That you as " Premier," play the Divil, 
 
 IV. 
 
 And make young girls' blood to boil and bubble, 
 Until they do sigh and long upon their beds, 
 
 To change life's single rub for a double ; 
 
 When they've got, poor things, your whimsies in their heads ! 
 
 And that when, through you, they get in trouble, 
 And find them entangled in your mazy threads — 
 
 You hold their softness up to sneers and laughter, 
 
 As sage Lycurgus did the maids of Sparta 6 ; 
 
 V. 
 
 Which to say the best, is not kind of you ; 
 
 For when you have increased their sighs and size, 
 To comfort 'em's the least you ought to do : 
 
 Think of these soft young things, haunted by the cries 
 Of the rank, insulting, worldly crew — 
 
 The tittle-tattle rabble — the great unwise — 
 Who care not the whiff of a Nargilly * 
 For the tear-drops of the sweetest lily ! 
 
CANTO I. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Oh young Love ! thou hast much to answer for — 
 Thine is th' entail of broken hopes and hearts ! — 
 
 Wert thou subjected to a mortal law, 
 
 Exchanged for those of Death, would be thy darts ; 
 
 For they are kinder, and not near so raw ; 
 
 Nor do they cause such bitter, rankling smarts : — 
 
 Surely, in spite of thy gay rose-flushed wings, 
 
 Thyself and ruin were engendered twins ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 In other words, ye are synonimous : 
 
 The women, at least, are apt to find ye so — 
 
 And would give worlds to be anonymous, 
 
 If they but could, from your wounds and woe ; 
 
 But they cannot : else by Hieronimus ! 
 
 (To whom the Roman Catholics much do owe) 
 
 Each child of Eve would hie her to a nunnery, 
 
 Sooner than tempt the dangers of thy gunnery. 
 
 VIII. 
 Here 'tis time we stop apostrophising : 
 
 And commence the matter of our history, 
 Which of all things, would not be surprising, 
 
 Should it sometimes offend that Whig, and this Tory ; 
 For both are so fond of analyzing, 
 
 And taking to themselves an Author's story : 
 But if in description, I should excel — I 
 Care not a bulrush for such vardarelli. 
 
6 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Well then, in Seville, is my first scene laid-^- 
 Which, saith Lord Byron, is a pleasant city 8 , 
 
 Famed far for love and the orange trade ; 
 For both which traffics, I care not a bit — I 
 
 Not being for sucking or loving made ; 
 
 Which, perhaps as things go, may be a pity : 
 
 But there, 'tis well to cashier such devices, 
 
 Aid cool your blood with one o'Tortoni's ices. 
 
 X. 
 
 Near that city is a grove all rife with trees, 
 Exceedingly well known to love and lovers — 
 
 Where, of a June evening, the soft breeze 
 Invites many a black eye to its covers, 
 
 To meet their Dons, who do much as they please, 
 As the fair one's altered shape too oft discovers : — 
 
 In other words, it is a place where Signors 
 
 Do nightly come and court their Nora Creinas. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Behold ! the moon is shining on that field — 
 And her long shadows fall upon that walk ; 
 
 While softly, meeting hearts are seen to steal, 
 A- whispering gently what they dare not talk ; — 
 
 (Much in " pig's whispers," though one may reveal ! 
 As the Milesians say, in County Cork :) 
 
 Well, such is my scene, Reader — time, midnight — 
 
 With a moon most immeasurably bright ! 
 
CANTO I. 
 XII. 
 
 But hark ! a silky step is heard to glide, 
 Like vision lightly, to that cork-tree's shade, 
 
 Beneath where lies the moon-beam like a bride, 
 The first night — conscious she — and half afraid — 
 
 Yet not knowing, whether to shew or hide, 
 
 Her blushes from him, the bridegroom near her laid. — 
 
 This vision, gentle reader, know of me, 
 
 Is meant for this Canto's Heroine. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 And now I'll try my descriptive powers : 
 And describe her, if she can be described — 
 
 She was, then, as sweet as village flowers — 
 
 At least, when I knew her — she since has died — 
 
 And her voice fell on the ear like showers 
 
 Of spring rain, — it was so soft — and you sighed 
 
 When it ceased its happy tones, with pain, 
 
 To hear it wake, its music gush again ! — 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Two dove-some eyes were her's of deep sea blue, 
 
 O'er which, long dark lashes laughingly were spread : 
 
 Theirs was th' intelligence — the mild — the true ! 
 
 Oh ! that their lustrous splendour should e'er be sped !- 
 
 I've seen many angelic eyes — but few 
 
 Like those that thought and languished in her head : — 
 
 For hers were eyes that would laugh and say to you, 
 
 When they were kissed — " My God ! what do you do ! " 
 
8 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XV. 
 
 And then, her ankle 9 — Heav'n save me from sin ! 
 
 And, most of all, from that crime call'd adult'ry !- 
 I never see a pretty leg and slim, 
 
 But I feel th' air about me getting sultry : — 
 This may be only, to be sure, a whim, 
 
 Which p'raps it may not be right to multiply ; — 
 Therefore, as 'tis a rather dangerous theme, 
 I'll say no more about it, lest I dream. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Well then, her beauties were quite numberless, 
 Like the fam'd steps in Govan's chapel hoar 10 ; 
 
 For, when you tried to count 'em, a silk tress 
 Of hair would fall, and make a hundred more, 
 
 So it would be impossible to express, 
 
 You see, in verse, a tithe of her charms' store : 
 
 Such then, was the beauteous girl who now 
 
 Watch'd for her lover, 'neath the cork-tree bough. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Yes such was she, who now for him did wait, 
 Alone in that moonlight grove, in agony : 
 
 For she — alas young thing ! — was in that state 
 In which those ladies are almost sure to be 
 
 Who love as wives their lovers.— -But I relate 
 P'raps these matters rather too curiously ; 
 
 If so, I must entreat you give some hint, 
 
 And not e'en this verse shall appear in print. 
 
CANTO I. 
 XVIII. 
 
 But truly, she was an unseemly sight — 
 
 And should have been upon her soft couch lying : 
 
 Not shivering in the dank cold of night, 
 
 With her sweet robes, and hair dew-drunk and flying 
 
 In the wind ; glancing oft and trembling bright, 
 Like lily plumes of downy swan a-dying : — 
 
 But there, what will not women do who love n ? 
 
 Ask those who chronicle their deeds above. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 At last he comes ! — why did he stay so long, 
 
 From her (the fond one !) who listens, now he's near, 
 
 For his approaching steps, as to a song, 
 For he still, she feels, to her is very dear ! 
 
 Though he has done too much her young heart wrong. — 
 But he ne'er loved her as he ought, I fear : — 
 
 Else he would not, for a snatch 'o crowning bliss, 
 
 Have brought his own one to a pass like this ! 
 
 XX. 
 
 He comes ! and she crows with joy, like infancy — 
 And for the time, forgets her trouble and is gay : 
 
 And begins, with her ruined heart, to try, 
 
 To make excuses for his long lingered stay : — 
 
 " He was busy, perhaps — and Society, 
 
 Had calls — calls which, poor fellow, he must obey !" — 
 
 And this was the fond, young thing, whom Juan 
 
 (For that was his name), had brought to ruin ! 
 
10 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Well, well, man's love indeed's a mystery ! 
 
 The most wwtender, for a tender passion, 
 Which for a twist of rapture — a kiss — he 
 
 Can make his " belle and bonne " partake the fashion 
 Of those maidens, who in Piccadilly, 
 
 Nightly to all comers hold their "Jlag station ! " — 
 Sooner than do so, I'd cut off my thumbs, 
 And imitate the ancient Myrmidons 12 . 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Not that I am too virtuously inclined : — 
 
 No ! I leave that for those who're far above me 
 
 In rank, all of whom I've long opined, 
 
 Ought, both in love and war, to act most dovely. — 
 
 But truly my reason, for not being kind, 
 
 To such things, is — I do not think 'em lovely ! 
 
 For I consider tender stuff a bubble, 
 
 And quite unworthy any wise man's trouble. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 For " sink " love's " offal," what is love ? — ah what ! 
 
 (Much more I am afraid of gall than " Melle 13 ! ") 
 Ask boys o' Eton — men o' Oxford — they have got 
 
 Experience in such matters, and can tell ye ; 
 At least, their surgeon's bills can I wot ! 
 
 (If, which I somewhat doubt, they settle any.) 
 But now, we will return to that sad scene, 
 Which I had given worlds had never been ! 
 
CANTO I. 11 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The footsteps of the lover, as I've said, 
 
 Stole in echoes on the lone and stilly way ; 
 While, as he approach'd nearer, the deep red 
 
 Lining of his cloak, flashed burning in the ray, 
 Of the moon, like lightening's fitful dread 14 ; 
 
 (" Almaviva " wears one like it in the play 15 ;) 
 And we British, for names rather at a loss, 
 Should christen such an one a " Mackintosh." 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Wrapp'd in his " Spanish," then the lover came, 
 
 Lilting to himself an old Guerilla song, 
 I shall not now his face and mien proclaim, 
 
 As for the present his incog. I'd prolong ; — 
 But in future Canto's, which'll be the same, 
 
 I may whisper matters of him rather wrong : 
 And shew that something else beside the lute is, 
 " In usum," with the Spanish " Juventutis." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 In the meantime, I'll add a few " brevibus 
 Notis," to shew he came of good parentage — 
 
 His Sire was a Don ; — his Mother virtuous — 
 
 (Tho' on that point I am not quite sure — the age 
 
 Is become so extremely courteous — 
 And really as civil off, as on the stage.) 
 
 He'd several sisters, though, all pretty girls, 
 
 With eyes as black as jet, and teeth like pearls. 
 
12 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Each of whom were married, except two : — 
 
 One, to a vet'ran chief of Cuirassiers ; 
 (He lost part of his leg at Waterloo — ) 
 
 One, to an Attache of the Ministers 
 Of the " Interior ; " — and the next, ('tis true !) 
 
 To an old Grandee of three-and-sixty years: — 
 Poor thing ! — and yet she might have done worse — 
 A queen of old, 'tis said, loved a horse 16 . 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 But of my Hero's family, more anon. — 
 
 And now to the meeting of the lovers twain ; 
 
 We left my hero entering upon 
 
 The well remembered green and flow'ry lane 
 
 Of cork-trees, where, he oft had sooth'd with song, 
 
 The hours of her whose heart since had known but pain ! 
 
 But there, those hours, like friends, were dead and gone — 
 
 And beauty kind, holds not her queendom long ! 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 » 
 
 The moon shone bright, and in that holy hour, 
 He stood in the very spot where first he'd made 
 
 Her own passion's soft and thrilling power ! 
 For here, often entranced, these two had laid, 
 
 Twins 'o rapture — he sigh'd as he pass'd the bower, 
 And then brushing quick by it, like one afraid — 
 
 Again assumed the worldling and the world, 
 
 And called her by her name, the watching girl. 
 
CANTO I. 13 
 
 XXX. 
 
 She advanc'd with timid gaze and humid eye — 
 
 With that quiet, suffering, enquiring glance ; 
 Which seems as 'twere, in the wronger's soul to pry, 
 
 And ask where he pitied her fond mischance ? 
 Oh ! it was heart-rending — half smile, half cry ; — 
 
 And cutting keen to the feelings like a lance — 
 I have seen such gazes in my time e'er now : 
 God shield me from deceit and broken vow ! 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 She advanc'd, but not as she was wont to do, 
 
 E'er ruin had crept o'er her confiding soul, 
 Like a snake : — for then a glance from her she knew, 
 
 Could inthrill his heart, enrapture and control : — 
 But now it was different, for the dew 
 
 Of self reproach heav'ly to her eyes had stole. — 
 Yes, now in her turn, she must ask, not grant ; 
 The beauty had become the suppliant ! 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 They met : — and she her liquid blue eyes threw 
 Upon the withered leaves that strew'd the ground ; 
 
 And 'mid those bright things faded there were few 
 
 More fallen : — tho' many of them were crisp and brown ; 
 
 And then, clasping his knees, as if she grew 
 There like ivy ; at his feet threw her down, — 
 
 And with many a tear — her boon's presage, 
 
 Entreatingly murmured — " Marriage ! " 
 
14 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 At that word her lover start'd and turn'd pale — 
 As well he might : — For he'd no wish to take on 
 
 Himself, the squalls of th' Hymeneal gale, 
 
 "Which, (malgre the fam'd Dunmow flitch of bacon,) 
 
 He knew to be most heavy ; and " like a whale" 
 All blubber ; — in other words, life's " to kakori' : — 
 
 Full of ills, and those ills quite as various 
 
 As were the trials of Belisarius ! 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Ah wedlock ! thou'rt indeed a ticklish thing ! 
 
 And that too in many strange particulars — 
 After the honey-moon you seldom bring 
 
 Forth any of Love's roses or auriculas — 
 For Love has but one " Lady -day — one spring, 
 
 For us who're poor unfortunate Agricolas — 
 And that is the days of courtship — a time 
 Always beautiful — and sometimes divine ! 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Besides Juan hated the care-cloth state of strife 17 ; 
 
 Since he'd been told by one whose name was Lovel, 
 That were you as " sweet as trade " to your wife, 
 
 (I got that phrase from a new Irish novel :) 
 She'd lead you after all but a so-so life ; 
 
 And fill with babes and smoke your cottage hovel. 
 Such then being the case, can you wonder, 
 Any man should desire to knock under ? 
 
CANTO I. 15 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 I for one cannot — but as I've said, all these 
 
 Objections wedlock-wards passed through the mind 
 
 Of our hero, and he was ill at ease ;— 
 
 But presently, with a gentle voice and kind, 
 
 He took his mistress' hand, and with a squeeze, 
 
 Whisper' d, he could'nt now the banns of Hymen bind : 
 
 But he'd be (the old story,) if she chose, 
 
 Her lover, or her friend, or both of those. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 The RomanVirginius when he knew 
 
 His pleading for his daughter was in vain — 
 Our tragic muse, the Siddons, when she drew 
 
 Gen'ral tears as " Lady Randolph" o'er the slain 18 
 Body of her son, presented to the view, 
 
 Just such a chill agonized face of pain, 
 As she, who now her arms her bosom crossed, 
 Stood like to one irrevocably lost! 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 So piteously did that girl gaze now 
 
 At him, to whom she'd given, oh God ! so much — 
 And could he — could he break his plighted vow — 
 
 Plighted too, where he stood ! — and her young heart crush 
 For ever ! — how — how could he do so — how 
 
 Could he thus blight her softness ? — did he not blush ? — 
 She looked into his face with fond despair, 
 But found, alas ! no pity inscribed there. — 
 
16 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Enough — she spoke not — wept not — did not blame 
 Him ; but suffering, turned her to depart, 
 
 While he mechanically did the same ; 
 
 She in utter bankruptcy of hope and heart, 
 
 He with small regard ; — for with him love's flame 
 
 Had long been quenched : and thus these two did part ! 
 
 Sans look, sans word, sans kiss from one another, 
 
 Though never more on earth to meet each other. 
 
 XL. 
 
 For she shortly after fell sick and died : 
 
 Withering from that time like a May flower 
 
 Pluck'd ; while the babe she bore did not survive, 
 But breathed its first and last i' the self same hour ; 
 
 As it was meet it should, and not outlive 
 The giver of its birth — its erring mother : — 
 
 Well, she threw at life's game and in the long run, 
 
 Lost her stake — it was her all — and was undone. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Such was her fate ; but there do not blame her, 
 
 She only pursued the dictates of a heart 
 Too kind — and was not one who could tame her 
 
 Feelings down to coldness or to play a part ; 
 Had she done so, no blight would have o'ercome her ; 
 
 And her heart had been spared much bitter smart, 
 But now surely no one will her fate deride, 
 For she sleeps calm with her babe, side by side. 
 
CANTO I. 17 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Her's was but the end of thousands of those 
 Warm delicate creatures, who love unwisely — 
 
 And 'till young hearts can bring themselves to close, 
 Their feelings against love's sweet intensity, 
 
 'Twill always be so ! pity that such woes 
 
 Should be th' entail of those who love so lovely ! 
 
 And that young things should e'er be blam'd for yielding 
 
 To such sensations as they can't help feeling. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 But so it is : — They laid her in her tomb 
 
 Save indeed one lock of her fair hair — one tress, 
 
 Which when she knew of her approaching doom, 
 She sent to him who spoiled her loveliness, 
 
 Her faithless lover — it was I presume, 
 
 A woman's way of shewing her forgiveness : 
 
 And with it a letter which express'd a hope, 
 
 That he might never miss the heart he'd broke. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 And there was a word too, about old times — 
 
 " The cork grove where first their intercourse begun ; 
 
 The evening tooling of those convent chimes ; 
 
 Their soft peal — the silver moon — the setting sun — " 
 
 All dear to lovers — but in southern climes, 
 Especially, as has been often sung — 
 
 And then came the pang — the wrench to sever ! 
 
 A woman's last — last farewell for ever ! 
 
18 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 # 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Her grave hath no stone but from it doth spring 
 Yearly the choicest sweets of garden flowers, 
 
 Planted upon it — humble offering 
 
 Of neighbouring peasant girls or Labradores 19 , 
 
 Who, in simple ballads, to this day do sing, 
 
 Her beauty — unhappy love — and blighted hours : 
 
 But in them, they have chang'd her lover's name — 
 
 Perhaps, they deem'd his rank too high for blame. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 There let her sleep — and turn we to her lover, 
 — Or hater, may be of the two is better — 
 
 At her death he did not much grief discover, 
 Or much regret ; but reading her last letter, 
 
 He could not though he strove, his feelings smother- 
 Feelings are stubborn things ! and he did wet her 
 
 Fond last words with some sad tears, and cried ; 
 
 But 'mong his gay friends they soon were dried. 
 
CANTO I. 19 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 For man seldom grieveth long for woman ! 
 
 His grief is violent, but never lasting ; 
 For when his " Portia's dead," there's no man 
 
 Who does'nt forthwith begin his fancy tasking, 
 To choose another fair : — and soon the beau-man, 
 
 Contrives to weather the " third time of asking :" 
 And in six weeks from his wife being dead, 
 He's often to some vixen married, 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Who, duty bound, as might have been expected, 
 
 Pays off the debt-sheet of her predecessor ; 
 And makes him daily curse that he selected 
 
 So perfect a " Savilian Professor 20 " 
 Of teazing, so sorely is he henpecked, 
 
 And crossed by his domestic she oppressor : — 
 Folks say, a first wife is sufficient evil ; — 
 But some who have a second, own the Devil, 
 
 L. 
 
 As many men have found. — Oh ! Solomon, 
 
 You must have had a famous constitution ! 
 And a good stock of patience thereupon — 
 
 To have undertaken the execution 
 Of such a host o' wives and Jie-Jies, when one, 
 
 In this age is reckoned a profusion 
 To all, except the very aristocratic, 
 And those who are afflicted with rheumatic 21 . 
 
20 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LI. 
 
 The ruined fate and death of the young girl, 
 Love and my hero's victim ! (I'll not speak 
 
 Her name, because I would not have the world 
 O'er one so sinless, yet so fallen, wreak 
 
 Its harsh blame or pity,) caused the twirl 
 Of gossip wond'rous for at least a week ; 
 
 And would have caused more, but it was known, 
 
 Her father was a peasant, not a Don. 
 
 LII. 
 
 But still I 'spose her wronger was detested- 
 
 By his acquaintance, cut upon the Prado — 
 While on the pave he waded " single breasted," 
 For having such a fairy creature laid low ! — 
 In short, was he not constantly arrested 
 
 With threatenings or abhorrence — or a blow- 
 Up where'er he went ? " — " Not a bit of it, 
 They only said " 'twas wrong " — and praised his wit. — 
 
 LIIL 
 
 Which faint blame made him quite the mode of course 
 At Seville ; and in dress he set th' example ; 
 
 Till to be d la Juan was a source 
 
 Of great uneasiness both to beau and belle. 
 
 For who in fashions ought to have more force, 
 Than he who had ruined a girl so well ? — 
 
 None that I know — but ask a certain Lord — 
 
 By letter — and perhaps he'll send you word. 
 
CANTO I. 21 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Behold my hero, then, in great request, 
 
 (After his gallant conduct just related :) 
 At balls — at parties — bull-fights — dinners — press'd 
 
 To come and be universally feted, 
 " Et quidquid volet ;" — e'en by those, you'd guess'd, 
 
 Would most have shunn'd a man so dissipated ; — 
 I mean the woman-kind. — But wherefore blame ? — 
 Wild fowl eat sweeter always than the tame. 
 
 LV. 
 
 Especially when sous'd in good port-wine 22 , 
 
 And judiciously with peptic spices sauc'd ; 
 There's not a dish on which a man could dine 
 
 More nobly, if by th' Artiste it be rightly toss'd 
 Up. — So, they think of men, the feminine — 
 
 Their darlings if offensive — if quiet lost — 
 Thus, when those bipeds " hick, hack, and cry horum," 
 Instanter, all the women folks adore 'em. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 In this case there were few of them remiss 
 
 In adoration ; but were really willing 
 To shield Don Juan — " Sure with legs like his, 
 
 No one," they said, " could ever be a villain ! — 
 And ev'n had he Matronized the Miss. — 
 
 There were excuses for him — aye, a million :" — 
 And one of them, I bet, you don't surmise — 
 It was, because he had " such loves of eyes !" 
 
%% DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 "And then 'twas all the forward minion's fault: — 
 The creature gave him encouragement no doubt — 
 
 'Tis pity such bold Madams were not taught, 
 
 That love they must not with gentlemen dare spout :- 
 
 T' avoid submission should she not have fought ? — 
 Or downright told him she could not with a pout." — 
 
 But when a blushing nymph cries " I could not /." 
 
 She does'nt always mean to say, " You should not." 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Ev'n among us free-born smoking British, 
 Whose maidens mostly are allowed to be, 
 
 Of all nations' charmers, the most skittish 
 In virtue, — the above phrase, I assure ye, 
 
 Means naught ; and 'twould be a thousand pities 
 To take it literally ; — unless she's ugly, 
 
 Then, indeed, there's not the least occasion, 
 
 For you to attempt a free translation. 
 
 LIX. 
 
canto r. 23 
 
 LX. 
 
 There's a gay party, and the room is blushing 
 
 With charms like 'Paspe's 23 naked 'fore her limner ! 
 
 And fair ones' cheeks are now with beauty flushing 
 And mirth and rouge — Ah ! what can be sublimer ! 
 
 Than to behold these pretty creatures crushing 
 
 Against you — now with scornful glance — now kinder 
 
 Of large black sparkling eyne, whose ray ne'er pales, 
 
 Like Roma's Vestal fires, and those in Wales 24 . 
 
 LXI. 
 
 " See ! with what grace Spain's daughters tread the maze ! — 
 Those virgins of the sunbeam whose torrid zones, 
 
 All jewellery and fire-flash, seem to blaze, 
 Round the warm waists they cincture with starry stones 
 
 Of brilliance — See ! for in all your days, 
 
 You ne'er saw such piquant bits of living bronze ! 
 
 As those who now like dazzling gold fish swim 
 
 Around, all soul, all rapture, and all whim 26 . 
 
 LXII. 
 
 " And our youth too, they're not amiss are they ? — 
 Though but slim they could deal pretty hardish blows, 
 
 As enemies perhaps may find ; — but pray, 
 
 Monsieur, why don't you Anglois wear mustachios ? 
 
 My word, they'd keep you warm — and in what way, 
 Pass you your time without bull-fights ? — I suppose, 
 
 Just like that Deity who came exprcs 26 , 
 
 To fly kites on the Siamese causeway ! 
 
24 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 " But no offence : — see you that Donna there ; 
 
 She is a Poetess, and her name is Leila 27 ; — 
 She wrote th' " Infanta," and her prose is far 
 
 Superior to that sad stupid fellow, 
 Lope, (at least, so says her Publisher,) 
 
 No doubt, the fripon, with an eye to sell her 
 Printed trash off, before her readers wake, 
 And after find they've made a d — d mistake ! 
 
 LXIV. 
 "But voila ! here comes a tight-built figure ! — 
 
 There's a pretty waist — or band-box if you please ! — 
 Egad ! if I were young, I should not care 
 
 To give that fair madam's gentle hand a squeeze ; 
 Especially, were none near us to stare. 
 
 Her legs, methinks, are like the legs of Vestris ; 
 Save she wears her coats more short, and smarter, 
 That they may shew th' ' Order of the Garter.' " 
 
 LXV. 
 
 So in the gay scene spoke an old whisker'd Don, 
 (He was the pest of Seville and a News Triton,) 
 
 To a stranger who seem'd to look upon 
 
 All with great contempt, for he was a Briton ; 
 
 And, therefore, despised every one 
 
 Who was'nt of that damp isle, which has transmitten 
 
 Some of the most foolish faces in the world, 
 
 Under the libell'd names of Duke and Earl. 
 
CANTO I. 25 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 With a look of guarded chill, the islander 
 
 Gaz'd on the chattering grey-head before him, 
 
 Who could thus his conversation squander 
 
 On one who car'd not for it ; but, for the whim 
 
 Of the thing, would listen ; — yet, a stander- 
 
 By might have read in that faint look, verbatim : — 
 
 " Like Ceres' son, shrink down to hell — begone ! 
 
 And become, old fool, a second Acheron 28 ! " 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 But the man of many words saw none of this, 
 
 Or at least, saw double (for he was groggy), 
 Thought 'twas'nt an opportunity to miss 
 
 Of hearing himself talk ; so, with a nod, he 
 Inserted through the other's arm his wrist, 
 
 And proposed, in a voice rather foggy, 
 To leave the clash of those cursed castanets, 
 And have a chat on some interesting subjects. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 With this, pushing thro' the gay crowd like. a nail- 
 Passer, boring all who stopped his passage ; 
 
 He dragged his unwilling victim, pale 
 
 With vexation, and forthwith 'gan to damage 
 
 His ear with talk unprofitably stale ; 
 
 Thus unloading his immense rough tongue's luggage : — 
 
 " You English are not Catholics — how odd ! 
 
 Hem ! — how do you expect to go to God ? 
 
26 VJ0N JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 " Well, (I would not offend for trillions,) 
 
 But have you no saints, or pictures in your churclies 1 
 Such things, believe me, though but silly ones, 
 
 Excite religion in the people, as birches 
 Do Syntax in boys. There are millions 
 
 Who, but for these, would never make their courtesies 
 To their God. You doubt — but to convince ye, 
 Look at the ' Last Supper,' by Da Vinci ! 
 
 LXX. 
 
 " But there you are heretic — Protestant, 
 I beg pardon, I meant to say. Do you see 
 
 That little gentleman who does so pant 
 
 And sweat in the fandango ? — there, that is he ; — 
 
 The other day he caught a young commandant 
 (Of course, though, I tell you this in secrecy,) 
 
 In a certain position with his bride, 
 
 Which none but the newspapers can describe. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 " Sad business, Seignior, those crim. cons.! — 
 
 It is a pity such doings are allow'd. 
 By Jove ! ' had I a hundred brace of sons, 
 
 Before they should do so, I'd see them in their shroud. 
 Surely, they might be content'd with their bons, 
 
 Of which in every town there are a crowd ; 
 And not make wedd'd ladies serve their pleasure, 
 As grass did that stot Nebuchadnezzar. 
 
CANTO I. 27 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 " But there, they will do it, the wild young men, 
 
 Though, by Moses, they must know they are to blame : 
 
 In vain the clergy's sermons — the author's pen, 
 
 The world will sin and slaughter just — 'just the same ! 
 
 And the crim. con. that was, will be agen 29 — 
 
 The more's the pity that there should be no shame ; 
 
 But sooner than 'tis alter'd, the sewers 
 
 Will flow with ' Esprit Lavande aux mille fleurs.' 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 " An event, not much likely to take place ■ 
 
 Shortly, (at least in Spain — nor, for that matter, 
 
 Anywhere else ;) well, extreme passion is our case — 
 Or fault — I would our young fellows did smatter 
 
 In something worthier — but 'tis their taste ! 
 In other respects, though, (I do not flatter,) 
 
 We are a fine, brave, and noble people, Sir, 
 
 As rich as Croesus, and as great as Csesar. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 " For in Spain monarchs have the monop'ly 30 
 
 Of paper, china, cards, glass, salt, swords, broad-cloth ; 
 
 Besides saltpetre, stockings, pottery, 
 
 Brandy, gunpowder, sulphur, and too, the worth 
 
 Of red sealing-wax, tissue, tapestry, 
 
 Quicksilv'r, and tobacco — all, save sense, which in troth, 
 
 Is not requisite for a sovereign ; — 
 
 Saul sought his father's asses, and was made king 
 
28 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 " But I'm getting rather too national : — 
 
 We'll change the subject. How do your politics 
 
 Run now in England ? pretty irrational, 
 
 Eh ? Still, I suppose, doing their dirty tricks 
 
 And speeches — the Tory, Whig, and Radical ? 
 Seriously, were I in politics to mix, 
 
 'Twould be in the first — for I hope I ne'er shall 
 
 Mount that vile ' bonnet du petit Corporal 31 .' 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 " But of this, what's your opinion, Sir ? 
 
 You are silent — no answer — what whim is this, 
 That for the last hour you have, and still will wear 
 
 Th' ' os humerosque ' Downing-streeto similis ? ' " 
 Here he was interrupt'd by a " silence there ! " 
 
 And was obliged to close that mouth of his ; 
 For just then a Don was making ready 
 His guitar, to sing, and please a lady. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 The glib rattle of the chatterer's tongue 
 
 Thus being stopped, he turn'd, and found asleep 
 
 The stranger : him he by the armlets wrung, 
 
 Whispering, he had been full some two hours deep 
 
 A-dosing, the while he (the speaker) flung 
 
 Away his good things : " but now," add'd he in pique, 
 
 " I hope you'll attempt some self-denial, 
 
 As young Juan's going to play, the viol ; 
 
CANTO I. 29 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 " And in your ear, a wild young Tyro that, 
 
 Who has lately gain'd much notoriety, 
 By standing sponsor to a recent hat, 
 
 And ruining some angel girl of low degree ; 
 Who oft, confiding, on his knee had sat — 
 
 Tho' 'tis said she seduc'd him ! — but that's not likely — 
 As well move that Hebe, who Juno's pet is, 
 Was conceived by her ma's eating lettuce 32 ! 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 " But he will sing his song, and you'd better 
 Attend, as 'tis made on the lass he did seduce, 
 
 And describes her ruining to a letter : 
 
 First, how in vows and swearings he was profuse, 
 
 And how he tried all his arts to get her 
 
 To his purpose : and then — but really 'tis too loose 
 
 A subject in a ball-room to discuss — 
 
 And " here arose a general cry of " Hush ! " 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Stood forth our hero, with his darkling hair, 
 
 His complexion ruddy as a Babel brick ; 
 Preluding o'er the frets a martial air, 
 
 Whose warlike chords might have made a coward sick 
 With cowardice, so nobly did it dare ; — 
 
 Or harped the praiseful deeds of Roderic, 
 When Spaniards, the Moslem fought, and won, 
 Victorious trophies from th' Heathendom ! 
 
30 
 
 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 Anon he surceased the measure brave, 
 
 And graceful retouch'd him then another string, 
 
 As tinkling o'er the wires a strain he gave, 
 
 Resistless — warm — as Childe Cupid's symphoning, 
 
 When a maiden frail, her poor heart would save, 
 But cannot — from feeling's .silent enthrilling : 
 
 Fir'd it would Tussaud's 33 ' lament'd Malibran,' 
 
 For thus to that gay crowd the young rake sang : — 
 
 HTfyc %a$t <&nz. 
 
 " Again thou art with me, 
 
 In vain I entreat — 
 A-whispering to me, 
 
 Thy warm words so sweet : 
 Away with thee, tempter ! 
 
 Away with thee now ; 
 Ere thy fire words burning, 
 Have rose-flushed my brow. 
 
 Tink a tink— Tink a te ! 
 
 " There, give me my hand Sir, 
 
 And let not thy lips 
 Creep scalding hot o'er it, 
 
 Like lava that drips. 
 Come leave me ! Come leave me ! 
 
 I dare not look up, 
 While thy fierce eyes drink me, 
 
 Like wine from a cup. 
 
 Tink a tink— Tink a te ! 
 
 " My red lips ! — my red lips ! 
 
 And dare you kiss those 
 With thy own, which all fire, 
 
 Such passion disclose ? 
 
 God ! kiss me no more, 
 
 With that warm mouth o' thine ; 
 Oh leave me ! — Oh leave me ! 
 Indeed 'twould be kind. 
 
 Tink a tink— Tink a te ! 
 
 " Yet, still thou art with me, 
 
 Thy heart throbbing quick — 
 Thy sighs like the hot dew, 
 
 Which the fire-gods lick. 
 Those kisses ! — Those kisses ! — 
 
 I dare not allow, 
 Oh leave me ! — Oh leave me ! — 
 
 Thou must not go now ! 
 
 Tink a tink— Tink a te ! 
 
 " There kiss me ! — there kiss me ! 
 And do as you will — ■ 
 
 1 dare not resist thee, 
 
 My soul is all thrill : 
 Yes ! press lips and bosom, 
 
 T must not be coy — 
 For ha ! thou hast won me, 
 
 Thou dark-headed boy ! 
 
 Tink a tink— Tink a te ! " 
 
CANTO I. 31 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 The song ceased — but still the singer stood, 
 
 Staring wide, like one who sees some horrent sight, 
 
 Which scares the sinews of his hardihood : 
 
 "What had happened, that his gay eyne so bright, 
 
 Should thus fix on vacancy ? — Had the flood 
 Of memory wafted back some past delight 
 
 Spent with woman — now gone — and was this the song 
 
 The one — his charmer then did dote upon V 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 Or did he — did he in his wild glance see, 
 
 Among the lovely forms that shrined that hall, 
 
 The likely resemblance of one whom he 
 
 Once ador'd ? — For we oft in stranger looks recall 
 
 The guise of some well known face most startingly ! 
 So like 'tis, and yet we must not — dare not call 
 
 It by our own one's name, — for 'tis not she, 
 
 Though beams the eye as sweet, the mouth as wee. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 The acclaim of beauty was around him, 
 
 And th' eyes, for he had sung well — but still he stood ; 
 There was a wildness in his gaze — a film — 
 
 As if reason had giv'n way to wonderhood. 
 All turned to him — was it not a whim ? — 
 
 No ! — most shook their heads as if it meant no good ; 
 While girls with cheeks as pure as porcelain, 
 Call'd back their glance, and did not look again ! 
 
6°Z DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 It was strange, — there aghast he stood, and gaz'd, 
 Dash'd with paleness — immoveable as the Dane, 
 
 When in the warrior ghost, amazed, 
 
 He knows his own father. It was strange his brain 
 
 Should thus all so suddenly be crazed. 
 
 Was it with joy, sorrow, stupor, or with pain ? — 
 
 Just now as gay had been his youthful smile 
 
 As Calypso's, when the Greek 34 touch'd her isle ! 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 " It was strange ! " re-echo'd enquiry's note — 
 But, careless, he heard it not — nor did he heed, 
 
 More than if they, the speakers, had not spoke ; 
 For a vision, like the fume of burning reed, 
 
 Rose up before him — a pillar of soft smoke — 
 For a moment it poized, as not agreed 
 
 What shape to take : while in his_ ears harp'd a strain, 
 
 Such as causeth pleasure, and sootheth pain. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 Ambient it rose, and filmed in air, 
 
 Like the transparent gauze so delicate and thin, 
 Which Moslem maids in eastern harems wear ; 
 
 Or summer's mist, the shadowy cloudlet dim, 
 Seen of nights on lyric Guadalquiver. 
 
 It rose, and amazement gush'd floodlike o'er him — 
 ***** 
 
CANTO I. 33 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 The misty vapour for an instant stood 
 
 Impalpable ; and then unwreathed to his ken 
 
 The shadowy eidolon of womanhood. 
 
 First came the small head — the silken hair — and then 
 
 The dewy lips and fond bright eyes, which could, 
 Though only shady and unreal, win from men 
 
 Rapture ; — next came the downy bosom soft, 
 
 As white as breakers' foam when toss'd aloft. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 Then merg'd the arms of rounded gossamer ; — 
 The bust y'clad in pale and silvery showers ; 
 
 "While the mists, down falling, shewed a pair 
 
 Of pet feet, which could walk o'er beds of flowers, 
 
 And leave no trail of foot-mark printed there. 
 Brighter it grew — until, immortal powers ! 
 
 It disclos'd to the white and sinking youth, 
 
 The girl he'd ruin'd with so little ruth. 
 
 XC. 
 
 Floated that form at anchor in mid space, 
 
 Like eagle poiz'd, only milder in its gaze ; 
 For seem'd more of sigh than anger in that face, 
 
 As it peered, looking through the cloudy haze 
 Which shrin'd it. Awful was the sil'nce of that place — 
 
 The ball-room — exchang'd the looks of deep amaze, 
 As on the wronger the spirit cast her eyes, 
 Fresh from the dreamy gleams of paradise. 
 
34 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XCI. 
 
 Cold shiver'd 'neath her gaze the wronger then ! 
 
 Like sails of coaster barque when they heel the tack ; 
 Or lithe poplar foliage when the ken 
 
 Of winter winds is deadly. Oh ! not the rack ! 
 The wrenching cruelty of tyrant men, 
 
 Could have caused his firm sinews so to crack, 
 As the sudden terrorness of that shock. 
 Good Heav'n ! you might have heard his wild heart knock. 
 
 XCII. 
 
 A moment pass'd — an awful moment that ! — 
 And Time seem'd to have cased his angel's wing, 
 
 The stillness was so stilly ; — all there sat, 
 
 A whole assembly gazing at one, who could fling 
 
 Such fear o'er them : not that they knew at what 
 He glared, — no, that was reveal'd alone to him, 
 
 But all felt a heaviness their hearts oppress, 
 
 Such as priests feel when murderers do confess. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 Another moment pass'd — and Juan's breath 
 Hardly came in waftage to his breathing scant. 
 
 Fell down the damp sweat, and his cheeks like death, 
 Paled paler ; for on him the eye coruscant 
 
 Shone, of the shadowy comer. While the wreath 
 Of fume clearing from around the visitant — 
 
 Forth came a voice melodiously sweet, 
 
 Such as angels and women only speak ; — 
 
CANTO I. 35 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 " Oh Juan false ! — ungrateful and unkind ! 
 
 For thee I lost honour — virtue — life — the three ! 
 And now to be torn from my grave to find, 
 
 A slightful stanza on my fondness sang by thee. 
 Say, could not my devotion to thee bind 
 
 Some respect for my poor — too fond — memory ? 
 Shame on manhood ! — shame, a double shame on thee ! 
 To sport with what thou caused — my infamy ! 
 
 xcv. 
 
 " Oh woman fair! — too tender and too true ! 
 
 Is it thus your devot'd fondness is repaid ? — 
 And are contempt and heartruptcy all that you, 
 
 When wrong'd, receive from your wrongers to persuade 
 Your heart without breaking to bear the view 
 
 Of sad degradation which men's arts have made ? 
 But there, what have I with falsehood now to do ? 
 In the better world beyond — all are true ! " 
 
 XCVI. 
 
36 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 She spoke — and lo ! a flush of silver light 
 
 Came o'er her form, shrining it from head to knees, 
 
 With soft splendour ; — a moment it stood bright, 
 And then fading fainter — fainter by degrees, 
 
 It vanish'd altogether from the sight : 
 
 Causing, as it dissolv'd in air, a slight breeze, 
 
 Which flar'd the candelabra's waxy flame, 
 
 And the dark curls fanned of each fair dame. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 In the meanwhile, our hero, his senses scar'd, 
 At the spectral visitant, had sunk lifeless 
 
 On the floor ; — and had'nt it been that they car'd 
 
 For him, this Canto would have been some verses less. 
 
 All gathered around him ; and none spar'd 
 
 Advice. One was for Cologne — one for a mess 
 
 Of burnt feathers. The Englishman vot'd brandy 35 ; 
 
 But, as ill-luck would have it — none was handy. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 " Strange conduct this of our young friend Juan ! " 
 Quoth the chatterer, gulping down a huge slice 
 
 Of cake : " I wonder now what's a brewing ? " — 
 " 'Tis a great pity, his front hair curls so nice," 
 
 Simper'd two belles, whose eyes would been your ruin : 
 " Don't you think some holy water would entice 
 
 Animation back ? " — Here th' Englishman " pish'd," 
 
 At which they were very much astonish'd. 
 
CANTO I. 37 
 
 c. 
 
 So opinions were at issue, when one 
 
 Thought him of a doctor, who liv'd near the quay ; 
 Him they delegat'd a young man to run 
 
 And fetch ; — he was the cock Galen of the day, 
 And certainly a great repute had won, 
 
 By curing in an esteem'd and summ'ry way 
 All folks, where ill of fever, cold, or wound, 
 
 Videlicet: — by putting 'em under ground ! 
 
 CI. 
 
 He came : a sleek, oily man, tho' not " of God," 
 And found fault with ev'rything, to shew his skill : 
 
 Pulse intermittent — heat — rigours — 'twas odd — 
 
 Hem ! — he must prescribe — -draught — mixture, bolus, pill. 
 
 There really was danger : his senses were abroad ; 
 And symptoms wore appearance exceeding ill. 
 
 Quiet was a great thing, and they must mind 
 
 Not to let him have brandy, gin, or wine. 
 
 GIL 
 
 For spiritful liquors destroy 'd the coat 
 
 Of the stomach ; — saying, he seized a bottle, 
 
 Which stood by, and pour'd a bumper down his throat . 
 So affording a practical example 
 
 Of the temp'rance thesis he just had spoke. 
 
 Then he order'd leeches, (bleeding would have done as well,) 
 
 And our heroic to be put to bed, 
 
 One at his side {himself), and ten at his head. 
 
38 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 cm. 
 
