In utilizing the octave for his own satires, he gave it a freedom of which it had never before been made capable in English; and, by a clever employment of double and triple rhymes, and by the constant use of run-on lines and stanzas, he adjusted the measure to the conversational flow of his verse. At a time, then, when his youthful narrowness was developing into the maturity that comes only from experience, and when, therefore, he was most susceptible to broadening influences, Byron, fortunately for his satire, was brought into contact with the Italian spirit. The result was that _Don Juan_ joined many of the most powerful features of _English Bards_ with the lighter elements of Berni and Casti. The beauty of Byron’s satire at its finest in _Don Juan_ and _The Vision of Judgment_, lies in the welding of the direct and indirect methods, in the interweaving of invective with burlesque, in such a way that the poems seem to link the spirit of Juvenal with the spirit of Pulci. The consequence is a variety of tone, a widening of scope, and a considerable increase in effectiveness. Byron’s general attacks are relieved from the charge of futility; his vindictiveness is mitigated by humor and a touch of the ridiculous; and his aggressiveness, though it does not disappear, is sometimes changed to a cynical tolerance. CHAPTER VIII “DON JUAN” With the exception of _The Ring and the Book_, _Don Juan_, containing approximately 16,000 lines, is probably the longest original poem in English since the _Faerie Queene_; moreover, if we exclude the _Canterbury Tales_, no other work in verse in our literature attempts an actual “criticism of life” on so broad a scale. It is Byron’s deliberate and exhaustive characterization of his age, the book in which he divulges his opinions with the least reticence and the most finality. With all their occasional brilliance and power, his earlier satires had been essentially imitative and could be judged by pre-existing standards. Later, in composing _Beppo_, Byron discovered that he had found a kind of verse capable of free and varied treatment and therefore especially suited to his improvising and discursive genius; accordingly, in _Don Juan_, which is a longer and more elaborate _Beppo_, he produced a masterpiece which, besides being an adequate revelation of his complex personality, is unique in English, anomalous in its manner and method.[276]