LVII. Laura, when dress'd, was (as I sang before) A pretty woman as was ever seen, Fresh as the Angel o'er a new inn door, Or frontispiece of a new Magazine, With all the fashions which the last month wore, Colour'd, and silver paper leaved between That and the title-page, for fear the press Should soil with parts of speech the parts of dress. LVIII. They went to the Ridotto; -'tis a hall Excepting that it can't be spoilt by rain: For a "mix'd company" implies that, save Yourself and friends, and half a hundred more, Whom you may bow to without looking grave, The rest are but a vulgar set, the bore Of public places, where they basely brave The fashionable stare of twenty score Of well-bred persons, call'd "the World; but I, Although I know them, really don't know why. LX. This is the case in England; at least was During the dynasty of Dandies 1, now Perchance succeeded by some other class Of imitated imitators : — - how Irreparably soon decline, alas! ["I liked the Dandies: they were always very civil to me; though, in general, they disliked literary people, and persecuted and mystified Madame de Stael, Lewis, Horace Twiss, and the like. The truth is, that though I gave up the business early, I had a tinge of Dandyism in my minority, and probably retained enough of it to conciliate the great ones at four and twenty."— Byron Diary, 1821.] 2 ["When Brummell was obliged to retire to France, he knew no French, and having obtained a grammar for the purpose of study, our friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress Brummell had made in French: he responded, that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the elements. I have put this pun into Beppo, which is à fair It needs must be and so it rather lingers; This form of verse began, I can't well break it, But must keep time and tune like public singers But if I once get through my present measure, I'll take another when I'm next at leisure. LXIV. They went to the Ridotto ('t is a place To which I mean to go myself to-morrow, 4 Just to divert my thoughts a little space, Because I'm rather hippish, and may borrow Some spirits, guessing at what kind of face May lurk beneath each mask; and as my sorrow Slackens its pace sometimes, I'll make, or find, Something shall leave it half an hour behind.) LXV. Now Laura moves along the joyous crowd, Smiles in her eyes, and simpers on her lips; To some she whispers, others speaks aloud; To some she curtsies, and to some she dips, Complains of warmth, and this complaint avow', Her lover brings the lemonade, she sips; She then surveys, condemns, but pities still Her dearest friends for being dress'd so ill. LXVI. One has false curls, another too much paint, A third-where did she buy that frightful turba A fourth's so pale she fears she's going to faint, A fifth's look 's vulgar, dowdyish, and suburban. A sixth's white silk has got a yellow taint. A seventh's thin muslin surely will be her bane And lo! an eighth appears, —"I'll see no more For fear, like Banquo's kings, they reach a score. LXVII. Meantime, while she was thus at others gazing, LXVIII. For my part, now, I ne'er could understand Just to entitle me to make a fuss, exchange and no robbery; for Scrope made his fortir several dinners (as he owned himself), by repeating ora ally, as his own, some of the buffooneries with which I encountered him in the morning."- Byron Diary 1821. LXIX. Tele Laura thus was seen and seeing, smiling, LXX. He was a Turk, the colour of mahogany; Per woman, whom they purchase like a pad : LXXI. They lock them up, and veil, and guard them daily, A supposed the case with northern nations; LXXII. They cannot read, and so don't lisp in criticism; Save no romances, sermons, plays, reviews, — fing Botherbys have they to show 'em • That charming passage in the last new poem." LXXIIL wen, antique gentleman of rhyme, Votaving angled all his life for fame, And getting but a nibble at a time, fundy keeps fishing on, the same imal-Triton of the minnows," the sublime of zedwcrity, the furious tame, Tweety's echo, usher of the school f wits, boy bards in short, a fool! LXXIV. & talking oracle of awful phrase, LXXVI. Of these same we see several, and of others, LXXVII. The poor dear Mussulwomen whom I mention I think 't would almost be worth while to pension Our Christian usage of the parts of speech. LXXVIII. No chemistry for them unfolds her gasses, Religious novels, moral tales, and strictures No exhibition glares with annual pictures; Why I thank God for that is no great matter, I fear I have a little turn for satire, And yet methinks the older that one grows Inclines us more to laugh than scold, though laughter Leaves us so doubly serious shortly after. LXXX. Oh, Mirth and Innocence! Oh, Milk and Water! His thirst with such pure beverage. No matter, LXXXI. Our Laura's Turk still kept his eyes upon her, The approving" Good!" (by no means GooD in law) Could staring win a woman, this had won her, LXXXIII. And stay'd them over for some silly reason, To see what lady best stood out the season; And though I've seen some thousands in their prime, Lovely and pleasing, and who still may please on, I never saw but one (the stars withdrawn) Whose bloom could after dancing dare the dawn. LXXXIV. The name of this Aurora I'll not mention, Although I might, for she was nought to me Laura, who knew it would not do at all To meet the daylight after