Broken in carriages, and all the phantasies [nels? Of fashion-say what streams now fill those chanSome die, some fly, some languish on the Continent, Because the times have hardly left them one tenant. LXXXI.

Some, who once set their caps at cautious dukes, Have taken up at length with younger brothers: Some heiresses have bit at sharpers hooks:

Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers,

Others have lost their fresh and fairy looks:

In short, the list of alterations bothers. There's little strange in this, but something strange is The unusual quickness of these common changes.

LXXXII.

Talk not of seventy years as age: in seven

I have scen more changes, down from monarchs to The humblest individual under heaven,

Than might suffice a modern century through. I knew that nought was lasting, but now even Change grows too changeable, without being new: Naught's permanent among the human race, Except the Whigs not getting into place.

LXXXIII.

I have seen Napoleon, who seem'd quite a Jupiter, Shrink to a Saturn. I have seen a Duke

(No matter which) turn politician stupider,

If that can well be, than his wooden look. But it is time that I should hoist my Blue Peter,' And sail for a new theme:-I have seen, and shook To see it-the king hiss'd, and then caress'd, But don't pretend to settle which was best.

LXXXIV.

I have seen the Landholders without a rap;
I have seen Joanna Southcote; I have seen
The House of Commons turn'd to a tax-trap;
I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen;
I have seen crowns worn instead of a fool's cap;
I have seen a Congress doing all that's mean;
I have seen some nations, like o'erloaded asses,
Kick off their burthens-meaning the high classes:

LXXXV.

I have seen small poets, and great prosers, and
Interminable-not eternal-speakers;

I have seen the funds at war with house and land;
I have seen the country gentlemen turn squeakers;

I have seen the people ridden o'er, like sand,
By slaves on horseback; I have seen malt liquors

I.

Exchanged for 'thin potations' by John Bull; I have seen John half detect himself a fool.

LXXXVI.

But carpe diem, Juan, carpe, carpe!
To-morrow sees another race as gay
And transient, and devoured by the same harpy.
'Life's a poor player'-then play out the play,
Ye villains and, above all, keep a sharp eye
Much less on what you do than what you say;
Be hypocritical, be cautious, be

Not what you seem, but always what you see.
LXXXVII.

But how shall I relate, in other cantos,
Of what befel our hero, in the land
Which 'tis the common cry and lie to vaunt as
A moral country? But I hold my hand-
For I disdain to write an Atalantis ;

But 'tis as well at once to understand
You are not a moral people, and you know it,
Without the aid of too sincere a poet.

LXXXVIII.

What Juan saw and underwent shall be
My topic, with of course the due restriction
Which is required by proper courtesy:

And recollect the work is only fiction,
And that I sing of neither mine nor me,

Though every scribe, in some slight turn of diction, Will hint allusions never meant. Ne'er doubt This-when I speak, I don't hint, but speak out. LXXXIX.

Whether he married with the third or fourth
Offspring of some sage husband-hunting countess;
Or whether with some virgin of more worth
(I mean in Fortune's matrimonial bounties)

He took to regularly peopling earth,

Of which your lawful awful wedlock fount is;
Or whether he was taken in for damages,
For being too excursive in his homages,

XC.

Is yet within the unread events of time.
Thus far, go forth, thou lay, which I will back
Against the same given quantity of rhyme,

For being as much the subject of attack

As ever yet was any work sublime,

By those who love to say that white is black. So much the better; I may stand alone,

But would not change my free thoughts for a throne

OF 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 ;-

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 dyes
Of other stones, to soothe the miser's eyes.
IX.

The lands on either side are his: the ship
From Ceylon, Inde, or fair 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;

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.
XIX.

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

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.

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 enslaved the whites, And Malthus does the thing 'gainst which he writes.

ΧΧΙ.

