The House of Commons turned 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 Congress1 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
Exchanged for "thin potations"" by John Bull
I have seen John half detect himself a fool.-

LXXXVI.

But "carpe diem," Juan, " carpe, carpe!" 3
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 befell our hero in the land,

Which 't is the common cry and lie to vaunt as
A moral country? But I hold my hand-

For I disdain to write an Atalantis ;

But 't is as well at once to understand,

1. [The Congress at Verona, in 1822. See the Introduction to The Age of Bronze, Poetical Works, 1891, v. 537-540.]

2. [2 Henry IV., act iv. sc. 3, line 117.]

3. Hor., Od. I. xi. line 8.]

4. [Macbeth, act v. sc. 5, line 24.]

5. [1 Henry IV., act ii. sc. 4, line 463.]

I

6. See the Secret Memoirs and Manners of several Persons of Quality, of Both Sexes, from the New Atalantis, 1709, a work in which the authoress, Mrs. Manley, satirizes the distinguished characters of her day. Warburton (Works of Pope, ed. 1751, i. 244) calls it "a famous

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.1

book,... full of court and party scandal, and in a loose effeminacy of style and sentiment, which well suited the debauched taste of the better vulgar." Pope also alludes to it in the Rape of the Lock, iii. 165, 166— "As long as Atalantis shall be read,

Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed."

And Swift, in his ballad on “Corinna" (stanza 8)—

"Her common-place book all gallant is,
Of scandal now a cornucopia,

She pours it out in Atalantis,
Or memoirs of the New Utopia."

1. [Oct. 17, 1822.-MS.]

Works, 1824, xii. 302.]

CANTO THE TWELFTH.

I.

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 ;-

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,
Gleams only through the dawn of its creation.1

III.

O Gold! Why call we misers miserable? 2
Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall;

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. 605.]

Theirs is the best bower anchor, the chain cable
Which holds fast other pleasures great and small.
Ye who but see the saving man at table,

And scorn his temperate board, as none at all,
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 bank 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 ?1

(That make old Europe's journals "squeak and gibber "," all)

"2
"2

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,3 and his fellow-Christian, Baring.

VI.

Those, and the truly liberal Lafitte,*

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

1823, vol. xxix. pp. 270-276.]

Liberals,' see Quarterly Review, April,

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,
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, 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,
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.