 There, for the present, we intend to leave him ; 
 
 "Well assured that it will be time enough, 
 Before th' apothecary will relieve him 
 
 From his sad presence — large fees — and that " stern stuff" 
 Which, trundled down the gullet, makes so thin 
 
 All those who are fools to take it like " Fribourg's " snuff. 
 Well, 'tis no jest a drug-shop to swallow, 
 With a huge bill afterwards to follow ! 
 
 CIV. 
 
 " Throw physic to the dogs," — so spouts the Thane: 
 
 But I ne'er could follow his instigation ; 
 For had I a fav'rite tike, 'twould give me pain, 
 
 To cause in its poor inwards such sensation : 
 Except, indeed, the puppy were insane, 
 
 And of dishonest fame and conversation, — 
 Then it would be well to drug his " posset," 
 Lest he bite, and you 'twixt feath'r beds be tossed. 
 
 CV. 
 
 Ye Gods ! what real rogues are mortal doctors ! 
 
 Ye dittos ! what dittos are mortal lawyers 36 ! 
 To say so of the former most have cause ; 
 
 And eke of the latter — for both are drawers 
 
 Upon our chests — * * * * 
 
 ***** 
 
 ***** 
 ***** 
 
canto r. 39 
 
 CVI. 
 
 ". A marshal of France never surrenders ! " 
 
 So said Nap's bravest brave 37 , the glorious Ney. 
 
 And in religion some are not pretenders, 
 
 But really in their hearts and lives work out their say ; 
 
 And, at times, a, Jew of both the genders, 
 
 Have shewn consid'rable virtue in their way, 
 
 By nobly refusing o' their own accord, 
 
 A place — a coach — a pension, and a lord. 
 
 CVII. 
 
 Hearts too have occasionally been found 
 
 In overseers ; and toads embedded in stone : 
 And now and then, the wig — the lawn — the crown, 
 
 Have been honour'd by their wearers, and the groan 
 Of thousands have not dogg'd their steps to sound 
 
 Execration : and three hundred men alone 3S , 
 Once did 'gainst countless armies make a stand, 
 And fell for freedom — broad-swords in their hand ! 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 Of old, too, some have reject'd sacks of plate 
 
 And gold — th' acquaintance of monarchs and their smile ; 
 
 Preferring the unknown and quiet state 
 
 Of their own hearths, and it may be the lone isle 
 
 Where they were born. Some have scorn'd to be great 
 At th' expence of their country, with honest bile. 
 
 One of the Danaidae, did not slay her spouse 39 — 
 
 Though to stick theirs, her sisters made no mouths. 
 
40 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 CIX. 
 
 And then history tells of three chaste men ; — 
 Joseph, (not Surface, or Andrews, but the one 
 
 Who would not with Mrs. Potiphar offend 
 " Contra bonos") — The second's Melanion 40 , 
 
 The third — (pure flows my ink his name to pen,) 
 Was a Briton, and Captain Cook's companion : 
 
 I mean the Botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, 
 
 Who always refus'd a lady's love with thanks. 
 
 ex. 
 
 Here are instances of the world's morality, 
 
 Known ones — yet I love it not — 'tis so insane — 
 
 Tho' I can laugh at it, when it laughs at me — 
 But what / was, I never can be again ! 
 
 No ! the young heart which once beat so freely, 
 
 Will beat no more so 41 — 'tis gone like last year's rain 
 
 For ever ! So the sweetest flowers are made, 
 
 The first to bloom — the first also to fade ! — 
 
 CXI. 
 
 The world was the first aggressor, not I. 
 
 In my early years I tried to be its friend ; 
 'Twas the boy's endeavour, and was purely 
 
 A desire to comfort its grey hearts, and spend 
 What I could to relieve their misery : — 
 
 Enough — I did so, and savagely did they rend 
 Me, and deep in my soul their talons set ; — 
 The wound was cruel — 'tis sore — I feel it yet ! 
 
CANTO r. 41 
 
 CXII. 
 
 Still I mix with it, but never mingle : — 
 
 For I feel I could not bear to do that now ! 
 But abide alone and from it single, 
 
 Like one who has outlived an early vow : — 
 Yet, there are times when my heart will kindle, 
 
 And long to shake hands with it again — but how, 
 If I did would it repay me ? — I fear, 
 By pouting its dread lip and dreader sneer 42 . 
 
 CX1II. 
 
 Away to the top o' mountains and the sea — 
 
 Nature's boundless — deepest — wildest solitude ! — 
 
 There alone amidst the free'st and the free, 
 
 The far world and its worldlings cannot intrude ! — 
 
 But I was not made for misanthropy, 
 
 Bird-like to sit on the idle heights and brood 
 
 O'er evils — No, I nourish a milder bile ; 
 
 And at the world's sad doings only smile. 
 
 ■CXIV. 
 
 Its poor-box cov'red by a spider's knitting ; — 
 
 Its shoes and boots with Bible bindings mended 43 ; — 
 
 Its nightly shewing of Members sitting 
 
 At Crockford's, when business ought to be attended 
 
 To ; — its dirty St. Giles's way of spitting 
 
 In the face of those who never have offended ; — 
 
 Its best hearts sinking — unrelieved by one, 
 
 In the chilly streets and squares of London ; 
 
42 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 cxv. 
 
 Its Heroes 44 , Parsons, Statesmen, extra bad ; — 
 Its vulgar, noisy high life, balls and parties ; 
 
 The last, speaking politically, are sad, 
 
 And go the " whole swine" in rancour like Harpies : 
 
 A digging into one another quite mad — 
 
 Its Colleges and Public Schools, my hearties ! 
 
 Where are learnt little Latin, and less Greek, 
 
 Many kicks — ditto flogging, and no sleep. 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 Its many Rats rev'rsing coats and jackets, 
 
 For the sweets o' place — strawberry leaves and orders 45 ; 
 Who a few years back, were the loudest rackets, 
 
 For — viz : themselves, quasi the lower orders. 
 Its Lib'rals hunting like strong-mouth'd brackets 46 , 
 
 The "hart royal" despotism o'er the borders. 
 While at the same time, they are moving flesh and bone, 
 To establish some snug tyranny of their own. 
 
 CXVIL 
 
 Its Party papers and their balaam boxes, 
 
 Who amuck run all but their Subscribers down ; — 
 
 The loud " Tambourgi 47 " of its orthodoxes, 
 
 Crying, " the church is in danger !" and done brown 48 : 
 
 Regardless quite, that the heterodoxes 
 
 Looking up, declare the roof and steeples sound. 
 
 And too, its young sparks taking * holy orders,' 
 
 And not leaving certain bad borders 
 
CANTO I. 43 
 
 CXVIII. 
 
 And then its galiot of fools and asses, 
 
 ' Transacting business at the Foreign Office 49 ;' 
 
 Who do so to be deemed the higher classes — 
 But in that particular they often miss ; 
 
 As do those fine gentlemen in mustaches 
 
 Who wait (the Rustics !) for dead men's shoon, when pish ! 
 
 The opened codicils declare ye, 
 
 Left but " nil praster sibi plorare !" 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 Then its " harl'try players " and their starboard ; 
 
 Its authors rigging with " red lattice " phrasing 
 Their three deckers — Its crack tailors, and th' horde 
 
 Of singers, who for notes get notes amazing ! 
 Its bankrupts, who break that they may afford 
 
 To take a larger house to end their days in. 
 And last, not least — O tempora ! O mores ! 
 The D — 'd lies it tells for simple stories. 
 
 cxx. 
 
 But 'tis time to end this deration, 
 
 Before with Society I get too bitter ; 
 For which, I promise you, I've good occasion, 
 
 And p'raps, (who knows ?) could with my wit outwit her 
 Sculk of Foxes — at least, I've that persuasion ; 
 
 And sometime may essay how I can hit her, 
 Greatest " part affect'd " — her cant — but heigho 
 Such things will happen, " sub rege pio." 
 
44 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 And here, by your leave, I'll close this Canto ; 
 
 "Which if not of Poesy's wild rose-blooms full, — 
 (Those rose-blooms, which so seldom blush and blow !) 
 
 It is not, T hope, particularly dull : 
 Besides, in it, there's a moral — one, or two — 
 
 Display'd conspicuous like a Traitor's skull : 
 To shew people they should be cautious 
 How they go " prope Csesaris hortos." 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 " Instinct's a great matter," so says Sir John ; 
 
 Certes, then, my rhyme'll be " quite the potatoe ! " 
 Should I be in that supposition wrong, 
 
 I still, at least, shall remain in " statu quo " — 
 As I was before I began this song ; 
 
 And not without other Bards to bring me through : 
 For e'en Byron's Pegasus as 'tis seen, 
 Does not always create a Hippocrene ! 
 
 CXXIII. 
 
 But I hope I may be read — In my sleep, 
 
 Prone I have often dreamt of it — and the kisses 
 
 Of Fame have come like woman's on my cheek ; 
 And glowed has my burning heart with the blisses 
 
 Of the proud height I have and still do seek : — 
 But there, alas ! the vanity of mortal's wishes 
 
 Horace pray'd his lines might not be taught in schools, 
 
 And now they are in the hand of all our fools 50 ! 
 
 END OF CANTO I. 
 
NOTES TO CANTO I. 
 
 1 " Some sing of shipwrecks." 
 Falconer's " Shipwreck." 
 
 2 " Some of " blood and 'ouns." 
 Homer, Virgil, cum multis aliis. 
 
 3 " Some of our Mother Eve and her green apple ;" 
 Milton, " Paradise Lost." 
 
 4 " Being, I fear, more partial to fresh sewin ! " 
 
 I have here taken the liberty of reviving a poetical licence, or figure, 
 much in use among the ancient Scalds, (at least, I suppose it was ;) of 
 substituting one object for another ; therefore, the intelligent reader has 
 only to change the roughs into the smooths, and the longs into the shorts, 
 and for sewin, he will have mackerel, and hence, he will immediately 
 perceive the allusion of the text, regarding the Humanity's preference to 
 sewin, (or more properly mackerel,) versus piety : — i. e. in allowing those 
 fishes to be hawked and cried about of a Sunday. Why, however, 
 mackerel should have a carte-blanche to evade the fourth Commandment, 
 to the exclusion of the like privilege to oysters, (who come of gentle 
 kind,) turbot, soles, salmon, (the crown prince of fishes!) I never could 
 divine. 
 
 Since writing the above, I have heard cried, purchased, and devoured for 
 my Sunday evening's symposium, a score of " mute inglorious Miltons," 
 Milfords, or Mumblers, and consequently suppose the suffrage in favour 
 of Mackerel has been extended to other fishy people. 
 
 5 " I've been inform'd you do not keep the hay" 
 
 " Kay" Doric for key ; and here used for no other purpose than because 
 it rhymes to " say." — Poetic licence — hum ! 
 
 6 " You hold their softness up to sneers and laughter, 
 As sage Lycurgus did the maids of Sparta." 
 
 Among the many crowning measures of this ancient Legislateur, (three 
 cheers for him !) it is reported in the official organs of those days, that 
 taking great offence at the wZZra-conservative modesty of his fair country- 
 women ; he issued a decree, condemning it as " roue ; " and for its 
 
46 NOTES. 
 
 better expatriation, ordered the virgin girls of Sparta, periodically to 
 wrestle, " loose, unattired, warm, tender and full of blushes," before the 
 microscopic eyes of himself and other " us youth ;" to take off, as he 
 Downing -Streetishly expressed it, their bashfulness. Which, although 
 history is silent on the subject, we have every reason to suppose, it did to 
 a miracle. 
 
 7 " Who care not the whiff of a Nargilly, etc." 
 Pipes in India, are yclept, " Hookahs," — In Persia, " Nargillies," — In 
 Egypt, " Sheeshas," — In Turkey, " Chibouques," — Tn Germany, " Meer- 
 schaums," — In Holland, " Pipes," — In Spain, " Cigars," — Knowledge for 
 the people! 
 
 8 " Well then in Seville, is my first scene laid, 
 Which saith Lord Byron, is a pleasant city." 
 
 Vide, the " Don Juan," of the " Grand Napoleon of Rhyme." — 
 
 " In Seville was he born, a pleasant city, 
 
 Famous for oranges and women ." 
 
 Canto 1 — 8. 
 
 9 " And then her ankle." 
 In Spain it was anciently deemed, not only an indelicacy, but a capital 
 offence, for a lover to speak of his mistress's legs ; but I believe, a wider 
 license in those matters is now allowed ; though a modern author, no 
 further back than 1834, discussing this interdiction, has the following 
 passage : " The queens of Spain, you know have no legs, 'tis high treason 
 to say they have. And were a poet of that kingdom to praise the ankles 
 of his young sovereign, he would be broken on the wheel for his temerity." 
 
 10 « Well then her beauties were quite numberless, 
 Like the famed steps in Govan's chapel hoar." 
 
 Multifarious are the miraculous and therefore ridiculous legends 
 attached to the chapel or hermitage of St. Govan, which is situated in the 
 hollow of a rock, on the wild and stormy coast of Pembrokeshire, S. W. 
 Among the many fables in circulation concerning it, the numerical one of 
 its limestone steps, (of which you descend a long flight to enter its pre- 
 cincts ;) has received the greatest credence among the lovers of the 
 marvellous. The prevalent report concerning these steps is, that no 
 person can reckon the same number of steps when ascending as descending, 
 and vice-versa — and furthermore, that no two men, women or children, 
 can come to the same arithmetical conclusion when counting them. A 
 
NOTES. 47 
 
 similar story is told of the circle stones of Stonehenge. For further par- 
 ticulars of this remarkable ruin, vide "Fenton's Pembrokeshire, and 
 Norris's ditto." 
 
 11 " But there, what will not women do who love ? 
 
 Ask those who chronicle their deeds above." 
 
 Everything ! — Dear woman ! she has, and will feed him she loves, with 
 her own bosom — follow him as a common servant to the battle-field, and 
 battle-deck — carry him on her small back, when disabled in the march or 
 the fray — suck with her rosy lips, (sweet cherubs !) the poison from his 
 wound — bite out her tongue sooner than betray him, and if betrayed, will 
 enter, disguised, into his prison-walls, and freeing hifh, remain there in his 
 stead ; should she not effect his escape, she will suffer with him on the 
 scaffold, or pure as its flame, burn herself o'er his funeral pyre ! There 
 can't be a more perfect devotion than woman's devotion to man. It is 
 impossible ! Her's is the fidelity and forgiveness of the dog towards him ; 
 the courage of the lion in his defence; the grace and beauty of the 
 gazelle for his pleasure ; and the unprotectedness of the wren in her 
 slight clothing and bodily weakness, to shew how much she relies on his 
 honour. Alas ! that in that she should ever be deceived. And then, who 
 so gay in happiness ? so melodious and sweet in voice ? so piquant in wit ? 
 it flows like aromatic vinegar ; so graceful in walk ? there's poetry in her 
 steps ; and where will you find one so matchless in beauty ? she is what 
 art tries to be in vain. Draw the veil and behold her in her higher moods ; 
 and who so holy in prayer ? so sincere in repentance ? so speedy in for- 
 giveness ? Her whole philosophy like Epictetus's may be comprised in 
 four words : — " to bear and forbear." So constant in love ? her heart 
 when once inhabited by that tender feeling, like the sea-shell will ever 
 re-echo it ; and not threats, persecutions, nor even death, will make her 
 forsake her lover ! And to conclude her praises ; who so firm in virtue 
 when assailed ? what will buy it ? not worlds ! so chastened in grief ? 
 'tis calm like the moon -beam o'er the waters ; and lastly who so constant 
 in adversity ? and in guilt (alas that that word and woman should ever 
 commingle ;) who so guiltless ? 
 
 12 " Sooner than do so, I'd cut off my thumbs, 
 
 And imitate the ancient Myrmidons." 
 
 According to the Greek Historians, those " cowardly, cowardly custards," 
 the Athenians, cut off the thumbs of the iEginenses, or Myrmidons, a 
 people of the Island of iEgina — Cicero, however, makes out only one man 
 called iEgines, whose hands the Athenians mutilated. — (Cicero. Off. 3, 11.) 
 
45 NOTES. 
 
 13 " (Much more I am afraid of gall than ' Melle ! ') " 
 " Melle." — The principals of colleges and the head masters of public 
 schools are respectfully informed, that the above term in the Quiritian, or 
 latin language, means " Honey" — not Lord Melbourne — verb. sap. 
 
 14 " Of the moon, like lightening's fitful dread — " 
 The meteor here is intended. 
 
 15 " (' Almaviva ' wears one like it in the play ;) " 
 Vide Rossini's " II Barbiere." 
 
 16 " A queen of old, 'tis said, loved a horse." 
 Those men for scale, leather, and feather, the mythologists, describe a 
 lady sovereign (I will spare her " chameleon blushes," and not mention 
 her name,) as owning the " soft impeachment " to an equestrian passion 
 of this nature. While the commentators upon the same set up a horse- 
 laugh, and declare the long and short of the matter was, that the lady in 
 question, had a penchant for her groom, which I opine, (judging from 
 several like occurrences which I have witnessed,) to be a very natural ex_ 
 position of the amour. Perhaps a certain modern poetess had the horse- 
 stricken queen in her eye when she threw off her " Lines on an ' Arab 
 steed.' "— 
 
 " My beautiful ! my beautiful ! that standest meekly by, 
 With thy proud arch'd and glossy neck, and dark and fiery eye ; 
 Fret not to roam the desert now, with all thy winged speed — 
 I may not mount on thee again — thou'rt sold, my Arab steed ! " 
 
 17 " Besides Juan hated the ' care cloth ' state of strife ; " 
 
 In the never-to-be-too-much-venerated days of our ancestors, (may 
 their shadows never be less!) it was the custom to hold a fine piece of 
 linen (allegorically and sweetly by them termed a " care cloth ") over new 
 married couples, during the performance of mass. Pleasant prospect for 
 beginners, was'nt it ? — care and cotton ! 
 
 13 " Gen'ral tears, as ' Lady Randolph,' o'er the slain " 
 Vide Home's beautiful play of " Douglas." 
 
 19 " Of neighbouring peasant girls or Labradores," 
 " Labradores " — " Criados " — " Jomaleros " — the Spanish terms for the 
 i' poor o'er labour'd wights," who, on the other side the Pyrenees, beg a 
 " brother of the earth for leave to toil ; " viz., peasants, men-servants, and 
 day-labourers. 
 
NOTES. 49 
 
 20 " So perfect a ' Savilian Professor ' " 
 
 " Savilian professor," — one of the many high-sounding, no-meaning 
 titles which common-place people lite to dignify (which it seldom does) 
 their common-placeness with. The following official distinctions are 
 mostly, if not altogether, tagged to the names of sumphs and stots, viz. : — 
 " Honorary Secretary " — " Chairman " — " F.R.S." — " Arch-deacon " — 
 "Dean" — "Master of the Ceremonies" — "Clerk of the Peace" — 
 " Mayor" — "Alderman" — " Regius Professor" — "Margaret ditto" — 
 " Senior Wrangler " — " Fellow " — " President " — " Bencher " — etc. etc. 
 
 And apropos of common-place — its circulation is immense ; for it fills 
 the greater part of our newspapers, novels, public speeches, sermons, etc. 
 etc. And there is not a science which has more professors. Its members 
 are numerically numberless ; as it monopolizes, with a few and solitary 
 exceptions, all our kings, queens, dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, 
 barons, baronets, bishops, maids of honour, etc. etc. : and irrecoverably 
 nets — lord mayors, masters of public schools, heads and principals of col- 
 leges, writers of fashionable and historical novels, editors of provincial 
 journals, and certain London dittos, managers of theatres, etc. etc. etc. 
 The leading attributes and prognostics by which common-placers, or 
 sumphs, may be known : are, imprimis, a double allowance of intolerance, 
 with an extra seasoning of abuse on catholics, radicals, methodists, novels, 
 the French, the pope, and the devil ; a never-failing attention to eclipses 
 of the sun and moon, through the medium of smoked glass ; an intuitive 
 and simultaneous desire to correct the typographical errors in new books 
 with a pencil ; a violent partiality for regulating their watches by the sun- 
 dial and the Horse-Guards ; a most unreasonable penchant for gathering 
 and arranging shells, mosses, etc. ; and, lastly, a superhuman and unde- 
 viating constancy in attending fairs, races, fights, lounges, public walks, 
 exhibitions, executions, assizes, philosophic provincial soirees, etc. etc. 
 
 21 •' And those who are afflicted with rheumatic." 
 
 Mrs. Quickly, in her Catalogue Raisonne of excuses for Falstaff's 
 delinquencies with the feminine, intercedes : — 
 
 " But then he was rheumatic ; " 
 
 22 " Especially when sous'd in good port-wine," 
 
 Accipe a couple of wild ducks which have hung pendent for a week. 
 Roast them brown, "ad unguem • " and then, inserting them in your 
 tureen, pour a bottle of old Port (bees' wing) over them, and you have a 
 dish fit for a bishop, an alderman, or any Regius devourer of good things. 
 Try it. Byron says a beef-steak is good for sea-sickness : but this is not 
 
50 NOTES. 
 
 only good for sea-sickness, but for every sickness under that blue cover- 
 all — the sky : let a man eat of it, and he may defy — the spade, and the 
 doctor ! 
 
