I cannot say that she's done much for me yet:
Not that I mean her bounties to disparage,
We've not yet closed accounts, and we shall see yet
How much she'll make amends for past miscarriage;
Meantime the goddess I'll no more importune,
Unless to thank her when she's made my fortune.

LXIII.

To turn, and to return:-the devil take it!
This story slips for ever through my fingers,
Because, just as the stanza likes to make it,
It needs must be-and so it rather lingers;
This form of verse begun, I can't well break it,
Bat 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 ('tis a place

To which I mean to go myself to-morrow, (1) Jast 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 Shackens 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'd,
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 turban?
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,
Others were levelling their looks at her;
She heard the men's half-whisper'd mode of praising,
And, till 'twas done, determined not to stir;
The women only thought it quite amazing
That, at her time of life, so many were

for consideration was-who was to be object of his choice; and, while his friend mentioned one lady, he himself named Miss Milbanke. To this however his adviser strongly objected, remarking to him that Miss Milbanke had at present bo fortune, and that his embarrassed affairs would not allow him to marry without one; that she was moreover a learned lady, which would not at all suit him. In consequence of these representations, he agreed that his friend should write a proposal for him to the other lady named, which was accordingly done; and an answer containing a refusal arrived as they were one morning sitting together. You see,' said Lord Byron, that after all, Miss Milbanke is to be the person;-I will write to her.' He accordingly wrote on the moment, and as soon as he had finished, his friend, remonstrating still strongly against his choice, took

Admirers still, but men are so debased, Those brazen creatures always suit their taste! LXVIII.

For my part, now, I ne'er could understand
Why naughty women-but I won't discuss
A thing which is a scandal to the land,
I only don't see why it should be thus;
And if I were but in a gown and band,
Just to entitle me to make a fuss,
I'd preach on this till Wilberforce and Romilly
Should quote in their next speeches from my homily.
LXIX.

While Laura thus was seen and seeing, smiling,
Talking, she knew not why and cared not what,
So that her female friends, with envy broiling,
Beheld her airs and triumph, and all that;
And well-dress'd males still kept before her filing,
And passing bow'd and mingled with her chat;
More than the rest one person seem'd to stare
With pertinacity that's rather rare.

LXX.

He was a Turk, the colour of mahogany;
And Laura saw him, and at first was glad,
Because the Turks so much admire philogyny,
Although their usage of their wives is sad;
"Tis said they use no better than a dog any

Poor woman, whom they purchase like a pad: They have a number, though they ne'er exhibit'em, Four wives by law, and concubines “ad libitum."

LXXI.

They lock them up, and veil, and guard them daily,
They scarcely can behold their male relations,
So that their moments do not pass so gaily

As is supposed the case with northern nations;
Confinement, too, must make them look quite palely:
And as the Turks abhor long conversations,
Their days are either pass'd in doing nothing,
Or bathing, nursing, making love, and clothing.

LXXII.

They cannot read, and so don't lisp in criticism;
Nor write, and so they don't affect the muse;
Were never caught in epigram or witticism,

Have no romances, sermons, plays, reviews,-
In harams learning soon would make a pretty schism!
But luckily these beauties are no "Blues,"
No bustling Botherbys have they to show'em
"That charming passage in the last new poem." (2)
LXXIII.

No solemn, antique gentleman of rhyme,

Who having angled all his life for fame,

up the letter, but on reading it over observed, 'Well, really this is a very pretty letter; it is a pity it should not go. I never read a prettier one.' 'Then it shall go,' said Lord Byron; and in so saying sealed and sent off, on the instant, this fiat of his fate."-P. E.

(1) In the margin of the original MS. Lord Byron has written--"January 19th, 1818. To-morrow will be a Sunday, and full Ridotto."-L. E.

(2) In these lines, and in the commencement of the following stanza, allusion is made to Mr. Sotheby, who, while Lord Byron was at Venice, had, it seems, dunned him with anonymous letters, containing disagreeable news-" and, what was worse," says his Lordship, and more nauseous and indigestible still, with his criticisms and advice." See Medwin's Conversations.—P. E.

And getting but a nibble at a time,

Still fussily keeps fishing on, the same
Small "Triton of the minnows," the sublime
Of mediocrity, the furious tame,
The echo's echo, usher of the school

Of female wits, boy bards-in short, a fool!
LXXIV.

