CANTO THE THIRTEENTH.1 I. I NOW mean to be serious;-it is time, Since Laughter now-a-days is deemed too serious; A jest at Vice by Virtue 's called a crime, And critically held as deleterious: Besides, the sad 's a source of the sublime, Although, when long, a little apt to weary us; And therefore shall my lay soar high and solemn, As an old temple dwindled to a column. II. The Lady Adeline Amundeville ('T is an old Norman name, and to be found In pedigrees, by those who wander still Along the last fields of that Gothic ground) Was high-born, wealthy by her father's will, And beauteous, even where beauties most abound, In Britain-which, of course, true patriots find The goodliest soil of Body and of Mind. III. I'll not gainsay them; it is not my cue; I'll leave them to their taste, no doubt the best; An eye 's an eye, and whether black or blue, 'T is nonsense to dispute about a hue- 1. Fy. 12th 1823. VOL. VI. 2 I The fair sex should be always fair; and no man, IV. And after that serene and somewhat dull Epoch, that awkward corner turned for days More quiet, when our moon 's no more at full, We may presume to criticise or praise; Because Indifference begins to lull Our passions, and we walk in Wisdom's ways; Also because the figure and the face Hint, that 't is time to give the younger place. v. I know that some would fain postpone this era, Their post; but theirs is merely a chimera, For they have passed Life's equinoctial line : VI. And is there not Religion, and Reform, Peace, War, the taxes, and what's called the "Nation"? The struggle to be pilots in a storm ? 1 The landed and the monied speculation? The joys of mutual hate to keep them warm, VII. Rough Johnson, the great moralist, professed, Within these latest thousand years or later. 1. [The allusion is to the refrain of Canning's verses on Pitt, "The Pilot that weathered the storm." Compare, too, "The daring pilot in extremity" (.e. the Earl of Shaftesbury), who ". sought the storms" (Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, lines 159–161).] 2. [Johnson loved "dear, dear Bathurst," because he was "a very good hater."-See Boswell's Johnson, 1876, p. 78 (Croker's footnote).] Perhaps the fine old fellow spoke in jest :- VIII. But neither love nor hate in much excess; Though 't was not once so. If I sneer sometimes, It is because I cannot well do less, And now and then it also suits my rhymes. I should be very willing to redress Men's wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, Had not Cervantes, in that too true tale Of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail. Of all tales 't is the saddest-and more sad, X. Redressing injury, revenging wrong, To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff; Opposing singly the united strong, From foreign yoke to free the helpless native :Alas! must noblest views, like an old song, Be for mere Fancy's sport a theme creative, A jest, a riddle, Fame through thin and thick sought! And Socrates himself but Wisdom's Quixote? XI. Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away; i. By that great Epic —.-[MS.] 1. [So, too, Charles Kingsley, in Westward Ho! ii. 299, 300, calls Don Quixote the saddest of books in spite of all its wit."-Notes and Queries, Second Series, iii. 124.] Of his own country;-seldom since that day Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm, The World gave ground before her bright array; And therefore have his volumes done such harm, That all their glory, as a composition, Was dearly purchased by his land's perdition. XII. I'm "at my old lunes"1-digression, and forget Although she was not evil nor meant ill; (Fate is a good excuse for our own will), And caught them ;-what do they not catch, methinks? But I'm not Edipus, and Life's a Sphinx. XIII. I tell the tale as it is told, nor dare To venture a solution: "Davus sum !" 2 And now I will proceed upon the pair. Sweet Adeline, amidst the gay World's hum, Was the Queen-Bee, the glass of all that 's fair; Whose charms made all men speak, and women dumb. The last 's a miracle, and such was reckoned, XIV. Chaste was she, to Detraction's desperation, Proud of himself and her: the World could tell I. 2, ["Your husband is in his old lunes again." Merry Wives of Windsor, act iv. sc. 2, lines 16, 17.] ["Davus sum, non dipus." Terence, Andria, act i. sc. 2, line 23.] I. XV. It chanced some diplomatical relations, Into close contact. Though reserved, nor caught By specious seeming, Juan's youth, and patience, And talent, on his haughty spirit wrought, And formed a basis of esteem, which ends In making men what Courtesy calls friends. XVI. And thus Lord Henry, who was cautious as Which knows no ebb to its imperious flow, XVII. His friendships, therefore, and no less aversions, Though oft well founded, which confirmed but more His prepossessions, like the laws of Persians And Medes, would ne'er revoke what went before. His feelings had not those strange fits, like tertians, Of common likings, which make some deplore What they should laugh at-the mere ague still Of men's regard, the fever or the chill. XVIII. ""T is not in mortals to command success : "" 1 But do you more, Sempronius-don't deserve it, And take my word, you won't have any less. Be wary, watch the time, and always serve it; Give gently way, when there 's too great a press; And for your conscience, only learn to nerve it; For, like a racer, or a boxer training, 'T will make, if proved, vast efforts without paining. ["T is not in mortals to command success, Addison's Cato, act i. sc. 2, ed. 1777, ii. 77.] |