CXXXIII.

Suwarrow now was conqueror-a match

For Timour or for Zinghis in his trade.

While mosques and streets, beneath his eyes, like thatch
Blazed, and the cannon's roar was scarce allayed,
With bloody hands he wrote his first despatch;
And here exactly follows what he said :—
"Glory to God and to the Empress !" (Powers
Eternal! such names mingled !) "Ismail 's ours." 1

CXXXIV.

Methinks these are the most tremendous-words,
Since "MENE, MENE, TEKEL," and "UPHARSIN,"
Which hands or pens have ever traced of swords.
Heaven help me! I'm but little of a parson:
What Daniel read was short-hand of the Lord's,
Severe, sublime; the prophet wrote no farce on
The fate of nations;-but this Russ so witty
Could rhyme, like Nero, o'er a burning city.

CXXXV.

He wrote this Polar melody, and set it,
Duly accompanied by shrieks and groans,
Which few will sing, I trust, but none forget it-
For I will teach, if possible, the stones

1. In the original Russian

"Slava bogu! slava vam!
Krépost vzata i ya tam;"

a kind of couplet; for he was a poet.

[J. H. Castéra (Vie de Catherine II., 1797, ii. 374) relates this incident in connection with the fall of Turtukey (or Tutrakaw) in Bulgaria, giving the words in French, "Gloire à Dieu! Louange à Catherine! Toutoukai est pris. Souwaroff y est entré.". W. Tooke (Life of Catherine II., 1800, iii. 278), Castéra's translator, gives the original Russian with an English version. But according to Spalding (Suvóroff, 1890, pp. 42, 43), the words, which were written on a scrap of paper, and addressed to Soltikoff, ran thus: "Your Excellency, we have conquered. Glory to God! Glory to you! Alexander Suvóroff." When Ismail was taken he wrote to Potemkin, "The Russian standard floats above the walls of Ismail," and to the Empress, "Proud Ismail lies at your Majesty's feet." The tenour of the poetical message on the fall of Tutrakaw recalls the triumphant piety of the Emperor William I. of Germany. See, too, for "mad Suwarrow's rhymes," Canto IX. stanza lx. lines 1-4.]

To rise against Earth's tyrants. Never let it
Be said that we still truckle unto thrones ;-
But ye-our children's children! think how we
Showed what things were before the World was free!
CXXXVI.

That hour is not for us, but 't is for you:

And as, in the great joy of your Millennium, You hardly will believe such things were true

As now occur, I thought that I would pen you 'em ; But may their very memory perish too!

Yet if perchance remembered, still disdain you 'em More than you scorn the savages of yore,

Who painted their bare limbs, but not with gore.

CXXXVII.

And when you hear historians talk of thrones,
And those that sate upon them, let it be
As we now gaze upon the mammoth's bones,
And wonder what old world such things could see,
Or hieroglyphics on Egyptian stones,

The pleasant riddles of futurity-
Guessing at what shall happily be hid,
As the real purpose of a pyramid.

CXXXVIII.

Reader! I have kept my word,—at least so far
As the first Canto promised. You have now
Had sketches of Love-Tempest-Travel-War,-
All very accurate, you must allow,

And Epic, if plain truth should prove no bar;
For I have drawn much less with a long bow
Than my forerunners. Carelessly I sing,
But Phoebus lends me now and then a string,

CXXXIX.

With which I still can harp, and carp, and fiddle.
What further hath befallen or may befall

The hero of this grand poetic riddle,

I by and by may tell you, if at all:

But now I choose to break off in the middle,

Worn out with battering Ismail's stubborn wall,

While Juan is sent off with the despatch,
For which all Petersburgh is on the watch.

CXL.

This special honour was conferred, because
He had behaved with courage and humanity-
Which last men like, when they have time to pause
From their ferocities produced by vanity.
His little captive gained him some applause
For saving her amidst the wild insanity
Of carnage, and I think he was more glad in her
Safety, than his new order of St. Vladimir.

CXLI.

The Moslem orphan went with her protector,
For she was homeless, houseless, helpless; all
Her friends, like the sad family of Hector,
Had perished in the field or by the wall:
Her very place of birth was but a spectre

Of what it had been; there the Muezzin's call To prayer was heard no more!—and Juan wept, And made a vow to shield her, which he kept.

CANTO THE NINTH.

OH, Wellington! (or "Villainton" 2-for Fame
Sounds the heroic syllables both ways;
France could not even conquer your great name,
But punned it down to this facetious phrase—
Beating or beaten she will laugh the same,)

You have obtained great pensions and much praise:
Glory like yours should any dare gainsay,
Humanity would rise, and thunder "Nay!" 3

II.

