"At the particular request of the Contessa G. I have promised _not_ to continue Don Juan. You will therefore look upon these three Cantos as the last of the poem. She had read the two first in the French translation, and never ceased beseeching me to write no more of it. The reason of this is not at first obvious to a superficial observer of FOREIGN manners; but it arises from the wish of all women to exalt the sentiment of the passions, and to keep up the illusion which is their empire. Now Don Juan strips off this illusion, and laughs at that and most other things. I never knew a woman who did _not_ protect _Rousseau_, nor one who did not dislike De Grammont, Gil Bias, and all the comedy of the passions, when brought out naturally. But 'king's blood must keep word,' as Serjeant Bothwell says." * * * * * LETTER, 438. TO MR. MURRAY. "July 14. 1821. "I trust that Sardanapalus will not be mistaken for a _political_ play, which was so far from my intention, that I thought of nothing but Asiatic history. The Venetian play, too, is rigidly historical. My object has been to dramatise, like the Greeks (a _modest_ phrase), striking passages of history, as they did of history and mythology. You will find all this very _un_like Shakspeare; and so much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the _worst_ of models[40], though the most extraordinary of writers. It has been my object to be as simple and severe as Alfieri, and I have broken down the _poetry_ as nearly as I could to common language. The hardship is, that in these times one can neither speak of kings nor queens without suspicion of politics or personalities. I intended neither. "I am not very well, and I write in the midst of unpleasant scenes here: they have, without trial or process, banished several of the first inhabitants of the cities--here and all around the Roman states--amongst them many of my personal friends, so that every thing is in confusion and grief: it is a kind of thing which cannot be described without an equal pain as in beholding it. "You are very niggardly in your letters. "Yours truly, "B." [Footnote 40: In venturing this judgment upon Shakspeare, Lord Byron but followed in the footsteps of his great idol Pope. "It was mighty simple in Rowe," says this poet, "to write a play now professedly in Shakspeare's style, that is, professedly in the style of a bad age."--Spence, sect. 4. 1734-36. Of Milton, too, Pope seems to have held pretty nearly the same opinion as that professed by Lord Byron in some of these letters. See, in Spence, sect. 5 1737-39, a passage on which his editor remarks--"Perhaps Pope did not relish Shakspeare more than he seems to have done Milton."] * * * * * LETTER 439. TO MR. MURRAY.