The three maintain'd a strife which must not yield,
In spots where eagles might have chosen to build.
Their every shot told; while the assailant fell,
Dash'd on the shingles like the limpet-shell;
But still enough survived, and mounted still,
Scattering their numbers here and there, until
Surrounded and commanded, though not nigh
Enough for seizure, near enough to die,
The desperate trio held aloof their fate

But calm and careless heaved the wave below,
Eternal, with unsympathetic flow;
Far o'er its face the dolphins sported on,
And sprung the flying-fish against the sun,
Till its dried wing relapsed from its brief height,
To gather moisture for another flight.

XIV.

'Twas morn; and Neuha, who by dawn of day

And not a groan inform'd their foes who fell.

Christian died last-twice wounded; and once more
Mercy was offer'd when they saw his gore;
Too late for life, but not too late to die,
With, though a hostile hand, to close his eye.
A limb was broken, and he droop'd along
The crag, as doth a falcon reft of young.
The sound revived him, or appear'd to wake
Some passion which a weakly gesture spake:
He beckon'd to the foremost, who drew nigh,
But, as they near'd, he rear'd his weapon high-
His last ball had been aim'd, but from his breast
He tore the topmost button from his vest, (1)
Down the tube dash'd it, levell'd, fired, and smiled
As his foe fell; then, like a serpent, coil'd
His wounded weary form, to where the steep
Look'd desperate as himself along the deep;
Cast one glance back, and clench'd his hand, and shook
His last rage 'gainst the earth which he forsook;
Then plunged the rock below received like glass
His body crush'd into one gory mass,
With scarce a shred to tell of human form,
Or fragment for the sea-bird or the worm;

A fair-hair'd scalp, besmear'd with blood and weeds,
Yet reek'd, the remnant of himself and deeds;
Some splinters of his weapons (to the last,
As long as hand could hold, he held them fast)
Yet glitter'd, but at distance-hurl'd away
To rust beneath the dew and dashing spray.
The rest was nothing-save a life mis-spent,
And soul-but who shall answer where it went?
'Tis ours to bear, not judge the dead; and they
Who doom to hell, themselves are on the way:
Unless these bullies of eternal pains

Are pardon'd their bad hearts for their worse brains.

XIII.

The deed was over! All were gone or ta'en,
The fugitive, the captive, or the slain.
Chain'd on the deck, where once, a gallant crew,
They stood with honour, were the wretched few
Survivors of the skirmish on the isle;
But the last rock left no surviving spoil.
Cold lay they where they fell, and weltering,
While o'er them flapp'd the sea-birds' dewy wing,
Now wheeling nearer from the neighbouring surge,
And screaming high their harsh and hungry dirge:

(1) In Thibault's account of Frederic the Second of Prussia, there is a singular relation of a young Frenchman, who with his mistress appeared to be of some rank. He enlisted and deserted at Schweidnitz; and after a desperate resistance was retaken, having killed an officer, who attempted to seize him after he was wounded, by the discharge of his musket loaded with a button of his uniform. Some circumstances on his court-martial raised a great interest amongst his judges, who wished to discover his real situation in life, which he offered to disclose, but to the king only, to whom he requested permission to write. This was refused, and

And watch if aught approach'd the amphibions lair
Where lay her lover, saw a sail in air:

It flapp'd, it fill'd, and to the growing gale
Bent its broad arch: her breath began to fail
With fluttering fear, her heart beat thick and high,
While yet a doubt sprung where its course might le:
But no! it came not; fast and far away
The shadow lessen'd as it clear'd the bay.
She gazed, and flung the sea-foam from her eyes,
To watch as for a rainbow in the skies.
On the horizon verged the distant deck,
Diminish'd, dwindled to a very speck-
Then vanish'd. All was ocean, all was joy!
Down plunged she through the cave to rouse her boy;
Told all she had seen, and all she hoped, and all
That happy love could augur or recall;
Sprung forth again, with Torquil, following free
His bounding nereid over the broad sea;
Swam round the rock, to where a shallow cleft
Hid the canoe that Neuha there had left
Drifting along the tide, without an oar,
That eve the strangers chased them from the short;
But when these vanish'd, she pursued her prow,
Regain'd, and urged to where they found it now:
Nor ever did more love and joy embark,
Than now were wafted in that slender ark.

