Cambridge Forecast Group Blog

Lord Byron’s poetical critique of globalizing

capitalism and the Rothschilds…

Byron’s Don Juan as a global allegory.(Lord Byron)

“Who hold the balance of the world? Who reign

O’er congress, whether royalist or liberal?

Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain? [*]

(That make old Europe’s journals squeak and gibber all.)

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, 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

On ‘Change; and even thy silver soil, Peru,

Must get itself discounted by a Jew.”

THE DEDICATION IS ONE OF THE MOST CITED PASSAGES IN DON JUAN,

The Dedication, then, is treated as literary and political criticism, but what is overlooked is its specifically economic content. For Byron, Robert Southey and Wordsworth are “sellouts” in the first sense–they have compromised themselves for money: I would not imitate the petty thought, Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice, For all the glory your conversion brought, Since gold alone should not have been its price. You [Southey] have your salary–was’t for that you wrought? And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise. (1) Byron then departs from this critique of poets to make a larger attack upon British foreign policy, upon the ‘”intellectual eunuch Castlereagh” and the Holy Alliance, the “Conspiracy or congress to be made– / Cobbling at manacles for all mankind– / A tinkering slavemaker, who mends old chains, / With God and man’s abhorrence for its gains” (14). There is a movement from the micro-level of individual behavior, to the national level, to the international level–from Wordsworth’s gold to Castlereagh’s gains–and to explore this movement is to see the nature of Byron’s critique of globalizing capitalism. Byron’s uneasy relationship with the British economic empire is found as early as The Curse of Minerva. Although Minerva’s narrator tries to fend off her curse by arguing that the plunderer of Greek ruins, Lord Elgin, was a Scot, she negates the distinction, responding that Elgin is a “lawless son / … do[ing] what oft Britannia’s self had done” (211-12). Elgin’s sin is to turn sacred ruins into commerce. “Long of their Patron’s gusto let them tell, / Whose noblest, native gusto is–to sell: / To sell, and make, may Shame record the day, / The State receiver of his pilfer’d prey” (171-74; author’s emphasis). Hence, Minerva’s analysis of the corruption of British society, and her retributive curse, is economic in nature; after a scathing critique of British imperialism, which includes the prediction of a nationalist rebellion in India, she turns to London: Now fare ye well, enjoy your little hour, Go grasp the shadow of your vanish’d power; Gloss o’er the failure of each fondest scheme, Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a dream: Gone is that Gold, the marvel of mankind, And Pirates barter all that’s left behind. No more the hirelings, purchas’d near and far, Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war. The idle merchant on the useless quay, Droops o’er the bales no bark may bear away; Or back returning sees rejected stores Rot piecemeal on his own encumber’d shores: The starv’d mechanic breaks his rusting loom, And desperate roans him ‘gainst the common doom. Then in the Senate of your sinking state, Show me the man whose counsels may have weight. Vain is each voice where tones could once command, E’en factions cease to charm a factious land; Yet jarring sects convulse a sister isle, And light with maddening hands the mutual pile. (259-78) The poem’s commercialized world fits Wallerstein and Fernand Braudel’s model of a “world-system” Byron’s economic views were internationalist in scope. Don Juan does not focus on a labor-based class struggle; we are never taken inside a factory, or onto a plantation raising crops for export to the core powers (a major element in Immanuel Wallerstein’s globalized model of capitalism). However, the poem’s commercialized world fits Wallerstein and Fernand Braudel’s model of a “world-system,” as Byron depicts countries sewn ever closer together by trade and finance, a process guided by the hegemonic core of the order, Great Britain.  Braudel emphasizes that although the world is composed of various orders–cultural, social, political, and economic–”[w]ith modern times, nevertheless, the primacy of economics became more and more overwhelming,” an observation mirrored in Byron’s cynical statement from an 1814 letter: “I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments…. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.” Hence we see globalization is a not fundamentally contemporary event and we must recognize that it has a long history. I Begin with canto 12, the economic heart of Don Juan. Byron had a love/hate relationship with Napoleon, alternately celebrating him as a liberator, denouncing him as a tyrant, and criticizing him on a purely aesthetic level (in the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, Byron judges Napoleon’s handling of his fall from power against classical models and finds him lacking). Here, however, he gives an entirely new perspective on Napoleon’s historical significance, on why he fell and the power that guides the world: Who hold the balance of the world? Who reign O’er Congress, whether royalist or liberal? Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain? (That make old Europe’s journals squeak and gibber all.) Who keep the world, both old and new, in pain Or pleasure? Who make politics run glibber all? The shade of Bonaparte’s noble daring?– Jew Rothschild, and his fellow Christian Baring. (12.5) Rothschild and Baring were, of course, bankers who played key parts in the consolidation of post-1815 Europe’s political structure, while Rothschild was the major financial element in Britain’s defeat of Napoleon, conveying gold specie to the cash-poor Wellington.  As the statesman Henry Dundas famously told William Pitt at the beginning of the wars with Revolutionary France, “All modern Wars are a Contention of Purse,” and Nathan Rothschild, considered a “Napoleon of finance” by his brothers, was “the principal conduit of money from the British government to the continental battlefields on which the fate of Europe was decided in 1814 and 1815.” According to Niall Ferguson, after Waterloo the Rothschilds outpaced the Barings as the main developers of the international bond market, becoming the “chief ally of the Holy Alliance”: “In so far as they helped to finance Austrian intervention in Italy and French intervention in Spain, the Rothschilds deserve to be thought of as financiers of ‘reaction’” (Ferguson 137). However, Ferguson emphasizes that what was important to the bankers was not politics per se, but business opportunities; “[t]he attraction of counter-revolution … was not that it restored despots, but that it developed new financial needs” (142). “Who hold the balance of the world?” For Byron, the world is balanced in England, although significantly it is not politicians (“run[ning] glibber all”) who do the balancing, but businessmen. It would be a mistake to view the opening of canto 12 as an attack on Jewish financiers; nor is it merely describing bankers, as Byron discusses not just banking but trade in general. The figure he describes is not specifically a banker, or merchant, but the “miser,” guided by the rational spirit of accumulation, and Byron describes the miser’s “pleasure that can never pall” (12.3) in a Weberian manner: … 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. (12.7) Whatever “great projects [are] in his mind, / To build a college, or to found a race” (12.10), his primary purpose is to accumulate. Citing these passages,  some have argued that the misers do not represent dynamic economic expansion, but rather create a sinkhole, “fetishizing the tokens of commerce and blocking exchange.” Yet the misers’ wealth is based on exchange, as “The lands on either side are his: the ship / From Ceylon, Inde, or far Cathay, unloads / For him the fragrant produce of each trip” (12.9). Moreover, this wealth directs political affairs and determines the outcome of revolutions: “Every loan / Is not a merely speculative hit, / But seats a nation or upsets a throne” (12.6). For all Castlereagh’s power as a foreign secretary, Byron referred to him as a weak figure, an “intellectual eunuch” (Dedication I I). Now we see why. The source of the “wealth of worlds (a wealth of tax and paper)” (10.83) is the misers, who are dealing with the real thing–the “ore” and “ingots,” or, in a word, the capital. In fact, despite the paper-based nature of loans, if anything had permanence in Byron’s poetic depiction of a fallen world with its golden age long past, it is misers and their moneymaking. All is transitory, politicians rise and fall, “Weigh’d in the balance, hero dust / Is vile as vulgar clay” (Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte 100-101), and the thoughtful observer can find nothing of lasting value; in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV Byron had lamented, “What from this barren being do we reap? / Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, / Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, / And all things weigh’d in custom’s falsest scale” (93). By contrast, the miser, with no place in the public mythology of leadership, has both poetic and social power: He is your only poet;–passion, pure And sparkling on from heap to heap, displays Possess’d, the ore, of which mere hopes allure Nations athwart the deep … His very cellars might be kings’ abodes; While he, despising every sensual call, Commands–the intellectual lord of all. (12.8-9) Overall, the passage functions as a sophisticated thematic rewriting of its clear influence in terms of imagery, the Cave of Mammon canto in Book 2 of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Mammon’s “masse of coyne,” “great Ingoes” and “wedges square” (2.7.4-5) make him the “greatest god below the skye,” overseeing “Riches, renowme, and principality, / Honour, estate, and all this worldes good” (2.7.8). The influence of his wealth does not, at least explicitly, represent any particular economic system, but rather the temptation of the World, the Flesh and the Devil…

Don Juan: 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.

