Was scarce enough; for he had fifty-nine
Years, and a fifteen-hundredth concubine.

IX.

I am not, like Cassio, "an arithmetician,"
But by "the bookish theoric "1 it appears,
If 't is summed up with feminine precision,
That, adding to the account his Highness' years,
The fair Sultana erred from inanition;

For, were the Sultan just to all his dears,
She could but claim the fifteen-hundredth part
Of what should be monopoly-the heart.

X.

It is observed that ladies are litigious

Upon all legal objects of possession,
And not the least so when they are religious,

Which doubles what they think of the transgression : With suits and prosecutions they besiege us,

As the tribunals show through many a session,
When they suspect that any one goes shares
In that to which the law makes them sole heirs.

XI.

Now, if this holds good in a Christian land,
The heathen also, though with lesser latitude,
Are apt to carry things with a high hand,

And take, what Kings call "an imposing attitude;"

And for their rights connubial make a stand,

When their liege husbands treat them with ingratitude; And as four wives must have quadruple claims,

The Tigris hath its jealousies like Thames.

XII.

Gulbeyaz was the fourth, and (as I said)

The favourite; but what 's favour amongst four? Polygamy may well be held in dread,

Not only as a sin, but as a bore:

i.

though with greater latitude.—[MS. A.]

1. [Othello, act i. sc. 1, lines 19-24.]

Most wise men with one moderate woman wed,i.
Will scarcely find philosophy for more;
And all (except Mahometans) forbear

To make the nuptial couch a "Bed of Ware."

XIII.

His Highness, the sublimest of mankind,— ii.
So styled according to the usual forms
Of every monarch, till they are consigned

To those sad hungry Jacobins the worms,
Who on the very loftiest kings have dined,—
His Highness gazed upon Gulbeyaz' charms,
Expecting all the welcome of a lover

1

(A "Highland welcome" all the wide world over).

XIV.

Now here we should distinguish; for howe'er
Kisses, sweet words, embraces, and all that,
May look like what it is-neither here nor there,
They are put on as easily as a hat,
Or rather bonnet, which the fair sex wear,

Trimmed either heads or hearts to decorate,
Which form an ornament, but no more part
Of heads, than their caresses of the heart.

XV.

A slight blush, a soft tremor, a calm kind
Of gentle feminine delight, and shown
More in the eyelids than the eyes, resigned
Rather to hide what pleases most unknown,

i.

with one foolish woman wed.-[MS. B.]

ii. His Highness the sublimest of mankind,
The greatest, wisest, bravest, [and the] best,
Proved by his edicts somewhat blind,

Who saw his virtues as they saw the rest-
His Highness quite connubially inclined

Had deigned that night to be Gulbeyaz' guest.—[MS. A.]

iii. May look like what I need not mention here.—[MS. A.]

iii.

1. [The famous bed, measuring twelve feet square, to which an allusion is made by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, act iii. sc. 2, line 44, was formerly preserved at the Saracen's Head at Ware, in Hertfordshire. The bed was removed from Ware to the Rye House in 1869.] 2. See Waverley [chap. xx.].

i.

Are the best tokens (to a modest mind)

Of Love, when seated on his loveliest throne,
A sincere woman's breast,-for over-warm
Or over-cold annihilates the charm.

XVI.

For over-warmth, if false, is worse than truth;
If true, 't is no great lease of its own fire;
For no one, save in very early youth,

Would like (I think) to trust all to desire,
Which is but a precarious bond, in sooth,

And apt to be transferred to the first buyer At a sad discount: while your over chilly Women, on t' other hand, seem somewhat silly.

XVII.

That is, we cannot pardon their bad taste,
For so it seems to lovers swift or slow,
Who fain would have a mutual flame confessed,
And see a sentimental passion glow,
Even were St. Francis' paramour their guest,
In his monastic concubine of snow ;-1
In short, the maxim for the amorous tribe is
Horatian, "Medio tu tutissimus ibis." 2

XVIII.

The "tu" 's too much,-but let it stand,—the verse Requires it, that 's to say, the English rhyme,

And not the pink of old hexameters ;

But, after all, there 's neither tune nor time

In the last line, which cannot well be worse,"

And was thrust in to close the octave's chime:

I own no prosody can ever rate it

As a rule, but Truth may, if you translate it.

i. Are better signs if such things can be signed.-[MS. A.]

ii. In the damned line ('t is worth, at least, a curse)

Which I have examined too close.-[MS. erased.]

