[168] {142} ["Mr. Hobhouse is at it again about indelicacy. There is no indelicacy. If he wants that, let him read Swift, his great idol; but his imagination must be a dunghill, with a viper's nest in the middle, to engender such a supposition about this poem."—Letter to Murray, May 15, 1819, Letters, 1900, iv. 295.]
[CG] Two hundred stanzas reckoned as before.—[MS.]
CANTO THE THIRD.[169]
I.
Hail, Muse! et cetera.—We left Juan sleeping,
Pillowed upon a fair and happy breast,
And watched by eyes that never yet knew weeping,
And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest