Or all the barbarous middle ages, that
Which is most barbarous is the middle age
Of man: it is-I really scarce know what;
But, when we hover between fool and sage,
And don't know justly what we would be at-
A period something like a printed page,
Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair
Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were ;-

II.

Too old for youth,-too young, at thirty-five,

BIAN

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To herd with boys, or hoard with good threescore,

I wonder people should be left alive;

But, since they are, that epoch is a bore;

Love lingers still, although 'twere late to wive:
And as for other love, the illusion's o'er;

And money, that most pure imagination,

Gleams only through the dawn of its creation.

III.

O Gold! Why call we misers miserable?

Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall; Theirs is the best bower-anchor, the chain-cable

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Which holds fast other pleasures great and small.

And scorn his temperate board, as none at all,

Ye who but see the saving man at table,

And wonder how the wealthy can be sparing,

Know not what visions spring from each cheese-paring.

IV.

Love or lust makes man sick, and wine much sicker;
Ambition rends, and gaming gains a loss ;
But making money, slowly first, then quicker,
And adding still a little through each cross
(Which will come over things), beats love or liquor,
The gamester's counter, or the statesman's dross.
O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper,
Which makes bank credit like a bark of vapour.

V.

Who hold the balance of the world? Who reign
O'er congress, whether royalist or liberal?
Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain?

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[all.)

(That makes old Europe's journals squeak and gibber Who keep the world, both old and new, in pain

Or pleasure? Who make politics run glibber all?
The shade of Buonaparte's noble daring ?--
Jew Rothschild, and his fellow-Christian, Baring.

VI.

Those, and the truly liberal Lafitte,
Are the true lords of Europe.

Is not a merely speculative hit,

Every loan

But seats a nation, or upsets a throne.

Republics also get involv'd a bit;

Columbia's stock hath holders not unknown On 'Change; and even thy silver soil, Peru, Must get itself discounted by a Jew.

VII.

Why call the miser miserable? as
I said before; the frugal life is his
Which in a saint or cynic ever was

The theme of praise: a hermit would not miss
Canonization for the self-same cause;

And wherefore blame gaunt wealth's austerities ? Because, you'll say, nought calls for such a trial;Then there's more merit in his self-denial.

VIII.

He is your only poet ;-passion, pure,

And sparkling on from heap to heap displays,
Possess'd, the ore, of which mere hopes allure
Nations athwart the deep: the golden rays
Flash up in ingots from the mine obscure;
On him the diamond pours its brilliant blaze;
While the mild emerald's beam shades down the dies
Of other stones, to soothe the miser's eyes.

IX.

:

The lands on either side are his the ship
From Ceylon, Inde, or far Cathay, unloads
For him the fragrant produce of each trip:
Beneath his cars of Ceres groan the roads,
And the vine blushes like Aurora's lip;

His very cellars might be kings' abodes;
While he, despising every sensual call,
Commands-the intellectual lord of all.

X.

Perhaps he hath great projects in his mind,
To build a college, or to found a race,
A hospital, a church,-and leave behind

Some dome surmounted by his meagre face.
Perhaps he fain would liberate mankind,

Even with the very ore which makes them base;
Perhaps he would be wealthiest of his nation,
Or revel in the joys of calculation.

XI.

But whether all, or each, or none of these
May be the hoarder's principle of action,

The fool will call such mania a disease :

What is his own? Go-look at each transaction,

Wars, revels, loves-do these bring men more ease

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Than the mere plodding through each "vulgar fraction ?"

Or do they benefit mankind? Lean miser!

Let spendthrifts' heirs inquire of yours-who's wiser?

XII.

How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests
Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins

(Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests

Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines,

But) of fine unclipt gold, where dully rests

Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines, Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid, stamp:

Yes! ready money is Aladdin's lamp.

XIII.

