I can't say much for friend or yet relation):

The lawyers did their utmost for divorce, (')
But scarce a fee was paid on either side
Before, unluckily, Don Jóse died.

XXXIII.

He died and most unluckily, because,
According to all hints I could collect

From counsel learned in those kinds of laws,

(Although their talk's obscure and circumspect) His death contrived to spoil a charming cause; A thousand pities also with respect To public feeling, which on this occasion Was manifested in a great sensation.

XXXIV.

But ah! he died; and buried with him lay
The public feeling and the lawyers' fees:
His house was sold, his servants sent away,
A Jew took one of his two mistresses,
A priest the other—at least so they say:
I ask'd the doctors after his disease-
He died of the slow fever call'd the tertian,
And left his widow to her own aversion.

XXXV.

Yet Jóse was an honourable man,

That I must say, who knew him very well; Therefore his frailties I'll no further scan, Indeed there were not many more to tell:

(1) [MS." The lawyers recommended a divorce."]

And if his passions now and then outran
Discretion, and were not so peaceable

As Numa's (who was also named Pompilius), (')
He had been ill brought up, and was born bilious. (2)

XXXVI.

Whate'er might be his worthlessness or worth,
Poor fellow he had many things to wound him.
Let's own since it can do no good on earth (3)-
It was a trying moment that which found him
Standing alone beside his desolate hearth, [him (4)
Where all his household gods lay shiver'd round
No choice was left his feelings or his pride,
Save death or Doctors' Commons- -so he died. (5)

"The reason was, perhaps, that he was bilious."]

(3) [MS." And we may own—since he is

now but
laid in earth."]

(4) [In a letter from Venice, Sept. 19. 1818 (when he was writing Canto I.), Lord Byron says, " I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any thing but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me. Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it? It has, comparatively, swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I am only a spectator upon earth till a tenfold opportunity offers."

Again, in Marino Faliero

"I had one only fount of quiet left,

And that they poison'd! My pure household gods
Were shiver'd on my hearth, and o'er their shrine
Sate grinning ribaldry and sneering scorn."]

(5) [MS."Save death or litigation

banishment. so he died."]

XXXVII.

Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir

To a chancery suit, and messuages, and lands, Which, with a long minority and care,

Promised to turn out well in proper hands:
Inez became sole guardian, which was fair,
And answer'd but to nature's just demands;
An only son left with an only mother (1)
Is brought up much more wisely than another.

XXXVIII.

Sagest of women, even of widows, she

Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon, And worthy of the noblest pedigree:

(His sire was of Castile, his dam from Aragon.) Then for accomplishments of chivalry,

In case our lord the king should go to war again, He learn'd the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,

And how to scale a fortress

or a nunnery.

XXXIX.

But that which Donna Inez most desired,
And saw into herself each day before all
The learned tutors whom for him she hired,
Was, that his breeding should be strictly mora:

(1) ["I have been thinking of an odd circumstance. — My daughter, my wife, my half-sister, my mother, my sister's mother, my natural daughter, and myself, are, or were, all only children. My sister's mother had only one half-sister by that second marriage (herself, too, an only child), and my father had only me (an only child) by his second marriage with my mother. Such a complication of only children, all tending to one family, is singular, and looks like fatality almost. But the fiercest animals have the rarest number in their litters, -as lions, tigers, and even elephants, which are mild in comparison." — B. Diary, 1821.]

VOL. XV.

K

Much into all his studies she enquired,

And so they were submitted first to her, all, Arts, sciences, no branch was made a mystery To Juan's eyes, excepting natural history.

XL.

The languages, especially the dead,

The sciences, and most of all the abstruse.
The arts, at least all such as could be said
To be the most remote from common use,
In all these he was much and deeply read;
But not a page of any thing that's loose,
Or hints continuation of the species,
Was ever suffer'd, lest he should vicious.

XLI.

grow

His classic studies made a little puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,

But never put on pantaloons or bodices;
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,

And for their Æneids, Iliads, and Odysseys, (') Were forced to make an odd sort of apology, For Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.

XLII.

Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,

I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example,

(1)[MS." Defending still their Iliads and Odysseys."]

Although Longinus (1) tells us there is no hymn Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample; But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one Beginning with "Formosum Pastor Corydon."

XLIII.

Lucretius' irreligion is too strong

For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;
I can't help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,

So much indeed as to be downright rude ;(2)
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?

(1) See Longinus, Section 10., “ ἵνα μὴ ἕν τι περὶ αὐτὴν πάθος φαίνηται, παθῶν δὲ σύνοδος.” - [The Ode alluded to is the famous φαίνεται μοι κήνες ἶσος θεοισι, κ. τ. λ.

"Blest as th' immortal gods is he,

The youth that fondly sits by thee,
And hears and sees thee all the while
Softly speak and sweetly smile, &c.]

(2) [To hear the clamour raised against Juvenal, it might be supposed, by one unacquainted with the times, that he was the only indelicate writer of his age and country. Yet Horace and Persius wrote with equal grossness yet the rigid stoicism of Seneca did not deter him from the use of expressions which Juvenal, perhaps, would have rejected; yet the courtly Pliny poured out gratuitous indecencies in his frigid hendecasyllables, which he attempts to justify by the example of a writer to whose freedom the licentiousness of Juvenal is purity! It seems as if there was something of pique in the singular severity with which he is censured. His pure and sublime morality operates as a tacit reproach on the generality of mankind, who seek to indemnify themselves by questioning the sanctity which they cannot but respect; and find a secret pleasure in persuading one another that "this dreaded satirist" was, at heart, no inveterate enemy to the licentiousness which he so vehemently reprehends. When I find that his views are to render depravity loathsome, that every thing which can alarm and disgust is directed at her in his terrible page, I forget the grossness of the execution in the excellence of the design. GIFFORD.]