“I thought, at setting off, about two dozen
Cantos would do; but at Apollo’s pleading,
If that my Pegasus should not be foundered,
I hope to canter gently through a hundred.”[282]
As it lengthened Don Juan developed more and more into a verse diary, bound, from the looseness of its design, to remain uncompleted at Byron’s death.
But whatever may have actuated Byron in beginning Don Juan and however uncertain he may have been at first about its ultimate purpose, it soon grew to be primarily satirical. He himself perceived this in describing it to Murray in 1818 as “meant to be a little quietly facetious upon everything”[283] and in characterizing it in 1822 as “a Satire on abuses of the present states of society.”[284] Despite the intermingling of other elements, the poem is exactly what Byron called it—an “Epic Satire.”[285] His remark “I was born for opposition” indicates how much at variance with his age he felt himself to be; and his inclination to pick flaws in existing institutions and to indulge in destructive criticism of his time had become so strong that any poem which expressed fully his attitude towards life was bound to be satirical. Just as the cosmopolitan outlook of the poem is due partly to Byron’s long-continued residence in a foreign country, so its varied moods, its diverse methods, and its wide range of subject matter are to be attributed, to a large extent, to the fact that the composition of Don Juan extended over several years during a period when he was growing intellectually and responding eagerly to new ideas.[286] The work is a fair representation of Byron’s theories and beliefs during the period of his maturity, when he was developing into an enlightened advocate of progressive and liberal doctrines. It is an attack on political inertia and retrogression, on social conventionality, on cant and sham and intolerance. The intermittent, erratic, and somewhat imitative radicalism of a few of his earlier poems has changed into a persistent hostility to all the reactionary conservation of the time. Don Juan is satiric, then, in that it is a protest against all that hampers individual freedom and retards national independence.
The pervasive satiric spirit of Don Juan has varied manifestations. In a few passages there are examples of rancor and spite, of direct personal denunciation and furious invective, that recall the satire of English Bards. The attacks on Castlereagh and Southey, on Brougham and Lady Byron are in deadly earnest, with hardly a touch of mockery. At the same time Byron relies mainly on the more playful and less savage method which he had learned from the Italians and used in Beppo. He himself expressed this alteration in mood by saying,
“Methinks the older that one grows,
Inclines us more to laugh than scold.”[287]
It is noticeable, too, that in Don Juan petulant fury is much less conspicuous than philosophic satire. Byron is assailing institutions and theories as well as men and women. To some extent the poem is a medium for satisfying a quarrel or a prejudice; but to a far greater degree it is a summary of testimony hostile to the reactionary early nineteenth century. The poet still prefers, in many cases, to make specific persons responsible for intolerable systems; but he is gradually forsaking petty aims and rising to a far nobler position as a critic of his age.