Canto III

Andrew Nicholson1 adduces, as the books to which John Murray refers on

October 15th 1819, Hone’s Canto, and a volume called Don Juan: with A
Biographical Account of Lord Byron and his Family; Anecdotes of His
Lordship’s Travels and Residence in Greece, at Geneva, &c., including,
also, a Sketch of the Vampire Family. This last was printed for William
Wright of 46 Fleet Street – he “for whom” A New Canto (see below), was
printed at the same time (both by the same printer, W.Shackell of Johns-
court, Fleet Street). William Wright was a Fleet Street publisher
responsible among other things for Lockhart’s John Bull’s Letter to Lord
Byron, and for another spurious publication, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey
Crayon, supposedly by Washington Irving.2 He seems, from references in
letters between Lockhart and J.W.Croker, to have been an intimate of
Murray,3 and regarded as “a babbling sort of man”.4
The volume carries an epigraph from Dr Johnson, linking Byron to
the Restoration:

The wits of Charles5 found easier ways to fame,

Nor wished for Jonson’s art, or Shakespeare’s flame,
Themselves they studied; as they felt, they writ,
Intrigue was plot, Obscenity was wit.
Yet bards like these aspired to lasting praise,
And proudly hoped to pimp in future Days.6

Of the poem’s author (or authors), we can say that they may know
Aberdeen, seem to dislike hereditary peers, and may have travelled in
Greece. But they remain unknown. A reference to “Hammond’s lay”
might lead us to a parodist or parodists once attached to the Anti-Jacobin
(see CXXIII 2n). Another reference, in the notes, to John Murray’s solicitor
Sharon Turner (see CXXVII 7n) might lead us to another acquaintance of
Byron’s publisher. Turner (a pioneer in the study of Anglo-Saxon),

1: LJM 292n.
2: LJM 349-50.
3: See Strout, Alan Lang (ed.) John Bull’s Letter to Lord Byron (Oklahoma 1947),
p.51.
4: Ibid., p.52.
5: The Restoration comic writers: Wycherley, Congreve, and so on.
6: Johnson, Prologue Spoken by Mr. Garrick at the Opening of the Theatre in
Drury-Lane, 1747, ll.17-20 and 22-3.
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brought out, also in 1819, Prolusions on Modern Poets and Poetry, from
which this is an anti-Byron passage:

And here sage Reason cries, with firm-ton’d voice,

‘Is poetry absolved from moral choice?
Is she, a charter’d libertine, to rove,
Like the free air, o’er marsh, heath, vale or grove?
And careless, whether from the den or dell,
She bring us ‘airs from heaven or blasts from hell?’
Is she, are we—impassible to ill?
Does nectar only flow along her rill?
And do the evil genii of mankind,
No access to her lays or votaries find?
Good taste; sound judgment; are they in her train?
Or have these ancient muses ceas’d to reign?

The voice of blame I hate to hear, or swell,

And yet some strains the censor’s frown impel.
Giaours; Selims; Corsairs; Alps and Harolds teize;
And all the misanthropes and ruffians please.
Paris and Weimar drill’d us to admire
Outragious sentiment and maniac fire.
With humble plagiarising skill we toil,
And their worst shoots transplant to British soil.
Our rage for novelty th’exotic hails,
And German Endriagos crowd our tales.
Montorios, Bertrams, Christabels delight:
Ambrosios, sorcerers, bravos, fiends affright.
As if a bedlam were the general school,
Or Bacchus’ orgies gave the poet rule.
As if chew’d opium were the happiest muse,
And her best forms, phantasmagorias views.

Thou hermit Reason! hie thee to thy cell,

Forbid with truth, or taste, or use to dwell.
Disorder’d fancy! tis thy triumph now.
Rage; flaunt; frown; vapour; to thy reign we bow.7

Byron, champion of Pope, would here find his earlier works

condemned in a Popean idiom, just as he is abandoning his earlier
“vapouring” style in favour of something wittier.
Five small-printed stanzas (see below), called “A Suppressed
Passage”, at the book’s very end, indicate a strange familiarity with some

7: Sharon Turner, Prolusion on Modern Poets and Poetry (1819), pp.93-5.

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Byronic bêtes noirs, about whom the real Byron’s full feelings have yet to
see print, the Don Juan Dedication not having been published (though
received at Albemarle Street), and the anti-Laker section from the real
Canto III (sts.93-5) not yet even written. The five stanzas are a much more
sympathetic and effective pastiche of Byron than the main poem, and may
be by a different author.
Strange pre-echoes of the as yet unwritten Don Juan III and IV are
found elsewhere, in such things as Berinthia’s pregnancy, and “Byron”’s
stay on the Trojan plain. There is also a possible reference to Byron’s
Alpine Journal in the reference to the “lonely, scath’d, and ruin’d pine” in
stanza CXXXVI. The Alpine Journal had been on Murray’s premises.8
Canto III affects to be a biography of Byron (so far) in ottava rima.
Incest (LXXXI, 4) and homosexuality (XCVII, 6) are hinted at, though in
terms dark and remote. Of Byron’s Don Juan, it says in its notes,

Tom Shadwell [author of The Libertine], though he delineates for the

public a sufficiently outrageous series of pictures of vice, was a
blushing poet—at least he tells us that he could blush in his
dedication; but the noble author of the Don Juan of our day, in
endeavouring to improve upon the Spanish and Italian tradition, has
submitted to the public without a blush or the smallest sign of remorse,
a work which, notwithstanding its poetical embellishments, is scarcely
fit to be read in a bagnio. (pp.74-5)

Quoting from Hours of Idleness, Childe Harold, and Don Juan, Canto
III is a running commentary not only on Byron’s life but on his work,
attempting a critique of his entire œuvre in his own new satirical idiom. It
describes among other felicities his expulsion from Harrow (XXXV, 7), his
journey from Cadiz to Lisbon (XLVII), his friendship with Aegean pirates
(LI-LII), his pleasure yacht (LIII), and his purchase of a Greek sex-slave, a
pirate’s daughter called Berinthia (LX). With Berinthia he resides on
Mitylene (LXXII), and goes on a sea-voyage during which Berinthia
survives a fall overboard (XC-XCIV). She has a child, which dies (XCV),
and “Byron”, bored, leaves her (XCVIII).
In one section (LXXIV-LXXXVIII) the poem aspires to lyric status: it
is not successful.
After wandering through Athens and Parnassus thinking dark thoughts
(C-CIII), “Byron” returns home (CV). He spends dissipated hours with
such as “Lady Caroline, and Lady Vain” (CVII, 6), and gets married to “a
beauteous and a virtuous fair” (CIX, 3), his brutal break with whom is

8: See LJM 182 and 217.

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contrasted with the way in which Byron’s own gentle Juan would have
behaved (CXVI-CXVII). Neither Juan’s mind nor Lara’s, the poem asserts,
would “vent its coward rage on woman-kind” (CXXI, 3) in the way Byron
allowed his domestic poems to (CXXII). Exiling himself, he passes
Waterloo, where “he glow’d not as his fathers glow’d” (CXXX, 5). He
arrives at Geneva, “Where,” as the poem tells us in one unforgettable
couplet, “… MILTON’s friend too dwelt, sage DIODATI, / And MADAM
STAEL, prolific as potatoe” (CXXXVII, 7-8). In Geneva, “Byron” goes to
seed: hitting rock-bottom, he mixes at last with truly diabolical company:

In rival conclave there and dark divan

He met and mingled with the Vampyre crew
Who hate the virtues and the form of man,
And strive to bring fresh monsters into view;
Who mock the inscrutable Almighty’s plan
By seeking truth and order to subdue –
Scribblers, who fright the novel reading train
With mad creations of th’unsettled brain.