seven hours' sitting Among three thousand people at a ball, To make her curtsy thought it right and fitting: The Count was at her elbow with her shawl, And they the room were on the point of quitting, When lo those cursed gondoliers had got Just in the very place where they should not. LXXXVI. In this they 're like our coachmen, and the cause They make a never intermitting bawling. The Count and Laura found their boat at last, The dancers and their dresses, too, beside; (As to their palace stairs the rowers glide) "Sir," said the Count, with brow exceeding grave, "Your unexpected presence here will make It necessary for myself to crave Its import? But perhaps 't is a mistake; I hope it is so; and, at once to wave All compliment, I hope so for your sake: You understand my meaning, or you shall." "Sir," (quoth the Turk) "'t is no mistake at all. LXXXIX. "That lady is my wife!" Much wonder paints They only call a little on their saints, And then come to themselves, almost or quite; Which saves much hartshorn,salts,and sprinkling faces, And cutting stays, as usual in such cases. ["Sate Laura with a kind of comic horror."- MS.] "And are you really, truly, now a Turk? With any other women did you wive? Is 't true they use their fingers for a fork? Well, that's the prettiest shawl-as I'm alive! You'll give it me? They say you eat no pork. And how so many years did you contrive To-Bless me! did I ever? No, I never Saw a man grown so yellow! How's your liver? XCIII. "Beppo! that beard of yours becomes you not; It shall be shaved before you're a day older: Why do you wear it? Oh! I had forgot Pray don't you think the weather here is colder How do I look! You shan't stir from this spot In that queer dress, for fear that some beholder Should find you out, and make the story known. How short your hair is! Lord! how grey it's grown XCIV. What answer Beppo made to these demands Of pirates landing in a neighbouring bay, XCV. But he grew rich, and with his riches grew so And so he hired a vessel come from Spain, XCVI. Himself, and much (heaven knows how gotten :) ca In our opinions: -well, the ship was trim, Ta mk me,” says Lord Byron, in a letter written in tiwa rolure of Manners, &c. on Italy. Perhaps I am teneb bɔw more of them than most Englishmen, I have lived among the natives, and in parts of the * where Englishmen never resided before (I speak of md this place particularly), but there are many I do not choose to treat in print on such a subject. amera w not your moral; their life is not your life; you understand it: It is not English, nor French, nor you would all understand. The conventual -kurs, the cavalier servitude, the habits of thought and ** * in entirely different, and the difference becomes so Trung the more you live intimately with them, alinare but be to make you comprehend a people who sen temperate and profigate, serious in their characters as their amusements, capable of impressions and na which are at once sudden and durable (what you find *The satin, and who actually have no society (what *** cut so, as you may see by their comedies, they ready, not even in Goldoni, and that is because when sorty to draw it from. Their conversazioni #mi mosty at all They go to the theatre to talk, and into de their tongues. The women sit in a circle, gather into groups, or they play at dreary faro, frar," for small süms. Their academie are concerts *, with befter music and more form. Their best at the carnival balls and masquerades, when every cum mad for a weeks. After their dinners and suppers ** SA VYTere verses and buffoon one another; but it •hich you would not enter into, ye of the north. - loves it is better. As for the women, from the p to the nobil dama, their system has its tres, and its decorums, so as to be reduced **** dag or game at hearts, which admits few - Ja to wish to lose it. They are extremely anders as furies, not permitting their lovers *o say of the can help it, and keeping them always La them is putte as in private, whenever they can. In ter marriage to adultery, and strike the not eminent. The reason is, that they marry for portata and be fre themselves. They exact fidelity Se à aver an a debt of honour, while they pay the husband **FRETS, that is, not at all. You hear a person's amale, canvassed, not as depending on their bastards or wives, but to their mistress or a quarto, I don't know that I could do more Y at 1 have here noted."] The extremely clever and amusing performance affords and complete specimen of a kind of diction and drh our English literature has hitherto Med very few examples. It is in itself, absolutely a *4* wathing — without story, characters, sentiments, or palatinat de Podolie: il avait été élevé page de Jean Casimir, et avait pris à sa cour quelque teinture des belles-lettres. Une intrigue qu'il eut dans sa jeunesse avec la femme d'un gentilhomme Polonais ayant été a sort intelligible object; -a mere piece of lively and loquacious prattling, in short, upon all kinds of frivolous subjects, of gay and desultory babbling about Italy and England, Turks, balls, literature, and fish sauces. But still there is something very engaging in the uniform gaiety, politeness, and good humour of the author, and something still more striking and admirable in the matchless facility with which he has cast into regular, and even difficult, versification the unmingled, unconstrained, and