 23 « with charms like 'Paspe's, naked 'fore her limner ! " 
 Campaspe, the most beautiful of Alexander's concubines, whom that 
 Macedonian Napoleon ordered Apelles to paint naked ; upon doing which, 
 he, (the painter,) as might have been expected, fell in love with her : and, 
 to finish the grouping, and to exhibit what so few monarchs exhibit, i. e. 
 his generosity, the " best of cut-throats " bestowed her upon him. Vide 
 the end of the Dictionary, passim. 
 
 24 " Like Roma's vestal fires, and those in Wales." 
 The Welsh never extinguish their kitchen fires of a night, but block 
 them up with balls, a composition formed of small coal, (indigenous to 
 the principality,) mixed with wet slime. 
 
 25 « Around, all soul, all rapture, and all whim." 
 For female and love's own XXX piquancy, recommend me (that is for 
 a little " desipere in loco ") to the belles of Spain. I don't know what 
 your houris, your almas or dancing girls may be, not having ever had the 
 felicity of seeing those same soft rogues ; but for sincerity of form, and 
 the veritable Sir Peter Lely's languish about the eye-lids, they are the 
 charmers for me. Truly a Spanish girl is what poor Keats, in his mytho- . 
 logical rhymes, would call a " brilliance feminine." And — but " vehimur 
 in altum," we touch on the sublime, and, consequently, have our warning 
 to desist. 
 
 26 " Just like that deity who came expres, 
 To fly kites on the Siamese causeway ! " 
 Sammonocodom, the Siamese divinity, without, like the angel in Cow- 
 ley's " Davideis," taking the trouble to equip himself (as a God should) in 
 a deity's harness of — 
 
 " Cloud most soft and bright, 
 That e'er the mid-day sun pierced through with light ; " 
 according to the hierarchy of that empire, only made his appearance 
 among mortals to indulge himself in the gratification of putting up six- 
 penny paper kites, cutting wood, and exhibiting sleight of hand in the 
 streets and lanes of, and about Siam. 
 
 27 " She is a poetess, and her name is Leila." 
 This Lady, who is still quite the adored among our Spanish neighbours, 
 belongs to the intense-passion-school of poesy. To enable the reader to 
 
51 
 
 judge of her metrical abilities, I annex the following, which was translated 
 from the original Spanish of her " Infanta" by a literary friend. It is 
 the soliloquy of the hero when married, on looking over the letters of a 
 former and once loved mistress. 
 
 " Time has passed since I saw thee, — 
 Time will pass ere I again shall see, 
 If I do ever, the blue ey'd thing, 
 Who was to life's desert a spring, 
 Of happiness ! fresh and flowing, 
 Setting my warm veins a-glowing, 
 Like a beam ; but there let that pass, 
 I must forget thee now my lass ; 
 And let what was between us seem 
 Unreal, shadowy, and a dream : 
 Our meeting-hour, our parting one, 
 The garden- walk, the setting sun ; 
 All must now with memory lie, 
 Epitaphed by tear and sigh. 
 For since we met, 'tis long, oh long ! 
 And I have heard another sing thy song.- 
 — Remembered well in days gone by! — 
 Have seen another like thee look meek,- 
 Have felt her kisses on my cheek, — 
 Have beheld her soft arms entwine 
 The neck that once was only thine ! 
 And I love her, and she loves me, 
 "With love intense, exceedingly ! 
 And I am happy, what art thou ? 
 Perchance Inez thou art the same ; 
 Or perchance, wronged thou liest low, 
 Victimed with a blasted name ! 
 
 Or dost thou love me yet ? — Oh no ! 
 
 I hope not. * * * 
 
 * # * * 
 
 Infanta, Canto 3. 
 
 28 " And become, old fool, a second Acheron ! " 
 The Son of the Goddess Ceres without the trouble of a father, who, 
 
52 NOTES. 
 
 soon as he was born, not daring to see the light, (I suppose because he 
 had no Papa,) slunk down to you know where, and was there turned into 
 a ditch, or something of the sort. 
 
 29 " And the crim. con. that was, will he agen — 
 
 Agen, or Ageyne, used very rhythmically by the olden Poets for again. 
 
 30 « p or ; n Spain monarchs have the monop'ly " 
 
 The Monarch does, or did, jure divino, so take care of his own interest. 
 
 31 " Mount that vile ' bonnet du petit Corporal.' " 
 
 i. e. the Cap of Liberty, and as it has been of Licentiousness, and 
 something more ! 
 
 32 " As well move that Hebe who Juno's pet is, 
 Was conceived by her Ma's eating lettuce ! " 
 
 • A Dutch lettuce, is said by the Poets, to have been the putative Papa 
 of Juno's daughter, Hebe, the well known Princess Royal of Youth and 
 "sweet two-and-twenty." — But whether there is any veracity in this state- 
 ment, I know no more than the " Cyclops" of Euripides, or the " Birds" 
 of Aristophanes; and shall, in all modesty, leave the matter to be investi- 
 gated by a " Jury of Matrons." 
 
 33 " Fir'd it would Tussaud's ' lamented Malibran.' " 
 
 Madame Tussaud and Sons' Wax-work. Vide their Advertisements ; 
 wherein, defunct Murderers and Regicides, and living Chancellors and 
 Heroes are so appropriately classified nem. con. 
 
 34 " As Calypso's, when the Greek touched her isle ! " 
 Laertiades. 
 
 35 " Of burnt feathers. The Englishman vot'd brandy ; 
 But as ill-luck would have it — none was handy." 
 
 " Claret for boys — Port for men — but if you wish to be a hero drink 
 brandy ! " so some one says, I think the Author of the " Rambler," — or 
 do I wrong that honourable man ? 
 
 36 " Ye dittos ! what dittos are mortal lawyers ! " 
 
 " Shew me a lawyer, Pll shew you a rogue ! " growls the old archaic. — 
 Shew me one of the six and eight-penny people that is honest and Pll pre- 
 sent you with twenty that are " the other way — the other way ! " say I. 
 But there, one in a score the devil allows. Apropos tho', the legal is not the 
 only profession which may be thus complimented, vide the lives of some 
 
NOTES. 53 
 
 of our English episcopacy. Remember I said some, not all — " all, did I 
 say all ? " 
 
 3 ? So said Nap's bravest brave, the glorious Ney. 
 " Le brave des braves ! " " What a man ! what a soldier ! what a vig- 
 orous chief!" said Napoleon, speaking of this hero, Michael Ney; and 
 yet his chivalric courage and moral grandeur did not — or could not deter 
 him from ratting like the meanest of our mean scramblers for Downing- 
 street pippins — Eheu ! — His death however had the true Roman zest about 
 it ; the " nobile lethum Catonis," and no mistake ! 
 
 33 « — —and three hundred men alone." 
 
 Thermopylae. 
 
 39 " One of the Danaidse, did not slay her spouse — " 
 The fifty daughters of Danaus, who were married to the fifty sons of 
 iEgyptus his brother ; whereof, all but Hypermnestra, slew their husbands 
 on the wedding night, and were sentenced for so doing to fill a tub full of 
 holes with " Masdeu " wine, " neat as imported." 
 
 vide Latin Dictionary. 
 
 40 " The second's Melanion. " 
 
 For this natural-historical phenomenon vide the Dictionary. Cicero 
 speaking of alike Hotspur, says : " Hominem enim integrum, et castum, 
 et gravem cognovi." 
 
 41 " No ! the young heart which once beat so freely, 
 Will beat no more so — " 
 
 " But now his heart no more will melt, 
 Because that heart is not the same." 
 
 Byron's address to a Fan. 
 
 42 " By pouting its dread lip and dreader sneer." 
 " Its dread laugh ! 
 
 Which scarce the firm Philosopher can scorn." 
 
 Thomson's Seasons. 
 
 43 " Its shoes and boots with Bible bindings mended ; — " 
 Hogarth, thou Fielding of the pencil ! " res tuas tibi habeto." 
 
 44 " Its Heroes, Parsons, Statesmen, extra bad ; — " 
 
 Heroes ours is a matter-of-fact age, and we want straight-forward, 
 
 matter-of-fact men — We cannot, in a word, keep up the credit and 
 
 B 
 
54 NOTES. 
 
 respectability of one,exceptinnovels,romances,andsuchlike "fictiunculse." 
 A Wilberforce, is of greater consequence, moi ally speaking, than a Welling- 
 ton — The man that hinders blood flowing and causes three blades of corn 
 to flourish where previously there were only two, is the man for us : not he 
 who flatters our national feelings, yet picks our pocket, and gives a loose 
 to the vintage of our veins. It is true, the hero is the finer fellow of the 
 twain — there is more romance — more to please the seamstresses about him 
 — ■his trowsers are ribbed with gold, and his head is plumed with feathers 
 — while, on the other hand, the Utilitarian is a plain, gaitered citizen, with 
 not the worth of a wren's eye of finery on his whole person — But what 
 matter ? the cui bono must be considered. 
 
 45 " strawberry leaves and orders ;" 
 
 The garniture of an Earl's headgear, as the berry is of a fruiterer's 
 plate. 
 
 46 " Its Lib'rals hunting like strong-mouth'd brackets," 
 Brackets — Brach a hound. 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 47 " The loud " Tambourgi " of its orthodoxes," 
 " Tambourgi ! Tambourgi ! thy larum afar. 
 Gives hope to the valiant and promise of war." 
 
 Childe Harold. 
 
 4S " the church is in danger I" and done brown : " 
 
 Folks must have, as the poet of misanthropy and misery says : — 
 
 " some watchword for the fight, 
 
 To vindicate the wrong, and warp the right : 
 Religion — Freedom — Vengeance — what you will — 
 A word's enough to raise mankind to kill ; 
 Some factious "phrase by cunning caught and spread, 
 That guilt may reign and wolves and worms be fed ! " 
 
 Lara. 
 
 This clerical war cry, is by no means a new publication ; for in the 68th 
 number of the " Tatler," the Editor reviewing a celebrated book by Dr. 
 John Eachard, " An Appendix to the Contempt of the Clergy," says : — 
 " There is a digression in this treatise, that the pretences made by the 
 Priesthood, from time to time, that the " Church is in danger !" is only a 
 trick to make the laity passionate for that, of which, they themselves, have 
 been negligent." 
 
49 « i Transacting business at the Foreign Office ; ' " 
 The circulars of the Morning Papers are crammed " usque ad nauseam," 
 with the names of those vain Sumphs, and ridiculous M. P. Dummies, 
 who are continually boring the sub -underlings and lodging their bits of 
 pasteboard at the several Government Offices ; that it may be reverberated 
 in print : — " Sir Something Ignorance transacted business yesterday at the 
 Home Office ; " or vice versa. — The " Foreign " — " Colonial " — or 
 "Board of Trade " dittos. — What littleness there is in little men ! 
 
 50 " And now they are in the hand of all our fools !" 
 
 " Contentus paucis lectoribus. An tua demens 
 Vilibus in ludis dictari carmina malis ? 
 Non ego : " ( Sat 10th.) 
 
CANTO II 
 
DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 CANTO II. 
 
 I. 
 
 Oh Time ! thou art a sad fellow and playest 
 
 The devil with our situate and being ; 
 Grinding on thy grindstone down the gayest — 
 
 And making their fine souls despicable and mean ; 
 For in such foul livery, thou arrayest 
 
 Those, who were so youthful when poor Car was Queen l 
 Alas ! that the beautiful and witty, 
 Should e'er be made a spectacle of pity ! 
 
 II. 
 
 But so it is. For what in a few years 
 
 Makest thou the belle ? — the dame — the dowager : 
 
 What the most graceful of our graceless peers ? 
 
 Good Heavens ! how great his bulk ! and such a bear 2 ! 
 
 And what all the ball-room host o' pretty dears, 
 Now so void of aught, save satin, silk, and hair ? 
 
 Obese mothers to offspring giving suction, 
 
 Nutrition, growth, and — and re-production. 
 
60 
 
 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 III. 
 
 Well — of all thy time-pieces that is the worst, 
 And most deserving signal reprobation, 
 
 Which giveth folks, innocent as our first 
 Ma, direct or indirect intimation 
 
 Of matters : cooling their young burning thirst 
 With waters stolen from th' imagination ; — 
 
 A thirst which once slak'd by the beginner, 
 
 Maketh him or her, a downright sinner. 
 
 IV. 
 
 At least it gives th' Heros and Leanders, 
 
 Views exceedingly concise and comprehensive 
 
 Of what's what : — cutting like Alexander's 
 Sabre, many a love knot which once did drive 
 
 Them as lunatic as gusty March's hares 
 
 To solve. — Botheration ! let a young man wive — 
 
 And I'll bet some fifty pound upon it, 
 
 He writes no more to woman's eyne a sonnet. 
 
 V. 
 
 And 'tis the same with the sex call'd softer ; 
 
 Who are all romantic when young and single, 
 And pure as the cherubs who sit aloft there 
 
 In the blue, 'till they with " us youth " commingle ; 
 But once let them have a son or daughter — 
 
 And to swear that barbaric oath by Jingle ! 
 Farewell to the female angels you thought all : 
 You'll find them most " desperately mortal ! " 
 
CANTO II. 61 
 
 VI. 
 
 But why the deuce, am I thus transgressing ! 
 
 And with diligence indefatigable, 
 Myself and Perryian pen addressing 
 
 To subjects, any thing but applicable 
 To my theme ; which before this digressing, 
 
 Was of Time's sports and pastimes predicable : — 
 That in them, there's something revolting, shocking, 
 Like Cromwell's lifting the lid of Charles's coffin 3 ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 And is there not ? The once gay heart turn'd grey 
 With the world's neglect, not age, and sorely bow'd — 
 
 Those who have lost their all in life's high play, 
 And ruin'd, now court solitude in a crowd : 
 
 The being, on whose lip, is aye, the say 
 
 Of bitterness — the with'ring sneer, and curses loud — 
 
 The one who hereafter should have died 4 , 
 
 Despairful, seeking rest in suicide ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The young author, thin, with disappointment pale, 
 Pining in thought and blight, his life's life away ; 
 
 While certain consumption, that fell female ! 
 Kneads him sickening in the damp sticky clay 
 
 Of the kirkyard — He dies — and hark ! the wail 
 
 Of those who knew him, erst the frolic boy and gay ; 
 
 Ere he worshipped Fame, the false traitress ! 
 
 Who hath brought him to a grave and nothingness 6 ! 
 
62 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Alas ! and is this th' end of one of those, 
 
 Malgre their keen aches of heart and fev'rish eyq ! 
 
 Who god-like — greatly — nobly daring, chose 
 
 From the herd, which meanly think and meanly die, 
 
 To turn ? Why doth the canker spoil the rose, 
 And pass the fat weed, and noisome nettle by ? 
 
 And yawns but the untimely sepulchre, 
 
 For Grenius' sons and her daughters fair ! 
 
 X. 
 
 My life's years are young, but my soul is old ; 
 
 For in my time, I've seen much alteration : 
 Have seen my familiar friend look cold ; 
 
 Have — but it would weary in the relation, 
 Have seen my dearest one laid in the mould ; 
 
 Him, who in puns and jokes took such gratulation ! 
 Have stood o'er his lone grave and felt with pain, 
 I should never greet his dear worth again 6 ! 
 
 XI. 
 
 Have seen all that worldly malice could do, 
 And all that worldly ingratitude has done ; — 
 
 The dead torn from their sepulchres, to rue 
 That they ever had entrusted such an one : — 
 
 One, to whom, they had been so kind and true, 
 And genial in their influence as the sun : 
 
 Have seen Lady C B , with her " snakie " pen, 
 
 Act the part of harlot Jersey o'er again 7 . 
 
CANTO II. 63 
 
 XII. 
 
 Have seen the monarch from his haughty throne 8 , 
 An uncheer'd wanderer through the wide world sped ; 
 
 Have seen the book so read by every one, 
 
 Wrap up tea, coffee, snuff, sugar, jam-tarts, lead : — 
 
 Have seen the fair girl from her parents gone, 
 
 With a young, handsome Philander spark to wed ; 
 
 Have seen the same twain part without a sigh, 
 
 And either to be had separately ! 
 
 XIII. 
 Have seen the crim. cons, in the public prints 9 , 
 
 Carefully digest'd for th' use of Love's students ; 
 The much expressed, and the warm broad hints 
 
 Abounding thick with curious impudence : 
 Have seen husbands who would have expend'd mints, 
 
 To get rid of their wives on any pretence ; 
 And like those who dwell by the ( seven towers,' 
 Giv'n 'em a sack posset, if 'twere in their powers 10 ! 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Have seen patriots advertis'd like houses ; 
 
 And some leave their country for their country's good n : 
 Have seen ov'rseers at parish paid carouses, 
 
 Who drinking, could not see the trees for the wood : 
 Afterwards tell poor devils and their spouses, 
 
 To rob, hang, burn, kill — any thing as they could ; 
 For the New Law grants no out-door relief, 
 Except to Barristers without a brief. 
 
64 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Yes ! I've seen that fiend-law's introduction, 
 
 In spite of Fielden, Stanhope, Oastler and the good 
 
 Its mildest aim, murder and seduction, 
 
 To overflush our streets with agony and blood ! 
 
 It tears the nipple from the babe at suction ! 
 And all to gorge a Hyena Commissionhood — 
 
 Hail ! thou legislative offspring begot 
 
 Tween a demon — mannikin, and a Scot 12 . 
 
 XVI. 
 
 These, old Scytheman ! are thy parlous doings 
 "Which, verily, thou carest no more about 
 
 Than the rake does for the girl he ruins — 
 But indifferent, pursuest thy fell route : 
 
 Mowing down Kaisers, beggars, harlequins, 
 
 And fools, as in spring- tide, hay-grass doth a lout ! 
 
 But there, perhaps, the blame is ours, not thine, 
 
 For like bad musicians we can't keep time ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 And this puts me in mind, that I must leave 
 Off recounting, what I could not help but feel 
 
 At seeing men and things pass through time's sieve — 
 And strike the chords of my narrative viol : 
 
 For, I confess, I have one, though I grieve, 
 Digression will often o'er its tune strings steal. 
 
 Now to our Hero — but p'raps you'd rather, 
 
 Imbibe something first about his father. 
 
CANTO II. 
 
 65 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Indeed, my reason in this said Canto, 
 
 For commencing with my compts. to that thief Time, 
 "Was to prelude o'er the keys, before I shew 
 
 The change that thief has made in one, whom, in his prime, 
 Most young ladies and gentlemen did know, 
 
 A dashing and pretty man, some few years syne : 
 For he was an acquaintance of most of you — 
 Saving, perhaps, a sour methodist, or two. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 But now how chang'd from what you saw him last ; 
 
 Such curious — piteous alteration ! 
 You might behold him on the causeway pass, 
 
 Without e'en the slightest imagination 
 That in the skinny elder going to mass, 
 
 Was th' exquisite that created such sensation. 
 Reader ! my hero's father was the Juan, 
 Whose life, if you have not perused — do soon. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Yes, Byron's hero was my hero's sire ! 
 
 But now grievously fall'n off from him, who then, 
 All agog, set young hearts and cheeks on fire ; 
 
 And consumed down to cinders, that wild pen, 
 Dashing off his deeds all sparkle and desire. 
 
 But now, O changing times ! and, O changeful men ! 
 From being an infidel roue, he 
 Had become a catholic devotee. 
 
66 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Yes, he who'd been in youthhood such a rake, 
 Had now entirely cut all that sort of thing ; 
 
 And thought but of living for the soul's sake, 
 And sending to far off shrines his offering : 
 
 Perchance a rich piece of family plate ; 
 Choice bits by Guido, or a jewelled ring; 
 
 For which, of course, ghostly abbots did not object 
 
 Him in their masses — or glasses to recollect 13 . 
 
 XXII. 
 
 No palpitate he'd now, of hand or heart, 
 
 For he nor drank, nor did aught in th' other way ; 
 
 Except, (pardon the innocent remark,) 
 As a good exemplary christian may. 
 
 And which, he was always ready on his part, 
 To confess, and then for absolution pay : 
 
 Well ! . if such can scrape off the old leaven, 
 
 No one was in a fairer way for Heaven ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 But he had not only this inward grace ; 
 
 But too, the blest visible and outward sign 
 Of earthly holiness : — a thin pinch'd face — 
 
 Eyes turned upwards, like a pig's when the wind 
 Is saucy — optics which, in any case, 
 
 I would not, dear Reader, for the world were thine !- 
 A form almost as bony as Lord Brough'm's — 
 A guide useful for the dissecting rooms. 
 
