The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 106

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!"[655]-- The only truth that yet has been confessed Within these latest thousand years or later.

Perhaps the fine old fellow spoke in jest:-- For my part, I am but a mere spectator, And gaze where'er the palace or the hovel is, Much in the mode of Goethe's Mephistopheles;

VIII.

But neither love nor hate in much excess; Though 't was not once so. If I sneer sometimes, It is because I cannot well do less, And now and then it also suits my rhymes.

I should be very willing to redress Men's wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, Had not Cervantes, in that too true tale Of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.

IX.[656]

Of all tales 't is the saddest--and more sad, Because it makes us smile: his hero's right, And still pursues the right;--to curb the bad His only object, and 'gainst odds to fight His guerdon: 't is his virtue makes him mad!

But his adventures form a sorry sight;-- A sorrier still is the great moral taught By that real Epic unto all who have thought.[lx]

X.

Redressing injury, revenging wrong, To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff; Opposing singly the united strong, From foreign yoke to free the helpless native:-- Alas! must n.o.blest views, like an old song, Be for mere Fancy's sport a theme creative, A jest, a riddle, Fame through thin and thick sought!

And Socrates himself but Wisdom's Quixote?

XI.

Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away; A single laugh demolished the right arm Of his own country;--seldom since that day Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm, The World gave ground before her bright array; And therefore have his volumes done such harm, That all their glory, as a composition, Was dearly purchased by his land's perdition.

XII.

I'm "at my old lunes"[657]--digression, and forget The Lady Adeline Amundeville; The fair most fatal Juan ever met, Although she was not evil nor meant ill; But Destiny and Pa.s.sion spread the net (Fate is a good excuse for our own will), And caught them;--what do they _not_ catch, methinks?

But I'm not Oedipus, and Life's a Sphinx.

XIII.

I tell the tale as it is told, nor dare To venture a solution: "_Davus sum!_"[658]

And now I will proceed upon the pair.

Sweet Adeline, amidst the gay World's hum, Was the Queen-Bee, the gla.s.s of all that's fair; Whose charms made all men speak, and women dumb.

The last's a miracle, and such was reckoned, And since that time there has not been a second.

XIV.

Chaste was she, to Detraction's desperation, And wedded unto one she had loved well-- A man known in the councils of the Nation, Cool, and quite English, imperturbable, Though apt to act with fire upon occasion, Proud of himself and her: the World could tell Nought against either, and both seemed secure-- She in her virtue, he in his hauteur.

XV.

It chanced some diplomatical relations, Arising out of business, often brought Himself and Juan in their mutual stations Into close contact. Though reserved, nor caught By specious seeming, Juan's youth, and patience, And talent, on his haughty spirit wrought, And formed a basis of esteem, which ends In making men what Courtesy calls friends.

XVI.

And thus Lord Henry, who was cautious as Reserve and Pride could make him, and full slow In judging men--when once his judgment was Determined, right or wrong, on friend or foe, Had all the pertinacity Pride has, Which knows no ebb to its imperious flow, And loves or hates, disdaining to be guided, Because its own good pleasure hath decided.

XVII.

His friends.h.i.+ps, therefore, and no less aversions, Though oft well founded, which confirmed but more His prepossessions, like the laws of Persians And Medes, would ne'er revoke what went before.

His feelings had not those strange fits, like tertians, Of common likings, which make some deplore What they should laugh at--the mere ague still Of men's regard, the fever or the chill.

XVIII.

"'T is not in mortals to command success:"[659]

But _do you more_, Semp.r.o.nius--_don't_ deserve it, And take my word, you won't have any less.

Be wary, watch the time, and always serve it; Give gently way, when there's too great a press; And for your conscience, only learn to nerve it; For, like a racer, or a boxer training, 'T will make, if proved, vast efforts without paining.

XIX.

Lord Henry also liked to be superior, As most men do, the little or the great; The very lowest find out an inferior, At least they think so, to exert their state Upon: for there are very few things wearier Than solitary Pride's oppressive weight, Which mortals generously would divide, By bidding others carry while they ride.

XX.

In birth, in rank, in fortune likewise equal, O'er Juan he could no distinction claim; In years he had the advantage of Time's sequel; And, as he thought, in country much the same-- Because bold Britons have a tongue and free quill, At which all modern nations vainly aim; And the Lord Henry was a great debater, So that few Members kept the House up later.

XXI.

These were advantages: and then he thought-- It was his foible, but by no means sinister-- That few or none more than himself had caught Court mysteries, having been himself a minister: He liked to teach that which he had been taught, And greatly shone whenever there had been a stir; And reconciled all qualities which grace man, Always a patriot--and, sometimes, a placeman.

XXII.

He liked the gentle Spaniard for his gravity; He almost honoured him for his docility; Because, though young, he acquiesced with suavity, Or contradicted but with proud humility.

He knew the World, and would not see depravity In faults which sometimes show the soil's fertility, If that the weeds o'erlive not the first crop-- For then they are very difficult to stop.

XXIII.

And then he talked with him about Madrid, Constantinople, and such distant places; Where people always did as they were bid, Or did what they should not with foreign graces.

Of coursers also spake they: Henry rid Well, like most Englishmen, and loved the races; And Juan, like a true-born Andalusian, Could back[660] a horse, as Despots ride a Russian.

XXIV.

And thus acquaintance grew, at n.o.ble routs, And diplomatic dinners, or at other-- For Juan stood well both with Ins and Outs, As in freemasonry a higher brother.

Upon his talent Henry had no doubts; His manner showed him sprung from a high mother, And all men like to show their hospitality To him whose breeding matches with his quality.

XXV.

At Blank-Blank Square;--for we will break no squares[661]

By naming streets: since men are so censorious, And apt to sow an author's wheat with tares, Reaping allusions private and inglorious, Where none were dreamt of, unto Love's affairs, Which were, or are, or are to be notorious, That therefore do I previously declare, Lord Henry's mansion was in Blank-Blank Square.

XXVI.

Also there bin[662] another pious reason For making squares and streets anonymous; Which is, that there is scarce a single season Which doth not shake some very splendid house With some slight heart-quake of domestic treason-- A topic Scandal doth delight to rouse: Such I might stumble over unawares, Unless I knew the very chastest squares.

XXVII.