XLII.
I like on Autumn evenings to ride out,

Without being forced to bid my groom be sure My cloak is round his middle strapp'd about,

Because the skies are not the most secure; I know too that, if stopp'd upon my route,

Where the green alleys windingly allure, Reeling with grapes red waggons choke the way, In England 't woud be dung, dust, or a dray.

XXXVI.
Besides, within the Alps, to every woman,

(Although, God knows, it is a grievous sin,) 'T is, I may say, permitted to have two men ;

I can't tell who first brought the custom in,
But “ Cavalier Serventes" are quite common,

And no one notices, nor cares a pin ;
And we may call this (not to say the worst)
A second marriage which corrupts the first.

XXXVII.
The word was formerly a “ Cicisbeo,"

But that is now grown vulgar and indecent;
The Spaniards call the person a “ Cortejo," I

For the same mode subsists in Spain, though recent; In short it reaches from the Po to Teio,

And may perhaps at last be o'er the sea sent. But Heaven preserve Old England from such courses ! Or what becomes of damage and divorces ?

XLIII. I also like to dine on becaficas,

To see the Sun set, sure he 'll rise to-morrow, Not through a misty morning twinkling weak as

A drunken man's dead eye in maudlin sorrow, But with all Heaven t'himself; that day will break as

Beauteous as cloudless, nor be forced to borrow That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers Where reeking London's smoky caldron simmers.

XXXVIII.
However, I still think, with all due deference

To the fair single part of the Creation,
That married ladies should preserve the preference

In tête-à-tête or general conversation And this I say without peculiar reference

To England, France, or any other nation Because they know the world, and are at ease, And being natural, naturally please.

XLIV.
I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,

Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,

With syllables which breathe of the sweet South, And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,

That not a single accent seems uncouth, Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural, Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all

XXXIX. 'Tis true, your budding Miss is very charming,

But shy and awkward at first coming out, So much alarm'd, that she is quite alarming,

All Giggle, Blush; half Pertness, and half Pout;

XLV.
I like the women too (forgive my folly),

From the rich peasant-cheek of ruddy bronze, And large black eyes that flash on you a volley

Of rays that say a thousand things at once, To the high dama's brow, more melancholy,

But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance, Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes, Soft as her climes, and sunny as her skies.

I Cortejo is pronounced Corteho, with an aspirate, accord. ing to the Arabesque guttural. It means what there is as yet no precise name for in England, though the practice is as common as in any tramontane country whatever.

2 " From the tall peasant with her ruddy bronze."- MS.) 3 [* Like her own clime, all sun, and bloom, and skies."

MS.) * C" In these lines the author rises above the usual and

XLVI.
Eve of the land which still is Paradise !

Italian beauty ! didst thou not inspire
Raphael', who died in thy embrace, and vies

With all we know of Heaven, or can desire, In what he hath bequeath'd us ?-in what guise,

Though flashing from the fervour of the lyre, Would words describe thy past and present glow, While yet Canova can create below ? 2

XLVII. “ England! with all thy faults I love thee still,"

I said at Calais, and have not forgot it; I like to speak and lucubrate my fill;

I like the government (but that is not it); I like the freedom of the press and quill;

I like the Habeas Corpus (when we've got it); I like a parliamentary debate, Particularly when 't is not too late ;

LII.
But I am but a nameless sort of person,

(A broken Dandys lately on my travels) And take for rhyme, to hook my rambling verse on,

The first that Walker's Lexicon unravels, And when I can't find that, I put a worse on,

Not caring as I ought for critics' cavils; I've half a mind to tumble down to prose, But verse is more in fashion - so here goes.

LIII. The Count and Laura made their new arrangement,

Which lasted, as arrangements sometimes do, For half a dozen years without estrangements

They had their little differences, too;
Those jealous whiffs, which never any change meant :

In such affairs there probably are few
Who have not had this pouting sort of squabble,
From sinners of high station to the rabble.

XLVIII.
I like the taxes, when they 're not too many ;

I like a seacoal fire, when not too dear;
I like a becf-steak, too, as well as any;

Have no objection to a pot of beer;
I like the weather, when it is not rainy,

That is, I like two months of every year.
And so God save the Regent, Church, and King !
Which means that I like all and every thing.

LIV.
But, on tbe whole, they were a happy pair,

As happy as unlawful love could make them;
The gentleman was fond, the lady fair,
Their chains so slight, 't was not worth while to

break them :
The world beheld them with indulgent air;

The pious only wish'd “the devil take them!"
He took them not; he very often waits,
And leaves old sinners to be young ones' baits.

XLIX.
Our standing army, and disbanded seamen,

Poor's rate, Reform, my own, the nation's debt, Our little riots just to show we are free men,

Our trifling bankruptcies in the Gazette,
Our cloudy climate, and our chilly women,

All these I can forgive, and those forget,
And greatly venerate our recent glories,
And wish they were not owing to the Tories.