CANTO II. 67 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 And his dress — 'twas hardly to be call'd dress : 
 
 (And he, once the model of the magazine !) 
 Eve's fig-leaf short clothes could not have had less 
 
 Pretension th' original Adam to screen — 
 Certes, his tailors had made a sorry mess, 
 
 And quite neglected all fashion, shape, and mien ; 
 For incased in their vestmental disguise, 
 His figure was left entirely to surmise. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Down where the Stultz coat tighten'd to the stays — 
 Furred costly, like that of our then dear king 14 — 
 
 Now coarsely wallow'd, a cloak of coarse baize ; — 
 And for the hat, cock'd on one side, like a thing 
 
 Of sneer — a slouch'd brimmer kept off the gaze 
 Of the laughter-loving and inquisiting : 
 
 While next his breast, a fretting hair-shirt sat, 
 
 Where erst, had flowed that cascade of cravat 15 . 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 In troth, he look'd, as advertisements say, 
 
 " One concern" — a presentment truly striking 
 
 Of a dog, who, like B , has had his day, 
 
 And now retir'd from marrow-bones and fighting — 
 
 One in short, whom you might almost but slay, 
 Ere he'd return to his old trick of biting. 
 
 " Run out — blown up — off the course " — though I ween, 
 
 A " d d pretty fellow" he had been l6 ! 
 
68 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 They say a tempter must be a second self — 
 A sort of double, whom there's no resisting. 
 
 In the present case, the seducing elf 
 
 "Who'd caus'd in Juan Sen. this moral twisting, 
 
 Was a pious priest — his name father Guelph, 
 Whom, as I have heard talking folks insisting, 
 
 Like James the second, was fond of woman, 
 
 Before he serv'd th' ' eternitatis domum 1? I ' 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 And e'en yet, 'twas bruit'd by the low'r orders, 
 That he'd not exactly left his naughty ways ; 
 
 For, said these fond, fanciful recorders, 
 
 A buxom female figure he still would praise. 
 
 And did not care stepping o'er the borders 
 
 Of discretion, when such an one met his gaze — 
 
 In short, (no reflection on his divinity,) 
 
 That he still had a penchant for the dimity. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 And moreover, on more than one occasion, 
 
 That from his room damsels had been seen to steal ; 
 
 Red with much alarm and hesitation, 
 
 Lest the perfidious moonlight should reveal 
 
 A too authenticate true relation 
 
 Of what they (kind charmers) wished to conceal : 
 
 As oft, some sly maids, or curious yeomen, 
 
 Were watching the coming down o' his fat women 18 . 
 
CANTO II. 69 
 
 XXX. 
 
 But this, after all, may be all their brag : 
 
 Though, I believe, he was not quite an angel — 
 
 Yet, p'raps, on the whole, he was not so bad ; 
 
 And his intents, as good as those which pave hell. 
 
 Nature's frail ; and e'en priests can't always drag 
 Her from their hearts — the sly vixen will rebel : — 
 
 And then perfection — it gives one quite a surfeit — 
 
 How should we know the clergy, if they were perfect ? 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 IV' importe ! the godly world may preach and talk — - 
 
 But as things go, he was a devout friar, 
 That Guelph ; and as upright as most did walk 
 
 In righteousness : a good, ghostly character. 
 'Twas pity, tho', his oily look did rather baulk 
 
 Our idea of a religious rev'rend Sir : 
 And then, when he met a lass, his eyes would laugh, 
 As if he desired her for a cooling draught. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Yes, his figure as I've just been hinting, 
 
 "Was precisely somewhat of the Falstaff cut ; 
 
 And his eyes, like devils, would be blinking 
 And ogling, make fair penitents close and shut 
 
 Theirs, when i' the confessional bethinking 
 
 Them of the sins, which were his prone ear to glut. — ■ 
 
 Oh ! those nice auricular confessionals ! 
 
 Sure 'tis warm work that in ye sometimes befals x *! 
 
70 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Such and so was old Juan's confessor, 
 
 Who his patron's half lost soul had sav'd alive ; 
 
 And entirely rout'd Satan th' oppressor, 
 
 Who till then, for its possession did so strive : 
 
 And that fleshly thoughts might not distress sore, 
 The new birth, our monk did piously contrive 
 
 To keep his patron from all earthly cares, 
 
 By managing entirely his affairs. — 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Receiv'd his rents and leases when they fell in ; 
 
 Hired his maid-servants — paid the tradesmen's bills : 
 (And may be his own — but that's revealing !) 
 
 And that the household might'nt have their carnal wills- 
 Fetch'd to his own home, the tenants' off'ring 
 
 Of birds — trouts — or tender lambkins from the hills : 
 In short, took off Juan's hands all the care, 
 And did bus'ness like a Whig Commissioner. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 His conduct in this was exemplary 
 
 Certainly ; tho' saucy menials thought otherwise ; 
 And in their comments were'nt over chary ; 
 
 But oft complimented his soul, limbs and eyes : 
 But for their curs'ry remarks, what car'd he ? 
 
 Content, he pocket'd the affronts and the supplies — 
 And lived on, almost in as good a way, 
 As if he'd cousins a Grenville and a Grey 20 . 
 
CANTO II. 71 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " Shame is not a parson's curry curistic 21 : " 
 So says th' Abigail of that naughty Fielding. 
 
 In the present case, our ecclesiastic, 
 
 Was in sooth, for anything hut for yielding 
 
 To the yells from without ; but with ears thick 
 
 With cotton, bore the curses they were squealing. — 
 
 Thus, like a proper, sensible man of God, 
 
 Keeping his temper even, when other folks' were odd. — 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 P'raps, what strengthen'd him in this prudent slight 
 Of abuse, was th' imbibing when he was dry, 
 
 A glass of what, my friends take great delight 
 In, and still do drink, cognac, or eau-de-vie : 
 
 For naught makes a mortal more full and hight 
 In his resolves, than this spirit liquor high — 
 
 Mankind are seldom very great grumblers 
 
 When post some ten, or a dozen tumblers ! 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 At least, when they are brewed strong, and not 
 Too hot. — O ! thou sweet seductive, kissy wine ! 
 
 At present my jaded Muse has not got 
 
 For the next stanza another thought to twine. 
 
 So that I may not be forced to blot, 
 
 I'll try what " awen " there's in a cup of thine 22 . 
 
72 
 
 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Here, I wish readers carefully to digest, 
 That in the foregoing I have not wished, 
 
 The true apostolic church to molest ; 
 
 Or its ministers, like Whigs, to have hissed : 
 
 Much less, by pun or antithesis, divest 
 
 The church script'ral, or by law established — 
 
 Although, both are not built on the same rocks, 
 
 Thanks to Doctor Luther and Doctor Xnox. 
 
 XL. 
 
 In brief, I mean to say, I mean no harm 
 
 To bishop, dean, or any prebendary : 
 To him, who digs the grave, or pipes the psalm ; 
 
 Or any other sacred emissary. 
 Therefore, your holinesses, pray be calm, 
 
 And survey my whistle craft with a spare eye. — 
 As " difficile est satiram non scribere 23 ," 
 When writing for a circulating library ! 
 
 XLI. 
 
 For 'tis for such, scrape I my vi'loncello ; 
 
 For I would be pop'lar among the ladies j 
 And by them, be call'd a clever fellow, 
 
 And peruse my succeeding in their glad eyes. 
 Content, I care not for fame more mellow — 
 
 The Critics may laud or blame just as they please — 
 Though Heavens ! from such low renown preserve me, 
 As that of suck-mug " Boz," and Weather Murphy 24 ! 
 
CANTO II. 73 
 
 XLII. 
 
 The brave Greek's defence was a battle piece 25 — 
 And mine — should I at any time in this my rant, 
 
 Presume at Society's laws to sneeze — 
 
 Her false outshining and her sickening cant — 
 
 And with the potency of a bold breeze 
 Unmask her insincerity — mine is, I thank 
 
 Heav'n ! like the holy fish's, a good intention 26 , 
 
 Viz : to enlighten the world's comprehension. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 In brief, to shew th' inhabitants thereof 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 The ghostly chaplain of our hero's sire, 
 
 As you may have perceiv'd by this narration — 
 
 Was, as the most shrewish wife could desire, 
 The sole master on every occasion, 
 
 Of his penitent's money, time, and fire- 
 Side : each of which he used without hesitation — 
 
 Indeed, he had him and his quite at discretion — 
 
 Especially, when he was at confession. 
 
74 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 For then, as is extremely natural, 
 
 In the confessions of an elderly gentleman- 
 He would without concealment tell of all 
 
 Th' unlawful adventures in his youth he ran : 
 And in a manner quite methodical, 
 
 Would prone relate all that experience can : 
 While the Friar, with those dark curious eyes 
 Would listen — 'twas Domitian spearing-flies ! — 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Ah ! a crafty wight was that large-ey'd Friar ! 
 
 And right well he knew from extensive practice, 
 To skim off " the full dish of fool " when fear 
 
 Or old age, had frozen the vein's blood to ice ; 
 Or sickness had stopt men in their career 
 
 Of ambitious or of amorous vice — 
 And then, right wisely, he could deal out damnation 
 Or safety — according to the consideration. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 He made, however, for the wealthy sinner, 
 Most properly, a distinction great and meet: 
 
 Allowing such of grace to be a winner, 
 
 An he would Mother Church endow — or treat 
 
 Him, her pious servant, with a dinner. 
 But for the atrocious, pauper black sheep, 
 
 Who could not for a paternoster pay — 
 
 He let go to Heav'n — or Hell, his own way 27 ! 
 
CANTO II. 75 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 In this, though, he was not particular. 
 
 Howbeit, we hear of such things now and then ; 
 And as long as guineas are what they are, 
 
 Respect '11 be paid their owners by mortal men — 
 Never mind if those owners deserve the tar 
 
 And feathers — have been rogues, and would be again, 
 For gold is gold, and you will always find, 
 Virtue without it as empty as the wind. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 O th' unction of a death-bed repentance ! 
 
 A repentance when the wretch can sin no more ! 
 A few sighs for a life's ill circumstance — 
 
 And then hey ! for Heaven in a coach and four ! 
 Well, there's something in giving poor Vice a chance 
 
 Lately as it may scratch at salvation's door — 
 Though, it is rather hard on the well-doer, 
 To fare no better than he of the twelfth hour. 
 
 L. 
 
 But hark ! the chime-bell to mass is sounding ! 
 
 And see that priest how meekly he steals along : 
 You'd little think that his heart is bounding 
 
 With anything but thoughts of heavenly song ! 
 But all his sanctity is around him. 
 
 For beneath his cowl, are large black eyes that long 
 For earthly appetites, and earthly pow'r — 
 He only blasphemeth riches to the poor. 
 
76 
 
 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LI. 
 
 Close behind, with wretch'd form so spare and wan, 
 Stalks old Juan, 'velop'd in his dreary cloak : 
 
 The melancholy eidolon of one, 
 
 Who despairs and groans 'neath superstition's yoke. 
 
 Strange, that he who so oft his lips had hung 
 Like bees on beauty's dear, dang'rous, yielding throat, 
 
 Should now be this Catholic convertite, 
 
 Doing everything his flesh to spite ! 
 
 LII. 
 
 And lo ! those boisterous tars who follow — 
 
 Sons of the pale-clifted isle whose walls are none 28 ! 
 
 Their limbs extra double stout and hollow 
 
 Beating any one's for bang up blood and bone. 
 
 Hark ! how loud they whistle, laugh and hollo ! 
 
 Voila ! what country would not such brave ones own ? 
 
 They came to be seen, and also to see 29 . — 
 
 It was a pity tho' they were so tipsy ! 
 
 PIL 
 
 A man o' war's a capital boarding school, — 
 
 Particularly an English one, with a 
 Skipper of the right bite her decks to rule — 
 
 One, who Nelson-like, would not let his pith a 
 Floating enemy thrice his girth to pull : 
 
 But would tarry politely in the frith-way, 
 'Till he could try by force of ball or sword, 
 Where bull or frog was to be the sea lord. 
 
canto ir. 77 
 
 LIV. 
 
 I, for one, adore the blue sea's rough service — 
 
 (At least, as well as I can one whose price is blood :) 
 
 And had it not happened that my nerve is 
 
 Sickly, I as a Middy should have stemm'd the flood 
 
 Of ocean ; and p'raps have been a Jervis ! 
 
 For the waters cleanse oft* so well the world's mud. 
 
 To be sure, one may be shot or engrav'd on steel — 
 
 But a sailor's so hardy, he can hardly feel! 
 
 LV. 
 
 But see, old Juan enters the cathedral ; 
 
 And the Jack Tars follow reeling in his wake , 
 While the bald sacristan bids one and all 
 
 To quit the sacred precincts, or less noise make. 
 But the bluff seamen, him a " Mounseer " call ; 
 
 And with boatswain echoes the carved roof shake. 
 Anon, they are pursued by the Holy Brethren 30 ; 
 But they soon trip up their heels — those ungodly men ! — 
 
 LVI. 
 
 Then falls a shower of glorious slang : 
 
 " Clear for action, Bill ! — go it ! — charge them fore and aft." 
 While British fist-cuffs on Dons' foreheads rang — 
 
 " Poop that old 'mi's stempiece, Jack !" you would have laugh'd 
 To see how the " boys " did the Spanish bang — 
 
 'Till at length, bellowing, they fled like a shaft, 
 Chased by the sea-sons, who forth such yells sent, 
 As hounds when they espy the hare apparent. 
 
78 
 
 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 In the meanwhile, Father Guelph is seated 
 Like a spider huge in his confessional — 
 
 He waits — and anon his ear is greeted 
 
 With a sigh, so piteous, that you might call 
 
 It agony. — Again, it is repeated : 
 
 As 'twere some soul becoming incorporal — 
 
 'Twas from Juan — the Friar his ear lent, 
 
 When to him, thus groaned the penitent : — 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 " Father, I've been a heinous sinner ! " 
 
 " Ahem ! " drily coughed the ghostly Mentor : — 
 
 " For when in life only a beginner 31 , 
 
 I did with another man's spouse adventure : — 
 
 Her name was Julia ; and did win her 
 
 (Fair she was, and with a voice like a precentor !) 
 
 From her Don — her husband and her virtue — " 
 
 " Son, give to the church, and 'twill not hurt you." 
 
 LIX. 
 
 " I will. But here, I wish in this reviewing 
 To say, that Julia was'nt at all to blame — 
 
 She really did'nt know what I was doing, 
 
 When I press'd her to my heart — that lovely dame ! 
 
 And ev'n in the blush heat of my wooing : 
 
 Protest'd to the last, she'd never grant my aim — 
 
 Which fact, thanks to my noble biographer ! 
 
 Has been told as a memorial of her 32 . 
 
canto ir. 79 
 
 LX. 
 
 " And then when wrecked on that Greek island, 
 
 O'er which, Lambro was sole chief and buccaneer : — 
 
 He was, by token, rather a high man, 
 
 And in tongue and temper, somewhat short and queer. 
 
 This Pirate had a daughter, who on dry land 
 
 "When I was cast, by chance happen' d to be near 
 
 With her maiden — poor thing ! — her name was Haidee.- 
 
 Young, tender, soft — a very pretty lady ! — 
 
 LXI. 
 
 " Cold, naked, hungry, dizzy, and all but dead — 
 They carry'd me to a cave, those two young girls ! 
 
 And laying me gently on a soft bed 
 
 Of furs 33 — such as line the cloaks of belted earls — 
 
 One watched me — o'er my pale drench' d forehead, 
 Letting wave like eastern breeze, her light long curls. 
 
 "While the other, on hospitable cares intent, 
 
 Fried eggs, which as a relish were excellent 34 . 
 
 LXII. 
 
 " My life was saved; and to repay their care — 
 (May Heaven assoil me for the foul offence !) 
 
 I sigh'd — I burnt — I kiss'd — and soon got her 
 To return my passion with as warm a sense 
 
 Of rapture 35 — and as if man and wife we were, 
 
 Liv'd : — passing whole days (our love was so intense !) 
 
 In caves and rocks, only thinking of the present 36 — - 
 
 God forgive me ! but it was extremely pleasant ! 
 
80 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 " Days — weeks — months — together, we enjoy 'd love's bliss- 
 
 The only bliss that can be called so here ! 
 Oh 'tis love, natural, unchain'd like this, 
 
 That illumes the dreary hours of this dull sphere ! 
 Entranc'd we liv'd — our life was all one kiss ! — 
 
 Nor had we scandal, or envy's tooth to fear — 
 In short, I passed my time like an eastern Sophi, 
 'Till her father's return — that sad catastrophe ! 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 " One day we had a sort of festival, 
 
 • With wine, fruits, cream, dancers, and a Greek poet — 
 
 In a word, our first house-warming, where all 
 
 The guests ate and drank as much as they could stow it- 
 And then were order'd for the future to call 
 
 Me master vice Lambro whom (tho' we did'nt know it), 
 We believ'd in some boarding expedition, 
 Had been knock'd from his deck into perdition. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 " But that was not the case : he still did live ; 
 
 As we afterwards found to our cost. For one eve, 
 While we each other abandon'd did give 
 
 Pouting kisses to our red lips, and then receive 
 'Em back again — Haidee starting from our hive, 
 
 Shriek'd — when to my terror, as you may conceive — 
 Lo ! there stood an old man with a calm stern eye, 
 Watching us cold and dreadful, as we did lie 37 ! 
 
CANTO II. 81 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 " In an instant rous'd I was on my feet — 
 
 In an instant from the wall I snatch'd my brand — 
 
 And baring it, stood prepared to greet 
 
 Him coming, as an assailant hand to hand : 
 
 But he eyeing me with his look of sleet, 
 Quietly took a loaded pistol from his band, 
 
 And said, without a muscle's move at all: — 
 
 ■ Frank, remember, this pistol hath a ball !' 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 " Now there is something in dressing for a ball 38 
 
 Extremely awkward — a pistol one, of course, I mean : 
 
 The weapon's cock'd — presented — and you may fall 
 The next moment, like a sparrow, or a drop scene ! 
 
 But I was determin'd like the beast we call 
 
 A wolf, not to die in silence 39 — my sword keen 
 
 I clutch'd — but Lambro, for 'twas he, his call-note blew, 
 
 And anon appeared some twenty of his crew 40 : — 
 
 LXVI1L 
 
 " ' Quick ! disarm, or slay him if he resist ! ' 
 Cried he, as his train's bright sabres gleamed : 
 
 But to' use my weapon, I did still persist, 
 
 And soon one fellow's shoulder had unseamed — 
 
 And made a second's cheek a phlebotomist : 
 
 When a third, handling his blade as if he deemed 
 
 A little exercise of that sort a treat — 
 
 Struck well, and I lay bleeding at his feet 41 . 
 
82 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 " A faintness came o'er me, and never more 
 
 Did I that lone isle and the young girl whose form 
 
 Was so fond and graceful, see — The brutes tore 
 Me bleeding a prisoner away in scorn, 
 
 And as a slave sold ; while she left forelore — 
 
 She became mad — the fruit of our sin was born — 
 
 And Haidee suffer'd — broke her heart and died." 
 
 Here, the penitent wept — paused and sighed. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 To all this the monk with unctious ear 
 
 Had list'n'd : (for love abounds with curious knowledge !) 
 And licking his smooth lips, he did appear 
 
 To live o'er again his naughty nights at college : 
 For where will you obtain nous so well as there ? — 
 
 Tho' to say so, by some, may be deem'd sacrilege — 
 Here, the Friar bid the penitent take heart, 
 And prepar'd to hear of his loves th' other part. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 The finest sensation of enjoyment 
 
 Is always 'tween pain and pleasure. Now Juan, 
 Whether he, in the present employment 
 
 Of recalling " larks " which had been his ruin, 
 Felt of both these feelings an alloyment, 
 
 I cannot represent in this my duan : 
 But certes, with a zest unsuit'd for th' occasion, 
 He proceeded thus to renew his relation : — 
 
83 
 
 CANTO II. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 "But this is not half the sin I've committed, 
 
 Before I perceived the error of my ways : 
 There was Dudu, she was to be pitied, 
 
 Shut up in that Oda all her nights and days : 
 Though with her, really, I might stand acquitted, 
 
 As her fat piquant form was enough to craze 42 
 A saint, and then, th' earnest opportunity ! 
 By her misthought a maid, with a maid to lie ! 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 " Yes, in this, good Father, you must allow, 
 
 There was a deal of proper provocation : 
 Tuck'd with a nymph under the same quilt, how 
 
 Could a man help feeling a slight sensation ? 
 
 Except, indeed, he did'nt like a bed-fellow ? — 
 
 Q r * * * * * 
 
 But there, 'tis past : and I now feel as 'tis meet 
 A Christian should — but why is sin so sweet ? 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 " Here you must bear in mind that pretty Dudu 
 
 Thought me a maid, or she'd not have slept a blink where 
 
 Mankind was — and to give them each their due, 
 Neither would the girls, Lolah or Katinka. 
 
 Those persons who suppose this is not true, 
 
 Must something very — very shocking think her ! 
 
 And then, as for her screaming, 'twas all a mistake — 
 
 Tho' 'twas a pity she did at that moment awake. — 
 
84 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 " But farewell to Dudu for the present — 
 
 For to dwell on her, or her's, I have not time. 
 
 Let me see, who comes next ? — A Russ peasant ? 
 No, 'twas the Christian empress Catharine. 
 
 So open to ev'ry one, and so pleasant, 
 
 So gentle with gents — so not with war and wine : 
 
 And who deemed, like Mary Wollstonecraft, 
 
 Woman's rights were too curtailed by half. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 " Her preference for my boyish figure, 
 
 "Was at the time, thought extremely flattering ; 
 
 As in her court, there were many bigger 
 
 Who'd been proud to fill a place so pat as mine ! 
 