A stalking oracle of awful phrase,

The approving "Good!" (by no means GOOD in law) Humming like flies around the newest blaze,

The bluest of bluebottles you e'er saw,
Teasing with blame, excruciating with praise,
Gorging the little fame he gets all raw,
Translating tongues he knows not even by letter,
And sweating plays so middling, bad were better.
LXXV.

One hates an author that's all author, fellows
In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink,
So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous,
One don't know what to say to them, or think,
Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows;

Of coxcombry's worst coxcombs e'en the pink
Are preferable to these shreds of paper,
These unquench'd snuffings of the midnight taper.

LXXVI.

Of these same we see several,--and of others,
Men of the world, who know the world like men,
Scott, Rogers, Moore, and all the better brothers,

Who think of something else besides the pen;
But for the children of the "mighty mothers,"

The would-be wits and can't-be gentlemen, I leave them to their daily "tea is ready," Smug coterie, and literary lady. (1)

LXXVII.

The poor dear Mussalwomen whom I mention
Have none of these instructive pleasant people,
And one would seem to them a new invention,

Unknown as bells within a Turkish steeple;
I think 't would almost be worth while to pension
(Though best-sown projects very often reap ill)
A missionary author, just to preach

Our Christian usage of the parts of speech.
LXXVIII.

No chemistry for them unfolds her gasses,
No metaphysics are let loose in lectures,
No circulating library amasses

Religious novels, moral tales, and strictures
Upon the living manners, as they pass us;

No exhibition glares with annual pictures;
They stare not on the stars from out their attics,
Nor deal (thank God for that!) in mathematics.
LXXIX.

Why I thank God for that is no great matter,
I have my reasons, you no doubt suppose,
And as, perhaps, they would not highly flatter,
I'll keep them for my life (to come) in prose;
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.

(I) "Nothing can be cleverer than this caustic little diatribe, introduced à propos of the life of Turkish ladies in their harams." Jeffrey.-L. E.

LXXX.

Oh, mirth and innocence! Oh, milk and water!
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days!
In these sad centuries of sin and slaughter,
Abominable man no more allays

His thirst with such pure beverage. No matter,

I love you both, and both shall have my praise: Oh, for old Saturn's reign of sugar-candy!-Meantime I drink to your return in brandy. LXXXI.

Our Laura's Turk still kept his eyes upon her,
Less in the Mussulman than Christian way,
Which seems to say, "Madam, I do you honour,
"And while I please to stare, you'll please to stay:"
Could staring win a woman, this had won her,
But Laura could not thus be led astray;
She had stood fire too long and well, to boggle
Even at this stranger's most outlandish ogle.

LXXXII.

The morning now was on the point of breaking,
A turn of time at which I would advise
Ladies who have been dancing, or partaking
In any other kind of exercise,
To make their preparations for forsaking

The ball-room ere the sun begins to rise, Because when once the lamps and candles fail, His blushes make them look a little pale.

LXXXIII.

I've seen some balls and revels in my time,
And stay'd them over for some silly reason,
And then I look'd (I hope it was no crime)

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 More than that patent work of God's invention, A charming woman, whom we like to see; But writing names would merit reprehension, Yet if you like to find out this fair she, At the next London or Parisian ball You still may mark her cheek, out-blooming all. LXXXV.

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
Is much the same-they crowd, and pulling, hauling,
With blasphemies enough to break their jaws,

They make a never-intermitting bawling.
At home, our Bow-street gemmen keep the laws,
And here a sentry stands within your calling:
But for all that, there is a deal of swearing,
And nauseous words past mentioning or bearing.

(1) In the MS.-

"Sate Laura with a kind of comic horror."-L. E. (2) "You ask me," says Lord Byron, in a letter written 1820, for a volume of Manners, etc. on Italy. Perhaps I am in the case to know more of them than most Englishaen, because I have lived among the natives, and in parts of the country where Englishmen never resided before (1 Reak of Romagna and this place particularly); but there are many reasons why I do not choose to treat in print on sach a subject. Their moral is not your moral; their life is at your life; you would not understand it: it is not Euganor French, nor German, which you would all underand. The conventual education, the cavalier servitude, the habits of thought and living, are so entirely different, and the difference Becomes so much more striking the more

you Eve intimately with them, that I know not how to make you comprehend a people who are at once temperate and profligate, serious in their characters and buffoons in their amusements, capable of impressions and passions, which are at once sudden and durable (what you find in no other nation), and who actually have no society (what we would call so), as you may see by their comedies; they have no real comedy, not even in Goldoni, and that is because they have no society to draw it from. Their conversazioni are not society at all. They go to the theatre to talk, and into company to hold their tongues. The women sit in a circle, and the men gather into groups, or they play at dreary faro, or lotto reale,' for small sums. Their academie are concerts like our own, with better music and more form. Their best things are the carnival balls and masquerades,

XCVIII.