There Frankenstein was hatched ... (CXXXVIII-CXXXIX)

The pastiche ends with its protagonist discontented, even in Venice:

“Farewell! a word that hath been and must be,”

And “if for ever,” still, so much the better …

The book concludes with of 83 its 156 pages given over to notes on
the House of Byron, Newstead Abbey (On Leaving Newstead Abbey is
printed whole), Hours of Idleness, Childe Harold, Greece, Lord Elgin (The
Curse of Minerva is printed in part), the Separation (A Sketch from Private
Life is printed whole) and the famous Phantasmagoriana evening at
Diodati. The notes conclude:

With his voluntary exile from his native land, every proud and
generous feeling passed away; and the Dante of England, as Byron has
often, although fantastically been called, took his willing station
among the tuneful purveyors of an exotic licentiousness. (p.154)

Canto III is at once watery, prurient in so far as it dares to be,

pharisaical, and sometimes fluent, with different layers of verse-writing
ability apparent (it employs too many mid-stanza full stops, particularly at
the end of the sixth line). It is intermittently amusing in its deflations. In
its gross and happy inaccuracy it gives one the same pleasure or

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displeasure as watching a Ken Russell movie. Reading it makes you

realise (as if you didn’t know) what a great poet Byron is, and the
alarming speed at which early, conventional readers, unable to deal with
the complexity of his work, re-interpreted it in terms of “Byronic”
stereotypes.

DON JUAN.
CANTO III.

I.
On second thoughts, and these, ’tis said, are best,
I cannot see9 why I afar should roam,
To Spain, France, Italy, Greece, or the rest
Of foreign climes, where Pleasure builds her dome,
To find a hero—no uncommon guest; 5
I might have looked, they say, much nearer home,
Where I should find of heroes not a few,10
Trimmed up in martial red, or green, or blue;

II.
Or sacerdotal black, if that will suit
The grave, dull colour of the Muse’s lay, 10
That like the men who strike at folly’s root
Dare not, lest censure’s tongue should blame, be gay;
The hypocrites, who hide the cloven foot,
Because the idly talkative may say,
The man who against vice the loudest bellows, 15
Is after all no better than his fellows.

III.
I might, ’tis true, have found a plenteous store
Of subjects for my Muse’s rambling pen
Within the sea-girt round of Britain’s shore,
That teems with noble bards and valorous men; 20
And now I weigh the knotty point once more,
I think I’d better leave that rogue of Spain,11

9: B. is assumed at this point to be the narrator.

10: Comments on DJ I 1: I want a hero …

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Whom I conducted to the beauteous Haidee,

To slumber in the arms of that frail lady;

IV.
And like the noble wits of Charles’s days 25
Who found an easy way to Fame’s sweet bowers
Rhyming in unsophisticated lays
The guilty pleasures of their own lewd hours,
Draw from myself—like those who sought for praise,
Covering the shrines of vice with specious flowers; 30
The dissolute wits that hated virtuous wives,
And trumpeted their own licentious lives.

V.
There are, I own, whose fevered life’s a theme
Of aberration, whim, and discontent;
Whose bosom is a fountain, whence the stream 35
Of black misanthropy is ever sent
In images, dark as is the maniac[’]s dream,
Who feels his woe and dares not yet repent,
To mock and mar with well-dissembled care
The inborn happiness they cannot share. 40

VI.
I hate the egoist—I hate that I,
Which brings me down to little space indeed;
It heralds in a tale of vanity
Which very oft is troublesome to read—
I think the critics will not this deny;— 45
But with my present purpose to proceed,—
I urge no title to peculiar grace,
So let us e’en like lawyers try the case.12

VII.
Suppose we then to northern wilds repair,
Where fortune seldom sheds her partial gleam, 50
To the lone barren rocks of LOCH-NA-GAIR,13

11: Assumes Juan to be the traditional seducer, despite the evidence in B.’s first
two cantos.
12: An impersonal narrator takes over from “Byron”.

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Where rises into strength the DEE’s fair stream;

That stream near which in a majestic air
Courting the stranger’s gaze and fame’s esteem,
A stately city stands,14 that grants with ease 55
What the world calls the honourable degrees.15

VIII.
Of Colleges we need not say much here,—
They best are judg’d of by their wisdom’s fruit;
They’re styled the seats of learning, but I fear
That learning is not always the pursuit 60
Where towers and temples piously they rear,
And chairs, and salaried offices to boot,
And youths are congregated from all quarters,
That care not much for stockings or for garters.

IX.
There too in stately form you may espy 65
A goodly Hospital16 its arms extend,
With most paternal love and charity
The helpless imps to succour and befriend
That bear the founder’s name, and where the cry
Of noisy boys, resounding without end, 70
Is heard, and ever and anon, the clatter
Of knives and forks, and well clean’d pewter platter.

X.
But to the point first mentioned—let us see—
Lone Loch-na-Gair, of wild and Gaelic name,
The birth-place of our hero that’s to be,17 75
And by a song already known to fame—
A little lairdship as we’ve said on DEE
That now and then just boasts a shot of game,

13: Lachin Y. Gair was published in Hours of Idleness and Poems Original and
Translated.
14: Aberdeen, where B. first went to school.
15: Aberdeen University dates from 1495; it is Scotland’s third oldest. B. never
mentions it.
16: Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, founded in 1737. B. never mentions it either
(though Aberdeen Grammar School may be intended by “goodly Hospital”).
17: B. was born in London.

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And sometimes a few goats without a horn—

Our hero there—a breechless Lord—was born. 80

XI.
Lord of the heathery heath and the mud cottage,
Or of a trout or two, if he could catch them;
But generally his fare was milk and pottage,
For animals escape unless you watch them
’Mid scenes where they run wild until their dotage; 85
And fowls, unless some other fowls will hatch them
Won’t come “like sacrifices in their trim”
To pamper even the best with wing or limb.

XII.
Our ragged hero, though “no vulgar boy,”
And born to heir a fairer, rich domain, 90
Might there have roved and known no other joy,
Starving upon his native hill or plain,
Far from the crowd whom fancied cares annoy,
Revelling till mad ’mid Dissipation’s train;
But with the simple men by nature fed, 95
Labouring without a murmur for their bread.

XIII.
Here had our youthful hero spent his time
Like lonely minstrel of the glen and dale,
And built on nature’s rock his simple rhime, 100
And told perhaps a far more artless tale,
To sympathy more true, more pure, sublime,
And o’er the heart more fitted to prevail,
Than all the stories of the demon men
And worthless jilts that have employed his pen. 105

XIV.
But Fortune oft will play most curious pranks,
That make even those with wisest heads to stare:
She lifts the meanest to the highest ranks
And makes a lordling of the beggar’s heir;
The urchin that will scarcely give her thanks 110
And late was glad a humble meal to share,
Shall, if my lady Fortune takes the whim,

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The very first in rank and merit seem.

XV.
But let us not disparage Fortune’s child,
Or those that owe their wealth and fame to others,
The world would be a rude and gloomy wild 115
If men were not to feel and act like brothers—
The sacred glow of charity is mild:—
He is the ungenerous soul the flame that smothers;
And many bright examples might be cited
Of those who thus have had their genius lighted. 120

XVI.
The youth whose tale I’ve chosen for my narration,
Had powerful claims to hospitable aid,
And luckily was placed on the foundation
Of the above most charitable shade, 125
For those who boast the name and generation
Of him who bade it rear its friendly head:
And there his grammar and his food he got
From learning’s eleemosynary18 lot.

XVII.
What talents there the embrio bard displayed
We will not say,—’twould seem they were not bright— 130
Nor will we tell the sportive tricks he played,
For school-boys take in mischief much delight:
Suffice it that we hint, as it was said,
He was from first a very wicked wight,
That for the scurvy wager of a fig 135
Would burn the Janitor’s old worsted wig.19

XVIII.
He was not good at running—this you’ll say
Is the chief virtue of the brave in soul—
It might be courage—but the reason lay
In a small part where nature claimed controul,— 140
Achilles’ heel alone need fear the fray,—
Our hero’s foot was round as any bowl,

18: “charitable”.
19: There is no record of B. having done this.

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And his protector was, for with his club

He could the stoutest adversary drub.20

XIX.
’Tis well for some that others have been born 145
Before them, and acquired superb estates,
And titles their descendants to adorn,
Or else perhaps the order of the fates
Had run in different terms, and spoon of horn
Instead of silver, rattled on their plates; 150
And those who now their fellows scornful view
Had gone without a stocking or a shoe.

