n which a prose satirist describes himself as
reclining under an arcade of the Pantheon: "Not the Pantheon by the Piazza
Navona, where the immortal gods were worshipped--the immortal gods now
dead; but the Pantheon in Oxford Street. Have not Selwyn, and Walpole, and
March, and Carlisle figured there? Has not Prince Florizel flounced
through the hall in his rustling domino, and danced there in powdered
splendour? O my companions, I have drunk many a bout with you, and always
found 'Vanitas Vanitatum' written on the bottom of the pot." This is the
mind in which _Don Juan_ interprets the universe, and paints the still
living court of Florizel and his buffoons. A "nondescript and ever varying
rhyme"--"a versified aurora borealis," half cynical, half Epicurean, it
takes a partial though a subtle view of that microcosm on stilts called
the great world. It complains that in the days of old "men made the
manners--manners now make men." It concludes--

Good company's a chess-board, there are kings,
Queens, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns; the world's a game.

It passes from a reflection on "the dreary _fuimus_ of all things here" to
the advice--

But "carpe diem," Juan, "carpe, carpe!"
To-morrow sees another race as gay
And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy.
"Life's a poor player,"--then play out the play.

It was the natural conclusion of the foregone stage of Byron's career.
Years had given him power, but they were years in which his energies were
largely wasted. Self-indulgence had not petrified his feeling, but it had
thrown wormwood into its springs. He had learnt to look on existence as a
walking shadow, and was strong only with the strength of a sincere
despair.

Through life's road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragg'd to three and thirty.
What have those years left to me?
Nothing, except thirty-three.

These lines are the summary of one who had drained the draught of pleasure
to the dregs of bitterness.

CHAPTER X.

1821-1824.

POLITICS--THE CARBONARI--EXPEDITION TO GREECE--DEATH.

In leaving Venice for Ravenna, Byron passed from the society of gondoliers
and successive sultanas to a comparatively domestic life, with a mistress
who at least endeavoured to stimulate some of his higher aspirations, and
smiled upon his wearing the sword along with the lyre. In the last episode
of his constantly chequered and too voluptuous career, we have the waking
of Sardanapalus realized