126 News from Parnassus.. .No. IX. [Sept. 1, 
Unless, indeed, it was from his own know¬ 
ledge he 
Decided thus, and shoW’d good reason 
why ; 
I think that Dante’s more abstruse ecstatics 
Meant to personify the mathematics.” 
The spirit of these passages will give 
our readers a pretty correct idea of the 
cynical sorties in which the poet de¬ 
lights to indulge. And, in truth, we 
see no reason for visiting him with a 
very heavy penalty of indignation, if 
lie ventures to speak of human beings 
and human affairs in this strain of bit¬ 
ter sarcasm. Compare these cantos 
with the works of Swift. There is no¬ 
thing in them which presents our na¬ 
ture in so degraded and disgusting a 
point of view as the latter laboured to 
place it in. HiS works are a tissue of wit, 
misanthropy, and something coarser, 
yet he was a dignitary of the church, 
and of unimpeached character. And 
why not allow his jest to Lord Byron ? 
Must the metropolitan law society be 
put into a flame, because bespeaks “of 
that sublime of rascals, the attorney?” 
or because in describing a Creek pirate, 
he calls him “a sea-attorney?” and 
again, unwilling to abandon so capital 
a hit, 44 a sea-solicitor?” Or must Miss 
Edgeworth or Lady Morgan resent it as 
a personal affront, when his Lordship 
comically talks of 44 the intensity of 
blue ?” 
The personal narrative of the hero of 
these pages may be condensed into a 
few lines. We may as well briefly re¬ 
capitulate the story of the former can¬ 
tos.- Don Juan, the rising hope of a 
noble Spanish family, was carefully 
educated by his widowed mother ; but 
being seduced at a very early age into 
an amour with a lady of rank, was sent 
on the grand tour, and for that purpose 
embarked at a sea port. The vessel 
suffers shipwreck, and the horrors en¬ 
dured by the unhappy crew are detail¬ 
ed with a fidelity and minuteness which 
is fully accounted for by a curious ar¬ 
ticle in our last number, respecting 
which we shall merely observe that it 
forms the only substantial proof of pla¬ 
giarism yet advanced against Lord By¬ 
ron. Juan alone escapes, and is cast 
insensible upon a Greek island, the 
44 chambers” in fact, of the sea-solici¬ 
tor. He is restored to life by the cares 
of that respectable practitioner’s daugh¬ 
ter, Haidee ; and the second canto 
concludes with a beautiful picture of 
their young and innocent loves. In the 
opening of the third canto, the tender 
pair, on a false report of the old man’s 
death, appear in full possession of his 
honors and estates, and of their own 
fond, ill-fated affections. 
“ All these were theirs, for they were chil¬ 
dren still, 
And children still they should have ever 
been ; 
They were not made in the real world to fill 
A busy character in the dull scene, 
But like two beings, born from out a rill, 
A nymph and her beloved, all unseen 
To pass their lives in fountains aud oil 
flowers, 
Andnever know the weight of humanhours. 
They should have lived together deep in 
w T oods, 
Unseen as sings the uightingale; thev 
were 
Unfit to mix in these thick solitudes 
Called social, where all vice and hatred 
are: 
How lonely every free-born creature broods: 
The sweetest song-birds nestle in a pair^ 
The eagle soars alone 5 the gu 1 and crow 
Flock o’er their carrion, just as mortals do. 
* 
Now pillow’d cheek to cheek, in loving 
sleep, 
Haidee and Juan their siesta took, 
A gentle slumber, but it was not deep, 
For ever and anon a something shook 
Juan, and shuddering o'er his frame would 
creep. 
And Haidee’s sweet lips murmur’d like 
a brook 
A wordless music, and her face so fair 
Stirr’d with her dream as rose-leaves with 
the air. 
The dream of Haidee, after a variety 
of ugly forms, presents to her the dead 
body of her beloved Juan. 
“ And gazing on the dead, she thought his 
face 
Faded, or altered into somethin^ new— 
Like to her father’s feature, till each trace 
More like and like to Lambro’s aspect 
grew— 
With all his keen worn look and Grecian 
grace, 
And starting, she awoke, and what to 
view- ? 
Oh ! Powers of heaven I W r hat dark eye 
meets she there ? 
’Tis—’tis her father’s fix’d upon the pair! 
A minute past, and she had been all in tears, 
And tenderness, and infancy : but now 
She stood as one who championed human 
fears, 
Pale, statue-like and stern, she woo’d the 
blow : 
And tall beyond her sex, and their compeers, 
She drew up to her height, as if, to show 
A fairer mark; and with a fixed eye scann’d 
Her father’s face—but never stopped his 
hand. 
in 