III

O Gold! Why call we misers miserable?

Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall;

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? [*]

(That make old Europe’s journals squeak and gibber all.)

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, 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

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,

Possess’d, 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.

XI

But whether all, or each, or none of these

May be the hoarder’s principle of action,

The fool will call such mania a disease: —

What is his own? Go — look at each transaction,

Wars, revels, loves — do these bring men more ease

Than the mere plodding through each “vulgar fraction”?

Or do they benefit mankind? Lean miser!

Let spendthrifts’ heirs enquire of yours — who’s wiser?

XII

How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests

Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins

(Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests

Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines,

But) of fine unclipt gold, where dully rests

Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines,

Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp: —

Yes! ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.

XIII

“Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,” — “for love

Is heaven, and heaven is love:” — so sings the bard;

Which it were rather difficult to prove

(A thing with poetry in general hard).

Perhaps there may be something in “the grove,”

At least it rhymes to “love;” but I’m prepared

To doubt (no less than landlords of their rental)

If “courts” and “camps” be quite so sentimental.

XIV

But if Love don’t, Cash does, and Cash alone:

Cash rules the grove, and fells it too besides;

Without cash, camps were thin, and courts were none;

Without cash, Malthus tells you — “take no brides.”

So Cash rules Love the ruler, on his own

High ground, as virgin Cynthia sways the tides:

And as for Heaven “Heaven being Love,” why not say honey

Is wax? Heaven is not Love, ‘t is Matrimony.

XV

Is not all love prohibited whatever,

Excepting marriage? which is love, no doubt,

After a sort; but somehow people never

With the same thought the two words have help’d out:

Love may exist with marriage, and should ever,

And marriage also may exist without;

But love sans bans is both a sin and shame,

And ought to go by quite another name.

XVI

Now if the “court,” and “camp,” and “grove,” be not

Recruited all with constant married men,

Who never coveted their neighbour’s lot,

I say that line’s a lapsus of the pen; —

Strange too in my “buon camerado” Scott,

So celebrated for his morals, when

My Jeffrey held him up as an example

To me; — of whom these morals are a sample.

XVII

Well, if I don’t succeed, I have succeeded,

And that’s enough; succeeded in my youth,

The only time when much success is needed:

And my success produced what I, in sooth,

Cared most about; it need not now be pleaded —

Whate’er it was, ‘t was mine; I’ve paid, in truth,

Of late the penalty of such success,

But have not learn’d to wish it any less.

XVIII

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 ‘t is 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.

XXI

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 mediation

On constitutions and steam-boats of vapour;

While sages write against all procreation,

Unless a man can calculate his means

Of feeding brats the moment his wife weans.

XXII

That’s noble! That’s romantic! For my part,

I think that “Philo-genitiveness” 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 “Philo-genitiveness”

Might meet from men a little more forgiveness.

XXIII

And now to business. — O 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.

‘T is 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.

XXIV

What with a small diversity of climate,

Of hot or cold, mercurial or sedate,

I could send forth my mandate like a primate

Upon the rest of Europe’s social state;

But thou art the most difficult to rhyme at,

Great Britain, which the Muse may penetrate.

All countries have their “Lions,” but in thee

There is but one superb menagerie.

XXV

But I am sick of politics. Begin,

“Paulo Majora.” Juan, undecided

Amongst the paths of being “taken in,”

Above the ice had like a skater glided:

When tired of play, he flirted without sin

With some of those fair creatures who have prided

Themselves on innocent tantalisation,

And hate all vice except its reputation.