L.
But to my tale of Laura, - for I find

Digression is a sin, that by degrees
Becomes exceeding tedious to my mind,

And, therefore, may the reader too displease – The gentle reader, who may wax unkind,

And caring little for the author's ease, Insist on knowing what he means, a hard And hapless situation for a bard.

LV. But they were young: Oh! what without our youth

Would love be! What would youth be without love! Youth lends it joy, and sweetness, vigour, truth,

Heart, soul, and all that seems as from above; But, languishing with years, it grows uncouth

One of few things experience don't improve, Which is, perhaps, the reason why old fellows Are always so preposterously jealous.

LI.
Oh that I had the art of easy writing

What should be easy reading! could I scale Parnassus, where the Muses sit inditing

Those pretty poems never known to fail,

LVI.
It was the Carnival, as I have said

Some six and thirty stanzas back, and so
Laura the usual preparations made,

Which you do when your mind's made up to go To-night t) Mrs. Boehm's masquerade,

Spectator, or partaker in the show; The only difference known between the cases Is — here, we have six weeks of " varnish'd faces."

appropriate pitch of his composition, and is betrayed into something too like enthusiasm and deep feeling for the light and fantastic strain of his poetry. Neither does the fit go off, for he rises quite into rapiure in the succeeding stanza. This is, however, the only slip of the kind in the whole work the only passage in which the author hetrays the secret (which might, however, have been suspected) of his own genius, and his atfinity to a higher order of poets than those to whom he has here been pleased to hold out a model." JEFFREY.)

1 For the received accounts of the cause of Raphael's death, see his lives. * Note. - (In talking thus, the writer, more especially

Of women, would be understood to say,
He speaks as a spectator, not officially,

And always, reader, in a modest way;

Perhaps, too, in no very great degree shall be

Appear to have offended in this lay,
Since, as all know, without the sex, our sonnets
Would seem untinish'd, like their untrimm'd bonnets.)

(Signed) PRINTER'S DEVIL, 3 [" The expressions blue-stocking' and ' dandy'may furnish matter for the learning of a commentator at some future period. At this moment, every English reader will understand them. Our present ephemeral dandy is akin to the maccaroni of my earlier days. The first of those expressions has become classical, by Mrs. Hannah More's poem of BasBleu,' and the other by the use of it in one of Lord Byron's poems. Though now become familiar and trite, their day may not be long.

Cadentque
Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula.'"
LORD GlenberVie, Ricciardetto, 1822.]

I 3

LVII.
Laura, when dress'd, was (as I sang before)

A pretty woman as was ever seen,
Fresh as the Angel o'er a new inn door,

Or frontispiece of a new Magazine, With all the fashions which the last month wore,

Colour'd, and silver paper leaved between
That and the title-page, for fear the press
Should soil with parts of speech the parts of dress.

LVIII.
They went to the Ridotto; - 't is a hall

Where people dance, and sup, and dance again; Its proper name, perhaps, were a masqued ball,

But that's of no importance to my strain ; 'T is (on a smaller scale) like our Vauxhall,

Excepting that it can't be spoilt by rain :
The company is “mix'd" (the phrase I quote is
As much as saying, they 're below your notice);

LIX.
For a “mix'd company” implies that, save

Yourself and friends, and half a hundred more, Whom you may bow to without looking grave,

The rest are but a vulgar set, the bore Of public places, where they basely brave

The fashionable stare of twenty score Of well-bred persons, callid “the Ilorld;" but I, Although I know them, really don't know why.

LX.
This is the case in England; at least was

During the dynasty of Dandies ', now
Perchance succeeded by some other class

Of imitated imitators: – how
Irreparably soon decline, alas !

The demagogues of fashion : all below
Is frail ; how easily the world is lost
By love, or war, and now and then by frost !

LXI.
Crush'd was Napoleon by the northern Thor,

Who knock'd his army down with icy hammer,
Stopp'd by the elements ?, like a whaler, or

A blundering novice in his new French grammar; Good cause had be to doubt the chance of war,

And as for Fortune - but I dare not d-n her,
Because, were I to ponder to infinity,
The more I should believe in her divinity. 3

LXII.
She rules the present, past, and all to be yet,

She gives us luck in lotteries, love, and marriage ; I cannot say that she's done much for me yet;

Not that I mean her bounties to disparage, We've not yet closed accounts, and we shall see yet

How much she 'll make amends for past miscarriage; Meantime the goddess I'll no more importune, Unless to thank her when she's made my fortune.

"C" I liked the Dandics : they were always very civil to me; though, in general, they disliked literary people, and persecuted and mystified Madame de Stael, Lewis, Horace Twiss, and the like. The truth is, that though I gave up the business early, I had a tinge of Dandyism in my minority, and probably retained enough of it to conciliate the great ones ac four and twenty." — Byron Diary, 1821.)

