OUR CHILDREN.

(DON JUAN, Canto iii. Stanzas 59, 60.)

It is a hard although a common case

To find our children running restive ;-they, In whom our brightest days we would retrace,

Our little selves re-form'd in finer clay, Just as old age is creeping on apace,

And clouds come o'er the sunset of our day, They kindly leave us, though not quite alone, But in good company—the gout or stone.

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Yet a fine family is a fine thing

(Provided they don't come in after dinner) ; 'Tis beautiful to see a matron bring

Her children up (if nursing them don't thin her); Like cherubs round an altar-piece they cling

To the fireside (a sight to touch a sinner) A lady with her daughters or her nieces Shine like a guinea and seven-shilling pieces.

SOUL.

(DON JUAN, Canto xiv. Stanzas 70-72.)

He was a cold, good, honourable man,

Proud of his birth, and proud of everything ;
A goodly spirit for a state divan,

A figure fit to walk before a king ;
Tall, stately, form’d to lead the courtly van

On birthdays, glorious with a star and string ;
The very model of a chamberlain-
And such I mean to make him when I reign.

But there was something wanting on the whole

I don't know what, and therefore cannot tell — Which pretty women- - the sweet souls !-call soul.

Certes it was not body; he was well Proportion'd, as a poplar or a pole,

A handsome man, that human miracle ; And in each circumstance of love or war Had still preserved his perpendicular.

Still there was something wanting, as I've said —

That undefinable “ Je ne sçais quoi,”
Which, for what I know, may of yore have led

To Homer's Iliad, since it drew to Troy
The Greek Eve, Helen, from the Spartan's bed ;

Though on the whole, no doubt, the Dardan boy Was much inferior to King Menelaüs :But thus it is some women will betray us.

MOBILITY.

(DON JUAN, Canto xvi. Stanzas 96-98.)

-JUAN, when he cast a glance On Adeline while playing her grand rôle,

Which she went through as though it were a dance (Betraying only now and then her soul

By a look scarce perceptibly askance
Of weariness or scorn), began to feel
Some doubt how much of Adeline was real ;

So well she acted all and every part

By turns—with that vivacious versatility, Which many people take for want of heart.

They err—'tis merely what is call’d mobility, A thing of temperament—and not of art,

Though seeming so from its supposed facility ; And false—though true; for surely they're sincerest Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest.

This makes your actors, artists, and romancers,

Heroes sometimes, though seldom-sages never ; But speakers, bards, diplomatists, and dancers,

Little that's great, but much of what is clever ; Most orators, but very few financiers,

Though all Exchequer chancellors endeavour, Of late years, to dispense with Cocker's rigours, And grow quite figurative with their figures. ; '

GREAT NAMES.

(Don Juan, Canto iii. Stanzas 90-95, and 98-100.)

AND glory long has made the sages smile ;

'Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, windDepending more upon the historian's style

Than on the name a person leaves behind :
Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle :

The present century was growing blind
To the great Marlborough's skill in giving knocks,
Until his late Life by Archdeacon Coxe.

Milton's the prince of poets—so we say ;

A little heavy, but no less divine : An independent being in his day

Learn'd, pious, temperate in love and wine ; But his life falling into Johnson's way,

We're told this great high priest of all the Nine Was whipt at college--a harsh sire-odd spouse, For the first Mrs. Milton left his house.

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All these are, certes, entertaining facts,

Like Shakspeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes; Like Titus youth, and Cæsar's earliest acts;

Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes) ;
Like Cromwell's pranks ;—but although truth exacts

These amiable descriptions from the scribes,
As most essential to their hero's story,
They do not much contribute to his glory.

All are not moralists, like Southey, when

He prated to the world of “Pantisocrasy ;" Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then

Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy ; Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen

Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy ; When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).

Such names at present cut a convict figure,

The very Botany Bay in moral geography ; Their loyal treason, renegado rigour,

Are good manure for their more bare biography. Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger

Than any since the birthday of typography ; A drowsy frowsy poem, call’d the “ Excursion,” Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

He there builds up a formidable dyke

Between his own and others' intellect;
But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like

Joanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect,
Are things which in this century don't strike

The public mind—so few are the elect;
And the new births of both their stale virginities
Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.

We learn from Horace, “ Homer some nes sleeps ;"

We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes,– To show with what complacency he creeps,

With his dear “Waggoners,” around his lakes.
He wishes for “a boat” to sail the deeps-

Of ocean ?- No, of air; and then he makes
Another outcry for “ a little boat,”
And drivels seas to set it well afloat.