XV.

Again their own shore rises on the view,
No more polluted with a hostile hue;
No sullen ship lay bristling o'er the foam,
A floating dungeon:-all was hope and home!
A thousand proas darted o'er the bay,
With sounding shells, and heralded their way;
The chiefs came down, around the people pour'd,
And welcomed Torquil as a son restored;
The women throng'd embracing and embraced
By Neuba, asking where they had been chased,
And how escaped? The tale was told; and then
One acclamation rent the sky again;
And from that hour a new tradition gave
Their sanctuary the name of "Neuha's Cave."
A hundred fires, far-flickering from the height,
Blazed o'er the general revel of the night,
The feast in honour of the guest, return'd
To peace and pleasure, perilously earn'd;
A night succeeded by such happy days
As only the yet infant world displays. (2)

Frederic was filled with the greatest indignation, from ha curiosity or some other motive, when he understood that he request had been denied.

(2) "Byron! the sorcerer! He can do with me according to his will. If it is to throw me headlong upon a dee island; if it is to place me on the summit of a dizzy c his power is the same. I wish he had a friend or a servan appointed to the office of the slave who was to knock ey morning at the chamber-door of Philip of Macedon, and re mind him he was mortal." Dr. Parr.-LE

DEDICATION.

I.

BOB SOUTHEY! You're a poet-Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race,
Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
Last,-yours has lately been a common case:
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?

(1) The first and second Cantos of Don Juan, were written at Venice in 1818, and published in July, 1819, without name either of author or bookseller; the third, fourth, and fifth, were written at Ravenna, in 1819 and 1821, and published in August of the latter year, still anonymously; the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh, were written at Pisa, in 1822 and 1823, and published in July and Augast of the latter year; and the remaining five were written at Genoa, in 1823, and published in November 1823 and March 1824. A Dedication, and several stanzas, hitherto suppressed, are now given in their proper places; and from two separate MSS. of the poet many curious various readings have been supplied.

In the notes to the Shipwreck in Canto II. we have enleavoured to trace minutely the authorities which the poet ad before him when composing that extraordinary description.

Lord Byron's temporary suspension of the poem when he lad finished Canto V., and the circumstances under which le resumed a very favourite plan twelve months afterwards, are explained in the note introductory to Canto VI.

The extracts now appended to the Siege, in Cantos VII. and VIII. will, it is presumed, interest and perhaps surprise many readers. It will be seen that, throughout this powerful picture, the poet has relied on a literal transcript of recorded facts, with precisely the same feelings which had produced the terrible verisimilitude of his Shipwreck in Canto II.; and it must please every one to know that those traits of graceful humanity, with which Don Juan's personal conduct is made to relieve the horrors of a Russian tack, are only a faithful copy of what was done in the moment of victory at Ismael, by a real "preux chevalier," the Duke of Richelieu.

Such additional particulars, respecting the production of the later Cantos, as may seem to deserve preservation, are given as the poem proceeds, as also some of the most striking passages of the poet's own letters with reference to this performance; and in an Appendix, at the end of the poem, will be found a selection of the principal Testimonies of authors and reviewers, elicited by the first publication of Dan Juan, together with two prose pieces referring thereto, ane of which had not before been published.

• PLUTARCH.

"Iam Caius Martius, who hath done to thy selfe particularly, and To all the Volsces generally, great hurt and mischiefe, which I cannot denie for my surname of Coriolanus that I beare. For I never had other benefit nor recompense of the true and painfull service I have dune, and the extreme dangers I have bene in, but this onely sarname; a good memorie and witnesse of the malice and displeasure Chou shouldest bear me. Indeed, the name only remaineth with me: for the rest, the envie and crueltie of the people of Rome have taken from me, by the sufferance of the dastardly nobilitie and magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let me be banished by the people. That

A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like "four-and-twenty Blackbirds in a pie;

II.

