The lawyers did their utmost for divorce,53
But scarce a fee was paid on either side
Before, unluckily, Don José died.
XXXIII
He died: and most unluckily, because,
According to all hints I could collect
From Counsel learnèd in those kinds of laws,
(Although their talk’s obscure and circumspect)
His death contrived to spoil a charming cause;
A thousand pities also with respect
To public feeling, which on this occasion
Was manifested in a great sensation.
XXXIV
But ah! he died; and buried with him lay
The public feeling and the lawyers’ fees:
His house was sold, his servants sent away,
A Jew took one of his two mistresses,
A priest the other—at least so they say:
I asked the doctors after his disease—
He died of the slow fever called the tertian,
And left his widow to her own aversion.
XXXV
Yet José was an honourable man,
That I must say, who knew him very well;
Therefore his frailties I’ll no further scan,
Indeed there were not many more to tell:
And if his passions now and then outran
Discretion, and were not so peaceable
As Numa’s (who was also named Pompilius),54
He had been ill brought up, and was born bilious.
XXXVI
Whate’er might be his worthlessness or worth,
Poor fellow! he had many things to wound him.
Let’s own—since it can do no good on earth—55
It was a trying moment that which found him
Standing alone beside his desolate hearth,
Where all his household gods lay shivered round him:56
No choice was left his feelings or his pride,
Save Death or Doctors’ Commons—so he died.57
XXXVII
Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir
To a chancery suit, and messuages, and lands,
Which, with a long minority and care,
Promised to turn out well in proper hands:
Inez became sole guardian, which was fair,
And answered but to Nature’s just demands;
An only son left with an only mother
Is brought up much more wisely than another.
XXXVIII
Sagest of women, even of widows, she
Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon,
And worthy of the noblest pedigree,
(His Sire was of Castile, his Dam from Aragon):
Then, for accomplishments of chivalry,
In case our Lord the King should go to war again,
He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress—or a nunnery.
XXXIX
But that which Donna Inez most desired,
And saw into herself each day before all
The learnèd tutors whom for him she hired,
Was, that his breeding should be strictly moral:
Much into all his studies she inquired,
And so they were submitted first to her, all,
Arts, sciences—no branch was made a mystery
To Juan’s eyes, excepting natural history.
XL
The languages, especially the dead,
The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,
The arts, at least all such as could be said
To be the most remote from common use,
In all these he was much and deeply read:
But not a page of anything that’s loose,
Or hints continuation of the species,
Was ever suffered, lest he should grow vicious.
XLI
His classic studies made a little puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
But never put on pantaloons or bodices;58
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,
And for their Aeneids, Iliads, and Odysseys,59
Were forced to make an odd sort of apology,
For Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.
XLII
Ovid’s a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon’s morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example,
Although Longinus60 tells us there is no hymn
Where the Sublime soars forth on wings more ample;
But Virgil’s songs are pure, except that horrid one
Beginning with “Formosum Pastor Corydon.”61
XLIII
Lucretius’ irreligion is too strong
For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;
I can’t help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,
So much indeed as to be downright rude;
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?
XLIV
Juan was taught from out the best edition,
Expurgated by learnèd men, who place,
Judiciously, from out the schoolboy’s vision,
The grosser parts; but, fearful to deface
Too much their modest bard by this omission,62
And pitying sore his mutilated case,
They only add them all in an appendix,63
Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index;
XLV
For there we have them all “at one fell swoop,”
Instead of being scattered through the pages;
They stand forth marshalled in a handsome troop,
To meet the ingenuous youth of future ages,
Till some less rigid editor shall stoop
To call them back into their separate cages,
Instead of standing staring all together,
Like garden gods—and not so decent either.
XLVI
The Missal too (it was the family Missal)
Was ornamented in a sort of way
Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all
Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they,
Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all,
Could turn their optics to the text and pray,
Is more than I know—But Don Juan’s mother
Kept this herself, and gave her son another.
XLVII
Sermons he read, and lectures he endured,
And homilies, and lives of all the saints;
To Jerome and to Chrysostom inured,
He did not take such studies for restraints;
But how Faith is acquired, and then insured,
So well not one of the aforesaid paints
As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions,
Which make the reader envy his transgressions.64
XLVIII
This, too, was a sealed book to little Juan—
I can’t but say that his mamma was right,
If such an education was the true one.
She scarcely trusted him from out her sight;
Her maids were old, and if she took a new one,
You might be sure she was a perfect fright;
She did this during even
