Why, then, did he choose the name, and what was the scheme or motif of
his poem? Something is to be gathered from his own remarks and
reflections; but it must be borne in mind that he is on the defensive,
and that his half-humorous paradoxes were provoked by advice and
opposition. Writing to Moore (September 19, 1818), he says, "I have
finished the first canto ... of a poem in the style and manner of
_Beppo_, encouraged by the good success of the same. It is ... meant to
be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. But I doubt whether it
is not--at least as far as it has gone--too free for these very modest
days." The critics before and after publication thought that _Don Juan_
_was_ "too free," and, a month after the two first cantos had been
issued, he writes to Murray (August 12, 1819), "You ask me for the plan
of Donny Johnny; I _have_ no plan--I _had_ no plan; but I had or have
materials.... You are too earnest and eager about a work never intended
to be serious. Do you suppose that I could have any intention but to
giggle and make giggle?--a playful satire, with as little poetry as
could be helped, was what I meant." Again, after the completion but
before the publication of Cantos III., IV., V., in a letter to Murray
(February 16, 1821), he writes, "The Fifth is so far from being the last
of _Don Juan_, that it is hardly the beginning. I meant to take him the
tour of Europe, with a proper mixture of siege, battle, and adventure,
and to make him finish as Anacharsis Cloots in the French Revolution....
I meant to have made him a _Cavalier Servente_ in Italy, and a cause for
a divorce in England, and a Sentimental 'Werther-faced' man in Germany,
so as to show the different ridicules of the society in each of these
countries, and to have displayed him gradually _gâté_ and _blasé_, as he
grew older, as is natural. But I had not quite fixed whether to make him
end in Hell, or in an unhappy marriage, not knowing which would be the
severest."