XXVI

But these are few, and in the end they make

Some devilish escapade or stir, which shows

That even the purest people may mistake

Their way through virtue’s primrose paths of snows;

And then men stare, as if a new ass spake

To Balaam, and from tongue to ear o’erflows

Quicksilver small talk, ending (if you note it)

With the kind world’s amen — “Who would have thought it?”

XXVII

The little Leila, with her orient eyes,

And taciturn Asiatic disposition

(Which saw all western things with small surprise,

To the surprise of people of condition,

Who think that novelties are butterflies

To be pursued as food for inanition),

Her charming figure and romantic history

Became a kind of fashionable mystery.

XXVIII

The women much divided — as is usual

Amongst the sex in little things or great.

Think not, fair creatures, that I mean to abuse you all —

I have always liked you better than I state:

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; ‘t was 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 “‘t is gold that glisters,”

Than their he 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, and some reject three dozen.

‘T is 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;

‘T was 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: —

But the old marchioness some plan had hatch’d,

As I’ll tell Aurea at to-morrow’s rout:

And after all poor Frederick may do better —

Pray did you see her answer to his letter?”

XXXVI

Smart uniforms and sparkling coronets

Are spurn’d in turn, until her turn arrives,

After male loss of time, and hearts, and bets

Upon the sweepstakes for substantial wives;

And when at last the pretty creature gets

Some gentleman, who fights, or writes, or drives,

It soothes the awkward squad of the rejected

To find how very badly she selected.

XXXVII

For sometimes they accept some long pursuer,

Worn out with importunity; or fall

(But here perhaps the instances are fewer)

To the lot of him who scarce pursued at all.

A hazy widower turn’d of forty’s sure [*]

(If ‘t is not vain examples to recall)

To draw a high prize: now, howe’er he got her, I

See nought more strange in this than t’ other lottery.

XXXVIII

I, for my part (one “modern instance” more,

“True, ‘t is a pity — pity ‘t is, ‘t is true”),

Was chosen from out an amatory score,

Albeit my years were less discreet than few;

But though I also had reform’d before

Those became one who soon were to be two,

I’ll not gainsay the generous public’s voice,

That the young lady made a monstrous choice.

XXXIX

Oh, pardon my digression — or at least

Peruse! ‘T is 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.

XLII

Besides, he had found out he was no tutor

(I wish that others would find out the same);

And rather wish’d in such things to stand neuter,

For silly wards will bring their guardians blame:

So when he saw each ancient dame a suitor

To make his little wild Asiatic tame,

Consulting “the Society for Vice

Suppression,” Lady Pinchbeck was his choice.

XLIII

Olden she was — but had been very young;

Virtuous she was — and had been, I believe;

Although the world has such an evil tongue

That — but my chaster ear will not receive

An echo of a syllable that’s wrong:

In fact, there’s nothing makes me so much grieve,

As that abominable tittle-tattle,

Which is the cud eschew’d by human cattle.

XLIV

Moreover I’ve remark’d (and I was once

A slight observer in a modest way),

And so may every one except a dunce,

That ladies in their youth a little gay,

Besides their knowledge of the world, and sense

Of the sad consequence of going astray,

Are wiser in their warnings ‘gainst the woe

Which the mere passionless can never know.

XLV

While the harsh prude indemnifies her virtue

By railing at the unknown and envied passion,

Seeking far less to save you than to hurt you,

Or, what’s still worse, to put you out of fashion, —

The kinder veteran with calm words will court you,

Entreating you to pause before you dash on;

Expounding and illustrating the riddle

Of epic Love’s beginning, end, and middle.

XLVI

Now whether it be thus, or that they are stricter,

As better knowing why they should be so,

I think you’ll find from many a family picture,

That daughters of such mothers as may know

The world by experience rather than by lecture,

Turn out much better for the Smithfield Show

Of vestals brought into the marriage mart,

Than those bred up by prudes without a heart.

XLVII

I said that Lady Pinchbeck had been talk’d about —

As who has not, if female, young, and pretty?

But now no more the ghost of Scandal stalk’d about;

She merely was deem’d amiable and witty,

And several of her best bons-mots were hawk’d about:

Then she was given to charity and pity,

And pass’d (at least the latter years of life)

For being a most exemplary wife.