unselected language of the most light, familiar, and ordinary conversation. With great skill and felicity, he has furnished us with an example of about one hundred stanzas of good verse, entirely composed of common words, in their common places; never presenting us with one sprig of what is called poetical diction, or even making use of a single inversion, either to raise the style or assist the rhyme, but running on in an inexhaustible series of good easy colloquial phrases, and finding them fall into verse by some unaccountable and happy fatality. In this great and characteristic quality it is almost invariably excellent. In some other respects, it is more unequal. About one half is as good as possible, in the style to which it belongs; the other half bears, perhaps, too many marks of that haste with which such a work must necessarily be written. Some passages are rather too snappish, and some run too much on the cheap and rather plebeian humour of out-of-the-way rhymes, and strange-sounding words and epithets. But the greater part is extremely pleasant, amiable, and gentlemanlike. — JEFFREY.] [The following "lively, spirited, and pleasant tale," as Mr. Gifford calls it, on the margin of the MS., was written in the autumn of 1818, at Ravenna. We extract the following from a reviewal of the time:-" MAZEPPA is a very fine and spirited sketch of a very noble story, and is every way worthy of its author. The story is a well-known one; namely, that of the young Pole, who, being bound naked on the back of a wild horse, on account of an intrigue with the lady of a certain great noble of his country, was carried by his steed into the heart of the Ukraine, and being there picked up by some Cossacks, in a state apparently of utter hopelessness and exhaustion, recovered, and lived to be long after the prince and leader of the nation among whom he had arrived in this extraordinary manner. Lord Byron has represented the strange and wild incidents of this adventure, as being related in a half serious, half sportive way, by Mazeppa himself, to no less a person than Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, in some of whose last campaigns the Cossack Hetman took a distin guished part. He tells it during the desolate bivouack of Charles and the few friends who fled with him towards Turkey, after the bloody overthrow of Pultowa. There is not a little of beauty and gracefulness in this way of setting the picture; the age of Mazeppa-the calm, practised indifference with which he now submits to the worst of fortune's deeds the heroic, unthinking coldness of the royal découverte, le mari le fit lier tout nu sur un cheval farouche, et le laissa aller en cet état. Le cheval, qui était du pays de l'Ukraine, y retourna, et y porta Mazeppa, demi-mort de fatigue et de faim. Quelques paysans le secoururent: il resta long-tems parmi eux, et se signala dans plusieurs courses contre les Tartares. La supériorité de ses lumières lui donna une grande considération parmi les Cosaques : sa réputation s'augmentant de jour en jour, obligea le Czar à le faire Prince de l'Ukraine."-VOLTAIRE, Hist. de Charles XII. p. 196. "Le roi fuyant, et poursuivi, eut son cheval tué sous lui; le Colonel Gieta, blessé, et perdant tout son sang, lui donna le sien. Ainsi on remit deux fois à cheval, dans la fuite, ce conquérant qui n'avait pu y monter pendant la bataille."-p. 216. "Le roi alla par un autre chemin avec quelques cavaliers. Le carrosse où il était rompit dans la marche; on le remit à cheval. Pour comble de disgrace, il s'égara pendant la nuit dans un bois; là, son courage ne pouvant plus suppléer à ses forces épuisées, les douleurs de sa blessure devenues plus insupportables par la fatigue, son cheval étant tombé de lassitude, il se coucha quelques heures au pied d'un arbre, en danger d'être surpris à tout moment par les vainqueurs, qui le cherchaient de tous côtés." -p. 218. Mazeppa. "Twas after dread Pultowa's day, When fortune left the royal Swede. Around a slaughter'd army lay, No more to combat and to bleed. The power and glory of the war, Faithless as their vain votaries, men, Had pass'd to the triumphant Czar, And Moscow's walls were safe again, Until a day more dark and drear, And a more memorable year, Should give to slaughter and to shame A mightier host and haughtier name; A greater wreck, a deeper fall, A shock to one-a thunderbolt to all. II. Such was the hazard of the die; When truth had nought to dread from power. madman to whom he speaks the dreary and perilous accompaniments of the scene around the speaker and the audience, all contribute to throw a very striking charm both of preparation and of contrast over the wild story of the Hetman. Nothing can be more beautiful, in like manner, This too sinks after many a league In outworn nature's agony; His wounds were stiff-his limbs were stark A transient slumber's fitful aid: III. A band of chiefs!-alas! how few, And all are fellows in their need. And smooth'd his fetlocks and his mane, And slack'd his girth, and stripp'd his rein, And joy'd to see how well he fed ; For until now he had the dread IV. This done, Mazeppa spread his cloak, And flints unloosen'd kept their lock— than the account of the love-the guilty love-the fru which had been so miraculous."] [For some authentic and interesting particulars enned the Hetman Mazeppa, see Barrow's "Memoir of the Peter the Great."]" |