 And who would have gone off like a trigger, 
 To pleasure their royal mistress Catharine. 
 
 Well, I was — (Grod shield my conscientious qualms !) 
 
 This great Czarina's chief man-at-arms. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 " In brief, I was her most humble servant — 
 And served her faithfully on all occasions ; 
 
 And though in blood not royal, yet I grant, 
 As near to her as any of her relations — 
 
 Or nearer — and should have had th' ascendant 
 Ov'r them all of whatever rank or stations, 
 
 Had not in her service, over agility 
 
 Brought on a cursed nervous debility. 
 
CANTO II. 85 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 " Of all the diseases that do rack us, 
 
 Surely the nervous makes us seem most silly, 
 
 For should females look, or males attack us, 
 Anon, we change, and tremble, willi nilli. 
 
 Besides, with fancy evils it doth suck us, 
 
 When at the same time we are from all ill free. 
 
 And then, it causes us to blush and burn in crowds, 
 
 Like the sun, that metropolis of the clouds ! 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 " Long time I bore its dull teazy torments : 
 
 Daily fainting and dying, but never dead : 
 Nausea — tremblings, and whole hours mispent 
 
 In sickly horror — scant pulse — short breath — hot head — 
 Chest that beat with agony and then bent 
 
 'Neath thick coming spasms and gouts of phlegm, like lead — 
 While my body look'd as yellow — thin and silly, 
 As if I had lately fed on naught but skilly 43 . 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 " Then oft came those mysterious moments — 
 When you see a flashing dagger in the cloud, 
 
 And would not turn round on any pretence, 
 
 Lest you should flush some paly figure in a shroud 
 
 Looking o'er your shoulder ; and oth'r intense 
 Presentiments o' coming evil ; which did crowd 
 
 In troops like grinning spectres through my brain — 
 
 One gone — and anon a thousand frightful came ! 
 
86 DON JUAN JUNIOR, 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 "In vain, to lay these nervous phantoms grim — 
 I plied th' usual cordial — liqueur — wine — 
 
 Their dread, they'd only for a moment dim, 
 
 And then, more ghast return my soul to undermine ! 
 
 LXXXIL 
 
 " In vain, I haunted plays, parties, masquerades — 
 Gay scenes, where poetry, passion, beauty met ! — 
 
 The crowded city's pleasures, and the shades — 
 The recreant puking nerves would not forget 
 
 Their tortures — my heart throbbed like a maid's — 
 In vain, I saw th' ape who could on steeples get : 
 
 Mimic, tumbler, turncoat, he was, and I should bet, 
 
 Some relation of that young Tory, old Burdett 44 . 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 " At last to soothe my health, th' Empress made me, 
 Attache, plenipo, or something of the sort ; 
 
 And from her liege subjects' hard cash paid me, 
 To misrepresent them at a foreign court. 
 
 Britain was the clime, to which she bade me. 
 
 (How beautifully her men have always fought 45 !) 
 
 England ! that's the isle for brave tall yeomen ! 
 
 England ! that's the land for lovely women ! 
 
CANTO II. 87 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 " Oh ! passing lovely those island charmers be ! 
 
 Though their atmosphere is dreary, damp, and chill. 
 Spain has beauties all passionful, but we 
 
 Cannot boast of fair dove-like beings who will 
 Prove so fond, and yet not from blushes free. 
 
 O ! I remember well at first, the wishing thrill 
 Produced by their slim ankles, white as lilies, 
 A moment's glance of which, enough to kill is ! 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 " Many of these dear Houris fair I knew 
 
 And lov'd, of every age — rank — size — and station. 
 
 And 'mong the number, there then were few, 
 Who would have had the slightest hestiation, 
 
 To follow with Juan the wide world through. 
 Travellers say, they are coy in their relation : 
 
 They speak as they found — But I — I mean no harm : 
 
 The girls' looks are cold — but their hearts are warm ! 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 " Oh where! oh where! are those fond — those fair forms now? 
 
 Father forgive, I cannot flint the feeling — 
 Whose sweet tongues did like brooks for ever flow 
 
 With music, soft as the Scald's tuneful telyn 46 
 Heard on Cymru's dreamy hills long ago ! — 
 
 Oh ! where are they with their bright eyes so appealing ? 
 Gone — gone ! — Many a fairy head is now a skull ! — 
 The sexton hurls it ! — of dirt and worms quite full ! 
 
88 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 LXXXVIL 
 
 ' Where are the wedded dames and youthful maidens 
 I then did know ? — the daughters, mothers, blues and blondes 
 
 Those who play'd so sweetly that air o' Haydn's — 
 And thrilled so plaintively Haynes Bayley's songs ? — 
 
 Those clever writing feminines who made pens 
 Describe what of right to bearded men belongs ? 
 
 Where's Lady Fitz-Frisky and Miss Mcevia Mannish, 
 
 To whom, I made desperate love in Anglo Spanish 47 ? 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 " Dear Lady Adeline Amundeville ! 
 
 She was the fairest — the chastest of them all ! 
 So slow to warm — to love — and yet she fell ! 
 
 The pure — the wife — the woman — and did she fall ? 
 She did — 'Twas I like a black fiend of hell 
 
 Seduc'd — Alas ! she long has moulder'd 'neath th' pall ! 
 Yet bright shine the diamonds that decked her clothes, 
 But dimm'd are the brighter eyes which outshone those ! 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 " The days ! — the days ! I spent in Norman Abbey ! 
 
 Oh for them ! tho' 'tis vain — 'tis sinful to recall — 
 Dearest Adeline ! — sweet Aurora Raby ! 
 
 Poor Leila ! — her "frolic grace," Fitz Fulke ! — and all 
 Are dust or " — Here the Friar rose like a tabby, 
 
 Exclaiming sharply from the confessional : — 
 " You miserable sinner ! be quiet can't ye? 
 Your offence is rank — you must endow a chantry. 
 
CANTO II. 89 
 
 xc. 
 
 <l Six candles on St. James's altar you must burn : 
 Yes, bum them Seignior, you must, night and day. 
 
 Our convent's plate, I've lately seen with great concern, 
 Is much worn, and in a very shabby way — 
 
 You understand me — you have a silver urn — 
 Your mother left it you on her dying day — 
 
 And then, as for the souls o' those ruin'd lasses, 
 
 No more — your purse — and I will put up masses. 
 
 XCI. 
 " You must not taste of meat for forty days. 
 
 You must nightly apply the scourge to your flesh : 
 Be cautious, in choosing one that flays, 
 
 Or perchance, you will have to commence afresh : 
 Much depending on the rope's due inlays, 
 
 To extricate you from sin and Satan's mesh. — 
 Benedicite ! think no more of the ladies, 
 Else by Paul ! I can't get your soul out of Hades." 
 
 XCII. 
 
 Saying, the large friar strode down the aisle, 
 
 Regarding as he pass'd the fond penitent, 
 With a side-way look of derisive smile, 
 
 And then composing his countenance as he went 
 From scornful grimace and unseemly guile, 
 
 Till it glowed with all its specious holyment : 
 So that when he'd gained the porch and outer door, 
 He had assum'd the meek clergy face he always wore. 
 
90 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 O ! priest-cherished dear hypocrisy ! 
 
 By holy men in ev'ry clime and age ador'd ! 
 The abbot loves thee, and the dervise locks thee 
 
 In his alms ; and ev'n my right reverend lord 
 Bishop o' the diocese, doth meekly try 
 
 To worship thee frail one ! both in deed and word 48 . 
 Hail to thee ! — Tho' now I must leave thee in the lurch, 
 As I would not for trillions board the church. 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 My pen is worn — my ink is dry, and here, 
 
 This Canto I should have end'd sans more bother, 
 
 Did I not wish first to make out clean and clear, 
 The name and person of my hero's mother ; 
 
 But to establish her identity, I fear, 
 
 Would consume too much of my time and pother — 
 
 Certes tho', whatever young Juan's maternal stock, 
 
 He was assuredly a chip of the old block. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 His sire, howev'r, much to the world's surprise, 
 And to the detriment o' this biography ! 
 
 Never did tell, (such secrecy I despise !) 
 
 Who the female parent of his son might be — 
 
 In fact, left it to scandal to surmise ; 
 
 Which was not remiss, as you'll see presently : 
 
 Some said he was by a duchess when she was forty, 
 
 But surely at such an age no one could be naughty ! 
 
CANTO II. 91 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 Some opined by the empress Catharine ; 
 
 And some by that plump, pretty, pouting Dudu ; 
 Some by one of the Cadiz girls, who were so kind ; 
 
 But I don't conceive that probable — do you ? — 
 While some who deem'd themselves anything but blind, 
 
 Hinted : Aurora Raby might give a clue — 
 But is it likely afemme sole and unmarried, 
 Should have allow'd her virtue so to have miscarried ? 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 Haidee, many fixed upon as his mamma ; 
 
 Many as matron, Julia did rather, — 
 A few, circulated about with much eclat, 
 
 That Lady Amundeville was his mother. 
 But I, without wishing to push things too far, 
 
 Think " little Leila " as likely as any other — 
 For when a young man's left guardian to a younger maid, 
 Their converse^is not always innocent I am afraid. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 But after all, she may have saved her rose, 
 
 Little Leila, and lived on with those few 
 Divinities in decorum's long silk clothes, 
 
 Who warmly feel and yet keep virtuous too : 
 Whether she was one of these, I can't disclose — 
 
 Or whether she did let her good name slip through 
 Her fingers, and give birth to our hero — 
 I've no knowledge — but I rather fear her. 
 
y# DON JUAN JUNIOR, 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 Whether she lov'd, as I have said, thus well — 
 Or whether, discreet, she loved more wisely — 
 
 Her life's heart history, I cannot tell — 
 At least, not accurately, or precisely. — 
 
 But to feel — to languish— to blush — to swell — 
 To be call'd angel, and then prove otherwisely — 
 
 To love it — to have it — to lose it — and to pout it, 
 
 Is most woman's history — and that's all about it. 
 
 C. 
 
 And mankind's is not a broad D better : — - 
 
 To worship fame, woman, or some such bubble — 
 
 And when the doll softens and you get her, 
 
 To find the sleek prize was not worth the trouble 49 ! 
 
 Then to cry : — " Oh ! that I had never met her ! 
 
 This fame ! — good Heavens.! I must have seen double ! 
 
 And then, for remembrance to close the scene 
 
 With — ah ! what a pity ! — he might have been ! 
 
 CI. 
 
 A pity ! — many things are a pity ! 
 
 A pity folks arn't a leetle civiller — 
 A pity they are so seldom — witty. 
 
 A pity, King George, his queen, would'nt live with h 
 And made himself the grin o' many a city. 
 
 A pity, Napoleon played the driv'ller ; 
 And lastly put on that pathetic cant, 
 Of Themistocles as a suppliant 50 . 
 
CANTO II. 93 
 
 CIL 
 
 Its a pity, army torture is allow'd : 
 
 Its a pity man should ev'r be less than man. — 
 
 Its a pity the brave and generous crowd 
 
 Should let the Commissioners them starve and damn. 
 
 Its a pity, (and this I voice aloud,) 
 
 The descendants of bright Brinsley Sheridan, 
 
 A good stout crab, or horse-whip had not bought one, 
 
 And laid on the traducers of Mrs. Norton 51 , 
 
 cm. 
 
 Its a pity, tis pass'd, that pauper woe ! 
 
 So rife with murders, poisonings, hearts broke — rack ! 
 Authors of England ! why are ye so slow 52 ? 
 
 Gentlemen of England ! why are ye so slack ! 
 Awake ! — arise ! — expose ! — ward off the blow 
 
 Ere yet it comes down thundering on your back. 
 Let its cruelties continue, and grow like weeds : 
 And I can only say : — " Look to your little deeds ! " 
 
 CIV. 
 
 Young Victoria ! lady of these isles ! 
 
 Its a pity you let that guzzling Melbourne 
 Come shadowing so often between whiles, 
 
 And your royal dinner-table take by storm 53 . 
 Oh ! bestow not, if you are wise, your smiles 
 
 On him who has made your people's hearts so lorn! 
 And who, possesses no more diplomatic nous, 
 Than a brood hen, or the Baxter's blind rear-mouse 54 . 
 
94 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 CV. 
 
 Its a pity you don't your ministers vary : 
 
 But if you did so, there would be always one, 
 
 Who'd strive to continue a secretary — 
 
 Viz : fop, convenient, curly Palmerston 55 ! 
 
 As for principles, black or white, what care he ? 
 Its a pity pure eloquence should be put- down : 
 
 But 'tis sometimes. For the Foxites with all their wit, 
 
 "Were, God 'a mercy! often feign to f fly the Pitt.' 
 
 CVI. 
 
 Hail M'Ghee! and too the Revd. O'SuUivan 56 ! 
 
 Titus Oateses ye o' the nineteenth century ! 
 Is there now in Great Britain, any one 
 
 Who your primum mobile does not espy, 
 Why mountebanks, ye, thus o'er the country run — 
 
 Is it not to grab rectories, or money ? 
 Are ye not set up 'gainst O'Connell's agitators, 
 As a sort of counter or counterfeit potatoes ? 
 
 CVII. 
 
 Sure 'tis strange fears in men's minds ye create, 
 When your papist terrors ye conceive and pup : 
 
 After the birth-day of your pass of pate, 
 
 I have seen a whole stout town afraid to sup, 
 
 (I naught here set down in malice, or relate : ) 
 
 Lest the bloody " Gatholics" should eat them up 57 . 
 
 Its a pity, ye should thus wholesale fright a city, 
 
 And make its man folks squeal — Again, I say a pity ! 
 
CANTO II. 95 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 But diverse thinge may be so lamented : 
 
 Its a pity Kirke White died so early, 
 Before to fine fame he had presented 
 
 The songs he promis'd when "juvenile and curly," 
 Alas ! the tune gush that was prevented 
 
 By that grisly woman, consumption surly ! — 
 If genius is a disease 58 not an attribute — 
 
 Three cheers for happy dull ones ! Who would not be mute ? 
 
 CIX. 
 
 Yet, to be the clever among the clever — 
 
 The incarnation of a glorious whim ! 
 Famous, after life's death, to die never, 
 
 But like a sky-star to shine — to blaze, — to sing, — 
 In the atmosphere of renown for ever ! 
 
 Illuming wide worlds with its imagining — 
 Is worth the trouble pang of being born, 
 And bearing the world's aftermath of scorn. 
 
 CX. 
 
 But to be the low, among ones as low — 
 
 The narrow-minded, among minds as narrow — 
 
 Never with soul-born, burning thoughts to glow, 
 Or let pathos exquisitely to harrow 
 
 The sympathies with fictitious woe — 
 To be such an one is to be far below 
 
 Contempt or pity ! * * * 
 
96 DON JUAN JUNIOR. 
 
 CXI. 
 
 Its a pity, mankind won't take advice. 
 
 Its a pity they will take prussic acid ; 
 And by the throat draw them up in a trice 
 
 With cord or garter, to the bed-posts, rabid ! 
 Its a pity, they will go on the ice, 
 
 When 'tis not firm enough to slide, or to be slid— 
 Its a pity, plain folk will exalt their ire, 
 And curse and call each other rogue and liar ! 
 
 CXII. 
 
 For an affair of this sort mostly ends 
 
 In an after crisis the most unpleasant : — 
 
 As you must either bend as the bow bends, 
 
 Or be fired at like a hare or pheasant. 
 
 ***** 
 
 ***** 
 
 To be sure, you may make an apology — 
 But if you do — adieu to your theology ! 
 
 CXIIL 
 
 After all, the best way in such a case, 
 
 If you must quote sweets from the dictionary : 
 
 Is at ten, or twelve paces to take your place, 
 And receive the blue ball o' your adversary — 
 
 This saves a great deal of trouble and disgrace : 
 For if you shew of life you are not chary, 
 
 Hereafter, you may play as you please, the ninny, 
 
 Or the fiddle marvels of Paganini 59 . 
 
CANTO II. 97 
 
 CXIV. 
 
 Its a pity our cash will so ooze out. — 
 
 " Hey silver ! there it goes 6o ! " alas ! in vain the sigh ! 
 Its a pity our brandy and brown stout, 
 
 "Will ever wantonly to the lees rim dry ; 
 WTien in our mole-skins, we have not a groat, 
 
 A moist damper, or replenishment to buy — 
 This of all pities, is most piteous : for it is sad, 
 To have naught to raise our spirits, when with the world we're mad. 
 
 END OF CANTO II. 
 
NOTES TO CANTO IT. 
 
 1 " Those, who were so youthful when poor Car was queen : " 
 The victimed wife of George the Fourth and fat, is here intended. 
 
 2 " Good Heavens ! how great his bulk ! and such a bear ! " 
 
 The Duke of B , and Lord , for instance, are an exemplifica- 
 tion. 
 
 3 " Like Cromwell's lifting the lid of Charles's coffin ! " 
 Vide a well-executed presentment of that legendary occurrence, which 
 startled and waylaid the observer in the windows of the several print- 
 shops about town and country some short time since : I forget whom by. 
 
 4 " The one who hereafter should have died," 
 " She should have died hereafter ! " — Macbeth. A parallel passage, I 
 believe, may be found in one of the plays of Sophocles or Euripides ; but 
 I cannot, at present, start it. Perhaps against a second edition, Hay, or 
 Merrivale, will cull it for me. 
 
 5 " Who hath brought him to a grave and nothingness ! " 
 Fitz-Price of Hereford, (Grsecorum longe doctissimus !) one of the best 
 translators of Greek anthologies in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 
 lately died (Feb. 1838) of this insidious disease — consumption. His 
 departure, in the spring flush of life, (for he was only twenty-four,) pain- 
 fully illustrated, though slowly, how surely consumption compels the 
 children of genius (whom she most frequently, alas ! attacks,) to the tomb ! 
 Before his decease, he was worn, piteously to be seen, to a perfect anatomy ; 
 and, for weeks previous to his death, could only receive nourishment 
 through a tin tube. Had his existence been prolonged, there is no doubt, 
 for his talents were of the first order, he would have obtained the highest 
 distinction as a classical scholar. I cannot help here expressing my cor- 
 dial disgust at the heartless unconcern evinced by the editor of " Black- 
 wood," on the occasion of his death ; who, (the editor,) though he was 
 eager enough to suck the poor fellow's brains, for his columns, when 
 living, — when dead, never so much as took up his pen in regret, or 
 chronicled one word of mention concerning his past services to the maga- 
 zine — his slow decay, and premature and melancholy end ! So much for 
 
100 NOTES. 
 
 the often self reiterated philanthropy and feeling of Professor Wilson 
 alias " Christopher North ! " 
 
 6 " Have seen my dearest one laid in the mould ; 
 
 Him, who in puns and jokes took such gratulation ! 
 Have stood o'er his lone grave, and felt with pain, 
 I should never greet his dear worth again ! " 
 
 Perusers of the above, the following (which was composed at the time, 
 and appeared in several publications,) is a few words of mournful feeling 
 on the irretrievable loss sustained by the writer, as commemorated in the 
 text : — 
 
 MONODY 
 On the Rev. Henry Law Bamford, of Hereford, and Ulverston, Lan- 
 cashire, who died on the 9th of October, 1836. The deceased was well 
 known in Herefordshire, for his superior literary abilities, and the bril- 
 liancy of his wit and humour. In his private character, he was a most 
 amiable and kind-hearted man, being highly prepossessing in his manners, 
 and very charitable ; while in the discharge of his religious duties, as a 
 priest of Christ, he was beyond praise : lastly, as a witty companion, a 
 sincere friend, and an upright and just man, his memory will long keep 
 green in the hearts of those who knew him ; among whom, the writer of 
 the following lines was proud to rank himself, — the deceased having been 
 for many years, his tutor and most intimate friend : — 
 
 I. 
 
 " And art thou gone, tutor — poet — friend ? — 
 I could have spar'd thousands of earth's dull ones ; 
 
 But for thee to depart so early — 
 Thou of the deep pathos and the many puns ! 
 
 II. 
 
 " I had hop'd thou would'st have liv'd long yet, 
 To give thy kind and cheerful praise to me ; 
 
 Praise, which I loved beyond the world's, 
 For the deserving it was learnt from thee ! 
 
 III. 
 
 " Yes, it was thou 'taught the boy to read,' 
 And too, that spirit art not often taught ; 
 
 And if he has done aught — or shall do 
 Worthy fame, from thee, he the impulse caught ! 
 
NOTES. 101 
 
 IV. 
 
 , * For thou wert rarely gifted with the tones 
 Of dear poesy : kind heart — -feelings fine, 
 
 And much charity, lifted thee far above 
 The mean worldling herd, and grovelling kind. 
 
 V. 
 
 " Early and only friend, a last adieu ; 
 I shall not look upon thy like again : 
 
 Many will grieve, and many miss thee, 
 But none so much as he who pens this strain ! " 
 
 Poor Bamford ! — 
 
 Long, long, shall I rue thee, 
 Too deeply to tell ! 
 
