THE details of the siege of Ismail, in two of the following cantos (i. e. the seventh and eighth), were taken from the French work entitled Histoire de la Nouvelle Russie. Some of the incidents attributed to Don Juan really occurred, particularly the circumstance of his saving the infant, which was the actual case of the late Duc de Richelieu, then a young volunteer in the Russian service, and afterwards the founder and benefactor of Odessa, where his name and memory can never cease to be regarded with reverence.

In the course of these cantos, a stanza or two will be found relative to the late Marquis of Londonderry, but written some time before his decease. Had that person's oligarchy died with him, they would have been suppressed: as it is, I am aware of nothing in the manner of his death or of his life to prevent the free expression of the opinions of all whom his whole existence was consumed in endeavouring to enslave. That he was an amiable man in private life, may or may not be true; but with this the public have nothing to do: and as to lamenting his death, it will be time enough when Ireland has ceased to mourn for his birth. As a minister, I, for one of millions, looked upon him as one of the most despotic in intention, and the weakest in intellect, that ever tyrannized over a country. It is the first time indeed, since the Normans, that England has been insulted by a minister (at least) who could not speak English, and that Parliament permitted itself to be dictated to in the language of Mrs Malaprop.

Of the manner of his death little need be said, except that, if a poor Radical, such as Waddington or Watson, had cut his throat, he would have been buried in a cross-road, with the usual appurtenances of the stake and mallet. But the minister was an elegant lunatic-a sentimental suicide; he merely cut the carotid artery' (blessings on their learning !), and lo! the pageant, and the Abbey, and the syllables of dolour yelled forth by the newspapers, and the harangue of the coroner in an eulogy over the bleeding body of the deceased (an Antony worthy of such a Cæsar), and the nauseous and atrocious cant of a degraded crew of conspirators against all that is sincere and honourable. In his death he was necessarily one of two things by the law-a felon or a madman-and in either case no great subject for panegyric. 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 Sejani 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 dépravées, 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, &c., are the changes 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 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 do-they 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 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 double-dealing and false-speaking time of selfish spoilers, and-but enough for the present.

PISA, July, 1822.

• 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.

Which, taken at the flood, leads-God knows Though such as she's a devil (if there be onel, where:

⚫ See Shakspeare's Julius Caesar, act iv scene 3.

Yet she would make full many a Manichean.

• A visionary born at Görlitz in Upper Lusatia in 1575 Be founded a sect called Behmenites.

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 Antony be well remember'd yet,

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

V.

He died at fifty, for a queen of forty;

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 Of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I Gave what I had-a heart; as the world went, I [never Gave what was worth a world; for worlds could Restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever.

VI.

'Twas the boy's 'mite,' and, like the 'widow's,' may

Perhaps be weigh'd 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.

If 'tis summ'd up with feminine precision,
That, adding to the account his Highness'
The fair Sultana err'd from inanition; [years,

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 women are litigious
Upon all legal objects of possession,
And not the least so when they are religious,
Which doubles what they think of the trans-
gression;

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,
Are apt to carry things with a high hand,
The heathen also, though with less latitude,

And take what kings call 'an imposing atti-
tude;'

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:
Most wise men, with one moderate woman wed,
Will scarcely find philosophy for more;

We left our hero and third heroine in [mon;
A kind of state more awkward than uncom-And all (except Mahometans) forbear
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 Poman,
Heroic, stoic Cato, the sententious,*
Who lent his lady to his friend Hortensius.

To make the nuptial couch a Bed of Ware.'

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

XIII.

His Highness, the sublimest of mankind,-
So styled according to the usual forms
Of every monarch, till they are consign'd
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 [over).
(A Highland welcome all the wide world

XIV.

She thought that her lord's heart (even could Now, here we should distinguish; for howe'er

• Cato gave up his wife, Martia, to his friend Hortensius; A slight blush, a soft tremor, a calm kind

but, on the death of the latter, took her back again. This conduct was ridiculed by the Romans, who observed, that Martia entered the house of Hortensius very poor, but returned to the bed of Cato loaded with treasures.- PLUTARCH.

Of gentle feminine delight, and shown

See IVaverley.