The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 97

LXXVII.

Where is Napoleon the Grand? G.o.d knows!

Where little Castlereagh? The devil can tell!

Where Grattan, Curran, Sheridan--all those Who bound the Bar or Senate in their spell?

Where is the unhappy Queen, with all her woes?

And where the Daughter, whom the Isles loved well?

Where are those martyred saints the Five per Cents?[le][601]

And where--oh, where the devil are the Rents?

LXXVIII.

Where's Brummell? Dished. Where's Long Pole Wellesley?[602] Diddled.

Where's Whitbread? Romilly? Where's George the Third?

Where is his will?[603] (That's not so soon unriddled.) And where is "Fum" the Fourth, our "royal bird?"[604]

Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled Unto by Sawney's violin, we have heard: "Caw me, caw thee"--for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching.

LXXIX.

Where is Lord This? And where my Lady That?

The Honourable Mistresses and Misses?

Some laid aside like an old Opera hat, Married, unmarried, and remarried: (this is An evolution oft performed of late).

Where are the Dublin shouts--and London hisses?

Where are the Grenvilles? Turned as usual. Where My friends the Whigs? Exactly where they were.

Lx.x.x.

Where are the Lady Carolines and Franceses?[605]

Divorced or doing thereanent. Ye annals So brilliant, where the list of routs and dances is,-- Thou Morning Post, sole record of the panels Broken in carriages, and all the phantasies Of fashion,--say what streams now fill those channels?

Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent, Because the times have hardly left them _one_ tenant.

Lx.x.xI.

Some who once set their caps at cautious dukes,[lf]

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.

Lx.x.xII.

Talk not of seventy years as age; in seven I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to The humblest individuals under Heaven, Than might suffice a moderate century through.

I knew that nought was lasting, but now even Change grows too changeable, without being new: Nought's permanent among the human race, Except the Whigs _not_ getting into place.

Lx.x.xIII.

I have seen Napoleon, who seemed 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 hissed, and then caressed; But don't pretend to settle which was best.

Lx.x.xIV.

I have seen the Landholders without a rap-- I have seen Joanna Southcote--I have seen 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 Congress[606] doing all that's mean-- I have seen some nations, like o'erloaded a.s.ses, Kick off their burthens--meaning the high cla.s.ses.

Lx.x.xV.

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"[607] by John Bull-- I have seen John half detect himself a fool.--

Lx.x.xVI.

But _"carpe diem,"_ Juan, _"carpe, carpe!"_[608]

To-morrow sees another race as gay And transient, and devoured by the same harpy.

"Life's a poor player,"[609]--then "play out the play,[610]

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_.

Lx.x.xVII.

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;[611]

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

Lx.x.xVIII.

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_.

Lx.x.xIX.

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 quant.i.ty 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.[612]

FOOTNOTES:

{427}[562] [Berkeley did not deny the reality of existence, but the reality of matter as an abstract conception. "It is plain," he says (_On the Principles of Human Knowledge_, sect. ix.), "that the very notion of what is called _matter_ or _corporeal substance_, involves a contradiction in it." Again, "It were a mistake to think that what is here said derogates in the least from the reality of things." His contention was that this _reality_ depended, not on an abstraction _called_ matter, "an inert, extended unperceiving substance," but on "those unextended, indivisible substances or _spirits_, which act, and think, and perceive them [unthinking beings]."--_Ibid._, sect. xci., _The Works_ of George Berkeley, D.D., 1820, i. 27, 69, 70.]

{428}[563] [_Tempest_, act v. sc. i, line 95.]

[564] ["I have been very unwell--four days confined to my bed in 'the worst inn's worst room' at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and bilious attack, constipation, and the devil knows what."--Letter to Murray, October 9, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 121. The same letter contains an announcement that he had "a fifth [Canto of _Don Juan_] (the 10th) finished, but not transcribed yet; and the _eleventh_ begun."]

{429}[kk] _Or Rome, or Tiber--Naples or the sea_.--[MS. erased.]

{430}[565] [_Vide ante_, Canto I. stanza xiv. lines 7, 8.]

{431}[566] ["_Falstaff_. Let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon: and let men say, we be men of good government; being governed, as the sea is, by our n.o.ble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we--steal."-_I Henry IV._, act i. sc. 2, lines 24-28.]

[567] [Gin. Hence the ant.i.thesis of _"All Max"_ in the East to Almack's in the West. (See _Life in London_, by Pierce Egan, 1823, pp. 284-290.)]