But neither love nor hate in much excess; Though ’twas not once so. If I sneer sometimes, It is because I cannot well do less, And now and then it also suits my rhymes. I should be very willing to redress Men’s wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, Had not Cervantes, in that too true tale Of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail. Of all tales ’tis the saddest—and more sad, Because it makes us smile: his hero ’s right, And still pursues the right;—to curb the bad His only object, and ’gainst odds to fight His guerdon: ’tis his virtue makes him mad! But his adventures form a sorry sight; A sorrier still is the great moral taught By that real epic unto all who have thought. Redressing injury, revenging wrong, To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff; Opposing singly the united strong, From foreign yoke to free the helpless native:— Alas! must noblest views, like an old song, Be for mere fancy’s sport a theme creative, A jest, a riddle, Fame through thin and thick sought! And Socrates himself but Wisdom’s Quixote? Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away; A single laugh demolish’d the right arm Of his own country;—seldom since that day Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm, The world gave ground before her bright array; And therefore have his volumes done such harm, That all their glory, as a composition, Was dearly purchased by his land’s perdition. I’m ‘at my old lunes’—digression, and forget The Lady Adeline Amundeville; The fair most fatal Juan ever met, Although she was not evil nor meant ill; But Destiny and Passion spread the net (Fate is a good excuse for our own will), And caught them;—what do they not catch, methinks? But I’m not OEdipus, and life ’s a Sphinx. I tell the tale as it is told, nor dare To venture a solution: ‘Davus sum!’ And now I will proceed upon the pair. Sweet Adeline, amidst the gay world’s hum, Was the Queen-Bee, the glass of all that ’s fair; Whose charms made all men speak, and women dumb. The last ’s a miracle, and such was reckon’d, And since that time there has not been a second. Chaste was she, to detraction’s desperation, And wedded unto one she had loved well— A man known in the councils of the nation, Cool, and quite English, imperturbable, Though apt to act with fire upon occasion, Proud of himself and her: the world could tell Nought against either, and both seem’d secure— She in her virtue, he in his hauteur. It chanced some diplomatical relations, Arising out of business, often brought Himself and Juan in their mutual stations Into close contact. Though reserved, nor caught By specious seeming, Juan’s youth, and patience, And talent, on his haughty spirit wrought, And form’d a basis of esteem, which ends In making men what courtesy calls friends.