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"Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,-for love 13 Is heaven, and heaven is love:"-so sings the bard; Which it were rather difficult to prove,

(A thing with poetry in general hard).
Perhaps there may be something in "the grove,"
At least it rhymes to "love:" but I'm prepar'd
To doubt (no less than landlords of their rental)
If "courts" and "camps" be quite so sentimental.

XIV.

But if Love don't, Cash does, and Cash alone:
Cash rules the grove, and fells it too besides;
Without cash, camps were thin, and courts were none;
Without cash, Malthus tells you-" take no brides."

So Cash rules Love the ruler, on his own

High ground, as virgin Cynthia sways the tides: And as for "Heaven being Love," why not say honey Is wax? Heaven is not Love, 'tis Matrimony.

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XV.

Is not all love prohibited whatever,

Excepting marriage? which is love, no doubt,

After a sort; but somehow people never

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With the same thought the two words have help'd out: Love may exist with marriage, and should ever;

And marriage also may exist without:

But love sans banns is both a sin and shame;

And ought to go by quite another name.

XVI.

Now if the court," " and camp," and "grove," be not
Recruited all with constant married men,

Who never coveted their neighbour's lot,
I say that line's a lapsus of the pen ;-
Strange too in my "buon camerado" Scott,
So celebrated for his morals, when
My Jeffrey held him up as an example
To me;-of which these morals are a sample.
XVII.

Well, if I don't succeed, I have succeeded,

And that's enough: succeeded in my youth,
The only time when much success is needed:
And my success produc'd what I, in sooth,
Car'd most about; it need not now be pleaded-
Whate'er it was, 'twas mine: I've paid, in truth,
Of late the penalty of each success;

But have not learn'd to wish it any less.

XVIII.

That suit in Chancery,-which some persons plead
In an appeal to the unborn, whom they,
In the faith of their procreative creed,

Baptize posterity, or future clay,-
To me seems but a dubious kind of reed
To lean on for support in any way;
Since odds are that posterity will know
No more of them, than they of her, I trow.

ΧΙΧ.

Why, I'm posterity-and so are you:

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And whom do we remember? Not a hundred.

Were every memory written down all true,

The tenth or twentieth name would be but blunder'd;

Even Plutarch's Lives have but pick'd out a few,

And 'gainst those few your annalists have thunder'd; And Mitford, in the nineteenth century,

Gives, with Greek truth, the good old Greek the lie.

XX.

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Good people all, of every degree,

Ye gentle readers and ungentle writers, In this twelfth Canto 'tis my wish to be

As serious as if I had for inditers

Malthus and Wilberforce :-the last set free
The negroes, and is worth a million fighters;
While Wellington has but enslav'd the Whites,
And Malthus does the thing 'gainst which he writes.

XXI.

I'm serious-so are all men upon paper:

And why should not form my speculation,
And hold up to the sun my little taper?

Mankind just now seem wrapt in meditation
On constitutions and steam-boats of vapour;
While sages write against all procreation,
Unless a man can calculate his means
Of feeding brats the moment his wife weans.

XXII.

That's noble! That's romantic! For my part,
I think that "Philo-genitiveness” is—
(Now here's a word quite after my own heart,
Though there's a shorter a good deal than this,
If that politeness set it not apart;

But I'm resolv'd to say nought that's amiss)-
I say, methinks that "Philo-genitiveness"
Might meet from men a little more forgiveness.

XXIII.

And now to business.-O my gentle Juan!
Thou art in London-in that pleasant place,
Where every kind of mischief's daily brewing,
Which can await warm youth in its wild race.
'Tis true that thy career is not a new one:

Thou art no novice in the headlong chase
Of early life; but this is a new land,
Which foreigners can never understand.

XXIV.

What with a small diversity of climate,
Of hot or cold, mercurial or sedate,

I could send forth my mandate, like a primate,
Upon the rest of Europe's social state;

But thou art the most difficult to rhyme at,
Great Britain, which the muse may penetrate.
All countries have their "Lions," but in thee
There is but one superb menagerie.

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