I'm serious-so are all men upon paper:
And why should I not form my speculation,
And hold up to the sun my little taper?
Mankind just now seem wrapt in meditation,
On constitutions and steamboats of vapour;
While sages write against all procreation,
Unless a man can calculate his means
Of feeding brats the moment his wife weans.

See Mitford's Greece. Grecia Verax, His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, his is the best modern history of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues-learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.

XXII.

That's noble! That's romantic! For my part, I think that philogenitiveness 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 resolved to say nought that's amiss)I say, methinks that 'philogenitiveness' Might meet from men a little more forgiveness. XXIII.

And now to business. Oh 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.

Since I've grown moral, still I must accuse you all
Of being apt to talk at a great rate;
And now there was a general sensation
Amongst you, about Leila's education.
XXIX.

In one point only were you settled-and

You had reason: 'twas that a young child of grace, As beautiful as her own native land,

And far away, the last bud of her race, Howe'er our friend Don Juan might command

Himself, for five, four, three, or two years' space, Would be much better taught beneath the eye Of peeresses whose follies had run dry.

XXX,

So first there was a generous emulation,
And then there was a general competition,
To undertake the orphan's education.

As Juan was a person of condition,
It had been an affront, on this occasion,
To talk of a subscription or petition :
But sixteen dowagers, ten unwed she-sages,
Whose tale belongs to Hallam's Middle Ages,

XXXI.

And one or two sad, separate wives, without
A fruit to bloom upon their withering bough,
Begg'd to bring up the little girl, and 'out'-

For that's the phrase that settles all things now: Meaning a virgin's first blush at a rout,

And all her points as thorough-bred to show: And I assure you that, like virgin honey, Tastes their first season (mostly if they have money). XXXII.

How all the needy, honourable misters,

Each out-at-elbow peer, or desperate dandy, The watchful mothers and the careful sisters

(Who, by the by, when clever, are more handy At making matches, where ''tis gold that glisters,' Than their e relatives), like flies o'er candy, Buzz round the Fortune' with their busy battery, To turn her head with waltzing and with flattery!

XXXIII.

Each aunt, each cousin, hath her speculation;

Nay, married dames will now and then discover Such pure disinterestedness of passion,

I've known them court an heiress for their lover. Tantæne! Such the virtues of high station, Even in the hopeful isle, whose outlet's 'Dover!' While the poor rich wretch, object of these cares, Has cause to wish her sire had had male heirs.

XXXIV.

Some are soon bagg'd, but some reject three dozen, 'Tis fine to see them scattering refusals And wild dismay o'er every angry cousin

(Friends of the party), who begin accusals,
Such as-Unless Miss (Blank) meant to have chosen
Poor Frederick, why did she accord perusals
To his billets? Why waltz with him? Why, I pray,
Look yes last night, and yet say no to-day?'
XXXV.

Why? Why? Besides, Fred really was attach'd;
'Twas not her fortune-he has enough without:
The time will come she'll wish that she had snatch'd
So good an opportunity, no doubt;

Oh! pardon my digression; or, at least,
Peruse! 'tis always with a moral end
That I dissert, like grace before a feast:
For, like an aged aunt or tiresome friend,
A rigid guardian, or a zealous priest,

My Muse by exhortation means to mend
All people, at all times, and in most places,
Which puts my Pegasus to these grave paces.
XL.

But now I'm going to be immoral; now
I mean to show things really as they are,
Not as they ought to be: for I avow,

That, till we see what's what, in fact, we're far
From much improvement with that virtuous plough
Which skims the surface, leaving scarce a scar
Upon the black loam long manured by Vice,
Only to keep its corn at the old price.

XLI.

But first of little Leila we'll dispose;

For, like a day-dawn she was young and pure,
Or like the old comparison of snows,
Which are more pure than pleasant, to be sure.
Like many people everybody knows,

Don Juan was delighted to secure
A goodly guardian for his infant charge,
Who might not profit much by being at large.

This line may puzzle the commentators more than the present generation