But The Deformed Transformed, which was also written at Pisa, is, though confessedly an imitation of Goethe’s Faust, substantially an original work.  In the opinion of Mr Moore, it probably owes something to the author’s painful sensibility to the defect in his own foot; an accident which must, from the acuteness with which he felt it, have essentially contributed to enable him to comprehend and to express the envy of those afflicted with irremediable exceptions to the ordinary course of fortune, or who have been amerced by nature of their fair proportions.  But save only a part of the first scene, the sketch will not rank among the felicitous works of the poet.  It was intended to be a satire—probably, at least—but it is only a fragment—a failure.

Hitherto I have not noticed Don Juan otherwise than incidentally.  It was commenced in Venice, and afterward continued at intervals to the end of the sixteenth canto, until the author left Pisa, when it was not resumed, at least no more has been published.  Strong objections have been made to its moral tendency; but, in the opinion of many, it is the poet’s masterpiece, and undoubtedly it displays all the variety of his powers, combined with a quaint playfulness not found to an equal degree in any other of his works.  The serious and pathetic portions are exquisitely beautiful; the descriptive have all the distinctness of the best pictures in Childe Harold, and are, moreover, generally drawn from nature, while the satire is for the most part curiously associated and sparklingly witty.  The characters are sketched with amazing firmness and freedom, and though sometimes grotesque, are yet not often overcharged.  It is professedly an epic poem, but it may be more properly described as a poetical novel.  Nor can it be said to inculcate any particular moral, or to do more than unmantle the decorum of society.  Bold and buoyant throughout, it exhibits a free irreverent knowledge of the world, laughing or mocking as the thought serves, in the most unexpected antitheses to the proprieties of time, place, and circumstance.