Part 54

Of all the barbarous middle ages, that Which is most barbarous is the middle age Of man; it is—I really scarce know what; But when we hover between fool and sage, And don’t know justly what we would be at— A period something like a printed page, Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were;—

Too old for youth,—too young, at thirty-five, To herd with boys, or hoard with good threescore,— I wonder people should be left alive; But since they are, that epoch is a bore: Love lingers still, although ’twere late to wive; And as for other love, the illusion ’s o’er; And money, that most pure imagination, Gleams only through the dawn of its creation.

O Gold! Why call we misers miserable? Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall; Theirs is the best bower anchor, the chain cable Which holds fast other pleasures great and small. Ye who but see the saving man at table, And scorn his temperate board, as none at all, And wonder how the wealthy can be sparing, Know not what visions spring from each cheese-paring.

Love or lust makes man sick, and wine much sicker; Ambition rends, and gaming gains a loss; But making money, slowly first, then quicker, And adding still a little through each cross (Which will come over things), beats love or liquor, The gamester’s counter, or the statesman’s dross. O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper, Which makes bank credit like a bank of vapour.

Who hold the balance of the world? Who reign O’er congress, whether royalist or liberal? Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain? (That make old Europe’s journals squeak and gibber all.) Who keep the world, both old and new, in pain Or pleasure? Who make politics run glibber all? The shade of Buonaparte’s noble daring?— Jew Rothschild, and his fellow-Christian, Baring.

Those, and the truly liberal Lafitte, Are the true lords of Europe. Every loan Is not a merely speculative hit, But seats a nation or upsets a throne. Republics also get involved a bit; Columbia’s stock hath holders not unknown On ’Change; and even thy silver soil, Peru, Must get itself discounted by a Jew.

Why call the miser miserable? as I said before: the frugal life is his, Which in a saint or cynic ever was The theme of praise: a hermit would not miss Canonization for the self-same cause, And wherefore blame gaunt wealth’s austerities? Because, you’ll say, nought calls for such a trial;— Then there’s more merit in his self-denial.

He is your only poet;—passion, pure And sparkling on from heap to heap, displays, Possess’d, the ore, of which mere hopes allure Nations athwart the deep: the golden rays Flash up in ingots from the mine obscure; On him the diamond pours its brilliant blaze, While the mild emerald’s beam shades down the dies Of other stones, to soothe the miser’s eyes.

The lands on either side are his; the ship From Ceylon, Inde, or far Cathay, unloads For him the fragrant produce of each trip; Beneath his cars of Ceres groan the roads, And the vine blushes like Aurora’s lip; His very cellars might be kings’ abodes; While he, despising every sensual call, Commands—the intellectual lord of all.

Perhaps he hath great projects in his mind, To build a college, or to found a race, A hospital, a church,—and leave behind Some dome surmounted by his meagre face: Perhaps he fain would liberate mankind Even with the very ore which makes them base; Perhaps he would be wealthiest of his nation, Or revel in the joys of calculation.

But whether all, or each, or none of these May be the hoarder’s principle of action, The fool will call such mania a disease:— What is his own? Go—look at each transaction, Wars, revels, loves—do these bring men more ease Than the mere plodding through each ‘vulgar fraction’? Or do they benefit mankind? Lean miser! Let spendthrifts’ heirs enquire of yours—who ’s wiser?

How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins (Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines, But) of fine unclipt gold, where dully rests Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines, Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp:— Yes! ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.

‘Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,’—‘for love Is heaven, and heaven is love:’—so sings the bard; Which it were rather difficult to prove (A thing with poetry in general hard). Perhaps there may be something in ‘the grove,’ At least it rhymes to ‘love;’ but I’m prepared To doubt (no less than landlords of their rental) If ‘courts’ and ‘camps’ be quite so sentimental.

But if Love don’t, Cash does, and Cash alone: Cash rules the grove, and fells it too besides; Without cash, camps were thin, and courts were none; Without cash, Malthus tells you—‘take no brides.’ So Cash rules Love the ruler, on his own High ground, as virgin Cynthia sways the tides: And as for ‘Heaven being Love,’ why not say honey Is wax? Heaven is not Love, ’tis Matrimony.

