from Canto XV

21

“Omnia vult belle Matho dicere—dic aliquando
    Et bene, dic neutrum, dic aliquando male.”
The first is rather more than mortal can do;
     The second may be sadly done or gaily;
The third is still more difficult to stand to;
     The fourth we hear, and see, and say too, daily:
The whole together is what I could wish
To serve in this conundrum of a dish.

22

A modest hope—but modesty’s my forte,
     And pride my feeble:—let us ramble on.
I meant to make this poem very short,
     But now I can’t tell where it may not run.
No doubt, if I had wish’d to pay my court
     To critics, or to hail the setting sun
Of tyranny of all kinds, my concision
Were more;—but I was born for opposition.

23

But then ‘tis mostly on the weaker side:
    So that I verily believe if they
Who now are basking in their full-blown pride,
     Were shaken down, and “dogs had had their day,”
Though at the first I might perchance deride
     Their tumble, I should turn the other way,
And wax an Ultra-royalist in loyalty,
Because I hate even democratic royalty.

24

I think I should have made a decent spouse,
     If I had never proved the soft condition;
I think I should have made monastic vows,
     But for my own peculiar superstition:
‘Gainst rhyme I never should have knock’d my brows,
    Nor broken my own head, nor that of Priscian,
Nor worn the motley mantle of a poet,
If some one had not told me to forego it.

25

But “laissez aller”—knights and dames I sing,
     Such as the times may furnish. ‘Tis a flight
Which seems at first to need no lofty wing,
    Plumed by Longinus or the Stagyrite:
The difficulty lies in colouring
     (Keeping the due proportions still in sight)
With Nature manners which are artificial,
And rend’ring general that which is especial.

26

The difference is, that in the days of old
     Men made the manners; manners now make men—
Pinned like a flock, and fleeced too in their fold,
     At least nine, and a ninth beside of ten.
Now this at all events must render cold
     Your writers, who must either draw again
Days better drawn before, or else assume
The present, with their common-place costume.

27

We’ll do our best to make the best on’t:—March!
     March, my Muse! If you cannot fly, yet flutter;
And when you may not be sublime, be arch,
     Or starch, as are the edicts statesmen utter.
We surely shall find something worth research:
     Columbus found a new world in a cutter,
Or brigantine, or pink, of no great tonnage,
While yet America was in her non-age.

28

When Adeline, in all her growing sense
     Of Juan’s merits and his situation,
Felt on the whole an interest intense—
     Partly perhaps because a fresh sensation,
Or that he had an air of innocence,
     Which is for innocence a sad temptation,—
As women hate half measures, on the whole,
She ‘gan to ponder how to save his soul.

29

She had a good opinion of advice,
     Like all who give and eke receive it gratis,
For which small thanks are still the market price,
     Even where the article at highest rate is.
She thought upon the subject twice or thrice,
     And morally decided, the best state is
For morals, marriage; and this question carried,
She seriously advised him to get married.

30

Juan replied, with all becoming deference,
     He had a predilection for that tie;
But that at present, with immediate reference
     To his own circumstances, there might lie
Some difficulties, as in his own preference,
     Or that of her to whom he might apply;
That still he’d wed with such or such a lady,
If that they were not married all already.