Gulbeyaz showed them both commiseration,

Or got rid of the parties altogether, Like other angry ladies of her nation,

Are things the turning of a hair or feather May settle; but far be 't from me to anticipate In what way feminine caprice may dissipate.

CXX.

I leave them for the present with good wishes, Though doubts of their well doing, to arrange Another part of History; for the dishes

Of this our banquet we must sometimes change; And trusting Juan may escape the fishes,

(Although his situation now seems strange, And scarce secure),—as such digressions are fair, The Muse will take a little touch at warfare.

End of Canto 6th 1822.

CANTO THE SEVENTH.'

I.

O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?
There's not a meteor in the polar sky

Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight.
Chill, and chained to cold earth, we lift on high
Our eyes in search of either lovely light;
A thousand and a thousand colours they
Assume, then leave us on our freezing way.

II.

And such as they are, such my present tale is,
A nondescript and ever-varying rhyme,

A versified Aurora Borealis,

Which flashes o'er a waste and icy clime.
When we know what all are, we must bewail us,
But ne'ertheless I hope it is no crime
To laugh at all things for I wish to know
What, after all, are all things-but a show?

III.

They accuse me— -Me-the present writer of

The present poem-of-Ï know not what—

1. [These [the seventh and eighth] Cantos contain a full detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business, your mercenary soldiery. With these things and these fellows it is necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself."-Letter to Moore, August 8, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 101.]

A tendency to under-rate and scoff

At human power and virtue, and all that; And this they say in language rather rough.

1

Good God! I wonder what they would be at! I say no more than hath been said in Dante's Verse, and by Solomon and by Cervantes;

IV.

By Swift, by Machiavel, by Rochefoucault,
By Fénélon, by Luther, and by Plato;"
By Tillotson, and Wesley, and Rousseau,

Who knew this life was not worth a potato.
"T is not their fault, nor mine, if this be so,-
For my part, I pretend not to be Cato,
Nor even Diogenes. We live and die,
But which is best, you know no more than I.

V.

Socrates said, our only knowledge was 2

"To know that nothing could be known;" a pleasant Science enough, which levels to an ass

Each man of wisdom, future, past, or present.

Newton (that proverb of the mind), alas!

Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent, That he himself felt only "like a youth

Picking up shells by the great ocean-Truth." i 3

VI.

Ecclesiastes said, "that all is vanity "

Most modern preachers say the same, or show it

i. Of Fenelon, of Calvin and of Christ.—[MS. erased.]
ii. Picking a pebble on the shore of Truth.-[MS. erased.]

I. [Byron attributes this phrase to Orator Henley (Letters, 1898, i. 227); and to Bayes in the Duke of Buckingham's play, The Rehearsal (Letters, 1901, v. 80).]

2. [Compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza vii. line 1, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 103, note 2.]

3. Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said, 'I don't know what I may seem to the world; but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'". Spence, Anecdotes (quoting Chevalier Ramsay), 1858, p. 40.]

By their examples of true Christianity :

In short, all know, or very soon may know it; And in this scene of all-confessed inanity,

By Saint, by Sage, by Preacher, and by Poet, Must I restrain me, through the fear of strife, From holding up the nothingness of Life?i

VII.

Dogs, or men !—for I flatter you1 in saying
That ye are dogs-your betters far-ye may
Read, or read not, what I am now essaying
To show ye what ye are in every way.
As little as the moon stops for the baying

Of wolves, will the bright Muse withdraw one ray From out her skies-then howl your idle wrath! While she still silvers o'er your gloomy path.

VIII.

"Fierce loves and faithless wars"-I am not sure If this be the right reading 't is no matter; The fact 's about the same, I am secure ;

I sing them both, and am about to batter A town which did a famous siege endure,

And was beleaguered both by land and water By Souvaroff, or Anglicè Suwarrow,

Who loved blood as an alderman loves marrow.

IX.

The fortress is called Ismail, and is placed
Upon the Danube's left branch and left bank,3
With buildings in the Oriental taste,

But still a fortress of the foremost rank,

Or was at least, unless 't is since defaced,

Which with your conquerors is a common prank :

i. From fools who dread to know the truth of Life.-[MS. erased.] 1. [Compare "Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog," lines 7, sq., Poetical Works, 1898, i. 280.]

2. [Aleksandr Vasilievitch Suvóroff (1729-1800) opened his attack on Ismail, November 30, 1790. His forces, including Kossacks, exceeded 27,coo men.-Essai sur l Histoire Ancienne et Moderne de la Nouvelle Russie, par le Marquis Gabriel de Castelnau, 1827, ii. 201.]

3. ["Ismaël est situé sur la rive gauche du bras gauche (i.c. the ilia) du Danube."—Ibid.]

It stands some eighty versts from the high sea,
And measures round of toises thousands three.1

X.

Within the extent of this fortification

A borough is comprised along the height
Upon the left, which from its loftier station
Commands the city, and upon its site
A Greek had raised around this elevation
A quantity of palisades upright,
So placed as to impede the fire of those
Who held the place, and to assist the foe's."

XI.

This circumstance may serve to give a notion
Of the high talents of this new Vauban :
But the town ditch below was deep as Ocean,
The rampart higher than you 'd wish to hang :
But then there was a great want of precaution
(Prithee, excuse this engineering slang),
Nor work advanced, nor covered way was there,3
To hint, at least, "Here is no thoroughfare."

XII.

But a stone bastion, with a narrow gorge,
And walls as thick as most skulls born as yet;
Two batteries, cap-à-pie, as our St. George,
Casemated one, and t'other "a barbette,"

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195

1. [—“à peu près à quatre-vingts verstes de la mer: elle a près de trois milles toises de tour."-Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, ii. 201.]

2. ["On a compris dans ces fortifications un faubourg moldave, situé à la gauche de la ville, sur une hauteur qui la domine: l'ouvrage a été terminé par un Grec. Pour donner une idée des talens de cet ingénieur, il suffira de dire qu'il fit placer les palissades perpendiculairement sur le parapet, de manière qu'elles favorisaient les assiégeans, et arrêtaient le feu des assiégés."-Ibid., p. 202.]

3. [Le rempart en terre est prodigieusement élevé à cause de l'immense profondeur du fossé; il est cependant absolument rasant : il n'y a ni ouvrage avancé, ni chemin couvert."-Ibid., p. 202.]

4. [Casemate is a work made under the rampart, like a cellar or cave, with loopholes to place guns in it, and is bomb proof.-Milit. Dict.]

5. (When the breastwork of a battery is only of such height that the guns may fire over it without being obliged to make embrasures, the guns are said to fire in barbet.-Ibid.]

VOL. VI.

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