I don't think that you used Kinnaird quite well
In Marinèt's affair 4-in fact, 't was shabby,

i. Oh Wellington (or "Vilainton ") —.—[MS. B.]

1. [Stanzas i.-viii., which are headed "Don Juan, Canto III., July 10, 1819," are in the handwriting of (?) the Countess Guiccioli. Stanzas ix., x., which were written on the same sheet of paper, are in Byron's handwriting. The original MS. opens with stanza xi., "Death laughs," etc. (See letter to Moore, July 12, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 96.)]

2.

["Faut qu' lord Villain-ton ait tout pris;

N'y a plus d'argent dans c' gueux de Paris."

De Béranger, "Complainte d'une de ces Demoiselles a l'Occasion des Affaires du Temps (Février, 1816)," Chansons, 1821, ii. 17. Compare a retaliatory epigram which appeared in a contemporary newspaper

These French petit-maîtres who the spectacle throng,
Say of Wellington's dress qu'il fait vilain ton!
But, at Waterloo, Wellington made the French stare
When their army he dressed à la mode Angleterre !"]

3. Query, Ney?--Printer's Devil. [Michel Ney, Duke of Elchingen, "the bravest of the brave" (see Ode from the French, stanza i. Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 431), born January 10, 1769, was arrested August 5, and shot December 7, 1815.]

4. [The story of the attempted assassination (February 11, 1818) of

And like some other things won't do to tell

Upon your tomb in Westminster's old Abbey. Upon the rest 't is not worth while to dwell,

Such tales being for the tea-hours of some tabby;1

the Duke of Wellington, which is dismissed by Alison in a few words (Hist. of Europe (1815-1852), 1853, i. 577, 578), occupies many pages of the Supplementary Despatches (1865, xii. 271-546). Byron probably drew his own conclusions as to the Kinnaird-Marinet incident, from the Letter to the Duke of Wellington on the Arrest of M. Marinet, by Lord Kinnaird, 1818. The story, which is full of interest, may be briefly recounted. On January 30, 1818, Lord Kinnaird informed Sir George Murray (Chief of the Staff of the Army of Occupation) that a person, whose name he withheld, had revealed to him the existence of a plot to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. At 12.30 a.m., February 11, 1818, the Duke, on returning to his Hôtel, was fired at by an unknown person; and then, but not till then, he wrote to urge Lord Clancarty to advise the Prince Regent to take steps to persuade or force Kinnaird to disclose the name of his informant. A Mr. G. W. Chad, of the Consular Service, was empowered to proceed to Brussels, and to seek an interview with Kinnaird. He carried with him, among other documents, a letter from the Duke to Lord Clancarty, dated February 12, 1818. A postscript contained this intimation: "It may be proper to mention to you that the French Government are disposed to go every length in the way of negotiation with the person mentioned by Lord Kinnaird, or others, to discover the plot."

Kinnaird absolutely declined to give up the name of his informant, but, acting on the strength of the postscript, which had been read but not shown to him, started for Paris with "the great unknown." Some days after their arrival, and while Kinnaird was a guest of the Duke, the man was arrested, and discovered to be one Nicholle or Marinet, who had been appointed receveur under the restored government of Louis XVIII., but during the Cent jours had fled to Belgium, retaining the funds he had amassed during his term of office. Kinnaird regarded this action of the French Government as a breach of faith, and in a "Memorial" to the French Chamber of Peers, and his Letter, maintained that the Duke's postscript implied a promise of a safe conduct for Marinet to and from Paris to Brussels. The Duke, on the other hand, was equally positive (see his letter to Lord Liverpool, May 30, 1818) "that he never intended to have any negotiations with anybody." Kinnaird was a dog with a bad name." He had been accused (see his Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, 1816, p. 16) of "the promulgation of dangerous opinions," and of intimacy "with persons suspected." The Duke speaks of him as "the friend of Revolutionists"! It is evident that he held the dangerous doctrine that a promise to a rogue is a promise, and that the authorities took a different view of the ethics of the situation. It is clear, too, that the Duke's postscript was ambiguous, but that it did not warrant the assumption that if Marinet went to Paris he should be protected. The air was full of plots. The great Duke despised and was inclined to ignore the pistol or the dagger of the assassin; but he believed that "mischief was afoot," and that 'great personages" might or might not be responsible. He was beset by difficulties at every turn, and would have been more than mortal if he had put too favourable a construction on the scruples, or condoned the imprudence of a "friend of Revolutionists."]