XLVIII

High in high circles, gentle in her own,

She was the mild reprover of the young,

Whenever — which means every day — they’d shown

An awkward inclination to go wrong.

The quantity of good she did’s unknown,

Or at the least would lengthen out my song:

In brief, the little orphan of the East

Had raised an interest in her, which increased.

XLIX

Juan, too, was a sort of favourite with her,

Because she thought him a good heart at bottom,

A little spoil’d, but not so altogether;

Which was a wonder, if you think who got him,

And how he had been toss’d, he scarce knew whither:

Though this might ruin others, it did not him,

At least entirely — for he had seen too many

Changes in youth, to be surprised at any.

L

And these vicissitudes tell best in youth;

For when they happen at a riper age,

People are apt to blame the Fates, forsooth,

And wonder Providence is not more sage.

Adversity is the first path to truth:

He who hath proved war, storm, or woman’s rage,

Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,

Hath won the experience which is deem’d so weighty.

LI

How far it profits is another matter. —

Our hero gladly saw his little charge

Safe with a lady, whose last grown-up daughter

Being long married, and thus set at large,

Had left all the accomplishments she taught her

To be transmitted, like the Lord Mayor’s barge,

To the next comer; or — as it will tell

More Muse-like — like to Cytherea’s shell.

LII

I call such things transmission; for there is

A floating balance of accomplishment

Which forms a pedigree from Miss to Miss,

According as their minds or backs are bent.

Some waltz; some draw; some fathom the abyss

Of metaphysics; others are content

With music; the most moderate shine as wits;

While others have a genius turn’d for fits.

LIII

But whether fits, or wits, or harpsichords,

Theology, fine arts, or finer stays,

May be the baits for gentlemen or lords

With regular descent, in these our days,

The last year to the new transfers its hoards;

New vestals claim men’s eyes with the same praise

Of “elegant” et cætera, in fresh batches —

All matchless creatures, and yet bent on matches.

LIV

But now I will begin my poem. ‘T is

Perhaps a little strange, if not quite new,

That from the first of Cantos up to this

I’ve not begun what we have to go through.

These first twelve books are merely flourishes,

Preludios, trying just a string or two

Upon my lyre, or making the pegs sure;

And when so, you shall have the overture.

LV

My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin

About what’s call’d success, or not succeeding:

Such thoughts are quite below the strain they have chosen;

‘T is a “great moral lesson” they are reading.

I thought, at setting off, about two dozen

Cantos would do; but at Apollo’s pleading,

If that my Pegasus should not be founder’d,

I think to canter gently through a hundred.

LVI

Don Juan saw that microcosm on stilts,

Yclept the Great World; for it is the least,

Although the highest: but as swords have hilts

By which their power of mischief is increased,

When man in battle or in quarrel tilts,

Thus the low world, north, south, or west, or east,

Must still obey the high — which is their handle,

Their moon, their sun, their gas, their farthing candle.

LVII

He had many friends who had many wives, and was

Well look’d upon by both, to that extent

Of friendship which you may accept or pass,

It does nor good nor harm being merely meant

To keep the wheels going of the higher class,

And draw them nightly when a ticket’s sent:

And what with masquerades, and fetes, and balls,

For the first season such a life scarce palls.

LVIII

A young unmarried man, with a good name

And fortune, has an awkward part to play;

For good society is but a game,

“The royal game of Goose,” as I may say,

Where every body has some separate aim,

An end to answer, or a plan to lay —

The single ladies wishing to be double,

The married ones to save the virgins trouble.

LIX

I don’t mean this as general, but particular

Examples may be found of such pursuits:

Though several also keep their perpendicular

Like poplars, with good principles for roots;

Yet many have a method more reticular —

“Fishers for men,” like sirens with soft lutes:

For talk six times with the same single lady,

And you may get the wedding dresses ready.

LX

Perhaps you’ll have a letter from the mother,

To say her daughter’s feelings are trepann’d;

Perhaps you’ll have a visit from the brother,

All strut, and stays, and whiskers, to demand

What “your intentions are?” — One way or other

It seems the virgin’s heart expects your hand:

And between pity for her case and yours,

You’ll add to Matrimony’s list of cures.

