***Byron's hero [Don Juan] is, after all, only a vagabond
libertine. And he is dumb: he does not discuss himself with a
Sganarelle-Leporello or with the fathers or brothers of his mistresses: he does
not even, like Casanova, tell his own story. In fact he is not a true Don
Juan at all; for he is no more an enemy of God than any romantic and adventurous
young sower of wild oats. ***Byron was as little of a philosopher as Peter
the Great: both were instances of that rare and useful, but unedifying
variation, an energetic genius born without the prejudices or superstitions of
his contemporaries. The resultant unscrupulous freedom of thought made
Byron a greater poet than Wordsworth just as it made Peter a greater king than
George III; but as it was, after all, only a negative qualification, it did not
prevent Peter from being an appalling blackguard and an arrant poltroon, nor did
it enable Byron to become a religious force like Shelley.