Is not all love prohibited whatever, Excepting marriage? which is love, no doubt, After a sort; but somehow people never With the same thought the two words have help’d out: Love may exist with marriage, and should ever, And marriage also may exist without; But love sans bans is both a sin and shame, And ought to go by quite another name.

Now if the ‘court,’ and ‘camp,’ and ‘grove,’ be not Recruited all with constant married men, Who never coveted their neighbour’s lot, I say that line ’s a lapsus of the pen;— Strange too in my ‘buon camerado’ Scott, So celebrated for his morals, when My Jeffrey held him up as an example To me;—of whom these morals are a sample.

Well, if I don’t succeed, I have succeeded, And that ’s enough; succeeded in my youth, The only time when much success is needed: And my success produced what I, in sooth, Cared most about; it need not now be pleaded— Whate’er it was, ’twas mine; I’ve paid, in truth, Of late the penalty of such success, But have not learn’d to wish it any less.

That suit in Chancery,—which some persons plead In an appeal to the unborn, whom they, In the faith of their procreative creed, Baptize posterity, or future clay,— To me seems but a dubious kind of reed To lean on for support in any way; Since odds are that posterity will know No more of them, than they of her, I trow.

Why, I’m posterity—and so are you; And whom do we remember? Not a hundred. Were every memory written down all true, The tenth or twentieth name would be but blunder’d; Even Plutarch’s Lives have but pick’d out a few, And ’gainst those few your annalists have thunder’d; And Mitford in the nineteenth century Gives, with Greek truth, the good old Greek the lie.

Good people all, of every degree, Ye gentle readers and ungentle writers, In this twelfth Canto ’tis my wish to be As serious as if I had for inditers Malthus and Wilberforce:—the last set free The Negroes and is worth a million fighters; While Wellington has but enslaved the Whites, And Malthus does the thing ’gainst which he writes.

I’m serious—so are all men upon paper; And why should I not form my speculation, And hold up to the sun my little taper? Mankind just now seem wrapt in mediation On constitutions and steam-boats of vapour; While sages write against all procreation, Unless a man can calculate his means Of feeding brats the moment his wife weans.

That ’s noble! That ’s romantic! For my part, I think that ‘Philo-genitiveness’ is (Now here’s a word quite after my own heart, Though there’s a shorter a good deal than this, If that politeness set it not apart; But I’m resolved to say nought that ’s amiss)— I say, methinks that ‘Philo-genitiveness’ Might meet from men a little more forgiveness.

And now to business.—O my gentle Juan, Thou art in London—in that pleasant place, Where every kind of mischief ’s daily brewing, Which can await warm youth in its wild race. ’Tis true, that thy career is not a new one; Thou art no novice in the headlong chase Of early life; but this is a new land, Which foreigners can never understand.

What with a small diversity of climate, Of hot or cold, mercurial or sedate, I could send forth my mandate like a primate Upon the rest of Europe’s social state; But thou art the most difficult to rhyme at, Great Britain, which the Muse may penetrate. All countries have their ‘Lions,’ but in thee There is but one superb menagerie.

But I am sick of politics. Begin, ‘Paulo Majora.’ Juan, undecided Amongst the paths of being ‘taken in,’ Above the ice had like a skater glided: When tired of play, he flirted without sin With some of those fair creatures who have prided Themselves on innocent tantalisation, And hate all vice except its reputation.

But these are few, and in the end they make Some devilish escapade or stir, which shows That even the purest people may mistake Their way through virtue’s primrose paths of snows; And then men stare, as if a new ass spake To Balaam, and from tongue to ear o’erflows Quicksilver small talk, ending (if you note it) With the kind world’s amen—‘Who would have thought it?’

The little Leila, with her orient eyes, And taciturn Asiatic disposition (Which saw all western things with small surprise, To the surprise of people of condition, Who think that novelties are butterflies To be pursued as food for inanition), Her charming figure and romantic history Became a kind of fashionable mystery.

The women much divided—as is usual Amongst the sex in little things or great. Think not, fair creatures, that I mean to abuse you all— I have always liked you better than I state: Since I’ve grown moral, still I must accuse you all Of being apt to talk at a great rate; And now there was a general sensation Amongst you, about Leila’s education.