from Canto XI

51

Juan, who was a little superficial,
    And not in literature a great Drawcansir,
Examined by this learned and especial
     Jury of matrons, scarce knew what to answer:
His duties warlike, loving, or official,
     His steady application as a dancer,
Had kept him from the brink of Hippocrene,
Which now he found was blue instead of green.

52

However, he replied at hazard, with
     A modest confidence and calm assurance,
Which lent his learned lucubrations pith,
     And passed for arguments of good endurance.
That prodigy, Miss Araminta Smith,
    (Who at sixteen translated “Hercules Furens”
Into as furious English) with her best look,
Set down his sayings in her common-place book.

53

Juan knew several languages—as well
     He might—and brought them up with skill, in time
To save his fame with each accomplished belle,
     Who still regretted that he did not rhyme.
There wanted but this requisite to swell
     His qualities (with them) into sublime:
Lady Fitz-Frisky, and Miss Maevia Mannish,
Both longed extremely to be sung in Spanish.

54

However, he did pretty well, and was
     Admitted as an aspirant to all
The Coteries; and, as in Banquo’s glass,
     At great assemblies or in parties small,
He saw ten thousand living authors pass,
     That being about their average numeral;
Also the eighty “greatest living poets,”
As every paltry magazine can show it’s.

55

In twice five years the “greatest living poet,”
    Like to the champion in the fisty ring,
Is called on to support his claim, or show it,
     Although ‘tis an imaginary thing.
Even I—albeit I’m sure I did not know it,
     Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king,—
Was reckoned, a considerable time,
The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.

56

But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
    My Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain:
“La Belle Alliance” of dunces down at zero,
    Now that the Lion’s fall’n, may rise again:
But I will fall at least as fell my hero;
     Nor reign at all, or as a monarch reign;
Or to some lonely isle of Jailors go,
With turncoat Southey for my turnkey Lowe.

57

Sir Walter reigned before me; Moore and Campbell
     Before and after; but now grown more holy,
The Muses upon Sion’s hill must ramble,
     With poets almost clergymen, or wholly;
And Pegasus hath a psalmodic amble
     Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley,
Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts,
A modern Ancient Pistol—by the hilts!

58

Still he excels that artificial hard
    Labourer in the same vineyard, though the vine
Yields him but vinegar for his reward,—
    That neutralised dull Dorus of the Nine;
That swarthy Sporus, neither man nor bard;
    That ox of verse, who ploughs for every line:—
Cambyses’ roaring Romans beat at least
The howling Hebrews of Cybele’s priest.—

59

Then there’s my gentle Euphues; who, they say,
     Sets up for being a sort of moral me;
He’ll find it rather difficult some day
     To turn out both, or either, it may be.
Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway;
     And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three;
And that deep-mouthed Boeotian, “Savage Landor,”
Has taken for a swan rogue Southey’s gander.

60

John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,
     Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible,—without Greek
     Contrived to talk about the Gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
     Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate:—
‘Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article.