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 :
'Tis 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 foundered,
I think to canter gently through a hundred.

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.

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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,
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?
In Because, you'll say, nought calls for such a trial ;—
Then there's more merit in his self-denial.

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 пр in ingots from the mine obscure;
Poron 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,

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 groans 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.
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.

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,
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,"
And one or two sad, separate wives, without

A fruit to bloom upon their withering bough
Begged 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.)

How all the needy honourable misters,

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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 " 'tis 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!
Smart uniforms and sparkling coronets

Are spurned in turn, until her turn arrives,
After much 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.

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")
Was chosen from out an amatory score,
Albeit my years were less discreet than few;

But though I also had reformed 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.

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:
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 eschewed by human cattle.

Moreover I've remarked (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,

ཧཱུྃ་ ད་I

Besides their knowledge of the world, and sense
Of the sad consequence of going astray,
Are wiser in the warnings 'gainst the woe
Which the mere passionless can never know.
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.

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.

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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
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.
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.
Perhaps you'll have a letter from the mother,

To say her daughter's feelings are trepanned;
Perhaps you'll have a visit from the brother,

All strút, 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.

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,
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.

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 wrecked, 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.

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
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.

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);-

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.

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,
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.

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.

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The amende honorable, upon the whole, is not amiss; but here we