His wife received, the patriarch re-baptized him
(He made the church a present, by the way);
He then threw off the garments which disguised him,
And borrow'd the Count's smallclothes for a day:
His friends the more for his long absence prized him,

Finding he'd wherewithal to make them gay With dinners, where he oft became the laugh of them For stories-but I don't believe the half of them.

when every body runs mad for six weeks. After their dinners and suppers, they make extempore verses and buffoon one another; but it is in a humour which you would not enter into, ye of the north.""In their houses it is better. As for the women, from the fisherman's wife up to the nobil dama, their system has its rules, and its fitnesses, and its decorums, so as to be reduced to a kind of discipline of game at hearts, which admits few deviations, unless you wish to lose it. They are extremely tenacious, and jealous as furies, not permitting their lovers even to marry if they can help it, and keeping them always close to them in public as in private, whenever they can. In short, they transfer marriage to adultery, and strike the not ont of that commandment. The reason is, that they marry for their parents, and love for themselves. They exact fidelity from a lover as a debt of honour, while they pay the husband as a tradesman, that is, not at all. You hear a person's character, male or female, canvassed, not as depending on their conduct to their husbands or wives, but to their mistress or lover. If I wrote a quarto, I don't know that I could do more than amplify what I have here noted."-L. E.

"The author of Sketches Descriptive of Italy, etc., one of the hundred tours lately published, is extremely anxious to disclaim a possible charge of plagiarism from Childe Harold and Beppo. He adds, that still less could this presumed coincidence arise from my conversation,' as he had repeatedly declined an introduction to me while in Italy.

"Who this person may be I know not, but he must have been deceived by all or any of those who repeatedly offered to introduce' him, as I have invariably refused to receive any English with whom I was not previously acquainted, even when they had letters from England. If the whole assertion is not an invention, I request this person not to sit down with the notion that he coULD have been introduced, since there has been nothing I have so carefully avoided as any kind of intercourse with his countrymen, excepting the very few who were a considerable time resident in Venice, or had been of my previous acquaintance. Whoever made him any such offer was possessed of impudence equal to that of making such an assertion without having had it. The fact is, that I hold in utter abhorrence any contact with the travelling English, as my friend the Consul General Hoppner, and the Countess Benzoni (in whose house the conversazione mostly frequented by them is held), could amply testify, were it worth while, I was persecuted by these tourists even to my riding-ground at Lido, and reduced to the most disagreeable circuits to avoid them. At Madame Benzoni's I repeatedly refused to be introduced to them; of a thousand such presentations pressed upon me, I accepted two, and both were to Irish women.

XCIX.

Whate'er his youth had suffer'd, his old age
With wealth and talking made him some amends;
Though Laura sometimes put him in a rage,
I've heard the Count and he were always friends.
My pen is at the bottom of a page,

Which being finish'd, here the story ends;
"Tis to be wish'd it had been sooner done,
But stories somehow lengthen when begun. (1)

"I should hardly have descended to speak of such trifles publicly, if the impudence of this sketcher' had not forced me to a refutation of a disingenuous and gratuitously im pertinent assertion;-so meant to be, for what could it in port to the reader to be told that the author had repeate edly declined an introduction,' even had it been true, which, for the reasons I have above given, is scarcely pos sible? Except Lords Lansdowne, Jersey, and Lauderdale; Messrs. Scott, Hammond, Sir Humphry Davy, the late M. Lewis, W. Bankes, Mr. Hoppner, Thomas Moore, Lord Kinnaird, his brother, Mr. Joy, and Mr. Hobhouse, I do not recollect to have exchanged a word with another Englishman since I left their country; and almost all these 1 had known before. The others and God knows there were some hundreds-who bored me with letters or visits. I refused to have any communication with, and shall be proud and happy when that wish becomes mutual." Byron.-P.E (1) This extremely clever and amusing performance af fords a very curious and complete specimen of a kind of diction and composition of which our English literature has hitherto presented very few examples. It is, in itself, ab solutely a thing of nothing-without story, characters, sen timents, or intelligible object;-a mere piece of lively and loquacious prattling, in short, upon all kinds of frivolous subjects,--a sort 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 gaiely, 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, ver sification, the unmingled, unconstrained, and unselected language of the most light, familiar, and ordinary cenversation. With great skill and felicity, he has furnished u with an example of about one hundred stanzas of god verse, entirely composed of common words, in their comm places; never presenting us with one sprig of what is called poetical diction, or even making use of a single inversi either to raise the style or assist the rhyme-bas rurais. 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" is almost invariably excellent. In some other respects, it a more unequal. About one half is as good as possible, in the style to which it belongs; the other half bears, perbas too many marks of that haste with which such a work mas necessarily be written. Some passages are rather too sp pish, 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 extreme ly pleasant, amiable, and gentlemanlike." Jeffrey. -L. E

ADVERTISEMENT.

"CELUI qui remplissait alors cette place était un gentilhomme polonais, nommé Mazeppa, né dans le palatinat de Padolie: 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

(1) The following "lively, spirited, and pleasant tale," as Mr. Gifford calls it, on the margin of the MS., was

avec la femme d'un gentilhomme polonais ayant e découverte, le mari le fit lier tout nu sur un cheva farouche, et le laissa aller en cet état. Le cheva qui était du pays de l'Ukraine, y retourna, et y port Mazeppa, demi-mort de fatigue et de faim. Quelque paysans le secoururent: il resta longtems parmi eux et se signala dans plusieurs courses contre les Ta tares. La supériorité de ses lumières lui donna un

written in the autumn of 1818, at Ravenna. We extra the following from a reviewal, of the time:-"Mazepf"

grande considération parmi les Cosaques: sa répu tation 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. (1)

'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;

The wounded Charles was taught to fly
By day and night through field and flood,
Stain'd with his own and subjects' blood;
For thousands fell that flight to aid:
And not a voice was heard to upbraid
Ambition in his humbled hour,

When truth had nought to dread from power.
His horse was slain, and Gieta gave
His own-and died the Russians' slave.
This too sinks, after many a league
Of well-sustain'd but vain fatigue;
And in the depth of forests, darkling
The watch-fires in the distance sparkling-

a very fine and spirited sketch of a very noble story, and is
very way worthy of its author. The story is a well-known
de; namely, that of the young Pole, who, being bound
Baked 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
atter hopelessness and exhaustion, recovered, and lived to
he long after the prince and leader of the nation among
whom he had arrived in this extraordinary manner.
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 cam-
paigns the Cossack Hetman took a distinguished part. He
tells it during the desolate bivouack of Charles and the few

Lord

A band of chiefs!-alas! how few,
Since but the fleeting of a day
Had thinn'd it; but this wreck was true
And chivalrous: upon the clay
Each sate him down, all sad and mute,
Beside his monarch and his steed,
For danger levels man and brute,

And all are fellows in their need.
Among the rest, Mazeppa made
His pillow in an old oak's shade-
Himself as rough, and scarce less old,
The Ukraine's hetman, calm and bold;
But first, outspent with this long course,
The Cossack prince rubb'd down his horse,
And made for him a leafy bed,

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 His wearied courser might refuse To browse beneath the midnight dews: But he was hardy as his lord, And little cared for bed and board; But, spirited and docile too, Whate'er was to be done would do. Shaggy and swift, and strong of limb, All Tartar-like he carried him; Obey'd his voice, and came to call, And knew him in the midst of all: Though thousands were around,-and Night, Without a star, pursued her flight, That steed from sunset until dawn His chief would follow like a fawn.

IV.

This done, Mazeppa spread his cloak,
And laid his lance beneath his oak,

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 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, than the account of the love-the guilty love-the fruits of which had been so miraculous."-L. E.

(1) For some authentic and interesting particulars concerning the Hetman Mazeppa, see Mr. Barrow's delightful Life of Peter the Great. Family Library, Vol. XXXV.-L. E.