There is more repose about this poem than in
any of the author's other compositions. In its pages the sea seems to
plash about rocks and caves that bask under a southern sun. "'Byron, the
sorcerer,' he can do with me what he will," said old Dr. Parr, on reading
it. As the swan-song of the poet's sentimental verse, it has a pleasing if
not pathetic calm. During the last years in Italy he planned an epic on
the Conquest, and a play on the subject of Hannibal, neither of which was
executed.
In the criticism of a famous work there is often little left to do but to
criticise the critics--to bring to a focus the most salient things that
have been said about it, to eliminate the absurd from the sensible, the
discriminating from the commonplace. _Don Juan_, more than any of its
precursors, _is_ Byron, and it has been similarly handled. The early
cantos were ushered into the world amid a chorus of mingled applause and
execration. The minor Reviews, representing middle-class respectability,
were generally vituperative, and the higher authorities divided in their
judgments. The _British Magazine_ said that "his lordship had degraded his
personal character by the composition;" the _London_, that the poem was "a
satire on decency;" the _Edinburgh Monthly_, that it was "a melancholy
spectacle;" the _Eclectic_, that it was "an outrage worthy of
detestation.
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