XX.
Puff but the beggar’s rags with wind of pride
Raised from a sudden gust of fortune’s store
And set the brat on horseback, and he’ll ride 155
Where scarcely ever mortal rode before;
His suppliant looks he quickly lays aside,
And what of modesty he had before;21
Kindred and friends alike the wretch despises,
And shines in vices as in wealth he rises. 160

XXI.
When the keen-sighted destinies espy
Deep stains imprinting life’s succeeding page,
’Tis kind in favouring Fortune’s hand to try
With splendid veil to cover passion’s rage;
To blend with specious guise the public eye 165
And make mad folly’s son appear a sage:—
A peerage can do this—a peerage came,22
And gave our beggar boy a noble name.

20: Implies schoolboy Byron’s ability to kick his foes with his malformed foot.
21: Echoes DJ II, 1, 7-8: … in a way that’s rather of the oddest, he / Became
divested of his native Modesty.
22: B. inherited his baronetcy in 1798, when a ten-year-old schoolboy in
Aberdeen.

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XXII.
Transported soon from the cold chilly north
To genial scenes of England, see him now 170
Amid the youths who show superior worth
By daring like true lordlings to avow
Superior profligacy—issue forth
While Fame her trumpet soon begins to blow
Lauding the accomplished image of a race 175
That long have reaped gay wreaths in glory’s chace.

XXIII.
But noble blood we see degenerate grows—
Honours there are that will not bear the keeping—
The stream again at length as vulgar flows
As that in meanest veins we may see creeping— 180
And hence we sometimes witness curious shows,
A MARLBOROUGH pawning plate—a CECIL peeping
Through window-blinds to catch the longing eyes
Of milliner’s apprentice—glorious prize!

XXIV.
Hence we perceive with feelings that belong 185
To indignation and to pity too,
(For there are sympathies so very strong
That injured nature cannot them subdue)
Lords of the soil whose noble names have long
For generous deeds received from fame their due, 190
Driving their helpless vassals from the land
And spreading misery with a stern command;

XXV.
Striplings from gaming tables and the stews,
As penniless, as haggard, and as fell
As the vile harpies whom such spendthrifts choose 195
To harbour with, and crowd their mimic hell,
Issuing with hands unhallowed to abuse
Their fathers’ well earned honours;—even to sell
Their coffin lids—so monstrously uncivil—
To raise the wind—such acts would raise the devil;— 200

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XXVI.
CHATHAMS and NELSONS hoarding up their bags
Of money, from the public squeezed in taxes;
And men with stars that should be wearing rags,
If we could rightly scan their parallaxes;23
PRINCES delighted clasping kitchen hags 205
Reeling like Saturn on a drunken axis,
More pleased the poker or the spit to wield
Than Britain’s glorious sceptre and her shield!

XXVII.
Abroad ’tis worse.—We will not far expand
Our view to prove the truth of this position; 210
But for a moment look at JUAN’s land
And see to what a miserable condition
The horrid sway of ignorant FERDINAND24
Has sunk proud Spain—joined to the Inquisition
That cramm’d like tyrants down the grandees’ throats 215
The captive coward wearing petticoats.

XXVIII.
Even ladies too, we see, are not much better:
The ancient virtues now are laid aside:
They care not for the matrimonial fetter
In which their modest mothers glorified; 220
LUCRETIA’s fame is now a mere dead letter—
Our modern belles have no such Roman pride.
Even now in print some wedded LADY CHARLOTTE
Shall tell you how she’d doated on some varlet.

XXIX.
Angel of truth! forefend that I should throw 225
Unmerited remark on Virtue’s train—
By Heaven! I would not fix upon the snow
Of spotless Innocence one cruel stain
For all of earthly dross that shines below—
But I have boldly taken up the pen 230
To tell the world its faults; and shall I spare

23: Apparent change of an object’s position which is in fact caused by the viewer
changing position.
24: Ferdinand VII of Spain (1784-1833), an obscurantist tyrant.

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25
ANATIS’ self because her face is fair?

XXX.
Now full of noble blood, and cash in pocket—
Cash that makes learning look a little thing—
And with a sportive soul that would not lock it 235
In caskets where no pleasure it would bring—
To HARROW’s famous school, as if to mock it,
Like many that surround the sacred spring,
Behold our hero sent—our Minor Lord—
And dubb’d LORD SQUANDER at the revelling board.26 240

XXXI.
What wondrous signs of early genius burst
From striplings born to heir a noble name?
Of learning’s prodigies they are the first,
Th’inheritors of everlasting fame!
Our sprig of ancient stock too had a thirst, 245
But it was kindled from unhallowed flame.
He wooed the Muses but to show his spite,
And in lampooning placed his sole delight.27

XXXII.
Science has pleasant tasks to those that prize them
Toiling up hill to catch her dawning morn; 250
But if you cannot master them, despise them,
And hold them up to ridicule and scorn;
Our hero took occasion to apprise them
The Lord of Newstead Abbey was not born
To plod like dull philosophers and tutors, 255
Whom he denominated fools and futors.28

25: Anatis unidentified. Anais may be intended, from Montesquieu’s Lettres

Persanes. The note says, “A lady of antiquity, who being a goddess beside, was in
her conduct above the usual restraints of decorum. Vide Heathen Mythology”
(p.84).
26: B. was never nicknamed Lord Squander.
27: Lampoons form only a fraction of B.’s juvenile output.
28: Coinage combining “fool” and “tutor”. Not found in B.’s writings.

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XXXIII.
Or if mayhap you’re rakishly inclined,
And wish to banish all the moral rules—
Give Satire’s blackest standard to the wind
And war against the fathers of the schools— 260
Call sophistry the mental eyes to blind,
And damn all doctrines of the solemn fools
Who love with equal fervour to abuse
Rakes, gambling tables, and delicious stews.

XXXIV.
This was the precious lore our hero learned 265
And preached and practised as his lyre he strung,
Wallowing amid the mire, where ne’er was earned
The wreath of spotless fame by old or young;
Early it seemed as if his bosom yearned
To shine the leader of the immoral throng, 270
And chace the purer virtues from the mind
That warm, adorn, and dignify mankind.

XXXV.
Our hopeful Minor thus laid the foundation
Of that strange creed which taints his gloomy page,
And thus he perfected his education 275
As many do in this licentious age:
Till tired at length, to guard their reputation
And check his course, the masters in a rage
Decreed expulsion to our lawless hero,29
Who laughed and fiddled at their wrath like Nero. 280

XXXVI.
They might do so—he cared not for their ire—
He was not now to fear a schoolman’s rod;
But if he had a spark of JUVENAL’s fire
Upon their backs he’d lay it on, by G—d.30
The world loves satire—people too admire 285
Lords that can write—then forth there came abroad
The POEMS OF A MINOR,31 something new,

29: Though sometimes in trouble at Harrow, B. was not expelled.

30: Echoes DJ I 206, 8.
31: HoI was subtitled BY GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON, A MINOR.

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Though scoffed at by the EDINBURGH REVIEW.32

XXXVII.
At English Bards and Scotch Reviewers33 then
He raged like one from Bedlam’s walls let loose, 290
And tried to point a keen and desperate pen
Well charged with gall, with anger and abuse—
But might have spared his pains—the Northern men,
Like others, cared not for his spiteful muse.
So weak his Song, his Satire so ill aimed, 295
That even himself was of the trash ashamed.34

XXXVIII.
Next Cam received him—Cam that oft has heard
’Mid Learning’s shrines the dissolute voice of glee
Like sound unblest of night’s unhallowed bird,
Revelling ’mid haunts long dear to piety. 300
Young Harold there he says to lore preferred
“His concubines and carnal companie;”35
And so we fear our youth in wanton strain
Vexed with his mirth the goddess of the fane.

XXXIX.
“He ne’er in Virtue’s ways did take delight, 305
But spent his days in riot most uncouth,”36
And we may well opine what deadly blight
In age must be the fruits of such a youth—
Ah! let no noble mind however bright
Thus strive th’unsightly paths of shame to smooth, 310
And by the splendour of fair fortune’s ray
Like a malignant meteor lead astray.37

32: Henry Brougham’s review of HoI was in The Edinburgh Review, January
1808, XI, pp.285-9.
33: EBSR was first published in March 1809.
34: B. was embarrassed by EBSR when he became friends with some of its targets.
35: CHP I, 2, 8. The original phrase does not refer to Harold’s life at any
university.
36: CHP I, 2, 2-3.
37: Echoes Manfred, I i, 6-10.

