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 ask'd the doctors after his disease,
He died of the slow fever call'd the tertian,
And left his widow to her own aversion.

XXXV.

Yet Jóse 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),

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;

It was a trying moment that which found him
Standing alone beside his desolate hearth,

Where all his household gods lay shiver'd round him; No choice was left his feelings or his pride

Save death or Doctors' Commons-so he died.

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 answer'd 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 Arragon.) Then for accomplishments of chivalry,

In case our lord the king should go to war again, He learn'd 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 learned 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 any thing that's loose, Or hints continuation of the species, Was ever suffer'd, 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 boddices;
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,

And for their Æneids, Iliads, and Odysseys, 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 (3) Longinus 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."

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?