"Which pie being open'd they began to sing" (This old song and new simile holds good), "A dainty dish to set before the king,"

Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,

"In the year 1799, while Lord Byron was the pupil of Dr. Glennie, at Dulwich, among the books that lay acces sible to the boys was a pamphlet, entitled Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Juno on the Coast of Arracan, in the Year 1795. The pamphlet attracted but little public attention; but, among the young students of Dulwich Grove it was a favourite study; and the impression which it left on the retentive mind of Byron may have had some share, perhaps, in suggesting that curious research through all the various accounts of Shipwrecks upon record, by which he prepared himself to depict, with such power, a scene of the same description in Don Juan..... As to the charge of plagiarism brought against him by some scribblers of the day, for so doing,-with as much justice might the Italian author, who wrote a Discourse on the Military Science displayed by Tasso in his battles, have reproached that poet with the sources from which he drew his knowledge;-with as much justice might Puysegur and Segrais, who have pointed out the same merit in Homer and Virgil, have withheld their praise, because the science on which this merit was founded, must have been derived by the skill and industry of these poets from others. So little was Tasso ashamed of those casual imitations of other poets which are so often branded as plagiarisms, that, in his Commentary on his Rime, he takes pains to point out whatever coincidences of this kind occur in his own verses."-Moore.

"With regard to the charges about the Shipwreck, I think that I told you and Mr. Hobhouse, years ago, that there was not a single circumstance of it not taken from fact; not, indeed, from any single shipwreck, but all from actual facts of different wrecks."-Lord B. to Mr. Murray.

"Of late, some persons have been nibbling at the reputation of Lord Byron, by charging him with plagiarism. There is a curious charge of this kind lately published, which redounds, in reality, to the noble author's credit. Every one who has looked into the sources from which Shakspeare took the stories of his plays, must know that, in Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus, he has taken whole dialogues, with remarkable exactness, from North's translation of Plutarch. Now, it is that very circumstance which impresses those plays with the stamp of antique reality, which the general knowledge of the poet could not have enabled him to communicate to them." Times.-L. E.

extremetie hath now driven me to come as a poor suter, to take thy chimnie harth; not of any hope I have to save my life thereby, for if I had feared death, I would not have come hither to put my self in hazard."

SHAKSPEARE.

"My name is Caius Martius, who hath done
To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces,
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may
My surname, Coriolanus The painful service,
The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood

ocean.

VI.

I would not imitate the petty thought,

Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice, For all the glory your conversion brought,

Since gold alone should not have been its price. You have your salary; was 't for that you wrought? And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise. (4)

(1) Mr. Coleridge's Biographia Literaria appeared in 1817.-L.E.

(2) "When, some years ago, a gentleman, the chief writer and conductor of a celebrated review, distinguished by its hostility to Mr. Southey, spent a day or two at Keswick, he was circumstantially informed by what series of accidents it had happened, that Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Southey, and I had become neighbours; and how utterly groundless was the supposition, that we considered ourselves as belonging to any common school but that of good sense, confirmed by the long-established models of the best times of Greece, Rome, Italy, and England; and still more groundless the notion that Mr. Southey (for, as to myself, I have published so little, and that little of so little importance, as to make it almost ludicrous to mention my name at all) could have been concerned in the formation of a poetic sect with Mr. Wordsworth, when so many of his works had been published, not only previously to any acquaintance between them, but before Mr. Wordsworth himself had written any thing but in a diction ornate, and uniformly sustained;

Shed for my thankless country, are requited

But with that surname: a good memory,
And witness of the malice and displeasure

Which thou should'st bear me: only that name remains;

The cruelty and envy of the people,

Permitted by our dastard nobles, who

Have all forsook me, hath devoured the rest;

X.

