THE LITERARY EXAMINER. No. XIX.-SATURDAY, NOV. 8, 1823. REVIEW OF BOOKS. Don Juan. Cantos XII. XIII, and XIV. Ir is a miserable thing, after the repeated assurances of the Literary Gazette, and similar high authorities, that as a Poet, Lord Byron is utterly defunct, that His fire is out, his wit decay'd, His fancy sunk, his Muse a jade: that not only Canto after Canto of the irreclaimable Don Juan should be published, but that people will be guilty of the insufferable crime of buying them with extreme avidity. Hypocrisy, in its variety of gradation is quite dumb-founded at this pertinacity, and having exhausted all its affectation in hyperbole in the first instance, looks upon each succeeding mass of mischief in much the same humour as honest John Bunyan describes the impotent Giant Pope, who regarded the heretics whom his paralysis would not allow him to sacrifice as heretofore, with willing but helpless malignity. The town will not listen, or at least will purchase, and the poet refuses to shake hands with the Gang, or to be negatived out of countenance by writers who prattle about Religion and Morals so like to "waiting gentlewomen." Without affecting indiscriminate approbation of all which is produced by the fertile Muse of Lord Byron, we think it matter of exultation that a writer exists, whose rank, fortune-and more than all-whose disposition, place him utterly beyond the reach of the conventional jargon with which it is sought to overlay every effusion of mind, good or bad, that will not be confined to the railway of cant, subserviency, or party spirit. What says Lord Byron in the first of the Cantos about to be published? My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin About what's called success, or not succeeding: Such thoughts are quite below the strain they have chosen : I thought, at setting off, about two dozen Cantos would do: but at Apollo's pleading, If that my Pegasus should not be foundered, So much for the operation, in the way of prevention, of the literary masquers, who abuse the original, and supply the quotation « Rail VOL. I. *This is a ludicrous fact in several instances. 19 on good youths," and instead of one, the number of Cantos may amount to two hundred, to the infinite exposure of the latent impurities and morbid secretions springing out of the scrophulous hypocrisy which has become the disgusting disorder of the English body-social-the mental malaria that is diffusing itself over every department of British intellect, and now to our task. The Twelfth Canto of Don Juan commences with a strain of digressionary matter, in the very peculiar manner of the noble author. The middle age of man, and the consequent decay of some passions and birth of others, form the leading theme of his wayward Muse. The following panegyric upon avarice reminds us of some of the rich soliloquies in the olden comedy, assigned to the Misers of past times, when the more tangible nature of property in gold and jewellery, gave gilding and lustre to the description. The intellectuality applied to the passion of avarice is profound as a thought and happy as a paradox. Why call the miser miserable? as 1 said before: the frugal life is his, The theme of praise: a hermit would not miss And wherefore blame gaunt wealth's austerities? He is your only poet :-passion, pure And sparkling on from heap to heap, displays, While the mild emerald's beam shades down the dies The lands on either side are his: the ship From Ceylon, Inde, or far Cathay, unloads His very cellars might be kings' abodes; Even with the very ore which makes them base : Or revel in the joys of calculation. 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? There is much more expatiation in a smaller space on love, marriage, and other matters, until at length we reach a resumption of the narration, where we find the more matronly ladies of the ton, with whom Juan from his fashion is a great favourite, deciding that his protégée, the little Turkish Leila, demands another sort of guardian: So first there was a generous emulation, A fruit to bloom upon their withering bough And all her points as thorough-bred to show: Tastes their first season (mostly if they have money.) How all the needy honourable misters, 66 Each out-at-elbow peer, or desperate dandy, Are spurned in turn, until her turn arrives, And when at last the pretty creature gets Some gentleman who fights, or writes, or drives, To find how very badly she selected. The following harping on the same string, in its egotism, is pleasing enough: I, for my part-(one " modern instance" more, ""True, 'tis a pity,-pity 'tis, 'tis true") But though I also had reformed before Those became one who soon were to be two, The Lady Pinchbeck is chosen for Leila's guardian. She is thus described, with some additional information on certain points of female character, which discovers an equal acquaintance with human nature and the beau monde :— Olden she was-but had been very young; Virtuous she was-and had been, I believe: An echo of a syllable that's wrong: In fact there's nothing makes me so much grieve Which is the cud eschewed by human cattle. Moreover I've remarked (and I was once ཧཱུྃ་ ད་I Besides their knowledge of the world, and sense Or what's still worse, to put you out of fashion,→→ Of Epic Love's beginning, end, and middle. Now whether it be thus, or that they are stricter, Than those bred up by prudes without a heart. 1 The perils of a bachelor of pretension, in the world of fashion, seem to be quite awful :— A young unmarried man, with a good name "The royal game of Goose," as I may say, "Fishers for men," like Sirens with soft lutes: To say her daughter's feelings are trepanned; All strút, and stays, and whiskers, to demand 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 dreamed to have shown Yet neither frightened 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 formed a pair., The foregoing danger is great; but there are also others, as for instance, There's also nightly, to the uninitiated, A peril-not indeed like love or marriage, The show of virtue even in the vitiated It adds an outward grace unto their carriage- Such is your cold coquette, who can't say "No," Then sees your heart wrecked, with an inward scoffing And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin; But yet is merely innocent flirtation, Not quite adultery, but adulteration. The last line is at once classification and discovery, and, unhappily, the coquette of this description is to be found in every rank. Henceforward be adulteration the name of this odious propensity. We come now to a critical subject. In the first place, it seems, Juan did not consider English women pretty! We quote with extreme apprehension: I said that Juan did not think them pretty Than storms it as a foe would take a city; She cannot step as does an Arab barb, Or Andalusian girl from mass returning, le those bravuras (which I still am learning She cannot do these things, nor one or two Which takes so much-to give the devil his due; Nor settles all things in one interview, ; (A thing approved as saving time and toil) ;- Well cultivated, it will render double. And if in fact she takes to a " grande passion," It is a very serious thing indeed: Nine times in ten 'tis but caprice or fashion, The pride of a mere child with a new sash on, But the tenth instance will be a Tornado, For there's no saying what they will or may do. The reason's obvious: if there's an eclût, They lose their caste at once, as do the Parias; And when the delicacies of the law Have filled 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. 1 The amende honorable, upon the whole, is not amiss; but here we |