Well, if I don’t succeed, I have succeeded, And that ’s enough; succeeded in my youth, The only time when much success is needed: And my success produced what I, in sooth, Cared most about; it need not now be pleaded— Whate’er it was, ’twas mine; I’ve paid, in truth, Of late the penalty of such success, But have not learn’d to wish it any less. That suit in Chancery,—which some persons plead In an appeal to the unborn, whom they, In the faith of their procreative creed, Baptize posterity, or future clay,— To me seems but a dubious kind of reed To lean on for support in any way; Since odds are that posterity will know No more of them, than they of her, I trow. Why, I’m posterity—and so are you; And whom do we remember? Not a hundred. Were every memory written down all true, The tenth or twentieth name would be but blunder’d; Even Plutarch’s Lives have but pick’d out a few, And ’gainst those few your annalists have thunder’d; And Mitford in the nineteenth century Gives, with Greek truth, the good old Greek the lie. Good people all, of every degree, Ye gentle readers and ungentle writers, In this twelfth Canto ’tis my wish to be As serious as if I had for inditers Malthus and Wilberforce:—the last set free The Negroes and is worth a million fighters; While Wellington has but enslaved the Whites, And Malthus does the thing ’gainst which he writes. I’m serious—so are all men upon paper; And why should I not form my speculation, And hold up to the sun my little taper? Mankind just now seem wrapt in mediation On constitutions and steam-boats of vapour; While sages write against all procreation, Unless a man can calculate his means Of feeding brats the moment his wife weans. That ’s noble! That ’s romantic! For my part, I think that ‘Philo-genitiveness’ is (Now here’s a word quite after my own heart, Though there’s a shorter a good deal than this, If that politeness set it not apart; But I’m resolved to say nought that ’s amiss)— I say, methinks that ‘Philo-genitiveness’ Might meet from men a little more forgiveness. And now to business.—O my gentle Juan, Thou art in London—in that pleasant place, Where every kind of mischief ’s daily brewing, Which can await warm youth in its wild race. ’Tis true, that thy career is not a new one; Thou art no novice in the headlong chase Of early life; but this is a new land, Which foreigners can never understand. What with a small diversity of climate, Of hot or cold, mercurial or sedate, I could send forth my mandate like a primate Upon the rest of Europe’s social state; But thou art the most difficult to rhyme at, Great Britain, which the Muse may penetrate. All countries have their ‘Lions,’ but in thee There is but one superb menagerie.