1. [For St. Francis of Assisi, and the "seven great balls of snow," of which "the greatest" was "his wife," see The Golden Legend, 1900, v. 221, vide ante, p. 32, note 1.]

2. [The words medio, etc., are to be found in Ovid., Metam., lib. ii. line 137; the doctrine, Virtus est medium vitiorum, in Horace, Epist., lib. 1, ep. xviii. line 9.]

VOL. VI.

T

XIX.

If fair Gulbeyaz overdid her part,

i.

I know not-it succeeded, and success
Is much in most things, not less in the heart
Than other articles of female dress.
Self-love in Man, too, beats all female art; i
They lie, we lie, all lie, but love no less :
And no one virtue yet, except starvation,
Could stop that worst of vices-propagation. /

XX.

We leave this royal couple to repose:

A bed is not a throne, and they may sleep,
Whate'er their dreams be, if of joys or woes:
Yet disappointed joys are woes as deep
As any man's clay mixture undergoes.

Our least of sorrows are such as we weep;
'T is the vile daily drop on drop which wears
The soul out (like the stone) with petty cares.'

XXI.

A scolding wife, a sullen son, a bill

To pay, unpaid, protested, or discounted At a per-centage; a child cross, dog ill,

A favourite horse fallen lame just as he 's mounted,

A bad old woman making a worse will,1

Which leaves you minus of the cash you counted

As certain ;-these are paltry things, and yet

I've rarely seen the man they did not fret.

XXII.

I'm a philosopher; confound them all!

iv.

iii.

Bills, beasts, and men, and—no! not womankind!"

i. Self-love that whetstone of Don Cupid's art.—[MS. A.}

ii. with love despairs.—[MS. A. erased.]

iii. Which diddles you -.

-MS. A. erased.]

iv. I'm a philosopher; G-d damn them all.—[MS. B.}

v. Bills, women, wives, dogs, horses and mankind.-[MS. B. erased.]

1. [Lady Noel's will was proved February 22, 1812. She left to the trustees a portrait of Byron with directions that it was not to be shown to his daughter Áda till she attained the age of twenty-one; but that if her mother was still living, it was not to be so delivered without Lady Byron's consent.-Letters, 1901, vi. 42, note 1.]

With one good hearty curse I vent my gall,
And then my Stoicism leaves nought behind
Which it can either pain or evil call,

And I can give my whole soul up to mind; Though what is soul, or mind, their birth or growth, Is more than I know-the deuce take them both!i

XXIII.

So now all things are damned one feels at ease,
As after reading Athanasius' curse,

Which doth your true believer so much please:
I doubt if any now could make it worse
O'er his worst enemy when at his knees,

"T is so sententious, positive, and terse,
And decorates the Book of Common Prayer,
As doth a rainbow the just clearing air.

XXIV.

Gulbeyaz and her lord were sleeping, or

ii.

At least one of them !-Oh, the heavy night,
When wicked wives, who love some bachelor,"
Lie down in dudgeon to sigh for the light
Of the grey morning, and look vainly for
Its twinkle through the lattice dusky quite—
To toss, to tumble, doze, revive, and quake
Lest their too lawful bed-fellow should wake!

XXV.

iii.

These are beneath the canopy of heaven,
Also beneath the canopy of beds
Four-posted and silk-curtained, which are given
For rich men and their brides to lay their heads
Upon, in sheets white as what bards call "driven
Snow," Well! 't is all hap-hazard when one weds.

1

i. Is more than I know, and, so, damn them both.-[MS. A. erased.] ii. When we lie down-wife, spouse, or bachelor

By what we love not, to sigh for the light.-MS. A. erased.] iii. By their infernal bedfellow- --[MS. A. erased.]

1. [The comparison of Queen Caroline to snow may be traced to an article in the Times of August 23, 1820: " The Queen may now, we believe, be considered as triumphing! For the first three years at least of her Majesty's painful peregrinations, she stands before her husband's admiring subjects as white as unsunned snows.'" Political bards and