ssed, "It fulfils in a certain degree what I have long
preached, the task of producing something wholly new and relative to the
age, and yet surpassingly beautiful." And Sir Walter Scott, in the midst
of a hearty panegyric: "It has the variety of Shakespeare himself. Neither
_Childe Harold_, nor the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain
more exquisite poetry than is to be found scattered through the cantos of
_Don Juan_, amidst verses which the author seems to have thrown from him
with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves."

One noticeable feature about these comments is their sincerity: reviewing,
however occasionally one-sided, had not then sunk to be the mere register
of adverse or friendly cliques; and, with all his anxiety for its verdict,
Byron never solicited the favour of any portion of the press. Another is,
the fact that the adverse critics missed their mark. They had not learnt
to say of a book of which they disapproved, that it was weak or dull: in
pronouncing it to be vicious, they helped to promote its sale; and the
most decried has been the most widely read of the author's works. Many of
the readers of _Don Juan_ have, it must be confessed, been found among
those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable--who have been
attracted by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste,
and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their
patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by
a showy Shakespearian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the
charge of being adapted "laudari ab illaudatis." But the welcome of the
work in other quarters is as indubitably duo to higher qualities. In
writing _Don Juan_, Byron attempted something that had never been done
before, and his genius so chimed with his enterprise that it need never be
done again. "Down," cries M. Chasles, "with the imitators who did their
host to make his name ridiculous." In commenting on their failure, an
Athenaeum critic has explained the pre-established fitness of the ottava
rima--the first six lines of which are a dance, and the concluding couplet
a "breakdown"--for the mock-heroic. Byron's choice of this measure may
have been suggested by Whistlecraft; but, he had studied its cadence in
Pulci, and the _Novelle Galanti_ of Casti, to whom he is indebted for
other features of his satire; and he added to what has been well termed
its character