In his life he was-what all the world knows, and half of it will feel for years to come, unless his death prove a "moral lesson to the surviving Sejani1 of Europe. It may at least serve as some consolation to the nations, that their oppressors are not happy, and in some instances judge so justly of their own actions as to anticipate the sentence of mankind. Let us hear no more of this man; and let Ireland remove the ashes of her Grattan from the sanctuary of Westminster. Shall the patriot of humanity repose by the Werther of politics!!!

With regard to the objections which have been made on another score to the already published cantos of this poem, I shall content myself with two quotations from Voltaire :-"La pudeur s'est enfuite des cœurs, et s'est refugiée sur les lèvres." ... "Plus les mœurs sont dépravés, plus les expressions deviennent mesurées; on croit regagner en langage ce qu'on a perdu en vertu."

This is the real fact, as applicable to the degraded and hypocritical mass which leavens the present English generation, and is the only answer they deserve. The hackneyed and lavished title of Blasphemer-which, with Radical, Liberal, Jacobin, Reformer, etc., are the changes

his own life, I therefore view it as an axiom, and an abstract principle, that a man must necessarily be out of his mind at the moment of destroying himself." Byron, probably, read the report of the inquest in Cobbett's Weekly Register (August 17, 1822, vol. 43, PP. 389-425). The "eulogy" was in perfectly good taste, but there can be little doubt that if "Waddington or Watson" had cut their "carotid arteries," the verdict would have been different.]

1. From this number must be excepted Canning. Canning is a genius, almost a universal one, an orator, a wit, a poet, a statesman; and no man of talent can long pursue the path of his late predecessor, Lord C. If ever man saved his country, Canning can, but will he? I for one, hope so.

[The phrase, great moral lesson," was employed by the Duke of Wellington, à propos of the restoration of pictures and statues to their "rightful owners," in a despatch addressed to Castlereagh, under date, Paris, September 19, 1815 (The Dispatches, etc. (ed. by Colonel Gurwood), 1847, viii. 270). The words, "moral lesson," as applied to the French generally, are to be found in Scott's Field of Waterloo (conclusion, stanza vi. line 3), which was written about the same time as the despatch. Byron quotes them in his "Ode from the French," stanza iv. line 8 (see Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 434, note 1). There is a satirical allusion to the Duke's "assumption of the didactic" about teaching a great moral lesson in the Preface to the first number of he Liberal (1822, p. xi.).]

which the hirelings are daily ringing in the ears of those who will listen-should be welcome to all who recollect on whom it was originally bestowed. Socrates and Jesus Christ were put to death publicly as blasphemers, and so have been and may be many who dare to oppose the most notorious abuses of the name of God and the mind

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of man. But persecution is not refutation, nor even triumph: the "wretched infidel," as he is called, is probably happier in his prison than the proudest of his assailants. With his opinions I have nothing to dothey may be right or wrong-but he has suffered for them, and that very suffering for conscience' sake will make more proselytes to deism than the example of heterodox 1 Prelates to Christianity, suicide statesmen to oppression, or overpensioned homicides to the impious alliance which insults the world with the name of "Holy!" I have no wish to trample on the dishonoured or the dead; but it would be well if the adherents to the classes from whence those persons sprung should abate a little of the cant which is the crying sin of this doubledealing and false-speaking time of selfish spoilers, and -but enough for the present.

1. When Lord Sandwich said "he did not know the difference between orthodoxy and heterodoxy," Warburton, the bishop, replied, "Orthodoxy, my lord, is my doxy, and heterodoxy is another man's doxy." A prelate of the present day has discovered, it seems, a third kind of doxy, which has not greatly exalted in the eyes of the elect that which Bentham calls "Church-of-Englandism."

[For the 'prelate," see Letters, 1902, vi. 101, note 2.]

2. [For the Duke of Wellington and the Holy Alliance, see the Introduction to The Age of Bronze, Poetical Works, 1901, v. 538, 561.]

CANTO THE SIXTH.'

I.

"THERE is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood,"-you know the rest,2 And most of us have found it now and then :

At least we think so, though but few have guessed The moment, till too late to come again.

But no doubt everything is for the best

Of which the surest sign is in the end:

When things are at the worst they sometimes mend.

II.