LXI

I’ve known a dozen weddings made even thus,

And some of them high names: I have also known

Young men who — though they hated to discuss

Pretensions which they never dream’d to have shown —

Yet neither frighten’d by a female fuss,

Nor by mustachios moved, were let alone,

And lived, as did the broken-hearted fair,

In happier plight than if they form’d a pair.

LXII

There’s also nightly, to the uninitiated,

A peril — not indeed like love or marriage,

But not the less for this to be depreciated:

It is — I meant and mean not to disparage

The show of virtue even in the vitiated —

It adds an outward grace unto their carriage —

But to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot,

“Couleur de rose,” who’s neither white nor scarlet.

LXIII

Such is your cold coquette, who can’t say “No,”

And won’t say “Yes,” and keeps you on and off-ing

On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow —

Then sees your heart wreck’d, with an inward scoffing.

This works a world of sentimental woe,

And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin;

But yet is merely innocent flirtation,

Not quite adultery, but adulteration.

LXIV

“Ye gods, I grow a talker!” Let us prate.

The next of perils, though I place it sternest,

Is when, without regard to “church or state,”

A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest.

Abroad, such things decide few women’s fate —

(Such, early traveller! is the truth thou learnest) —

But in old England, when a young bride errs,

Poor thing! Eve’s was a trifling case to hers.

LXV

For ‘t is a low, newspaper, humdrum, lawsuit

Country, where a young couple of the same ages

Can’t form a friendship, but the world o’erawes it.

Then there’s the vulgar trick of those damned damages!

A verdict — grievous foe to those who cause it! —

Forms a sad climax to romantic homages;

Besides those soothing speeches of the pleaders,

And evidences which regale all readers.

LXVI

But they who blunder thus are raw beginners;

A little genial sprinkling of hypocrisy

Has saved the fame of thousand splendid sinners,

The loveliest oligarchs of our gynocracy;

You may see such at all the balls and dinners,

Among the proudest of our aristocracy,

So gentle, charming, charitable, chaste —

And all by having tact as well as taste.

LXVII

Juan, who did not stand in the predicament

Of a mere novice, had one safeguard more;

For he was sick — no, ‘t was not the word sick I meant —

But he had seen so much love before,

That he was not in heart so very weak; — I meant

But thus much, and no sneer against the shore

Of white cliffs, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings,

Tithes, taxes, duns, and doors with double knockings.

LXVIII

But coming young from lands and scenes romantic,

Where lives, not lawsuits, must be risk’d for Passion,

And Passion’s self must have a spice of frantic,

Into a country where ‘t is half a fashion,

Seem’d to him half commercial, half pedantic,

Howe’er he might esteem this moral nation:

Besides (alas! his taste — forgive and pity!)

At first he did not think the women pretty.

LXIX

I say at first — for he found out at last,

But by degrees, that they were fairer far

Than the more glowing dames whose lot is cast

Beneath the influence of the eastern star.

A further proof we should not judge in haste;

Yet inexperience could not be his bar

To taste: — the truth is, if men would confess,

That novelties please less than they impress.

LXX

Though travell’d, I have never had the luck to

Trace up those shuffling negroes, Nile or Niger,

To that impracticable place, Timbuctoo,

Where Geography finds no one to oblige her

With such a chart as may be safely stuck to —

For Europe ploughs in Afric like “bos piger:”

But if I had been at Timbuctoo, there

No doubt I should be told that black is fair.

LXXI

It is. I will not swear that black is white;

But I suspect in fact that white is black,

And the whole matter rests upon eyesight.

Ask a blind man, the best judge. You’ll attack

Perhaps this new position — but I’m right;

Or if I’m wrong, I’ll not be ta’en aback: —

He hath no morn nor night, but all is dark

Within; and what seest thou? A dubious spark.

