Had sat beneath the Gallery at nights,

To hear debates whose thunder roused (not rouses) The World to gaze upon those Northern Lights,

Which flashed as far as where the musk-bull browses;1 He had also stood at times behind the ThroneBut Grey' was not arrived, and Chatham gone.3

LXXXIII.

He saw, however, at the closing session,

That noble sight, when really free the nation,
A King in constitutional possession

Of such a Throne as is the proudest station,
Though Despots know it not-till the progression
Of Freedom shall complete their education.
"T is not mere Splendour makes the show august
To eye or heart-it is the People's trust.

LXXXIV.

There, too, he saw (whate'er he may be now)
A Prince, the prince of Princes at the time,
With fascination in his very bow,

And full of promise, as the spring of prime.
Though Royalty was written on his brow,

He had then the grace, too, rare in every clime, Of being, without alloy of fop or beau,

A finished Gentleman from top to toe."

1. For a description and print of this inhabitant of the polar region and native country of the Aurora Boreales, see Sir E. Parry's Voyage In Search of a North-West Passage, [1821, p. 257. The print of the Musk-Bull is drawn and engraved by W. Westall, A. R.A., from a sketch by Lieut. Beechy. He is a " fearful wild-fowl!"]

2. [Charles, second Earl Grey, born March 13, 1764, succeeded to the peerage in 1807, died July 17, 1847.]

3. [William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, born November 15, 1708, died May 11, 1778.]

4. ["His person was undoubtedly cast by Nature in an elegant and pleasing mould, of a just height, well-proportioned, and with due regard to symmetry. . . . His countenance was handsome and prepossessing... His manners were captivating, noble, and dignified, yet unaffectedly condescending. . . . Homer, as well as Virgil, was familiar to the Prince of Wales; and his memory, which was very tenacious, enabled him to cite with graceful readiness the favourite passages of either poet."—The Historical . . . Memoirs of Sir N. W. Wraxall, 1884. v. 353, 354.]

5. ["Waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered me to be presented to him at a ball; and after some sayings

LXXXV.

And Juan was received, as hath been said,
Into the best society; and there
Occurred what often happens, I'm afraid,
However disciplined and debonnaire :-
The talent and good humour he displayed,
Besides the marked distinction of his air,
Exposed him, as was natural, to temptation,
Even though himself avoided the occasion.

LXXXVI.

But what, and where, with whom, and when, and why,
Is not to be put hastily together;
And as my object is Morality

(Whatever people say), I don't know whether I'll leave a single reader's eyelid dry,

But harrow up his feelings till they wither, And hew out a huge monument of pathos, As Philip's son proposed to do with Athos.1

LXXXVII.

Here the twelfth canto of our Introduction

Ends. When the body of the Book 's begun, You'll find it of a different construction

From what some people say 't will be when done;

peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities; he preferred you to every other bard past and present. He spoke alternately of Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both. . . . [All] this was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners certainly superior to those of any living gentleman."-Letter to Sir Walter Scott, July 6, 1812, Letters, 1898, ii. 134.] I. B. Iobre 7th 1822.-[MS.]

A sculptor projected to hew Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander, with a city in one hand, and, I believe, a river in his pocket, with various other similar devices. But Alexander 's gone, and Athos remains, I trust ere long to look over a nation of freemen.

[It was an architect named Stasicrates who proposed to execute this imperial monument. But Alexander bade him leave Mount Athos alone. As it was, it might be christened "Xerxes, his Folly," and, for his part, he preferred to regard Mount Caucasus, and the Himalayas, and the river Don as the symbolic memorials of his acts and deeds. -Plutarch's Moralia, "De Alexandri Fortuna et Virtute," Orat. II. cap. ii.]

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.2

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.]

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 hue-
The 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" (i.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).]