He has, after his way,
endeavoured in grave prose and light verse to defend it against its
assailants; saying, "In _Don Juan_ I take a vicious and unprincipled
character, and lead him through those ranks of society whose
accomplishments cover and cloak their vices, and paint the natural
effects;" and elsewhere, that he means to make his scamp "end as a member
of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or by the guillotine, or in an
unhappy marriage." It were easy to dilate on the fact that in interpreting
the phrases of the satirist into the language of the moralist we often
require to read them backwards: Byron's own statement, "I hate a motive,"
is, however, more to the point:
But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd,
Unless it were to be a moment merry--
A novel word in my vocabulary.
_Don Juan_ can only be credited with a text in the sense in which every
large experience, of its own accord, conveys its lesson. It was to the
author a picture of the world as he saw it; and it is to us a mirror in
which every attribute of his genius, every peculiarity of his nature, is
reflected without distortion.
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