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XL.
Early perverted thus to shameful ways,
The mind grows rank with noxious weeds alone,
Lost is the voice of glory and of praise, 315
And happiness, alas, is ever gone;
Nature in vain her beauteous face displays
And in the heart black Envy builds her throne.
Thus stung, to soften disappointment’s gravel,
Restless and sad, Lord Squander took to travel. 320

XLI.
No tender accents breath’d in his farewell,
Such as a man who loves his native land
Pours with a saddening heart upon the gale
Which fans the bark that wafts him from its strand;
These are sweet sympathies that only dwell 325
In breasts where virtue’s purest blooms expand.
Our Childe, whom Fortune’s smile thus lifted high,
Saw Albion’s cliffs recede without a sigh.38

XLII.
Though pampered thus with wealth by right divine,
And honoured far beyond his own desert, 330
He seemed to feel as if no ray benign
Had fallen upon his birth and warmed his heart.
As if the ancient glories of his line
Had fallen at length on an unworthy part;39
Ungrateful, leprosed o’er with discontent, 335
Railing at Heaven and human kind, he went.

XLIII.
His fancy and his passion led to Greece,
But ’twas not to imbibe her purer lore;
Fame taught him that still many a beauteous piece
Of ripening beauty decorates that shore. 340
He therefore sought amid the Egean seas,
The forms of love and pleasure to explore;
To riot amid Cytherea’s smiles,

38: Comments with seeming accuracy on CHP I, ll.118-97, while

misunderstanding it completely.
39: Echoes CHP I st.3.

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And clasp her beauties on their native isles.

XLIV.
He hated censure, though he pleasure loved, 345
And therefore wished to find some happy land
Where, though in luxury bosomed, unreproved
He might to loose delight his heart expand;
Where maids by qualms of conscience were not moved,
And wives were not declared as contraband; 350
Where for crim. cons. no damages are given,
Except perhaps being sent to soon for heaven.

XLV.
But first he took in his wild wandering course
The coast of Spain, and landing there at Cadiz,40
Began to exercise all Cupid’s force 355
Against the tender bosoms of the ladies.41
’Twould seem he never felt much keen remorse
To try what sort of game the lover’s trade is—
And revelling fondly ’mid the Spanish honey,
He spent some time, and not a little money. 360

XLVI.
Th’enticing manners of the Spanish fair,
Their figures and the way in which they move,42
Their eyes’ blue languish, and their winning air,
And all the ways they take to waken love,
Much pleas’d him; but he found in Spain there were 365
Things that he could not half so well approve,
Priests, tyrants, bravoes, and an Inquisition
To send you in a hurry to perdition.

XLVII.
He coasted then to Lisbon,43 and awhile
Where once the Taio rolled o’er golden sand— 370
Golden no more—wooed the voluptuous smile
Of beauties that adorn the Lesbian44 land—

40: The rhymes Cadiz / ladies / trade is are from DJ II, st.5.
41: In fact B. rejected the only carnal encounter he was offered in Spain.
42: Echoes CHP I st.57, ll.1-2.
43: In fact B. went in the other direction, from Lisbon to Cadiz.

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Prolific wives their husbands that beguile,

And cooped-up maids that have a loving hand,
Intriguing, languishing in barren cloister, 375
For love they say will penetrate an oyster.45

XLVIII.
In Portugal a man may spend his time
And money pleasantly enough, if he
Has any relish for the true sublime
In nature’s richest mountain scenery— 380
He may beneath the olive and the lime
Drink wine cheap from the manufactory;
Or with some Julia or eloping Anna,
Rove by the Minho or the Gaudiana.46

XLIX.
Our hero, as we’ve said, awhile sojourned
Amid the scenes where Camoens’47 lyre was strung, 385
And with congenial loves and raptures burned
For Lesbias brown and fair, and old and young;
Till sick at length, their jealous minds he spurned,
And said for venal deeds they should be hung—
They cheated, jilted, robbed, and sold their smiles, 390
And Lisbon was of Europe the St. Giles.48

L.
He left th’Hesperian maids to their confessions
And wives to appease their tyrants as they could,
And the grave Padres to their old transgressions, 395
Glad to escape the men who deal in blood,
For these are fellows that make strong impressions
Sometimes along the darkling Tagus’ flood,
Like Argonaut in search of Golden Fleece,
He spread th’adventurous sail and steered for Greece. 400

44: A strange term for Portugal; conceivably a play on “Lisboan”.

45: Echoes Sheridan, The Critic, III i, 298: An oyster may be cross’d in love.
46: Iberian rivers.
47: Luis Vaz de Camoens (1524-80), Portugal’s national poet.
48: The parish of St. Giles was famous for its brothels, &c. However, B. did not
criticise Lisbon’s morals, but its hygiene: see CHP I st.17.

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LI.
The Egean isles, now styled the Archipelago,
He reached—and here we’ll state for those who want,
These isles, if thither any thing to sell ye go,
Are poor, and situate in the Levant;
And if a pirate comes, mayhap to Hell ye go,49 405
Unless the rascal’s modest wish you grant;
I would advise you to appease their gullets,
As the best means, with good cannon bullets.

LII.
The plundering Corsair seldom mercy blends
With his rapacious acts—it happed howe’er 410
Our traveller needed not the aid which sends
A rude invader to the nether sphere—
He and the pirates soon were best of friends,
And kindly learnt each other to revere;
LORD SQUANDER loved such characters to paint 415
And sung of Pirate Chiefs where’r he went.

LIII.
He kept a pleasure yacht,50 and roved about,
Like summer voyager upon the wave,
And very frequently he would go out
Alone to visit some rude pirate’s cave: 420
They feared with whom he held wild pleasure’s rout
He would not always thus his bacon save;
But Pirates, Corsairs, Turks, and sallow Giaours,
Were favourites of his—they are not ours!51

49: To use the same rhyme twice in one stanza is against the rules in ottava rima.
50: It was not B., but his friend the Marquis of Sligo, who owned a yacht.
51: Given the success of Byron’s “Turkish Tales”, it is hard to know how we’re to
take this.

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LIV.
Sweet SCIO’s Isle ’twould seem he loved the best52 425
And SOPRIANO’s mountain, green and high,
On whose romantic summits you may rest
And feed with fairest sights the gazing eye;
The scenes and temples that APOLLO blest
And all the beauteous isles that scattered lie 430
Upon the placid surface of the deep
On to the woods that wave o’er HELLE’s steep.

LV.
Beside the ruins of Apollo’s fane
Reared by materials from the stately pile,
A cottage stands, in aspect very plain, 435
And not the largest that’s in Chios’ Isle;
But it was rural, and it pleased our swain,
Who there did many a lingering hour beguile;
There when he found no pleasure on the flood,
He nursed his dark and melancholy mood. 440

LVI.
He made excursions frequent to the coast
So famed in classic page—in search of joy,
But found it in barbaric ignorance lost
And pleasure like the Muses very coy—
He trod the bones of many a warlike host 445
And sat amid the ruined walls of Troy.53
These lonely scenes to folly’s wanton train
Speak awful lessons—but they spoke in vain.

LVII.
There have been wanderers in the climes that boast
Superior fame, and shine with brighter ray, 450
Who if they Pleasure’s fleeting phantom lost
Found Wisdom’s god-like form upon their way.

52: For Scio (Chios) see DJ II, 145, 8 and 174, 8; B. never went there. The note
says, “The following details have been given of Lord Byron’s residence and travels
in Greece. They are vouched for, as furnished by one who had the good fortune to
follow his lordship’s footsteps through many of the Grecian islands …” (p.25). In
fact the entire Greek section of the poem is fantasy.
53: Anticipates DJ IV sts.75-8 (not yet written in 1819).

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Our lonely exile’s mind was ever tost

Upon a sea of doubts and dark dismay,
Where his unruly passions and his pride 455
Spurned at the name of any other guide.

LVIII.
He hated tyrant rules and governesses,
And Virtue is a dame that loves controul—
She talks of self-denial and modest dresses,
And bids us sometimes think about our soul; 460
Some folks might heap upon her their caresses
He’d sit with no such vixen cheek by jowl—
His heart was made for love in warm degree,
But then ’twas love that glories to be free.