If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
Milton appeal'd to the Avenger, Time,

If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And makes the word "Miltonic" mean "sublime."
He deign'd not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;

when, too, the slightest examination will make it evident, that between those and the after-writings of Mr. Soathe there exists no other difference than that of a progreseve degree of excellence, from progressive developement power, and progressive facility from habit and increase ef experience. Yet, among the first articles which this man wrote after his return from Keswick, we were characterised as the School of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes.'" Coleridge.-L. E.

(3) Mr. Southey is the only poet of the day that ever resided at Keswick. Mr. Wordsworth, who lived at one time on Grasmere, has for many years past occupied Mount Ry dal, near Ambleside: Professor Wilson possesses an elegant villa on Windermere: Coleridge, Lambe, Lloyd, and others, classed by the Edinburgh Review in the Lake School, never, we believe, had any connection with that part of the cou try.-L. E.

(4) Wordsworth's place may be in the Customs-it is, | think, in that or the Excise-besides another at Lord Leas- |

And suffer'd me by the voice of slaves to be
Whoop'd out of Rome. Now, this extremity
Hath brought me to thy hearth. Not out of hope,
Mistake me not, to save my life; for if

I had fear'd death, of all men i' the world
I would have 'voided thee."

Coriolanus, Act 4th, Scene 5th

dale's table, where this poetical charlatan and political parasite licks up the crumbs with a hardened alacrity; the converted Jacobin having long subsided into the clownish sycophant of the worst prejudices of the aristocracy.

(I) "Pale, but not cadaverous :"-Milton's two elder daughters are said to have robbed him of his books, besides cheating and plaguing him in the economy of his house, etc. etc. His feelings on such an outrage, both as a parent and a scholar, must have been singularly painful. Hayley compares him to Lear. See part third, Life of Milton, by W. Hayley (or Hailey, as spelt in the edition before me). (2) Or,

"Would he subside into a hackney Laureate

A scribbling, self-sold, soul-hired, scorn'd Iscariot ?"

I doubt if "Laureate" and "Iscariot" be good rhymes, but must say, as Ben Jonson did to Sylvester, who challenged ham to rhyme with

"I, John Sylvester,

Lay with your sister."

Jonson answered,-"I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wife." Sylvester answered,-"That is not rhyme."-"No," said Ben Jonson; but it is true."

(3) For the character of Eutropius, the eunuch and minister at the court of Arcadius, see Gibbon. [" Eutropius, one of the principal eunuchs of the palace of Constanti nople, succeeded the haughty minister whose ruin he had accomplished, and whose vices he soon imitated. He was the first of his artificial sex who dared to assume the cha

racter of a Roman magistrate and general. Sometimes, in the presence of the blushing senate, he ascended the tribunal to pronounce judgment, or to repeat elaborate harangues; and sometimes appeared on horseback, at the head of his troops, in the dress and armour of a hero. The disregard of custom and decency always betrays a weak and ill-regulated mind: nor does Eutropius seem to have compensated for the folly of the design by any superior merit or ability in the execution. His former habits of life had not introduced him to the study of the laws, or the exercises of the field; his awkward and unsuccessful attempts provoked the secret contempt of the spectators; the Goths expressed a wish that such a general might always command the armies of Rome; and the name of the minister was branded with ridicule, more pernicious, perhaps, than hatred to a public character." Gibbon.-L E.]

(4) Mr. Fox and the Whig Club of his time adopted a uniform of blue and buff: hence the coverings of the Edinburgh Review, etc.-L. E.

(5) I allude not to our friend Landor's hero, the traitor Count Julian, but to Gibbon's hero, vulgarly yclept The Apostate.

(6) This "Dedication" was suppressed, in 1819, with Lord Byron's reluctant consent; but, shortly after his death, its existence became notorious, in consequence of an article in the Westminster Review, generally ascribed to Sir John Hobhouse; and, for several years, the verses have been selling in the streets as a broadside. It could, therefore, serve no purpose to exclude them on the present occasion.-L. E.

