e persecution which it brought upon him. Yet,
if we judge the poem with no preconceived severity, we shall find that,
with the exception of certain passages where he went beyond the limits
prescribed to satire, from his hatred of hypocrisy, and also at times as
a revenge against his persecutors, the poem is charming. These passages
he intended to suppress,[1] but death prevented him. This is greatly to
be regretted, for otherwise "Don Juan" would have been the most charming
satirical poem in existence, and especially had not the last four
cantos, written in Greece, been destroyed. The scene lay in England, and
the views expressed in them explained many things which can never now be
known. In allowing such an act to be committed for the sake of sparing
the feelings of some influential persons and national susceptibilities,
Byron's friends failed in their duty to his memory, for the last four
cantos gave the key to the previous ones, and justified them. From the
moment Byron conceived "Don Juan" he steeled his heart against feeling;
and he kept to his resolution not to give way to his natural goodness of
disposition, wishing the poem to be a satire as well as an act of
revenge. Here and there, however, his great soul pierces through, and
shows itself in such a true light that Byron's portrait could be better
drawn from passages of "Don Juan," than from any other of his poems.[2]
We have sufficiently proved, we think, that the uniform character of
Byron's heroes, which has been blamed by the poet's enemies, was merely
the reflection of the moral beauty which he drew from himself. It might
almost be said that the qualities with which he had been gifted by
Heaven conspired against him.

We have been led to dwell upon this phase of his literary career, at the
risk even of tiring the patience of the reader, from the necessity which
we believe exists to destroy the phantom of identification which has
been invoked, and to explain the moral nature of Byron in its true light
before analyzing the poet under other aspects. It is not in "Harold" or
in "Conrad," nor in any of his Oriental poems, that we are likely to
trace the moral character of Byron, for, although it would be easy to
detach the author's sentiments from those of the personages of these
poems, yet they might offer a pretext of blame to those who hate to look
into a subject to discover the truth which does not appear at first
sight. Nor is it in "Manfred"--the only one