LIX.
He felt it rather lonely in his rovings 465
And therefore thought a mistress might amuse;
He did as Greeks and Turks do in their lovings,
He bought one, as you’d buy a pair of shoes;
One whose untutored heart had tender movings
Though bred ’mong pirates and half Christian Jews. 470
She was a fisher’s or a corsair’s daughter,
And knew no art but love’s delicious slaughter.

LX.
Her name BERINTHIA54—lovely as the form
Licentious fancy paints to wake desire—
Mild as the balmy sky that knows no storm, 475
Yet with an eye that owned love’s kindling fire.
There is about a Grecian girl a charm
That still a classic passion can inspire;
And tho’ their dress is rather odd, between us,
They make a pretty substitute for Venus. 480

LXI.
If you have seen the eyes of sunny blue
And locks in many a beauteous ringlet wreathing,

54: The name Berinthia is from Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift, Vanbrugh’s The
Relapse and Sheridan’s A Trip to Scarborough. B. had no long-term heterosexual
relationships in Greece.

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And lips like melting rubies, dipt in dew,

And forms like alabaster fondly breathing,
That in some eastern regions you may view, 485
Unconsciously the soft desires bequeathing,
You may conceive, and have a hankering after,
Like our wild spark, the pirate’s lovely daughter.

LXII.
Berinthia was the HAIDEE of the isle,
Our hero though not shipwrecked, was the JUAN 490
Who shared that lovely simple creature’s smile
By help of glittering gold, without much suing;
We will not, can’t believe, he did by guile
Repay her love and kindness by her ruin—
We rather think he treated her with honour, 495
And squandered many a moidore55 upon her.

LXIII.
Berinthia was his tutor—taught him Greek,
As Venus taught Adonis—her own tongue—
A language which before he could not speak
Tho’ he had trod the land where Homer sung— 500
But it is sweet while pressing female cheek
To catch love’s lore and accents from her tongue—
It is, tho’ some may view it as a sin,
The sweetest way of sucking learning in.56

LXIV.
Cymon57 they say acquired the art of shining 505
When he to Beauty’s pleasant school was sent,
And some upon Aspasia’s58 breast reclining
Have learned the whole good art of government:
Some too have got the solid means of dining
By simply trying the experiment 510
Of Love’s advice and gentle revolutions
Upon their fortunes and their constitutions.

55: A moidore is a Portuguese, not a Greek, gold coin.

56: Echoes DJ II sts.163-5.
57: Cimon, fifth-century Athenian statesman.
58: Aspasia was companion to the Athenian statesman Pericles.

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LXV.
The JUAN of our story felt the power
Of Beauty, tho’ ’twas thus his passion’s slave—
She was the goddess of his rural bower 515
His guide and sweet companion on the wave;
With her his temper was not quite so sour,
His cheek less pallid grew, his look less grave:
Tho’ at mankind he railed for their deceptions,
’Twas plain he made for women some exceptions. 520

LXVI.
O’er every isle he and Berinthia ran
Like Tourists, prying into all they could,
Taking a pretty picture or a plan,
And now descending to take humble food:
Like travellers who repose where’er they can, 525
They sometimes laid them down in good green wood,
Startling the wild deer as they wandered on,
Like Dido, Robin Hood, or Little John.59

LXVII.
Borne o’er the Egean main, our rambling pair
Roved where old Cos Meropis60 spread her smile, 530
The birth-place of Hippocrates, and where
Apelles’61 pencil plied its pleasing toil;
They found, however, little pleasure there,
And often went to Mitylene’s62 Isle,
Which is a very sweet inviting place 535
As classic lovers would desire to trace.

LXVIII.
Scio, and Mitylene, and Valparos,
All claim the honour of great Homer’s birth;
But their ridiculous struggle to engross
This high renown now almost moves our mirth. 540
You might, ’tis true, have seen from Tenedos
The siege of Troy, but how that sacred earth

59: For Dido and Aeneas in the woods, see Virgil, Aeneid IV.
60: For Cos Meropis see Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, VIII 14.
61: Apelles was a fourth-century Greek painter.
62: “Mitylene” is trisyllabic.

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Covered in song with such immortal glory

Shews few remains of Homer or his story.63

LXIX.
On Scio there’s a place called Homer’s school, a 545
Dark, ugly cave, like the Calcutta hole,64
Where there is neither chair, nor bench, not stool, a
Convenient thing to travellers on the whole;
They say the bard there brandished the ferrula,65
And sung tho’ he was blind as any mole. 550
Of this we have from history no mention—
I therefore treat the matter as invention.

LXX.
The keeper of the cave expects some praas66
For shewing it—our hero gave him three,
And a Greek testament, to show the laws 555
Against extortion, lies, and bribery;
The master too, a ragged man who was,
Like all that were at his academy,
He gave a robe, his nakedness to hide,
Which filled the aged pedant’s breast with pride. 560

LXXI.
Berinthia widely too abused her bounty
Among the maids who haunt the bays for fish,
For every fair in city, town, and county,
Love presents; and you sometimes get a dish
Of better sort, if you don’t scan the amount ay 565
Of what you give to gratify their wish.
Our pair thus oft surprised and pleased the Turks
Who are not strong believers in good works.

LXXII.
At length they left the pleasant Isle of Scio,
In lovely Mitylene to reside, 570
For they seemed likely to become a trio,

63: Also anticipates DJ IV sts.75-8 (not yet written).

64: Refers to the infamous outrage against English soldiers and civilians in 1756.
65: A ferrula is a cane: the phrase implies that Homer was a schoolteacher.
66: Should be paras; but then the rhyme would not work.

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The fair Berinthia, neither wife nor bride,

Being squeamish grown, and rather pleased to sigh “O!”
And getting rather round and pale beside.67
Her lord, whom thus she loved, to please his lady 575
Bade them now get his dear felucca68 ready.

LXXIII.
They launched their precious burthens on the billow
And set their sail, and steered for Sanchez Bay;69
His lordship’s bosom was Berinthia’s pillow,
And they seemed very blest and very gay; 580
He looked as if he’d never worn the willow,
And she was plainly in a thriving way.
While thus they glided on, his fair enslaver
Asked for a song, and this is what he gave her.

LOVE AND INNOCENCE

LXXIV.
The bower where love is found will be 585
Of every joy the blissful centre,
If lovers, wise amid their glee,
Remember FOLLY must not enter.

LXXV.
Once, Virtue tells with tearful eye,
When she was banished from the plain, 590
The spouse of Prudence, CHASTITY,
Resolved to shun the glance of men.

LXXVI.
One care she had, one lovely care,
Named INNOCENCE, and she was young,
And much she feared some villain’s snare, 595
Would work the blooming prattler wrong.

67: Anticipates Haidee’s pregnancy (DJ IV st.70: not written in 1819).

68: A wooden sailing-boat.
69: Sanchez Bay unidentified.

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LXXVII.
Retired amid the greenest dell
Of a lone isle amid the sea,
The blameless pair resolved to dwell
With heaven diffused tranquillity. 600

LXXVIII.
And there they passed life’s sweetest hours,
From toil and busy scenes remote,
Sporting amid the lotus flowers
And light heeled fawns that loved the spot.

LXXIX.
There duly fell the blessed ray 605
That never set in sorrow’s close,
Virtue’s own bright unclouded day,
And night of undisturbed repose.

LXXX.
So calm they lived—till INNOCENCE
One day beheld the feathered oar 610
Of LOVE, with feigned indifference
And summer bark, approach their shore.

LXXXI.
Ah! need I say acquaintance grew
’Twixt souls so formed to love each other?
How swift the happy moments flew 615
While all that passed was “sister”—“brother;”

LXXXII.
And Chastity sat smiling by
And taught them sweetest songs of gladness;
To cherish virtue’s holy tie
And shun the walks that lead to sadness. 620

LXXXIII.
But whether Love’s uneasy ever,
And fond of paddling in the water,
And Innocence is a short liver,
And knows like me nought of the matter;

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LXXXIV.
Certain it is they took a notion 625
One day to leave the matron’s cot,
And have a frolic on the ocean
Of joy in Love’s sweet pleasure boat.

LXXXV.
May’s spring tide flow and sunny weather,
As wont, their kind assistance lent; 630
While Love’s soft sail and oar of feather
To sound of music gaily went.