? [" When Brummell was obliged to retire to France, he knew no French, and having obtained a grammar for the purpose of study, our friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress Brummell had made in French: he responded, 'that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the elements. I have put this pun into Beppo, which is a fair

LXIX.
While Laura thus was seen and seeing, smiling,

Talking, she knew not why and cared not what, So that her female friends, with envy broiling,

Beheld her airs and triumph, and all that ; And well-dress'd males still kept before her filing,

And passing bow'd and mingled with her chat; More than the rest one person seem'd to stare With pertinacity that's rather rare.

LXX.
He was a Turk, the colour of mahogany ;

And Laura saw him, and at first was glad,
Because the Turks so much admire philogyny,

Although their usage of their wives is sad; 'Tis said they use no better than a dog any

Poor woman, whom they purchase like a pad : They have a number, though they ne'er exhibit 'em, Four wives by law, and concubines “ ad libitum."

LXXI. They lock them up, and veil, and guard them daily,

They scarcely can behold their male relations, So that their moments do not pass so gaily

As is supposed the case with northern nations ; Confinement, too, must make them look quite palely;

And as the Turks abhor long conversations,
Their days are either pass'd in doing nothing,
Or bathing, nursing, making love, and clothing.

LXXII.
They cannot read, and so don't lisp in criticism ;

Nor write, and so they don't affect the muse;
Were never caught in epigram or witticism,

Have no romances, sermons, plays, reviews, In harams learning soon would make a pretty schism!

But luckily these beauties are no “ Blues," No bustling Botherbys have they to show 'em " That charming passage in the last new poem."

LXXVI.
Of these same we see several, and of others,

Men of the world, who know the world like men, Scott, Rogers, Moore, and all the better brothers,

Who think of something else besides the pen , But for the children of the “mighty mother's,"

The would-be wits and can't-be gentlemen,
I leave them to their daily “tea is ready,"
Smug coterie, and literary lady.'

LXXVII.
The poor dear Mussulwomen whom I mention

Have none of these instructive pleasant people,
And one would seem to them a new invention,

Unknown as bells within a Turkish steeple ;
I think 't would almost be worth while to pension

(Though best-sown projects very often reap ill)
A missionary author, just to preach
Our Christian usage of the parts of speech.

LXXVIII.
No chemistry for them unfolds her gasses,

No metaphysics are let loose in lectures,
No circulating library amasses

Religious novels, moral tales, and strictures Upon the living manners, as they pass us ;

No exhibition glares with annual pictures ;
They stare not on the stars from out their attics,
Nor deal (thank God for that!) in mathematics.

LXXIX.
Why I thank God for that is no great matter,

I have my reasons, you no doubt suppose,
And as, perhaps, they would not highly flatter,

I'll keep them for my life (to come) in prose; I fear I have a little turn for satire,

And yet methinks the older that one grows Inclines us more to laugh than scold, though laugoter Leaves us so doubly serious shortly after.

LXXX,
Oh, Mirth and Innocence ! Oh, Milk and Water !

Ye happy mixtures of more happy days !
In these sad centuries of sin and slaughter,

Abominable Man no more allays
His thirst with such pure beverage. No matter,

I love you both, and both shall have my praise.
Oh, for old Saturn's reign of sugar-candy! -
Meantime I drink to your return in brandy.

LXXXI.
Our Laura's Turk still kept his eyes upon her,

Less in the Mussulman than Christian way,
Which seems to say, “ Madam, I do you honour,

And while I please to stare, you 'l please to stay." Could staring win a woman, this had won her,

But Laura could not thus be led astray ;
She had stood fire too long and well, to boggle
Even at this stranger's most outlandish ogle.

LXXXII.
The morning now was on the point of breaking,

A turn of time at which I would advise
Ladies who have been dancing, or partaking

In any other kind of exercise,
To make their preparations for forsaking

The ball-room ere the sun begins to rise,
Because when once the lamps and candles fail,
His blushes make them look a little pale.

LXXIII.
No solemn, antique gentleman of rhyme,

Who baving angled all his life for fame,
And getting but a nibble at a time,

Still fussily keeps fishing on, the same Small “ Triton of the minnows," the sublime

Of mediocrity, the furious tame, The echo's echo, usher of the school Of female wits, boy bards — in short, a fool !

LXXIV.
A stalking oracle of awful phrase,

The approving“ Good!” (by no means coop in law) Humming like flies around the newest blaze,

The bluest of bluebottles you e'er saw, Teasing with blame, excruciating with praise,

Gorging the little fame he gets all raw, Translating tongues he knows not even by letter, And sweating plays so middling, bad were better.

LXXV.
One hates an author that's all author, -fellows

In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink,
So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous,

One don't know what to say to them, or think, Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows;

Of coxcombry's worst coxcombs e'en the pink Are preferable to these shreds of paper, These unquench'd snuffings of the midnight taper.

" [Yothing can be cleverer than this caustic little diatribe, introduced a propos of the life of Turkish ladies in their harams. – JEFFREY.]