A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest.
Abroad, such things decide few women's fate--
(Such, early traveller! is the truth thou learnest)--
But in old England, when a young bride errs,
Poor thing! Eve's was a trifling case to hers.

For 't is a low, newspaper, humdrum, lawsuit
Country, where a young couple of the same ages
Can't form a friendship, but the world o'erawes it.
A verdict--grievous foe to those who cause it!-
Forms a sad climax to romantic homages;
Besides those soothing speeches of the pleaders,
And evidences which regale all readers.

But they who blunder thus are raw beginners;
A little genial sprinkling of hypocrisy
Has saved the fame of thousand splendid sinners,
The loveliest oligarchs of our gynocracy;
You may see such at all the balls and dinners,
Among the proudest of our aristocracy,
So gentle, charming, charitable, chaste--
And all by having tact as well as taste.

Juan, who did not stand in the predicament
Of a mere novice, had one safeguard more;
For he was sick--no, 't was not the word sick I meant--
But he had seen so much love before,
That he was not in heart so very weak;--I meant
But thus much, and no sneer against the shore
Of white cliffs, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings,
Tithes, taxes, duns, and doors with double knockings.

But coming young from lands and scenes romantic,
Where lives, not lawsuits, must be risk'd for Passion,
And Passion's self must have a spice of frantic,
Into a country where 't is half a fashion,
Seem'd to him half commercial, half pedantic,
Howe'er he might esteem this moral nation:
Besides (alas! his taste--forgive and pity!)
At first he did not think the women pretty.

I say at first--for he found out at last,
But by degrees, that they were fairer far
Than the more glowing dames whose lot is cast
Beneath the influence of the eastern star.
A further proof we should not judge in haste;
Yet inexperience could not be his bar
To taste:--the truth is, if men would confess,
That novelties please less than they impress.

Though travell'd, I have never had the luck to
Trace up those shuffling negroes, Nile or Niger,
To that impracticable place, Timbuctoo,
Where Geography finds n