LXXXVI.
They saw the vales in distance sink,
And left afar the green isle’s strand—
“Adieu,” cried Love, and seemed to think 635
They voyaged to some happier land;

LXXXVII.
And sportive still the wanton threw
His arms around sweet Innocence,
When lo! a gust of fury blew
And whelmed in ruin every sense. 640

LXXXVIII.
By mystic sympathy conveyed,
The fate irrevocably dire
That doomed the daughter to the shade
Condemned the parent to expire!

LXXXIX.
Berinthia sighed as if she had not been 645
A pirate’s daughter, but a child of pity,
Like simple maid that never saw a queen
And not at all acquainted with the city,
To hear how rudest shocks may intervene
As was related in this faithful ditty, 650
To plunge two faithful hearts in sorrow deep—
She little thought how she was doomed to weep.

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XC.
The gale increased and adverse blew, like gales
That care not for the misery they create—
Berinthia sickened, tho’ the obedient sails 655
To please the fair were often changed and set—
O’er Gobriano’s Point70 a gloom prevails,
And Sanchez[’] welcome Bay is distant yet;
Sudden a gust of vengeful fury blew
And swept the fair Berinthia from the view. 660

XCI.
The thunder has not a more awful sweep,
The lightning glides not swifter o’er the wave
Than our Ægeus71 plunged into the deep
The lovely partner of his breast to save—
The waters rose in many a mountain heap, 665
But he soon snatched her from a watery grave.
Her lovely tresses round his soul were bound,
And by that golden hair his love he found.

XCII.72
A sailor when he ’scapes the dreadful ocean
That buries in its womb his hapless bark— 670
The soul that trembles in divine devotion
As to its Heaven mounts the ethereal spark—
The mother that again with wild emotion
Joys a lost darling’s features to remark,
Feel rapture—but it equals not the burning 675
To see the life blood to love’s cheeks returning—

XCIII.
To mark that eye which was our light of gladness
Once more illumined by Heaven’s sparkling ray—
To chace afar from her the gloom of sadness
Who was the sweet companion of our way; 680
And oh the sweet, the strange, bewildering madness

70: Gobriano’s Point, like Sanchez Bay, unidentified.

71: Ægeus was the father of Theseus. He drowned in the sea which was then
named after him.
72: The simile-list here echoes DJ II st.196 (An Infant when it gazes on a light, and
so on).

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When on that beauteous form of fragile clay

A double life depends—the hopes, the joys
Of future years that death alone destroys.

XCIV.
He must be more than god, or less than brute, 685
As Aristotle aptly somewhere says,
Through whose cold frame such feelings do not shoot
With quickening interest some time of his days.
The misanthrope whom love did thus transmute
And to whose course we dedicate these lays, 690
Hung o’er Berinthia’s looks with mute suspense,
And watched with rapture her returning sense.

XCV.
By change of wind they got into a cove,
And safely landed were in Mitylene,
Where now this new Ulysses nursed his love, 695
But would have given no doubt full many a guinea
That his companion had not tried to prove
Her floating power on Neptune’s waves so sheeny:
For it is said the lovely pair brought forth
A child which did not long survive its birth. 700

XCVI.
It was the child of love and warm desire,
Berinthia’s pleasures died with it forever,
And fame reports with wonder that its sire
Wept with the little beauteous thing to sever!
This mournful tribute Nature will require 705
In spite of stern philosophy’s palaver.
The roving sage whose heart had such meanderings
Now thought of change and mus’d on further wanderings.

XCVII.
The wearied mind can seldom find repose
Even on a female breast, tho’ fair and tender— 710
Instead of joy, it broods on endless woes,
And foolishly can love’s sweet Heaven surrender
To go in search of phantoms, the Lord knows
Whither, or if they are of any gender

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That may by Nature’s unreversing plan 715

Be any wise allied to mortal man.

XCVIII.
He who had looked with such a tender passion
Upon the lovely maid of Scio’s Isle,
Now showed that ’tis in every clime the fashion
For men to love but for a little while. 720
Berinthia now could only wake compassion,
And ’twas alike in vain to weep or smile:
He left her as Don Juan left his Julia,
And calmly marked the day in his port-folio.73

XCIX.
His sentiments he could express much better 725
In rhyme, than in the dull jog-trot of prose,
And therefore sent her a long rhyming letter,
In which he bade her piously compose
Her mind—he certainly would not forget her,
But they must learn to struggle with their woes; 730
Another child, the offspring of his brain,
Now claimed his care and moralizing strain.

C.
To Athens then he went, and sat him down
Amid the gloom of temples crumbled long,
Striving to catch the shadow of renown 735
Humming, if bats can sing, a bat-like song.
He feigned that he to fame was listless grown
And cared not for the opinions of the throng,
But much his heart with secret throb desired
To shew the Muses had his breast inspired. 740

CI.
He never walked abroad till evening tide,
And then he crept to some old mouldering fane.
And mused till midnight there, unterrified
Even by the visits of the plundering train

73: The desperate rhyme marks the desperate misreading: Juan is most unwilling
to leave Julia.

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Who come to break and steal the marble pride 745

Of Grecian toil, to turn to sordid gain
The legs and noses of the ancient sages,
Like Elgin, bartering the boast of ages.74

CII.
Through this dark mirror he surveyed mankind,
Their actions passing and their conduct past— 750
No wonder that his mental eye was blind
To all the fairer virtues that shall last—
To all the glories that with influence kind
Shall o’er weak man a bright’ning influence cast.
With souls like this the proverb will agree— 755
“None are so blind as those that will not see.”

CIII.
He wandered too to the Castalian Hill,
And sat beside the waters of the spring
Where thirsty Poets used to drink their fill,
And new-fledged fancies used to plume their wing, 760
He found it now a very scanty rill
That gave the drinkers little power to sing.
We know not if our poet quaffed at all,
But if he did ’twas deeply tinged with gall.

CIV.
He seemed as bred in the Corcyrian cave, 765
And nurtured by the nymphs that love the shade
Of those stalactic regions, where the wave
Through grottos lone in Lethe drops is spread;
Where stillness reigns o’er all, as in the grave,
And scarce a ray of Phœbus ever played; 770
But now and then some sparry gleam illumes
The wild fantastic forms that light the glooms.

CV.
We will not swell our faithful Epic more,
With what in Greece our wandering lord befel;
Tho’ it is sweet to trace the scenes, the lore, 775

74: Implies that Elgin’s workmen only operated under cover of darkness.

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Of classic land by fancy’s magic spell.

He now bethought him of his native shore,
And took of Greece and Polycarp farewell.
He home returned—excuse the weak impromptu,—
A peerage is a snug good thing to come to. 780

CVI.
It was with state affairs as with the schools;
In eloquence if he aspired to shine,
He found he had not studied well the rules
That raise the mortal man to half divine;
He called the greatest statesmen party tools 785
Because he was not fitted for that line.
He hated courts, and wrangling politics,
And life was a dark scene of artful tricks.

CVII.
Yet still he trod the round of folly’s maze,
Where fashion leads gay dissipation’s train, 790
And pleasure shines with her bewildering rays
That soon shall make the thoughtless wretch complain;
Well does my Lady Brag who deeply plays,
And Lady Caroline, and Lady Vain,
And Thespian maids that shine by candle lights, 795
Know how LORD SQUANDER passed his days and nights.

CVIII.
And when the demon Ennui came, that lours
Even o’er the pride of pampered Pleasure’s crest,
He sought the shelter of paternal bowers 800
Where some give both the purse and nature rest,
And rusticate, to renovate their powers;
But he, who was not of the wise or blest,
Appalled the fiend that thus so sadly dulls,
By drinking wine from his forefathers’ skulls.75 805

75: B.’s poem Lines inscribed upon a Cup formed from a Skull is quoted in the
notes (pp.129-30).

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CIX.
At length his wasted fortunes to repair,
He thought on marriage and its sober joys:—
He won a beauteous and a virtuous fair,
And passed some time in love’s serene employs;
But pleasure was with him a child of air— 810
It is the sweetest dish that soonest cloys:
And he whose heart feels libertine desire
Is ever burning with Promethean fire.

