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the most taboo of all acts, the consumption of another human. The source for thecannibalism is evidently The Sufferings of the Crew of the Thomas, 192 but, once again,the poet has added the religious element.On another part of Don Juan, the Edinburgh Monthly Review thus also makes an errorin reading when it claims “an apparently fixed disbelief of futurity” in the poem. 193While many of the poet’s works do question the idea of post-mortem existence, thispoem represents the idea as true. In the initial shipwreck, “near two hundred souls/Had left their bodies” (2.55.433-4), and the subsequent discussion of Purgatoryimplies that the souls did not cease to exist upon their exit. “Nine souls more went” inthe swamping of the cutter (2.61.481): the souls are described as travelling, notperishing. Referring to Haidée and Juan, and their great love for one another, therhetor says, “Their intense souls, into each other pour’d, /If souls could die, hadperished in that passion” (2.191.1523-4). The usage of the past-form conditionalstates that souls cannot die, and thus do exist beyond the death of the body. Don Juanaffirms the immortality of the soul, although it does go on to problematize thataffirmation later, in its engagements with agnosis.One single line which caused much contemporary comment was 8.9.70, with itscondemnation of Wordsworth’s address to God which says, “Yea, Carnage is thydaughter!” 194 Whereas the liberal Literary Examiner validates Byron’s criticism ofWordsworth’s “blasphemy”, 195 others took exception to Byron’s reference to it. 196Don Juan, however, continues by saying, “If he speak truth, she is Christ’s sister, and/Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.” (8.9.71-2). The carnage in the Holy Land192 Q.v. Galignani Edition, p.752b n3193 Edinburgh Monthly Review, October 1819, p.479 (797).194 Line 282 of the original version of “Ode, the morning of the day appointed for a generalThanksgiving, January 18, 1816”, later deleted by Wordsworth. Q.v. William Wordsworth, ShorterPoems, 1807-1820, ed. by Carl H. Ketcham (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).195 Literary Examiner, July 5, 1823, 6-12; July 12, 1823, 23-7, RR, III, 1358-64: p.25 (1363).196 The Literary Gazette includes Byron’s passage amongst a series of quotations which are followedby the dismissal “what the fool only says in his heart, the worse than fool publishes openly”(July 19,1823, 451-3, RR, IV, 1461-3: p.451 (1461), alluding to Psalm 14:1, “The fool hath said in his heart,There is no God”). The British Critic and John Bull exonerate Wordsworth’s “inadvertent nonsense”whilst arraigning Byron’s “shameless blasphemy” and “vice” (British Critic, 2nd Series, XX (August1823), 178-88, RR, I, 331-336: p.184 (334); John Bull, July 20, 1823, 229, RR, III, 1220-1: p.229(1221)).118