DON JUAN.(1)

CANTO I.

I.

I WANT a hero: an uncommon want,

When every year and month sends forth a new one, Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,

The age discovers he is not the true one; Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,

I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don JuanWe all have seen him, in the pantomime, (2) Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

(1) "Begun at Venice September 6; finished November 1, 1818.-B." The following are extracts of Lord Byron's Letters to Mr. Murray, with reference to Cantos I. and II.—

September 19, 1818.-"I have finished the First Canto (a long one, of about 180 octaves) of a poem in the style and manner of Beppo, encouraged by the good success of the same. It is called Don Juan, and is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. But I doubt whether it is not-at least, as far as it has yet gone too free for these very modest days. However, I shall try the experiment anonymously; and if it don't take, it will be discontinued. It is dedicated to Southey, in good, simple, savage verse, upon the Laureate's politics, and the way he got them."

January 25, 1819.-" Print it entire, omitting, of course, the lines on Castlereagh, as I am not on the spot to meet him. I have acquiesced in the request and representation; and, having done so, it is idle to detail my arguments in favour of my own self-love and 'poeshie;' but I protest. If the poem has poetry, it would stand; if not, fall; the rest is, leather and prunello,' and has never yet affected any human production pro or con.' Dulness is the only annihilator in such cases. As to the cant of the day, I despise it, as I have ever done all its other finical fashions, which become you as paint became the ancient Britons. If you admit this prudery, you must omit half Ariosto, La Fontaine, Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, all the Charles Second writers; in short, something of most who have written before Pope and are worth reading, and much of Pope himself. Read him-most of you don't -but do and I will forgive you; though the inevitable consequence would be, that you would burn all I have ever written, and all your other wretched Claudians of the day (except Scott and Crabbe) into the bargain."

I

February 1, 1819.-"I have not yet begun to copy out the Second Canto, which is finished, from natural laziness, and the discouragement of the milk and water they have thrown upon the First. say all this to them as to you, that is, for you to say to them, for I will have nothing underhand. If they had told me the poetry was bad, I would have acquiesced; but they say the contrary, and then talk to me about morality-the first time I ever heard the word from any body who was not a rascal that used it for a purpose. I maintain that it is the most moral of poems; but if people won't discover the moral, that is their fault, not mine."

April 6, 1819.-"You sha'n't make canticles of my cantos. The poem will please, if it is lively; if it is stupid, it will fail; but I will have none of your damned cutting and slashing. If you please, you may publish anonymously; it will perhaps be better; but I will battle my way against them all, like a porcupine."

August 12, 1819. You are right, Gifford is right, Crabbe is right, Hobhouse is right-you are all right, and I am all wrong; but do, pray, let me have that pleasure. Cut me up root and branch; quarter me in the Quarterly; send round my disjecti membra poetæ,' like those of the Levite's concubine; make me, if you will, a spectacle to men and angels; but don't ask me to alter, for I won't;-I am obstinate and lazy-and there's the truth.-You ask me for the plan of Donny Johnny: I have no plan; I had no plan; but I had or have materials; though if, like Tony Lumpkin, I am to be snubbed so when I am in spirits,' the poem will be naught, and the poet turn serious again. If it don't take, I will leave it off where it is, with all due respect to the public; but if continued, it must be in my own way. You might as well make Hamlet (or Diggory) act mad' in a strait waistcoat, as trammel my buffoonery, if I am to be a buffoon; their gestures and my thoughts would only be pitiably absurd and ludicrously constrained. Why, man, the soul of such writing is its license; at least the liberty of that license, if one likes-not that one should abuse it. It is like Trial by Jury and Peerage, and the Habeas Corpus-a very fine thing, but chiefly in the reversion; because no one wishes to be tried for the mere pleasure of proving his possession of the privilege.