 7 " Act the part of harlot Jersey o'er again." 
 See this s7je-ingrate's recent infamous compilation of falsehoods and in- 
 decencies, entitled : " Memoirs of the Court of George the Fourth, by a 
 Lady (?) in Waiting," — a publication which re-virgins Harriette Wilson, 
 and makes her descriptions chaste J 
 
 8 " Have seen the monarch from his haughty throne," 
 Depend upon it that there were many worse folks of the genus Rex, 
 than poor Charles the Tenth. His subjects opined otherwise, however ; 
 and in his successor, Louis Philippe, have significantly enough been 
 taught the discrepancy between king Log and king Serpent ! 
 
 9 " Have seen the crim. cons, in the public prints," 
 The considerable leaven who are all for love, or their characters well 
 lost, can never sufficiently recompense those gentlemen who provide notes 
 of their delicate investigations for the columns of the public press. Nature 
 unadorned, (vide recent displays, such as the memorable cause of Norton 
 v. Melbourne,) seems to be the " very god of very god " of their reports : 
 especially when they description certain exhibitions not perfectly compa- 
 tible with the acknowledged use of petticoats. Verily, they would deserve 
 their rewards, were it not that the publication of their fire-works are apt to 
 incite those young ladies and gentlemen — "quos dura premit custodia 
 matrum," whose mothers don't know they are out, or wish them to be for 
 some time, to form a precocious acquaintance with the mysteries of the 
 marriage state. This is not a fastidious age, and, of course, I don't wish 
 
 H 
 
102 NOTES. 
 
 to be particular ; but could not Messrs., the reporters, for the future con- 
 summate their order of firing in such matters in a less direct way ? For 
 the sake of our little masters and misses, probatum est. 
 
 10 " like those who dwell by the ' seven towers,' 
 
 Giv'n 'em a sack -posset if 'twere in their powers ! " 
 
 Our oriental neighbours, when their spouses cause them pain in their 
 heads, or elsewhere, instead of giving an eastern Charles Phillips, or Ser- 
 geant Talfourd, " forty ducats " to celebrate their coronation afresh in a 
 crowded court, as the manner of us Angles is, more prudently pocket the 
 "front of their offending" in a sack or bag; (the " Persicos apparatus,") 
 and some moonlight night, give the same the benefit of a voyage " out- 
 ward bound," down the Bosphorus, or a similar convenient stream. 
 
 11 " Have seen patriots advertis'd like houses ; 
 
 And some leave their country for their country's good." 
 
 True patriots we, be it understood, 
 
 We left our country for our country's good ! 
 
 Barrington, the conveyancer's prologue, on opening the theatre in New 
 
 South Wales. 
 
 12 " Hail ! thou legislative offspring, begot 
 'Tween a demon — mannikin, and a Scot." 
 
 The " legislative offspring " here spoken of, is the " Act (so called !) for 
 the Amendment (?) and better Administration (?) of the Laws relating to 
 the Poor, in England and Wales," (passed 14th August 1834,) and its 
 manufacturers — the " demon," of course, is " old hangie," in propria per- 
 sona — the " mannikin," that " little fiend who scoffs incessantly," Lord 
 John Russell — and the " Scot," " coarse food " Brougham and Vaux of 
 that ilk. A pretty trio ! but I understand one of the parties here named, 
 his Satanic Majesty, has recently penned a memorial, disclaiming, in very 
 indignant language, ever having had anything to do with the concoction 
 of such an ultra-diabolical enactment. Let a certain illustrious duke 
 
 follow his meritorious example, and 
 
 " Mark Anthony shall not love Csesar dead, 
 So well as Brutus living ! " 
 
 13 " Him in their masses — or glasses to recollect." 
 " Don Juan Corduba has left a hundred ducats to remember him in our 
 masses." 
 
 " Has he ? Let them be paid to our wine-merchant, and we'll remem- 
 ber him in our glasses, which will do just as well." — Duenna, A. 3., S. 5. 
 
NOTES. 103 
 
 14 (i F urr ed costly, like that of our then dear king — " 
 George the Fourth, whose penchant for furs, bows, cherry-bounce, and 
 forty-lied damsels, is well authenticated ; as well as his wrapenchant for 
 his wife, economy, and good sense. 
 
 15 it where e rst, had flow'd that cascade of cravat." 
 " Pray who is that opposite ? I want to take wine with him ; " said 
 
 M to my friend Lieut. S at a dinner-party the other evening. 
 
 " Which ? " enquired the Lieutenant. 
 
 " Why, that man with the immense waterfall of neckcloth : " at the 
 same time pointing out an individual who wore his shirt breast and 'ker- 
 chief inordinately displayed. 
 
 i6 « a ' d d pretty fellow ' he had been ! " 
 
 " Sir Bingo whispered to his friend, the squire : ' Run out — blown up 
 
 — off the course — pity — d d pretty fellow he has been ! ' " — " St. 
 
 Ronan's Well," vol. i. 
 
 17 " Before he serv'd th' ' eternitatis domum ! ' " 
 Sa Maj. tres Chret., King Jamie's re-productive propensities, and their 
 satisfaction antecedent to his sagely putting on " the weeds of Dominic," 
 are exceedingly well related by that reverend father in God, Bishop Bur- 
 net ; as likewise, the proceeds arising from a " general subscription of the 
 ladies," which he bequeathed to his heirs and heiresses, particularly queen 
 Anne, for ever ! 
 
 is « w e re watching the coming down o' his fat women." 
 " Host — ' Here's a Bohemian Tartar tarries the coming down of thy fat 
 woman.' " — " Merry Wives of Windsor." 
 
 19 " Sure 'tis warm work that in ye sometimes hefals \ " 
 
 At least so say mistress Maria Monk, and the others, who treat of the 
 " solicitatione mulieres in tribunali ; " and such like delicacies. 
 
 20 " And lived on, almost in as good a way, 
 As if he'd cousins, a Grenville and a Grey." 
 
 " A gentleman without a shilling, proposed the other day to an heiress ; 
 her father delicately asked his pretensions : — ' I have little at present,' 
 said he : ' but my expectations are very great.' — ' Ah ! indeed ! expecta- 
 tions ? ' — ' Yes ; you may easily conceive their extent when I tell you 
 that I have one cousin a Grenville, and another a Grey ! ' " — Bulwer's 
 " England and the English." 
 
104 NOTES. 
 
 Fine to be an hereditary legislator ! and almost as fine to be an here- 
 ditary legislator's cousin or maid of joy ! But soft, a few words anent those 
 state dungs and flints, who plead their privilege to ruin the nation gratis, 
 and for certain thousands per annum, In China, the family of the Philosopher 
 Confucius, is the only hereditary nobility, and that single instance, affords 
 the wits of Pekin laughter from Sunday to Sunday. But what would they 
 say, if they were told that the English — those haughty shopkeepers, 
 allowed every fashionable phantom, every graceful and graceless spectre, 
 redolent of no sense and little sentiment, saving the scents and scentiments 
 of " Genuine Bear's Grease," and " Esprit de Lavande aux Millefleurs," 
 because by some freakish whim of nature he happens to be born a lord, to 
 self-constitute himself the guardian and overseer of the interests and wel- 
 fare of countless millions, every tenth man of whom, on an average, pos- 
 sesses fifty times more ability and honesty for the task, than the born 
 natural and born legislator in question ! Yet these, and such aristocratic 
 orang-outangs, with a suffusion of old battered beaux, noble dummies, 
 and superannuated dotards, form the legislative sapience of that Assembly, 
 which nightly deliberates, not only on the destiny of England, but of the 
 whole civilized political world ! 
 
 21 " Shame is not a parson's curry curistic : " 
 " Want of shame is not the curry curistic of a clergyman." — Mrs. Slip- 
 slop, loquitur in " Joseph Andrews." Query : if the amiable Abigail were 
 now in this pretty world of ours, would she retract this assertion ? What 
 replies the Rev. Sydney Smith ? 
 
 22 " I'll try what ' awen ' there's in a cup of thine." 
 " Awen," a term anciently used by Cambrian bards, to signify inspira- 
 tion, or the rapturous glow which immediately precedes it. See the 
 remains of Taliesin and other old Cymric harpers. 
 
 23 " As ' difficile est satiram non scribere,' " 
 Juvenal, as I think : it may be, however, from the stylus of my school- 
 fellow Horace ; but the pace of my pegasus, as Nimrod would say, is too 
 good to enquire. 
 
 24 " As that of suck-mug " Boz," and Weather Murphy ! " 
 " Suck-mug," a reporter : see gridiron Cobbett for the term. It is a 
 curious coincidence that Chadwick, the principal secretary for the execu- 
 tion of the poor, and Dickens, who makes their untutored ignorance his 
 sport and profit, were originally both "suck-mugs." Arcades ambo! the 
 
NOTES. 105 
 
 former still continues (and may perhaps a little longer .') to pinch a pretty 
 considerable livelihood from the torn bellies and broken hearts of his vic- 
 tims. The former, however, — the public, I should think, have had enough 
 of his trumpery — trumpery, which, from the commencement of his career, 
 I have uniformly turned up my thumbs in disapprobalion of, even unto 
 death; and now, as might have been expected, " Sternitur, exanimisque, 
 tremens procumbit humi ' Boz ! ' " The idea (" optat ephippia ' Boz ' 
 piger ! ") of this groundling with his fag-ends of low farce, and excerpts 
 from his former professional " Mornings at Bow-street," and evening 
 abandonments at St. Giles's, ridiculously supposing that he writes like 
 Fielding, the crown prince of novelists ! Pooh ! Joseph Ady, Circus, 
 Minories, and he, will share a twin celebrity in Alderman Oblivion's 
 pocket-book ! 
 
 25 " The brave Greek's defence was a battle piece — " 
 Miltiades ; his se defendendo, when accused of various high crimes and 
 misdemeanors, was — Marathon ! What would Wellington's be, if he 
 were similarly impeached ? Waterloo, or his gratuitous approval of that 
 larger slaughter occasioned by the New Poor Laws ? 
 
 26 " — mine is, I thank 
 
 Heav'n ! like the holy fish's, a good intention, 
 Viz., to enlighten the world's comprehension." 
 
 The Chaldean theologians teach, that their fish Oannes, once upon a 
 time, condescended to visit the earth three times a day, expressly to 
 instruct mankind (i. e. the Chaldeans) in literis humanioribus ; and, con- 
 sequently, in honour of their finny missionary, they conscientiously 
 abstain to this hour from frying, boiling, or pickling any of those articles 
 which are on constant sale in Billingsgate market. — Vide " Voltaire's 
 Philosophical Dictionary," passim : article " Oannes." 
 
 27 " He let go to Heav'n — or Hell, his own way ! " 
 
 It is only, of course, those d d popish priests who act thus towards 
 
 their pauper disciples. The ministers of the Church of England, " the 
 poor man's church," are signally more benevolent with regard to the salva- 
 tion of their poorer brethren : between high and low they make not the 
 least distinction. Even the — 
 
 ■ " Bishop with a meeker air, 
 
 Admits — and leaves them Providence's care." 
 23 " Sons of the pale-clifted isle, whose walls are none ! " 
 " Britannia needs no bulwark, 
 No towers along the steep ; 
 
106 
 
 Her march is on the mountain waves, 
 Her home is on the deep ! " 
 
 29 " They came to be seen and also to see. — 
 It was a pity tho' they were so tipsy." 
 
 " Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsee." — Ovidius Naso. 
 
 30 " Anon, they are pursued by the Holy Brethren ; " 
 The Spanish Rural Police ; vide Don Quixote, passim. 
 
 31 « i p or w hen in life only a beginner,' " 
 " A lad of sixteen causing a divorce, 
 Puzzled his tutors very much of course." — Don Juan, Can. 2. S. 2. 
 
 32 " ' Has been told as a memorial of her.' " 
 "A little still she strove, and much repented, 
 And whispering 'I will ne'er consent' — consented." 
 
 Don Juan, C. 1. S. 117. 
 
 33 " Of furs — such as line the cloaks of belted earls — " 
 " He had a bed of furs and a pelisse, 
 
 For Haidee stripp'd her sables off to make 
 His couch " — Don Juan, C. 2. S. 133. 
 
 34 <( Fried eggs, which as a relish were excellent." 
 " And thus like to an angel o'er the dying, 
 
 Who die in righteousness, she lean'd ; and there 
 All tranquilly, the shipwreck'd boy was lying, 
 
 As o'er him lay the calm and stirless air : 
 But Zoe the meantime some eggs was frying, etc." 
 
 Don Juan, C. 2. S. 144. 
 
 35 « Qf rapture — and as if man and wife we were," 
 " Haidee spoke not of scruples, ask'd no vows, 
 
 Nor offer'd any ; she had never heard 
 Of plight and promise to be a spouse, 
 
 Or perils by a loving maid incurr'd ; " — Don Juan, C. 2. S. 190. 
 
 36 " In caves and rocks, only thinking of the present — 
 God forgive me ! but it was extremely pleasant ! " 
 
 " The voiceless sands, and dropping caves, that lay 
 Around them, made them to each other press, 
 
NOTES. 107 
 
 As if there were no life beneath the sky 
 
 Save their's, and that their life could never die." — Don Juan, C.2. S. 188. 
 
 37 " Lo ! there stood an old man with a calm stern eye, 
 Watching us cold and dreadful, as we did lie ! " 
 
 " And starting she awoke, and what to view ? 
 Oh ! Powers of Heaven ! what dark eyes meets she there ? 
 "Tis — 'tis her father's — fix'd upon the pair ! " — Don Juan, C. 4. S. 35. 
 
 33 " Now there is something in dressing for a ball " 
 " It has a strange quick jar upon the ear, 
 
 That cocking of a pistol, when you know 
 A moment more will bring the sight to bear 
 
 Upon your person, etc." — Don Juan, C. 4. S. 41. 
 39 « a wolf, not to die in silence — " 
 " The camel labours with the heaviest load, 
 And the wolf dies in silence." — Childe Harold, C. 4. 
 
 40 " And anon appeared some twenty of his crew : — " 
 " He raised his whistle as the word he said, 
 
 And blew ****** 
 
 Some twenty of his train came, rank on rank, 
 He gave the word, ' Arrest or slay the Frank.' " — Don Juan, C. 4. S. 4/\ 
 
 41 " Struck well, and I lay bleeding at his feet." 
 
 " the foremost, who 
 
 Had fallen, with his right shoulder half cut through. 
 
 The second had his cheek laid open ; but 
 
 The third, a wary, cool old sworder, took 
 
 The blows upon his cutlass, and then put 
 
 His own well in ; so well, ere you could look 
 
 His man was fioor'd and helpless at his feet." — Don Juan, C. 4. S. 49. 
 
 42 " As her fat piquant form was enough to craze " 
 
 "While Dudu's form 
 
 Look'd more adapted to be put to bed, 
 
 Being somewhat large and languishing and lazy, 
 
 Yet of beauty that would drive you crazy." — Don Juan, C. 6. S 41. 
 
 43 u While my body look'd as yellow — thin and silly, 
 As if I had lately fed on naught but skilly." 
 
 A sort of Hell-broth with which those wretches in the Union-houses of 
 bondage, convicted of the abominable crime of poverty, are " according as 
 
108 NOTES. 
 
 the Act directs," drugged. Since writing this, I have seen an account in 
 the papers of the analysis of this villanous compound as used in a certain 
 " Union ; " and it is reported, a considerable presence of poisonous matter 
 was detected in its composition ! Verily, the disciples of the Malthusian 
 and Broughamite Academies are not unwise in their generation. — The 
 cheapest way to keep paupers is certainly under ground ! 
 
 Vide " Marcus's " pamphlet. 
 
 44 " Mimic, tumbler, turncoat, he was, and I should bet, 
 Some relation of that young Tory, old Burdett." 
 
 The subscribed excerpt, from a series of political and rather sauce 
 piquantish squibs, which a certain mad wag was very guilty of letting off 
 not long since, may perhaps, as caviare to the subject matter, (the "young 
 Tory " of the text,) be altogether not inadmissible here. 
 
 " Enter " Old Glory " on crutches, * with his coat, breeches, and waist- 
 coat turned inside out, leaning on the ghost of " little Castlereagh," who 
 places a chair and vanishes. 
 
 Owen Welsh — (running away) — the Devil on two sticks ! ! 
 
 Old Glory — Ah ! my old friend, how are you ? — expected to see you at 
 the hustings — great victory for us, Reformers ! — suppose you have seen 
 the speech I made in the House — What ; don't you know me ? 
 
 Owen Welsh — (with superb contempt) — Know you! — " a Rat ! — a Rat ! 
 — shut to the door ! " 
 
 Old Glory — Come, come ; surely you can't have forgotten your old 
 associate, Francis, who some years ago, advocated " Universal Suffrage," 
 (was'nt ? — ah, that was it's name) " Vote by Ballot," — Annual Parlia- 
 ments ; " and was sent to the tower, and all the rest of it ? 
 
 Owen Welsh — I did know such a man — and I once honoured him, and 
 was proud to call him my friend ; — but he has long since been dead — dead 
 in principle — in honesty — in honour — and would before he cast such foul 
 stigma on his early virtue, and his early friends, he had been dead in 
 body ! 
 
 Old Glory — Pooh! you take things too literally — I hav'nt changed my 
 principles, man ■ 
 
 * At the period of Sir Francis's " jist so," he either was, or pretended to be, 
 enamoured with the " horrida podagra," chilblains, or something of the kind. 
 
NOTES. 109 
 
 Owen Welsh (with cool sarcasm — Have you not ? — I thought your 
 addresses called you a Conservative ? 
 
 Old Glory— So they did. 
 
 Owen Welsh — And that young Castlereagh the nephew of the man, you 
 formerly so anathematised, was one of your premier supporters ? 
 
 Old Glory — So he was. 
 
 Owen Welsh— And that you once agitated for the " Ballot," — the 
 " Suffrage "—and " Triennial Parliaments ? " 
 
 Old Glory— So I did. 
 
 Owen Welsh — And yet, you still persist in the enigma, that you have 
 not changed your principles ? 
 
 Old Glory — No more I hav'nt — I only bartered them for the Reform 
 Bill, which was to be a final measure, you know. 
 
 Owen Welsh (with great dignity) — Sir Francis, such a clumsy device as 
 that duly wrapped up in bank-note paper, may, and perhaps did, satisfy and 
 deceive the voters of Westminster ; and your unprincipled tergiversation 
 to those, who in your early days, would have gone through fire and water 
 for you, may for a while, find favour in the eyes of the Faction you have 
 out of caprice, jealousy, or the refusal of some office, or title, thought 
 
 proper to go over to but not with me. No, I here candidly tell you, 
 
 that I consider your conduct unequalled for treachery — mean, cowardly 
 treachery — in ancient, or modern times ; and that of all our Islandic Turn- 
 coats, known individually, as, Southey, Sir James Graham, Stanley, 
 Charlton, etc. etc. ; you are the worst, the basest, and as such, when the 
 ambidexters of this age have been comparatively forgotten, the name of 
 Francis the Apostate, will be a household term of execration and re- 
 proach in men's mouths ! 
 
 Old Glory — Stuff! " no abuse, Hal : " Principle's all my eye, as I said 
 to Sinclair, when he cautioned me about the extreme audacity of my 
 attempt — But come ; give us your hand, and don't be led away by the Whig 
 papers. 
 
 Owen Welsh — I am not led away ; nor am I accustomed to be led ; but 
 you appear to rely on the unqualified laudation of the Tories ; but there 
 you are deceived. Most of the Tory press it is true, run riot in your 
 praises ; but there is one paper — a noble exception — which has the honesty, 
 the spirit to stem the filthy stream and register in an article of great power, 
 its abhorrence and disgust of your proceedings ; and that paper, (taking 
 one from the table) is one of the most uncompromising articles of your 
 former enemies and your present employers, whose tool you have proved 
 yourself ; I mean the " Carlton Chronicle : " hear its opinion — a Tory's 
 
110 NOTES. 
 
 opinion ; the acknowledged organ of Londonderry, Cumberland, and the 
 Carlton Club's opinion. There, what is that, but an announcement on the 
 part of the Conservatives, that though they love the treason, they despise 
 
 the traitor. "Dick, lege" (Here Parson Adams's son reads the 
 
 following extract .-) " 
 
 " He came to us from no repentance, from no conviction, from no light 
 bursting upon him, who skulked formerly behind the laws — upon the 
 ancient Revolutionist as he stood upon the confines of eternity. No ; it 
 was vanity — the meanest vanity, drove him to us. If he had been an 
 honest politician he would have declared his opinions in Parliament ; he 
 would have raised his voice in the House against Mis-goverument ; he 
 would have manfully denounced Mr. O'Connell ; he would have done this 
 sometime within the last two years ; and not waited for his opportunity to 
 play a shabby trick upon the constituency in general and exhibit the worst 
 signal instance of impudence and ingratitude to old and disinterested, how- 
 ever mistaken supporters, to be found in the political history of England 
 
 or indeed of any other country." There J (Exit Owen Welsh, with a 
 
 look of mingled pity and contempt) " Old Glory " stands for a moment, as if 
 struck with conscious degradation, and then to conceal his shame, is me- 
 tamorphosed by the Genius of Conservatism, into " Viscount Pismire." 
 
