“I thought, at setting off, about two dozen Cantos would do; but at Apollo’s pleading, If that my Pegasus should not be foundered, I hope to canter gently through a hundred.”[282] As it lengthened _Don Juan_ developed more and more into a verse diary, bound, from the looseness of its design, to remain uncompleted at Byron’s death. But whatever may have actuated Byron in beginning _Don Juan_ and however uncertain he may have been at first about its ultimate purpose, it soon grew to be primarily satirical. He himself perceived this in describing it to Murray in 1818 as “meant to be a little quietly facetious upon everything”[283] and in characterizing it in 1822 as “a _Satire_ on _abuses_ of the present states of society.”[284] Despite the intermingling of other elements, the poem is exactly what Byron called it--an “Epic Satire.”[285] His remark “I was born for opposition” indicates how much at variance with his age he felt himself to be; and his inclination to pick flaws in existing institutions and to indulge in destructive criticism of his time had become so strong that any poem which expressed fully his attitude towards life was bound to be satirical. Just as the cosmopolitan outlook of the poem is due partly to Byron’s long-continued residence in a foreign country, so its varied moods, its diverse methods, and its wide range of subject matter are to be attributed, to a large extent, to the fact that the composition of _Don Juan_ extended over several years during a period when he was growing intellectually and responding eagerly to new ideas.[286] The work is a fair representation of Byron’s theories and beliefs during the period of his maturity, when he was developing into an enlightened advocate of progressive and liberal doctrines. It is an attack on political inertia and retrogression, on social conventionality, on cant and sham and intolerance. The intermittent, erratic, and somewhat imitative radicalism of a few of his earlier poems has changed into a persistent hostility to all the reactionary conservation of the time. _Don Juan_ is satiric, then, in that it is a protest against all that hampers individual freedom and retards national independence. The pervasive satiric spirit of _Don Juan_ has varied manifestations. In a few passages there are examples of rancor and spite, of direct personal denunciation and furious invective, that recall the satire of _English Bards_. The attacks on Castlereagh and Southey, on Brougham and Lady Byron are in deadly earnest, with hardly a touch of mockery. At the same time Byron relies mainly on the more playful and less savage method which he had learned from the Italians and used in _Beppo_. He himself expressed this alteration in mood by saying, “Methinks the older that one grows, Inclines us more to laugh than scold.”[287]