VI.

'Twas the boy's "mite," and, like the "widow's," may Perhaps be weigh'd hereafter, if not now; But whether such things do or do not weigh,

All who have loved, or love, will still allow Life has nought like it. God is love, they say,

And Love's a God, or was before the brow Of earth was wrinkled by the sins and tears Of- but Chronology best knows the years.

VII.

We left our hero and third heroine in

A kind of state more awkward than uncommon, For gentlemen must sometimes risk their skin For that sad tempter, a forbidden woman: Sultans too much abhor this sort of sin,

And don't agree at all with the wise Roman, Heroic, stoic Cato, the sententious,

Who lent his lady to his friend Hortensius. (1)

VIII.

I know Gulbeyaz was extremely wrong;
I own it, I deplore it, I condemn it;
But I detest all fiction even in song,

And so must tell the truth, howe'er you blame it. Her reason being weak, her passions strong,

She thought that her lord's heart (even could she claim it)

Was scarce enough; for he had fifty-nine

Years, and a fifteen-hundredth concubine.

(1) Cato gave up his wife Martia to his friend Hortensius; but, on the death of the latter, took her back again. This conduct was ridiculed by

IX.

I am not, like Cassio," an arithmetician,"
But by
"the bookish theoric" (1) it appears,
If 'tis summ'd up with feminine precision,

That, adding to the account his Highness' years, The fair Sultana err'd from inanition;

For, were the Sultan just to all his dears, She could but claim the fifteen-hundredth part Of what should be monopoly-the heart.

X.

It is observed that ladies are litigious

Upon all legal objects of possession,

And not the least so when they are religious,

Which doubles what they think of the trans

gression:

With suits and prosecutions they besiege us,

As the tribunals show through many a session,
When they suspect that any one goes shares
In that to which the law makes them sole heirs.

XI.

Now if this holds good in a Christian land,
The heathen also, though with lesser latitude,
Are apt to carry things with a high hand,

And take, what kings call "an imposing attitude;"

the Romans, who observed, that Martia entered the house of Hortensius very poor, but returned to the bed of Cato loaded with treasures. — PLU

TARCH.

(1)

["Forsooth, a great arithmetician,
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,

That never set a squadron in the field,

Nor the division of a battle knows

More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric," &c.

Othello.]

And for their rights connubial make a stand, [tude:
When their liege husbands treat them with ingrati-
And as four wives must have quadruple claims,
The Tigris hath its jealousies like Thames.

XII.

Gulbeyaz was the fourth, and (as I said)

The favourite; but what's favour amongst four?
Polygamy may well be held in dread,
Not only as a sin, but as a bore:

Most wise men with one moderate woman wed,
Will scarcely find philosophy for more;
And all (except Mahometans) forbear

To make the nuptial couch a " Bed of Ware." (')

XIII.

His Highness, the sublimest of mankind,—
So styled according to the usual forms
Of every monarch, till they are consign'd
To those sad hungry jacobins the worms, (2)
Who on the very loftiest kings have dined,-
His Highness gazed upon Gulbeyaz' charms,
Expecting all the welcome of a lover

(A "Highland welcome" (3) all the wide world over).

(1) ["At Ware, the inn known by the sign of the Saracen's Head still contains the famous bed, measuring twelve feet square, to which an allusion is made by Shakspeare in 'Twelfth Night."," CLUTTERBUCK's Hertford, vol. iii. p. 285.]

(2) "Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else, to fat us; and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king, and your lean beggar, is but variable service; two dishes but to one table: that's the end."- Hamlet.

(3) See Waverley.

XIV.

Now here we should distinguish; for howe'er Kisses, sweet words, embraces, and all that, May look like what is-neither here nor there, They are put on as easily as a hat,

Or rather bonnet, which the fair sex wear, Trimm'd either heads or hearts to decorate, Which form an ornament, but no more part Of heads, than their caresses of the heart.

XV.

A slight blush, a soft tremor, a calm kind
Of gentle feminine delight, and shown
More in the eyelids than the eyes, resign'd

Rather to hide what pleases most unknown, Are the best tokens (to a modest mind)

Of love, when seated on his loveliest throne, A sincere woman's breast,-for over-warm Or over-cold annihilates the charm.

XVI.

For over-warmth, if false, is worse than truth; If true, 'tis no great lease of its own fire; For no one, save in very early youth,

Would like (I think) to trust all to desire, Which is but a precarious bond, in sooth,

And apt to be transferr❜d to the first buyer At a sad discount: while your over chilly Women, on t'other hand, seem somewhat silly.

XVII.

That is, we cannot pardon their bad taste,
For so it seems to lovers swift or slow,
Who fain would have a mutual flame confess'd,
And see a sentimental passion glow,

Even were St. Francis' paramour their guest,
In his monastic concubine of snow ;-(1)
In short, the maxim for the amorous tribe is
Horatian," Medio tu tutissimus ibis."

XVIII.

The "tu"'s too much,—but let it stand,—the verse Requires it, that's to say, the English rhyme, And not the pink of old hexameters ;

But, after all, there's neither tune nor time In the last line, which cannot well be worse, And was thrust in to close the octave's chime:

I own no prosody can ever rate it

As a rule, but truth may, if you translate it.

XIX.

If fair Gulbeyaz overdid her part,

I know not-it succeeded, and success
Is much in most things, not less in the heart
Than other articles of female dress.

i

(1) "The blessed Francis, being strongly solicited one day by the emotions of the flesh, pulled off his clothes and scourged himself soundly: being after this inflamed with a wonderful fervour of mind, he plunged his naked body into a great heap of snow. The devil, being overcome, retired immediately, and the holy man returned victorious into his cell." -See BUTLER's Lives of the Saints.