CX.
The bower of happiness is not adorned
By vain exotic gew-gaws, fancy bred; 815
Love and the peaceful Lares76 ne’er sojourned
Where man with pride the social circle fled:
In moody discontent LORD SQUANDER scorned
The fire-side pleasures and the myrtle shade,
In which the smiling blameless loves delight, 820
Chacing alone wild Pleasure’s meteor light.77

CXI.
In vain the tears of virtuous love were shed,
In vain the sweetest bloom of Hymen’s bower
With smiles of innocence its arms out-spread,
To wake the passions that the heart o’er-power— 825
The breast that should have own’d their throb was dead
To all that gives to life its golden hour—
Alas! no pure, no lasting pleasures shine
For the loose bosom of the libertine—

CXII.
He hates whatever takes th’angelic form 830
Of virtue, dignified by woman’s mind;
Himself as vile and grovelling as the worm,
He glories to degrade all human kind—
His breast is like the scene of winter’s storm,
Swept by wild passion’s bleak ungenial wind; 835
And of all wretches by rude passion curst,

76: Household gods.

77: Echoes The Prisoner of Chillon, l.35.

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A sentimental libertine’s the worst.

CXIII.
It is not in the softest witchery
Of smiles all meek and pure as heavenly breast,
Or cheek of rosy bloom, or azure eye, 840
Or deeper sacrifice of heart, expressed
In love’s own tears, and gently stealing sigh,
Can blind licentious minds—mad and unblest
They flounder on amid their vicious lair,
Laying the rude foundations of despair. 845

CXIV.
What would have rapture been, and sweetest spring
Of happy days, to any heart that knew
The value of that love and fostering
Which but for him in purest bosom grew,—
The love that with a fond and guardian wing, 850
He should have shielded and have cherished too,
Was lost on him—with cold unkind alloy
He poisoned all life’s dearest cup of joy.

CXV.
That loving heart, that mind so richly stored
With all that charms till life itself decays, 855
Which fondly chose him for their happy lord,
And gave to him the peace of after days
To keep—the gem that cannot be restored
When dark ingratitude bedims its rays,
He gave to misery with wanton pride, 860
And widowed in her bloom a wife and bride.

CXVI.
DON JUAN’s wives were almost far beyond
His calculation, they came in so fast;
The Don of womankind was very fond,
But the bold Spaniard scorned until the last 865
To feign he felt affection’s tender bond
When he the rubicon of vice had passed:
JUAN confessed his errors very plain,
Or sung his griefs in hypocritic strain.

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CXVII.
If revelling found with demireps, actresses, 870
And the frail sisterhood that haunt the West,
He made no furious war on Governesses,
Because their tongues, poor chatterers, would not rest;
Poor JUAN never madly swore, Heav’n bless us!
Their blood was green and worms would them detest,78 875
But our redoubted sage, who felt as no man,
Fell furious on a poor defenceless woman.

CXVIII.
Women will peep, and women’s tongues will move
When there’s a secret that is worth the keeping;
On all occasions that relate to love 880
The pretty things were never yet found sleeping:
There are who think it ’s no crime to rove
Though ’tis a sad offence to be found peeping—
Mind this morality, ye Governesses,
And check your prying eyes and subtle guesses. 885

CXIX.
Beware of vengeful satire, of foul ink
Discharged with deadly and inhuman rage:
Think of the Lady GODIVA, and think
Of peeping TOM of the historic page;
You know not of the strange unnatural link, 890
That binds the meanest hearts to mind, that’s sage;
The futile venom that our Juan’s breast,
Pour’d on his lady’s friend will tell the rest.79

CXX.
He said the earliest friend of her he loved,
She who had formed that mind his soul admired, 895
And led her beauteous pupil unreproved
Through dangerous paths of youth, by virtue fired,
Was like a female dog-star,80 never moved

78: Echoes B.s 1816 poem A Sketch from Private Life, ll.68 and 98.
79: A Sketch shows, says the note (p.132), “… with what deliberation a refined and
exalted mind can voluntarily degrade it[s] powers, and indulge in passion and
desire for revenge, till it reaches the climax of absurdity and disgust”.

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By aught that ever kindliest breast inspired;

And prayed with demon curse her grave might be, 900
No bed of rest, but festering infamy.81

CXXI.
Oh it is worthy of the noble mind,
Of JUAN’s virtue and of LARA’s pride,
To vent its coward rage on woman-kind
When other means of vengeance are denied! 905
And when a tale unvarnished, unrefined,
Won’t serve the turn, to rally on one’s side
The powers of verse, on the obnoxious classes
To hurl the whole artillery of Parnassus,

CXXII.
To feign those feelings which the heart has not, 910
To talk of purest love in lofty strain,
Of broken hearts, affection long forgot,
And of fond violated vows complain—
To wash away the deep, “the damning spot,”
Where love lies bleeding on fair virtue’s fane, 915
Not even the Muses shall prevail—the Nine
Abhor the deed and spurn the unfeeling line.

CXXIII.
There are those whose hearts are of the flinty rock,
Yet claim the tenderness of HAMMOND’s lay,82
Who with a cold philosophy can mock 920
The cheerful scenes that bid our hearts be gay!
Rank Bedlamites, that would each feeling shock
Because they wantonly have gone astray
From the plain simple paths of meek content,
And found the flowers were false where’er they went. 925

80: Echoes A Sketch, l.77.

81: Echoes A Sketch, final line.
82: George Hammond (1763-1853), joint editor of the Anti-Jacobin and friend of
John Murray. He was a finance expert: see Lloyd Sanders, Selections from the
Anti-Jacobin (Methuen 1904), p.xiii. His “lay” is unidentified.

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CXXIV.
The pen he took, alas! the poet’s pen,
That ne’er should act the hypocritic part,
To tell the world in well affected strain
The soft and tender feelings of the heart—
In that pure bosom where his heart had lain, 930
To plant with cruel hand another dart—
To bid a long adieu, “farewell for ever,”
To her from whom he’d promised ne’er to sever.

CXXV.
Of self, and self-created sorrows still,
As ever ran his egotizing lay, 935
He raved, and called the MUSES from their hill
To bear his unrepentant sighs away.
No patron he of those who drink the rill
Where Aganippe’s83 wandering waters play,
Yet did he think each Muse for him would weep, 940
When launched again an exile on the deep.

CXXVI.
Can pride, “which not a world can bow”—vain boast!84
With influence ungenial, thus subdue
The husband’s and the father’s feelings, lost
In passion’s keen resentment? Then adieu 945
To tyrant pride for ever, if it cost
All that to nature, country, fame, are due.
An exile and an outcast may he roam
Who thus destroys the sacred joys of home!

CXXVII.
As if he had in Bedlam’s school been bred, 950
Or Bacchus’s orgies had inspired his brain,
He bound a cypress wreath around his head,
And went to ride on Neptune’s horse again.85
From home and homefelt joys he wildly fled
As if pursued by some unsightly train 955
Of Bravoes, Endriagos,86 Catchpoles,87 Giaours,

83: Aganippe is a fountain of inspiration at the foot of Mount Helicon.

84: See Fare Thee Well! l.50.
85: Echoes CHP III, 2, 2-3.

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Corsairs, or Demons with unearthly powers.

CXXVIII.
To sour misanthropy abandoned quite,
Gloomy and dark, and more than ever railing
At fortune and mankind, our wayward wight, 960
On life’s tumultuous sea again was sailing;
Unpitied by the world, his sole delight
To seek and magnify each human failing;
O’er Glory’s fields he passed, and Thraldom’s pyre,
Without one spark of exultation’s fire. 965

CXXIX.
In vain that heart which paused not to impart
To woman’s bosom an eternal wound,
Claims kindred with each great, each noble heart
In England’s page for patriot deeds renowned,
That felt on Marston’s heath the fatal dart,88 970
And dyed in Cressy’s vale the ensanguined ground—89
That blood which flowed so free for England’s sake,
No triumphs now for Albion’s sons can wake.

CXXX.
O’er Europe’s late Thermopylæ90 he trod,
Where Britain triumph’d tho’ her bravery’s flower 975
Bleeding was laid on war’s empurpled sod,
And stern Ambition met its vengeful hour;
But ah, he glow’d not as his fathers glow’d,
Who fearless bore the van of Edward’s power:
The modern “Hubert” only ceased his railings91 980
To string “old Robert’s” harp to childish wailings.92

86: The phrase “German Endriagos” is quoted, says the note (p.129), from
Turner’s Prolusions, referring to Sharon Turner’s Prolusions on Modern Poets
(1819). See above, introduction.
87: Constables or bailiffs.
88: Echoes On Leaving Newstead Abbey (from HoI), 5, 1.
89: Ibid., 4, 1.
90: The parallel between Leonidas’ holding action and Wellington’s victory seems
strained.
91: Ibid., 4, 1.
92: Ibid., 3, 1.

