The plan at present 's simply in concoction.
I can't oblige you, reader, to read on;
That's your affair, not mine: a real spirit
Should neither court neglect, nor dread to bear it.

LXXXVIII.

And if my thunderbolt not always rattles,

Remember, reader! you have had before, The worst of tempests and the best of battles, That e'er were brewed from elements or gore, Besides the most sublime of-Heaven knows what else; An usurer could scarce expect much moreBut my best canto-save one on astronomyWill turn upon "Political Economy." 1

LXXXIX.

That is your present theme for popularity:
Now that the public hedge hath scarce a stake,

It grows an act of patriotic charity,

To show the people the best way to break.
My plan (but I, if but for singularity,

Reserve it) will be very sure to take.
Meantime, read all the National-Debt sinkers,
And tell me what you think of our great thinkers.

1. [The "Political Economy" Club was founded in April, 1821. James Mill, Thomas Tooke, and David Ricardo were among the original members, See Political Economy Club, Revised Report, 1876, p. 60.]

2. (Stanzas lxxxviii, and lxxxix. are not in the MS.]

1

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, Is no great matter, so 't is in request;

'T is nonsense to dispute about a hueThe kindest may be taken as a test.

1. Fy. 12th 1823.

VOL. VI.

2 I

The fair sex should be always fair; and no man,
Till thirty, should perceive there's a plain woman.

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,
Reluctant as all placemen to resign

Their post; but theirs is merely a chimera,

For they have passed Life's equinoctial line :
But then they have their claret and Madeira,
To irrigate the dryness of decline;
And County meetings, and the Parliament,
And debt-and what not, for their solace sent.

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,
Instead of Love, that mere hallucination?
Now Hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

VII.

Rough Johnson, the great moralist, professed,
Right honestly, "he liked an honest hater!" 2—
The only truth that yet has been confessed
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 :-
For my part, I am but a mere spectator,
And gaze where'er the palace or the hovel is,
Much in the mode of Goethe's Mephistopheles ;

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.

IX.1

Of all tales 't is the saddest-and more sad,
Because it makes us smile: his hero 's right,
And still pursues the right;-to curb the bad
His only object, and 'gainst odds to fight
His guerdon: 't is his virtue makes him mad!
But his adventures form a sorry sight ;-
A sorrier still is the great moral taught
By that real Epic unto all who have thought."

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;
A single laugh demolished the right arm

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
The Lady Adeline Amundeville;

The fair most fatal Juan ever met,

Although she was not evil nor meant ill; But Destiny and Passion spread the net

(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,
And since that time there has not been a second.

XIV.

Chaste was she, to Detraction's desperation,
And wedded unto one she had loved well-
A man known in the councils of the Nation,
Cool, and quite English, imperturbable,
Though apt to act with fire upon occasion,

Proud of himself and her: the World could tell
Nought against either, and both seemed secure-
She in her virtue, he in his hauteur.

1.

2,

["Your husband is in his old lunes again."

Merry Wives of Windsor, act iv. sc. 2, lines 16, 17.] ["Davus sum, non Edipus."

Terence, Andria, act i. sc. 2, line 23.]