The character Don Juan has entered popular culture as an epic womanizer. Men want to be him and women want to sleep with him.  But one of the most famous depictions of this lothario, Lord Byron’s Don Juan, portrays him as a weak man, easily swayed by the tempting powers of women.  Byron, the demagogue of the Romantic poets, also criticized his contemporary, Robert Southey, in the famous side note to the Don Juan story. 

Don Juan was published from 1819 until 1823 in a series of sixteen cantos. Byron died while still at work on the seventeenth.  The poem was very popular, but it was also deemed immoral by 19^th century critics. The character of Don Juan, a womanizing libertine who loved fighting, had been around for centuries before Byron.  Byron’s poem takes only minimal influence from this legend. 

Throughout Don Juan, Byron’s narrator tells lies and uses misinformation and soon after condemns the spreading of false information. Byron continues his denouncement of Southey using this method. With lies and the subsequent condemnation of these lies, Byron criticizes Southey as an immoral gossip-monger who, at the same time, condemns the immorality of others.

Southey was a gossip who also seemed to view himself as the moral compass of English literature. Southey spread false, malicious gossip about Byron, Shelley, Claire Clarmont, and Mary Shelley. However, in his essay A Vision of Judgment, Southey said that English literature was pure and that writers like Byron were polluting this literature. Even though he spread this false gossip, Southey, as England’s Poet Laureate, viewed himself as the upholder of English literature’s moral status-quo.

Byron alludes to this contradiction throughout Don Juan. In a footnote, Byron writes “Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming, (I think) the opening of Canto II; but quote from memory.” In actuality, the footnote says, the quote comes from Gertrude of Wyoming, Canto III. Byron then warns others against the mistake he just made saying “Which commandment is’t they break? (I have forgot the number, and think no man should rashly quote, for fear of a mistake.)” This close juxtaposition of a broken rule followed by the condemnation of breaking that rule seems to allude to Southey’s behavior.

Additionally, Byron says “(‘Twas snow that brought St. Anthony to reason), and although the footnote says “Byron later realized it was St. Francis of Assisi who cast himself on the snow to quell his desires,” it is possible Byron was referring to Southey and his false gossip again. Again, Byron condemns the misuse of facts in the way he just did, saying “the fatal day, without whose epoch my poetic skill for want of facts would all be thrown away.”

Byron follows this same pattern on a larger scale. He says, “they embellish, that ‘tis quite a bore; their labyrinth of fables to thread through, Whereas this story’s actually true.” This quote, which advises against embellishment and fictional stories, is another admonishment of something Byron actually does. Don Juan is embellished and fictional.

Byron continues bashing Southey throughout Don Juan with his technique of making an untrue statement—like Southey did when gossiping about Byron and his contemporaries—and shortly thereafter condemning errors similar to the one he just did—like Southey condemnation of everything he didn’t view as moral. However, perhaps this thesis is wrong and Byron just became too secure in his fame and wealth, made some fact errors in Don Juan, and developed a penchant for telling people what to do.