There is a tide in the affairs of women,

Which, taken at the flood, leads-God knows where : Those navigators must be able seamen

Whose charts lay down its currents to a hair;

Not all the reveries of Jacob Behmen 3

With its strange whirls and eddies can compare:

1. [Two MSS. (A, B) are extant, A in Byron's handwriting, Ba transcription by Mrs. Shelley. The variants are marked respectively MS. A., MS. B.

Motto: "Thinkest thou that because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale? Aye! and ginger shall be hot in the mouth too."-Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Shakespeare, act ii. sc. 3, lines 109-112.-[MS. B.}

This motto, in an amended form, which was prefixed to the First Canto in 1833, appears on the title-page of the first edition of Cantos VI., VII., VIII., published by John Hunt in 1823.].

2. [See Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act iv. sc. 3, lines 216, 217.]

3. Jacob Behmen (or Boehm) stands for " mystic." Byron twice compares him with Wordsworth (see Letters, 1899, iii. 239, 1900, iv. 238).]

Men with their heads reflect on this and that

But women with their hearts on Heaven knows what!

III.

And yet a headlong, headstrong, downright She,
Young, beautiful, and daring—who would risk
A throne-the world-the universe-to be

Beloved in her own way-and rather whisk
The stars from out the sky, than not be free

ii.

As are the billows when the breeze is briskThough such a She's a devil (if there be one), Yet she would make full many a Manichean.

IV.

Thrones, worlds, et cetera, are so oft upset

By commonest ambition, that when Passion O'erthrows the same, we readily forget,

Or at the least forgive, the loving rash one. If Anthony be well remembered yet,

'T is not his conquests keep his name in fashion, But Actium, lost for Cleopatra's eyes, Outbalances all Cæsar's victories.iii.

v.

He died at fifty for a queen of forty;

iv.

I wish their years had been fifteen and twenty," For then wealth, kingdoms, worlds are but a sport-I Remember when, though I had no great plenty

i. Man with his head reflects (as Spurzheim tells),
But Woman with the heart-or something else.
or, Man's pensive part is (now and then) the head,
Woman's the heart or anything instead.-

ii. Like to a Comet's tail -.

[MS. A. Alternative reading.]
-[MS. A. erased.]

iii. O'erbalance all the Cæsar's victories.—MS. A.]
Outbalance all the Caesar's victories.—[MS. B.]

In the Shelley copy "o'erbalance" has been erased and "outbalance inserted in Byron's handwriting. The lines must have been intended to run thus

'Tis not his conquests keep his name in fashion
But Actium lost; for Cleopatra's eyes
Outbalance all the Cæsar's victories.

iv. I wish that they had been eighteen --[MS. A. erased.]

Of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I

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Gave what I had—a heart; as the world went, I Gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never Restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever.

VI.

'T was the boy's "mite," and, like the "widow's," may
Perhaps be weighed hereafter, if not now;
But whether such things do or do not weigh,
All who have loved, or love, will still allow
Life has nought like it. God is Love, they say,
And Love's a god, or was before the brow
Of Earth was wrinkled by the sins and tears
Of-but Chronology best knows the years.

VII.

We left our hero and third heroine in

A kind of state more awkward than uncommon,
For gentlemen must sometimes risk their skin
For that sad tempter, a forbidden woman :
Sultans too much abhor this sort of sin,

And don't agree at all with the wise Roman,
Heroic, stoic Cato, the sententious,
Who lent his lady to his friend Hortensius.2

VIII.

I know Gulbeyaz was extremely wrong;

I own it, I deplore it, I condemn it;

But I detest all fiction even in song,

And so must tell the truth, howe'er you blame it. Her reason being weak, her passions strong,

She thought that her Lord's heart (even could she claim it)

1. [To Mary Chaworth. Compare "Our union would have healed feuds... it would have joined lands broad and rich; it would have joined at least one heart."-Detached Thoughts, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 441.]

2. [Cato gave up his wife Martia to his friend Hortensius; but, on the death of the latter, took her back again. This conduct was censured by Cæsar, who observed that Cato had an eye to the main chance. "It was the wealth of Hortensius. He lent the young man his wife, that he might make her a rich widow."--Langhorne's Plutarch, 1838, pp. 539, 547.]