shows how far he was from the loftier mode of imagination. In place of heroic passion he must seek another outlet of relief, another mode of purging away melancholy; and the spirit of the burlesque came lightly to his use as the only available _vis medica_. The feeling was common to his age, but he alone was able to adapt the motive to epic needs. How often the melancholy sentimentality of Heine corrects itself by a burlesque conclusion! Or, if we regard the novel, how often does Thackeray in like manner replace the old heroic relief of passion by a kindly smile at the brief and busy cares of men. But neither Heine nor Thackeray carries the principle of the burlesque to its artistic completion, or makes it the avowed motive of a complicated action, as Byron does in _Don Juan_. That poem is indeed "prolific of melancholy merriment." It is not necessary to point out at length the persistence of this mock-heroic spirit. Love, ambition, home-attachments, are all burlesqued; battle ardour, the special theme of epic sublimity, is subjected to the same quizzical mockery: There was not now a luggage boy, but sought Danger and spoil with ardour much increased; And why? because a little--odd--old man, Stripped to his shirt, was come to lead the van. In the gruesome shipwreck scene the tale of suffering which leads to cannibalism is interrupted thus: At length they caught two Boobies, and a Noddy, And then they left off eating the dead body. The description of London town as seen from Shooter's Hill ends with this absurd metaphor: A huge, dun Cupola, like a foolscap crown On a fool's head--and there is London Town! Even Death laughs,--death that "_hiatus maxime defiendus_," "the dunnest of all duns," etc. And, last of all, the poet turns the same weapon against his own art. Do the lines for a little while grow serious, he suddenly pulls himself up with a sneer: Here I must leave him, for I grow pathetic, Moved by the Chinese nymph of tears, green tea! I trust, however, it has been made sufficiently clear that _Don Juan_ is something quite different from the mere mock-heroic--from Pulci, for instance, "sire of the half-serious rhyme," whom Byron professed to imitate. The poem is in a sense not half but wholly serious, for the very reason that it takes so broad a view of human activity, and because of its persistent moral sense. (Which is nowise contradicted by the immoral scenes in several of the cantos.) It is not, for example, possible to think of finding in Pulci such a couplet as this: But almost sanctify the sweet excess By the immortal wish and power to bless. He who could write such lines as those was not merely indulging his humour. _Don Juan_ is something more than A versified Aurora Borealis, Which flashes o'er a waste and icy clime.