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CXXXI.
The fall of that imperial diadem
That blazed afar with unpropitious light,
Like war’s red star, and set the world in flame,
He mourned as set in everlasting night; 985
And cried on Gaul and Gallic heroes “shame,”
Though he had gloried in the eagle’s flight
To Elba’s rock,93 and bade the vulture’s part
His muse perform, to wound the hero’s heart.

CXXXII.
Like that unhappy maniac, poor ROUSSEAU, 990
He then retired to Nature’s bosom wild,
To nurse at will his self-created woe
And whet the spleen of his ill-humoured Childe.
He went where sentimental wanderers go,
Who cannot get the lingering hours beguiled 995
To famed Geneva’s lake, romantic, lone,
Where they may drink, or sing, or drown unknown.

CXXXIII.
And there he sat him down amid the scenes
That even ROUSSEAU’s untoward mind could please,
Where, tho’ his frantic passion intervenes, 1000
We joy to sit with matchless HELOISE,94
Or rove where still she roves by fancy’s means,
And catch her lovelorn sighs upon the breeze—
Ah! many a breast have dreams like her’s beguiled
To breathe loose sighs and harbour passion wild. 1005

CXXXIV.
There, where the boast of Geneva first drew
The breath of Fancy’s own romantic clime,
In humble mansion, now not over new,
And scribbled o’er with many a doggrel rhyme,
Poor Harold sat, or wandered ’mid the dew 1010
Of Jura’s mountain paths and scenes sublime;

93: Sic: should be “From Elba’s rock”.

94: The heroine of Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse is called Julie, not Héloïse.

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Or launched upon the Lake amid the storm,

Rejoice to see it Nature’s face deform;

CXXXV.
Rejoiced to mark the night of darkness deep,95
Of tempest and of thunder loud descend, 1015
And call it glorious revelry to keep
Vigils, as if o’er Nature’s awful end;
Pleased to behold the lightning’s fatal sweep,
And see with horrid mirth the thunder rend
The mountains and the trembling earth, as when 1020
The earthquake comes, to chill the hearts of men.

CXXXVI.
So stands the lonely, scath’d, and ruin’d pine
Amidst the desolation of the blight
That vengeful struck, as with a bolt divine,
Its honours to the dust, and bade the light 1025
Of spring and joy for it no longer shine;
Such was our wanderer in the waste of night;
And such the ravages of passion’s strife
That wither peace, and blast the bloom of life.96

CXXXVII.
There too, where hermit-like, but gay VOLTAIRE, 1030
To nature’s sanctuary retired remote,97
And sat like Rabelais in his easy chair,
Laughing at others’ faith and luckless lot!
Where CALVIN calmed his troubled day, and where
Immortal as his Rome great GIBBON wrote; 1035
Where MILTON’s friend too dwelt, sage DIODATI,
And MADAM STAEL, prolific as potatoe.

CXXXVIII.
In rival conclave there and dark divan
He met and mingled with the Vampyre crew98

95: Comments on CHP III sts.92-4.

96: Appears to echo B.’s Alpine Journal: “Passed whole woods of withered pines –
all withered – trunks stripped & barkless – branches lifeless – done by a single
winter – their appearance reminded me of me & my family” (BLJ V 102).
97: Voltaire’s life at Ferney was anything but that of a hermit.

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Who hate the virtues and the form of man, 1040

And strive to bring fresh monsters into view;
Who mock the inscrutable Almighty’s plan
By seeking truth and order to subdue—
Scribblers, who fright the novel reading train
With mad creations of th’unsettled brain. 1045

CXXXIX.
There Frankenstein was hatched—the wretch abhorred,
Whom shuddering Sh——y saw in horrid dream
Plying his task where human bones are stored,
And there the Vampyre quaffed the living stream
From beauty’s veins—such sights could joy afford, 1050
To this strange coterie, glorying in each theme,
That wakes disgust in other minds—LORD HAROLD
Sung wildly too, but none knew what he carolled.

CXL.
From the wild waste of waters and of mountains,
And gloomy minds that pleasure never fills, 1055
He roamed to lovely Venice, where the fountains
Of love and joy unlock their sparkling rills
At the gay carnival; where you may count tens
Of thousands, reckless of their swinging bills,
In the voluptuous Gondola gaily riding, 1060
Like Cleopatra at her helm presiding.

CXLI.
But there, even there, where pleasure spreads o’er all
A sweet delirium, an oblivion kind,
The misanthrope was deaf to rapture’s call,
99
And even to beauty’s loveliest charms was blind— 1065
Borne o’er the wave in many a dying fall,
Not music’s softest strains could soothe his mind—
He stood upon the bridge, like man of sighs,
And shut his ears, and closed his jaundiced eyes.

98: The note (pp.148-50) gives as authority for this passage Polidori’s preface to
The Vampyre.
99: Hard to reconcile with Beppo, sts.11-16.

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CXLII.
So when the happy carnival is o’er, 1070
You hear of nothing but repentance sad,
And sermons treating of the tempter’s power,
Enough to drive a common sinner mad;
And thus a solemn methodist will lour
On all he thinks are radically bad— 1075
Though there are out of Venice some that preach
Who in the sixth command have made a breach.

CXLIII.
Here then we’ll leave our wandering poet planning,
Some tale to speak the colour of his mind,
Querulous and dark, nor too correctly scanning 1080
The moral of his story, or the kind
Of heroes whom his fancy’s ever spawning
And setting up as beings most refined—
JUAN the profligate, poor whipt MAZEPPA,
The discontented CHILDE, or silly BEPPO. 1085

CXLIV.
“Farewell! a word that hath been and must be,”
And “if for ever,” still, so much the better;
And should you mend not your morality,
Another Canto, or a rhyming letter,
May teach, LORD BEPPO, your nobility 1090
A due attention to this simple matter—
That scorn awaits the wretch, whate’er his pride,
Who toils for vice and spreads corruption wide!

The following stanzas are appended at the book’s end. They are a
more faithful Byronic pastiche than anything in the poem itself.

A SUPPRESSED PASSAGE.

For not to you belongs the power to say

What shall appear in type or glossy page;
Nor have alone the gayest of the gay
The right unquestioned to pollute the age—
My lay, though not a very cheerful lay, 5
Is noble, and beyond the critic’s rage;

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I’ll dedicate it hence to Paphian pleasures,

And teach the muse to dance in frolic measures.

I hate your printer’s stars—and coward blanks—

I’m not to be controuled by knaves in place; 10
Print boldly, and you’ll have my muse’s thanks,
And welcome guineas will come in apace—
Think not upon the ministerial ranks,
Nor draw the modest bonnet o’er thy face:
With lords and statesmen boast your high alliance, 15
And set the vice suppressors at defiance.

What’s Wordsworth, water drinking bard, to you,

Or turncoat Southey, with his blighted laurel?
I hate the sing-song of the Laking crew,
And hope the Muses will take up my quarrel— 20
Leave all such to the Quarterly Review,
To laud with fulsome praise. Apollo’s barrel
No drop of inspiration ever gave
To whet the windpipe of Corruption’s slave.

Fear not the lash of Gifford’s friendly pen, 25

To satire and the Muses listless grown,
Tho’ it was once the scourge of guilty men,
And to each Bavius and Mavius known;
Nor fear ye aught from Croker’s courtly strain,
Who sings of war and Wellington alone— 30
Some may like prudes affect a virtuous passion,
But mind, morality is not the fashion.

“What’s in a name” that on the title-page

The vender should in pompous letters shine,
As if ’twere his bright wit illum’d the age? 35
You see I’m not tenacious about mine—
Let but a lord—you know the old adage—
Let but a lord be said to write each line,
And though ’tis most abominable stuff,
Print it—the work will sell—and that’s enough. 40
(pp.155-6)

W.Shackell, Printer, Johnson’s-court, Fleet-street, London.

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