 " Cambrian Nights." 
 
 45 " (How beautifully her men have always fought !) " 
 Barring the Spanish Legion ! 
 
 46 « With music, soft as the Scald's tuneful telyn " 
 Telyn the Welsh portable harp, in contra-distinction, to the Crwth or 
 large harp. 
 
 47 "To whom, I made desperate love in Anglo- Spanish. 
 " Lady Fitz-Frisky, and Miss Mcevia Mannish, 
 
 Both long'd extremely to be sung in Spanish." — Don Juan, C. 11. S. 53, 
 
 48 " To worship thee frail one ! both in deed and word." 
 
 " I am still as orthodox as the majority of our bench of Bishops ; and 
 when I first became a clergyman, was much more so than any of them — 
 much more so, to my own certain knowledge, may I say, than my diocesan 
 himself, who told me that Heaven and earth was all a fable; that the 
 romance of the crucified God was a version of the Upo/j.e0evs Aurirwr^s of 
 yEschylus ; that the articles of the Church of England were a nose of wax, 
 and that if he thought I had a better opinion of them, he would not ordain 
 
NOTES. Ill 
 
 me, because there were fools enough in the Church already." — The Rev. 
 Robert Taylor's Defence on his Trial. — (Well, a comfortable creed some 
 folks must have !) 
 
 " 49 And when the doll softens and you get her, 
 
 To find the sleek prize was not worth the trouble ! " 
 
 Possession, as the professors of proverbs .and nonverbs declare, in all 
 cases of messuages, lands and tenements, is " nine points." — This archaism, 
 though it may hold good in law, is certainly very untenable in love ; as 
 possession of the goods and chattels of the latter is uniformly that bleak 
 sensation — disappointment. — So all men, after their kind, from Squire 
 Adam, the first inhabitant of Paradise Row, downwards, have found. 
 Among the many, who have complained of Cupid, like Swift's Lord Peter, 
 
 " palming his d d crusts on us for mutton " — crede Byron, for the 
 
 subscribed " 
 
 " 'Tis an old lesson ; time approves it true, 
 
 And those who know it best, deplore it most ; 
 
 When all is won that all desire to woo, 
 
 The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost."— Chi Ide Harold. 
 
 50 " A pity Napoleon played the driv'ller ; 
 And lastly put on that pathetic cant, 
 Of Themistocles as a suppliant." 
 
 Buonaparte's letter to the prince regent. 
 Altesse Royal, 
 
 " En butte aux factions qui divisent mon pays et a 
 l'inimitie des plus grandes Puissances de 1' Europe,j'aiterminema carriere 
 politique, et je viens, comme Themistocles, m' asseoir sur les foyers du 
 Peuple Britannique. Je me mets sous la Protection de ses lois, que je 
 reclame de V. A. R., comme le plus puissant, le plus constant, et le plus 
 genereux de mes ennemis." 
 
 " Napoleon." 
 anglo translation. 
 Royal Highness, 
 
 "Exposed to the factions which distress my 
 country, and to the enmity of the greatest European powers, I have ter- 
 minated my political career, and come, like Themistocles, to seat myself at 
 the hearths of the British people ; I place myself under the direction of 
 their laws, and claim it at the hands of your Royal Highness, as the most 
 powerful, as the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies." 
 
 "Napoleon.' 
 
112 NOTES- 
 
 The "Examiner" of July 30, 1815, alluding to this pretty missive, 
 after some appropriate comments, proceeds to draw a parallelism between 
 the Grecian and the Corsican " best of cut-throats : " 
 
 " Themistocles was an Athenian of obscure origin, who did much for 
 his countrymen in war, and had some great points about him ; but he also 
 had some very petty ones ; and was inordinately ambitious and finally un- 
 successful. Had he lived, in short, in these times, he would very likely 
 have been just such another man as Buonaparte, have been equally great 
 in some things and little in others ; have won and lost ; have conquered, 
 and deceived ; and finished with a courageous bearing of adversity, and a 
 compliment to the Prince Regent." 
 
 51 " Its a pity, (and this I voice aloud,) 
 
 The descendants of bright Brinsley Sheridan, 
 A good stout crab, or horse-whip had not bought one, 
 And laid on the traducers of Mrs. Norton." 
 
 Cambrian Nights, No 11. 
 " 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 ! " Don Juan. 
 Noctes, caenseque de — hum. 
 A room in the Boar's Head, Carmarthen. The Scene draws up, and 
 discovers the Maids of Cambria adorning the portrait of the Hon. Mrs. 
 Norton with lilies, as emblematical of her innocence and unspotted virtue. 
 The table covered with her numerous works, viz : — " The Sorrows of 
 Rosalie;" "The Undying One; " "The Wife;" etc. etc., each laurelled 
 and embalmed for the perusal of Prince Posterity. Owen Welsh and 
 Wythen Tinto coquetting with iced French wines and the Magazines of 
 the month. 
 
 Wythen Tinto — Well ! the denouement of the mighty intrigue * which 
 enceinte with change, like Von Tromp's besom, was to have swept by the 
 severity of its morality, the present Ministry, (especially Lord Melbourne) 
 from their treasury sediles, has exploded in smoke, and deservedly recoiled 
 in infamy — tar-feathered infamy, on the sculls of its foetid hatchers — much 
 
 doubtless, to the sorrows of his chaste Grace of Cumberland, 
 
 " Blessed be ' two headed Janus ! ' though inclined, 
 No waggish stork can peck at him behind." 
 And the moral Lord Lyndhurst, whose virtue, like the camel-hair 
 brushes of his worthy father, Mr. Copley, the scissors'. cutting portrait 
 taker, is beyond reproach. 
 
 * This appeared at the time of trial. 
 
NOTES. 113 
 
 Owen Welsh — So may all ' non mi recordo 1 conspiracies against 
 innocence explode ; and may the miscreant instruments employed in their 
 concoction, (particularly those concerned in the present instance,) he 
 scouted from the company of all honourable men ; and may all the women 
 of the land, (as I am sure they will), avoid them as reptiles, with loathing 
 and disgust; for a more fiend-like — a more cowardly attack on the purity 
 and fame of female character, surely was never chronicled. Good God ! 
 to drag, for the sake of party ends, and the despicable lust of places and 
 sinecures, a beautiful, highly accomplished, and defenceless female — 
 illustrious by her genius ; and as a mother and wife, beyond all praise, 
 (vide her affectionate letters produced at the trial) into the forensic arena 
 of jeers and mockery — subjected to the hired falsehoods of agents, who 
 doubtless, as the papers say, were " supplied on liberal terms ! " — Oh ! 
 it was foul ! and damns the name of Conservative, with a disgrace, which 
 nothing, save the utter extinction of the party, as a faction, can wipe 
 out 
 
 Wythen Tinto — But were I the friends of Mrs. Norton, I would not 
 have it rest here — I would shew these human vermin — these Diaboli, 
 without 
 
 " a tear — without a thought, 
 
 Save joy above the ruin they have wrought," 
 
 that an amiable and inoffensive woman — in a word, I would but there 
 
 ■> 
 
 let the actors in this late wicked complot, beware ! (for they are known) 
 how they publish themselves in public — the race of old English castigators 
 are not extinct ! 
 
 Owen Welsh — Leave them alone, Wythen, leave them alone ; and 
 they will have their reward sooner or later. See, what fatal retribution 
 awaited those who had a hand in the affair of the late poor Queen : the 
 corpse of the Countess of Jersey, and her calumniated mistress, met on 
 the road j " little Castlereagh " cut his throat; and George the Fourth, 
 her husband, dragged out a life of weary contempt and obesity — hateful 
 to himself, and disgusting to all others ; except, indeed the Peelites, by 
 whom, of course, he is prized to this very hour, as " the most comparative, 
 rascalliest — sweet young Prince." 
 
 Wythen Tinto — But to return to Mrs. Norton. To her I would most 
 respectfully say : " Be of good cheer ! well assured, that your sorrows, 
 like those of your own " Rosalie," are deeply commiserated through the 
 cities, towns, and villages of three kingdoms ; and the authors — the 
 despicable authors of those sorrows, justly and indignantly abhorred by 
 all the virtuous of your fair countrywomen. Yes, they adore your genius ; 
 
114 NOTES. 
 
 your exquisite snatches of feeling and pathos are ever on their tongues ; 
 your extreme beauty is the constant theme of their encomia ; your virtue 
 and domestic purity, their constant model ; and they consider the late 
 wicked attack on your character and fame, as a poisoned shaft, levelled at 
 the modesty and reputation of the whole sex : as wives, mothers., and 
 Englishwomen ! * 
 
 62 " Authors of England ! why are ye so slow ? " 
 
 " Poets and Poetesses, Novelists and Authors, leave off, for a while, 
 inditing your love sonnets, and metrical extravaganzas, for the pages of 
 " some trifle, some eight-penny matter " — suspend for a time, your 
 " fictiunculse," descriptive of the unheard of feats of some fashionable or 
 unfashionable ruffian " about Turnbull Street ; " and your mimic histories 
 in three volumes, "de casibus virorum illustrium," in which, by the con- 
 genial assistance of Messrs. Colburn and Bentley, many of you manage to 
 " misuse the ' Queen's press," most sadly — relinquish, I say, the portrait- 
 ure of imaginary wrongs and fictitious sufferings, and turn your attentions 
 and hearts to the present real and piteous ones of the poor ! 
 
 "Poets and Poetesses of England ! to you I particularly address myself; 
 for to expose tyranny and oppression, and commiserate the helpless and 
 suffering, has immemorially been your special province. Arise! then, 
 authoress of the " Golden Violet," and the " Improvisatrice " — gifted 
 
 L. E. L. — our isle's Sappho " 
 
 " the girl who gave to song, 
 what gold could never buy ! " 
 and prepare to warble to the melancholy breathings of your own soft 
 corded shell, the plaintive miseries of the poor. The Norton too, that 
 "brilliance feminine" — she of the pathos intense and deep, — pensive 
 Stuart Wortley ; not forgetting those more serious sisters of the lyre, 
 Caroline Bowles and Mary Howitt : be it yours, to portray the pauper's 
 sad history ; his persecuted life and death of agony ! 
 
 " And now for the " Grande Napoleons " of the " realms of rhyme ! " 
 Be ready Campbell, with your harp of liberty and fire, and scorch with 
 flames melodious, the fiend-like crew, who live and fatten on human 
 flesh — the vile Commissionocracy and their subaltern miscreancy ! And 
 you " Blackwood," or rather Wilson, the "rantin' dog the daddie o't" — 
 adjust your cutting shafts of castigation, and poetic bolts of indignation, 
 
 * The indignatory abhorrence expressed throughout the above article, will, 
 (with the necessary change of Whigs for Conservatives,) equally apply to the 
 despicable wretches who lately concerned themselves in the abomination of 
 scandalizing Lady Flora Hastings. 
 
NOTES. 115 
 
 and with soul and quill, war for the cause of suffering humanity and insulted 
 
 justice ; and lay, with your powerful eloquence, the " lickspittle " autocracy 
 
 low! 
 
 " Where's calm Wordsworth and Montgomery ? 
 
 And classic Southey, where is he ? 
 
 Where chaste Rogers, the kind and free ? 
 
 And " Fraser," flower of irony ! " 
 " Spin them (the Broughamites) like cock-chaffers on the point of your ex- 
 quisite sarcasm ! And lastly, Ebenezer Elliott — you will surely not be slack 
 — you, whom, as one of the people, it touches so nearly — you, who of old, 
 were so fond to season your " Corn Law " poems with a love of liberty and 
 stern justice — you know the people are on the abyss of universal degra- 
 dation and ruthless extermination. — You, at least, I hope, will not be 
 silent ! 
 
 Once more, and yet once more, I invoke each and all ; do not then slight 
 my provocation ; for in no cause could you touch your harps more 
 sweetly — more nobly — than in the cause of the helpless and oppressed ! " 
 
 (Baxter's " Poor Law Papers" in the " Metropolitan 
 Conservative Journal." 
 
 33 " Its a pity you let that guzzling Melbourne 
 Come shadowing so often between whiles, 
 And your royal dinner-table take by storm." 
 
 Ha! ha! ha! 
 
 He often requests me his pain to relieve ; 
 
 I ask him what favour he hopes to receive : 
 
 His answer 's a sigh, while in blushes I glow : 
 
 What mortal beside him would plague a maid so ? 
 
 Poor Melly ! Yet, as that " pestilent rogue," Junius, would say, if he 
 
 were still in the land of the quick : — before he had the misfortune of being 
 
 Premier of a Whig Ministry, he was neither an object of derision to his 
 
 enemies, nor of melancholy pity to his friends. 
 
 54 " Than a brood hen, or the Baxter's blind rear-mouse." 
 The coat of arms of the Baxter family is three bats, or rear-mice. 
 
 55 u yj z . f^ convenient, curly Palmerston ! " 
 This diplomatic, beauish curiosity, tho' now verging on the desperation 
 of d'un certain age, still entertains his early propensity for peace ; and yet 
 divides the onerous duties of his secretariat, between arranging the curls 
 of his tete, and applying thereunto, the eaus, essences, and extraits of 
 Messrs. Price and Gosnell, Rowland, Delcroix, etc. etc. 
 
116 NOTES. 
 
 55 " Hail M'Ghee and too the Revd. O'Sullivan ! 
 Titus Oateses ye o' the nineteenth century ! " 
 
 Cambrian Nights, No. 22. 
 
 The " Noctes " dissecting-room in the Boar's Head, Carmarthen : The 
 
 skeletons of Mr. Secretary ■ , " The Editor of ," " Roar'em- 
 
 down-derry " — " Lord Fitzscissors " — " the little Gentleman in black," etc. 
 etc., arranged on wires and labelled round the walls. A new subject on 
 the table. Owen Welsh and Wythen Tinto (with iron masks on to avoid 
 infection) discovered carving the "cold meat" before them, with their 
 sharp anatomical knives. 
 
 Owen Welsh — Pah ! how rank he smells ! — cut- me into his breast 
 bone, Wythen ; see what a nasty " noli me tangere "cancer he has about 
 his heart, and how full it is of "non mi recordi" matter and tincture of 
 "green bag." 
 
 Wythen Tinto — Ay, and how Orange the liver is ! 
 
 Owen Welsh — And look at his head, and behold how largely the organs 
 of Philotithe — massacreness and Catholic combativeness are developed ! 
 
 Wythen Tinto — Ecce! too, this bump-qf-would-wear-if-I-could-lawn 
 sleeves ! 
 
 Owen Welsh — (scooping out his scull) — But with all that, you can see 
 by this half salt-spoon of brains, he is a " very shallow monster," not- 
 withstanding he brays so loud ! 
 
 Wythen Tinto — Ay, " shallow " enough ; but hang me if I did not know 
 the fellow to be a most arrant ass, as the lion says in the adage, I should 
 be frightened myself with his Exeter Hall brayings : as it is, there are 
 moments, when seeing notices of so many " Protestant Associations," and 
 lamentable and outrageous maledictions against the poor Catholics, I fancy 
 the times of Charles the 2nd and Dr. Titus Oates, have slipped their 
 cable, and bore down from the waters of the past, to us again ! 
 
 Owen Welsh— 'Tis to make that party prevalent over England, is the 
 aim of this " simius iste," whom the Tories have set up (risum teneatis 
 amid '.) as a counter O'Connell! 
 
 Wythen Tinto — (with the most ineffable contempt) — He a counter 
 O'Connell ! Is it possible, that there exist any so " slight," whether 
 Tories, or Tyrians, who could believe that the high, generous, and noble- 
 minded Advocate * of a high, generous, and noble-minded People, would 
 
 * Since this originally appeared, O'Connell, as an unprincipled deceiver, has 
 forfeited all right to the fine things said of him in the text ; and is now as con- 
 temptible as the animal lashed above. 
 
NOTES. 117 
 
 condescend to put himself into competition, and befoul his well-earned 
 laurels in an encounter with such a clerical Merry Andrew, as this would- 
 be-Titus-Oates has shewn himself? No, no, O'Connell good or bad, is a 
 first-rate character, (even his enemies cannot with justice deny that !) and 
 he will take his seat along with Napoleon, Byron and Scott, in fame's 
 " gold clouds metropolitan," as one of the " worthies " of the nineteenth 
 century ; and his name, dear to liberty, but dearest to the children of Erin, 
 will hundreds of years hence, be a " household word " in men's mouths, 
 when this pitiful Ranter's designation, will not even be known, except, it 
 should be rescued from the clutches of " Alderman Oblivion " by mention 
 in this paper : therefore I won't speak it 
 
 Owen Welsh — Apropos of the " Arcadian : " I cannot help thinking of his 
 amazing effrontery, (not to say blasphemy,) in declaring, that he is inspired 
 by God, to set Protestants and Catholics to fly at one another s throats ! 
 He must entertain a very mean opinion of the understandings of his 
 audience to broach such a Munchausen as that. Ay, what cowards and 
 suffering slaves he must esteem them, when the other day at a " solemn 
 league and covenant " meeting, he said : " Let the Government admit the 
 Roman Catholic Bishops into the House of Lords, and they would establish 
 
 the Holy Inquisition in the Empire " Would they, indeed ! and where 
 
 would the English people be the while ? not in their sJcins, I should pre- 
 sume. But there, give yourself no trouble about the planting of Inquisi- 
 tions in this country, whether Roman, or Exeter Hall ones ; for well be 
 assured, Dr. Titus, the people of England are too sensible to be priest- 
 ridden, whether the jockey be yourself, Master Titus aforesaid, or a Roman 
 Catholic Primate. 
 
 Wythen Tinto — Why I should think so: particularly, as the age of 
 priest-craft like chivalry-craft is pretty nigh over ; and it would require a 
 better head than is on Master Titus's shoulders, to undertake the process 
 of its revivification — at least, without endangering the relations of 'amity 
 which exist between that hat-stretcher and the shoulder-blades already 
 enumerated. It is true, little country Gentlemen, small vicars, amd "milk 
 Deans," may be glad to attend his roaring displays against the Pope and 
 Petrus Dens, that they may play the second fiddle-ships of " Chairmen," 
 " Honorary Secretaries," etc. etc. ; but it will be a long time before he will 
 get (like his prototype in Charles the Second's time) the people to slaughter 
 and cry " horum " over their unoffending Catholic brethren ! 
 
 Owen Welsh — I should hope so. In the meanwhile, I would in the 
 words of Byron, say to him : (" Master Titus ") " read your bible, Sir, 
 (particularly that part which treats of Christian charity) and mind your 
 
j 
 
 US NOTES. 
 
 purse ; " and give up tramping about the country, bellowing a " tallyho ! " 
 against a race of men, who, whatever their former faults might have been, 
 now conduct themselves with great moderation and propriety j and take to 
 some honester way of getting yo"" bread. Should you be inclined to take 
 this hint, believe me, it will retrieve your character ; on the other hand, 
 should you continue in your old courses — expect the jeers and contempt of 
 three kingdoms to ring in your ears for your pains ! — (They wire, label, 
 and place the skeleton with the others, and exeunt.) 
 
 57 " Lest the bloody " Gatholics " should eat them up." 
 Fact ! I once heard a Welsh worthy, who was the proprietor of a few 
 carrion hounds and an officer in a horse militia to boot, thus charitably, 
 grammatically and courageously, while perusing a new's-letter, deliver him- 
 self. 
 
 S3 « jf genius is a disease not an attribute — 
 
 Three cheers for happy dull ones ! Who would not be mute ? 
 
 Hippocrates, M. D. announces in his " Lancet," that " the whole man 
 from his birth-day is a disease(" t>\os %vQpwiros e/c yeve rrjs vS<r6s i<ri.") Now, 
 I am sure, totidem syllabis, Genius may be esteemed one ; ay, and of the 
 most contagious kind, as on an impartial average, it kills or "abominable, 
 inutterable, and worse," starves two-thir 1 ' r its unfortunate votaries. 
 How many melodious souls, known and unknown (thousands of the latter !) 
 its fatal miasma has prematurely laid low ! T ' r many song bards, who 
 did, or might have touched with ecstacy the corded shell, its pinching 
 poverty has ground to silence and despair ! 
 
 To be sure, to cleanse this point of champaign from off her short petti- 
 coats, Genius does sometimes after the manner of Pope's Lady, " who 
 paid a tradesman once to make him stare ! " exhibit symptoms of a desire 
 to pension and prosper a gifted spirit ; but even then, her selection for the 
 purpose, is generally one of the least tuneful and deserving of her sons — 
 as witness ! and ! ■ and D . 
 
 59 " Hereafter, you may play as you please, the ninny, 
 Or the fiddle marvels of Paganini." 
 
 Les Merveilles de Paganini — i. e. a new and experienced method to pick 
 the pockets of such dowager nations as Great Britain. 
 
 co <i < jj e y s ii ver j there it goes ! ' alas ! in vain the sigh ! " 
 .Ariel -" Hey Silver ! there it goes, Silver ! " — Tempest. 
 
 Willoughby and Co., Printers, 109, Goswell Street, London.