CANTO THE TWELFTH. I. Of all the barbarous middle ages, that II. Too old for Youth,-too young, at thirty-five, 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 't were late to wive : And as for other love, the illusion 's o'er ; And Money, that most pure imagination, III. O Gold! Why call we misers miserable? 2 1. [See letter to Douglas Kinnaird, dated Genoa, January 18, 1823.] 2. Johnson would not believe that "a complete miser is a happy man. "That," he said, "is flying in the face of all the world, who have called an avaricious man a miser, because he is miserable. No, sir; a man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments."-Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1876, p. Theirs is the best bower anchor, the chain cable And scorn his temperate board, as none at all, Know not what visions spring from each cheese-paring. IV. Love or lust makes Man sick, and wine much sicker; Which makes bank credit like a bank of vapour. V. Who hold the balance of the World? Who reign (That make old Europe's journals "squeak and gibber ".2 all) Who keep the World, both old and new, in pain VI. Those, and the truly liberal Lafitte,1 Are the true Lords of Europe. Every loan Is not a merely speculative hit, But seats a Nation or upsets a Throne. Republics also get involved a bit; Columbia's stock hath holders not unknown 1. [The Descamisados, or Sansculottes of the Spanish Revolution of 1820-1823. For Spanish "Liberals," see Quarterly Review, April, 1823, vol. xxix. pp. 270-276.] 2. [Hamlet, act i. sc. 1, line 116.] 3. See The Age of Bronze, line 678, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, v. 573, note 3.] 4. Jacques Laffitte (1767-1844), as Governor of the Bank of France, advanced sums to Parisians to meet their enforced contributions to the allies, and, in 1817, advocated liberal measures as a Deputy.] On 'Change; and even thy silver soil, Peru, 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? Bécause, 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, Possessed, 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, Even with the very ore which makes them base; XI. But whether all, or each, or none of these What is his own? Go-look at each transaction, Wars, revels, loves-do these bring men more ease 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 (Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines, XIII. "Love rules the Camp, the Court, the Grove,-for Love Is Heaven, and Heaven is Love:"2-so sings the bard; Which it were rather difficult to prove (A thing with poetry in general hard). XIV. But if Love don't, Cash does, and Cash alone: i. Were not worth one whereon their profile shines.—[MS. erased.] 1. ["They say that Knowledge is Power' ;-I used to think so; but I now know that they meant Money ... every guinea is a philosopher's stone, or at least his touch-stone. You will doubt me the less, when I pronounce my pious belief-that Cash is Virtue."-Letter to Kinnaird, February 6, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 11.] 2. [Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto III, stanza ii. lines 4-6.] Without cash, camps were thin, and courts were none; Without cash, Malthus tells you-" take no brides." 1 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, 't is Matrimony. XV. Is not all Love prohibited whatever, Excepting Marriage? which is Love, no doubt, After a sort; but somehow people never With the same thought the two words have helped 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, XVI. Now if the "Court," and "Camp," and "Grove," be not Who never coveted their neighbour's lot, XVII. Well, if I don't succeed, I have succeeded, i. And that's enough; succeeded in my youth, - for his moral pen Held up to me by Jeffrey as example. Of which with profit-as you'll soon see by a sample.—[MS. erased.] 1. [See Godwin's Essay Of Population, 1820 (pp. 18, 19, et passim), in which he renews his attack on Malthus's Essay on the Principles of Population.] 2. ["We have no notion that Lord B[yron] had any mischievous intention in these publications-and readily acquit him of any wish to corrupt the morals, or impair the happiness of his readers... but it is our duty... to say, that much of what he has published appears to us to have this tendency. . . . How opposite to this is the system, or the temper, of the great author of Waverley!"-Edinburgh Review, February, 1822, vol. 36, p. 451.] |