"But a truce with these reflections. You are too earnest and eager about a work never intended to be serious. Do you suppose that I could have any intention but to giggle and make giggle?-a playful satire, with as little poetry as could be helped, was what I meant. And as to the indecency, do, pray, read in Boswell what Johnson, the sullen moralist, says of Prior and Paulo Purgante."* August 24, 1819. Keep the anonymous: it helps what fun there may be. But if the matter grow serious about Don Juan, and you feel yourself in a scrape, or me either, own that I am the author. I will never shrink; and if you do, I can always answer you • See Croker's Boswell, vol. iv. p. 43.

II.

Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke, Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk, [Howe,(3) And fill'd their sign-posts then, like Wellesley now; Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,

Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow: France, too, had Bonaparte (4) and Dumourier, Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.

III.

Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Pétion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
Were French, and famous people, as we know;
And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,

in the question of Guatimozin to his minister-each being on his ev coals. I wish that I had been in better spirits; but I am out of art out of nerves, and, now and then (I begin to fear), out of my senses" | (2) Remodelled under the names of Don Juan, The Liber tine, etc. etc., the old Spanish spiritual play, entitled Atheista Fulminato, formerly acted in the churches and monasteries. has had its day of favour in every country throughout Europe. It was first introduced upon the regular stage, under the title of El Burlador de Sevilla y Combidado de Pierra, by Gabriel Tellez, the contemporary of Calderon. It was sen translated into Italian by Cicognini, and performed with # much success in this language, not only in Italy but ev at Paris, that Molière, shortly before his death, produced a comedy in five acts, called Don Juan; ou, Le Festin d Pierre, This piece was, in 1677, put into verse by T. Car neille; and thus it has been performed on the French stag ever since In 1676, Shadwell, the successor of Dryden i the laureateship, introduced the subject into this country, in bis tragedy of the Libertine; but he made his here ser boundedly wicked, as to exceed the limits of probability, la all these works, as well as in Mozart's celebrated opera, the Don is uniformly represented as a travelling rake, who pr tises every where the arts of seduction, and who, for numerous delinquencies, is finally consumed by flames am populo, or, as Lord Byron has it,-"Sent to the devil what ere his time."-L. E.

(3) General Vernon served with considerable distri in the navy, particularly in the capture of Porto Bells, died in 1757.-The Duke of Cumberland, second st George II., distinguished himself at the battles of Detting and Fontenoy, and still more so at that of Culloden, whi he defeated the Chevalier, in 1746. He, however, obscured | his fame by the cruel abuse which he made, or suffered soldiers to make, of the victory. He died in 1765.-General Wolfe, the brave commander of the expedition against ( bec, terminated his career in the moment of victory, whilst fighting against the French in 1759.-In 1759, Admiral Lard, Hawke totally defeated the French fleet equipped at rest for the invasion of England. In 1765 he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty; and died, full of honours. 1781. Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, gained the victory of Minden. In 1762, he drove the French out of Hesse. the peace of 1763, he retired to Brunswick, and devoted for remainder of his life to freemasonry. He died in 1792.-TM Marquis of Granby, son of the third Duke of Rutland, nalised himself, in 1745, on the invasion by Prince Charlet, and was constituted, in 1759, commander of the British forces in Germany. He died in 1770.-Gen. Burgoyne was an English general officer and dramatist, who distinguish himself in the defence of Portugal, in 1762, against the Spa niards; and also in America by the capture of Ticonderoga, « but was at last obliged to surrender with his army to neral Gates. He died in 1792.-Admiral Keppel was serand son of the Earl of Albemarle. Placed at the head of the channel fleet, be partially engaged, in 1778, the French fest off Ushant, which contrived to escape; he was, in cost quence, tried by a court martial, and honourably acquitted He died in 1786,-Lord Howe distinguished himself on many occasions during the American war. On the breaking out of the French war, he took the command of the Eng fleet and, bringing the enemy to an action on the is June, 1794, obtained a splendid victory. He died, full ar years and honours, in 1799.-L. E.

(4) In the MS. was the following note to this stanza:"In the eighth and concluding lecture of Mr. Hazlitt's (2