Note p. 4, note 1 — INTRODUCTION TO DON JUAN

[2] {4}[In the "Critique on Bertram," which Coleridge contributed to the Courier, in 1816, and republished in the Biographia Literaria, in 1817 (chap, xxiii.), he gives a detailed analysis of "the old Spanish play, entitled Atheista Fulminato [vide ante, the 'Introduction to Don Juan'] ... which under various names (Don Juan, the Libertine, etc.) has had its day of favour in every country throughout Europe ... Rank, fortune, wit, talent, acquired knowledge, and liberal accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous health, and constitutional hardihood,—all these advantages, elevated by the habits and sympathies of noble birth and national character, are supposed to have combined in Don Juan, so as to give him the means of carrying into all its practical consequences the doctrine of a godless nature, as the sole ground and efficient cause not only of all things, events, and appearances, but likewise of all our thoughts, sensations, impulses, and actions. Obedience to nature is the only virtue." It is possible that Byron traced his own lineaments in this too life-like portraiture, and at the same time conceived the possibility of a new Don Juan, "made up" after his own likeness. His extreme resentment at Coleridge's just, though unwise and uncalled-for, attack on Maturin stands in need of some explanation. See letter to Murray, September 17, 1817 (Letters, 1900, iv. 172).]