LXXII

But I’m relapsing into metaphysics,

That labyrinth, whose clue is of the same

Construction as your cures for hectic phthisics,

Those bright moths fluttering round a dying flame;

And this reflection brings me to plain physics,

And to the beauties of a foreign dame,

Compared with those of our pure pearls of price,

Those polar summers, all sun, and some ice.

LXXIII

Or say they are like virtuous mermaids, whose

Beginnings are fair faces, ends mere fishes; —

Not that there’s not a quantity of those

Who have a due respect for their own wishes.

Like Russians rushing from hot baths to snows [*]

Are they, at bottom virtuous even when vicious:

They warm into a scrape, but keep of course,

As a reserve, a plunge into remorse.

LXXIV

But this has nought to do with their outsides.

I said that Juan did not think them pretty

At the first blush; for a fair Briton hides

Half her attractions — probably from pity —

And rather calmly into the heart glides,

Than storms it as a foe would take a city;

But once there (if you doubt this, prithee try)

She keeps it for you like a true ally.

LXXV

She cannot step as does an Arab barb,

Or Andalusian girl from mass returning,

Nor wear as gracefully as Gauls her garb,

Nor in her eye Ausonia’s glance is burning;

Her voice, though sweet, is not so fit to warb-

le those bravuras (which I still am learning

To like, though I have been seven years in Italy,

And have, or had, an ear that served me prettily); —

LXXVI

She cannot do these things, nor one or two

Others, in that off-hand and dashing style

Which takes so much — to give the devil his due;

Nor is she quite so ready with her smile,

Nor settles all things in one interview

(A thing approved as saving time and toil); —

But though the soil may give you time and trouble,

Well cultivated, it will render double.

LXXVII

And if in fact she takes to a “grande passion,”

It is a very serious thing indeed:

Nine times in ten ‘t is but caprice or fashion,

Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead,

The pride of a mere child with a new sash on,

Or wish to make a rival’s bosom bleed:

But the tenth instance will be a tornado,

For there’s no saying what they will or may do.

LXXVIII

The reason’s obvious; if there’s an éclat,

They lose their caste at once, as do the Parias;

And when the delicacies of the law

Have fill’d their papers with their comments various,

Society, that china without flaw

(The hypocrite!), will banish them like Marius,

To sit amidst the ruins of their guilt:

For Fame’s a Carthage not so soon rebuilt.

LXXIX

Perhaps this is as it should be; — it is

A comment on the Gospel’s “Sin no more,

And be thy sins forgiven:” — but upon this

I leave the saints to settle their own score.

Abroad, though doubtless they do much amiss,

An erring woman finds an opener door

For her return to Virtue — as they call

That lady, who should be at home to all.

LXXX

For me, I leave the matter where I find it,

Knowing that such uneasy virtue leads

People some ten times less in fact to mind it,

And care but for discoveries and not deeds.

And as for chastity, you’ll never bind it

By all the laws the strictest lawyer pleads,

But aggravate the crime you have not prevented,

By rendering desperate those who had else repented.

LXXXI

But Juan was no casuist, nor had ponder’d

Upon the moral lessons of mankind:

Besides, he had not seen of several hundred

A lady altogether to his mind.

A little “blasé” — ‘t is not to be wonder’d

At, that his heart had got a tougher rind:

And though not vainer from his past success,

No doubt his sensibilities were less.

LXXXII

He also had been busy seeing sights —

The Parliament and all the other houses;

Had sat beneath the gallery at nights,

To hear debates whose thunder roused (not rouses)

The world to gaze upon those northern lights

Which flash’d as far as where the musk-bull browses; [*]

He had also stood at times behind the throne —

But Grey was not arrived, and Chatham gone.

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 finish’d gentleman from top to toe.

LXXXV

And Juan was received, as hath been said,

Into the best society: and there

Occurr’d what often happens, I’m afraid,

However disciplined and debonnaire: —

The talent and good humour he display’d,

Besides the mark’d 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. [*]

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:

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 brew’d from elements or gore,

Besides the most sublime of — Heaven knows what else:

An usurer could scarce expect much more —

But my best canto, save one on astronomy,

Will turn upon “political economy.”

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 your great thinkers.