But 't is as well at once to understand,

You are not a moral people, and you know it,

Without the aid of too sincere a poet.

LXXXVIII.

What Juan saw and underwent shall be

My topic, with of course the due restriction

Which is required by proper courtesy;

And recollect the work is only fiction,

And that I sing of neither mine nor me,

Though every scribe, in some slight turn of diction,