But for the present, gentle reader! and Still gentler purchaser! the bard—that ’s I— Must, with permission, shake you by the hand, And so ‘Your humble servant, and good-b’ye!’ We meet again, if we should understand Each other; and if not, I shall not try Your patience further than by this short sample— ’Twere well if others follow’d my example.
‘Go, little book, from this my solitude! I cast thee on the waters—go thy ways! And if, as I believe, thy vein be good, The world will find thee after many days.’ When Southey’s read, and Wordsworth understood, I can’t help putting in my claim to praise— The four first rhymes are Southey’s every line: For God’s sake, reader! take them not for mine.
O ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations, Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain, I pray ye flog them upon all occasions, It mends their morals, never mind the pain: The best of mothers and of educations In Juan’s case were but employ’d in vain, Since, in a way that ’s rather of the oddest, he Became divested of his native modesty.
Had he but been placed at a public school, In the third form, or even in the fourth, His daily task had kept his fancy cool, At least, had he been nurtured in the north; Spain may prove an exception to the rule, But then exceptions always prove its worth— A lad of sixteen causing a divorce Puzzled his tutors very much, of course.
I can’t say that it puzzles me at all, If all things be consider’d: first, there was His lady—mother, mathematical, A—never mind; his tutor, an old ass; A pretty woman (that ’s quite natural, Or else the thing had hardly come to pass); A husband rather old, not much in unity With his young wife—a time, and opportunity.
Well—well, the world must turn upon its axis, And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails, And live and die, make love and pay our taxes, And as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails; The king commands us, and the doctor quacks us, The priest instructs, and so our life exhales, A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame, Fighting, devotion, dust,—perhaps a name.
I said that Juan had been sent to Cadiz— A pretty town, I recollect it well— ’Tis there the mart of the colonial trade is (Or was, before Peru learn’d to rebel), And such sweet girls—I mean, such graceful ladies, Their very walk would make your bosom swell; I can’t describe it, though so much it strike, Nor liken it—I never saw the like: