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Its poetical merits have been extolled to the skies by its admirers, and thePriest and the Levite, though they have joined to anathematise it, have not,when they came in its way, “passed by on the other side.” 134Strikingly, John Gibson Lockhart’s article on Cantos IX to XI in Blackwood’sEdinburgh Magazine acknowledges the cantos’ questioning of religion, and disagreeswith it, but nonetheless validates its usefulness: “Who can deny, that that is valuablein a certain way which paints the prevailing sentiment of a large proportion of thepeople of any given age of the world?” Despite his disagreements with itsmetaphysical ontology, Lockhart defends Don Juan’s representative nature,acknowledging the prevalence of heterodoxy amongst “a large proportion of thepeople”. This acknowledgement is useful in the same way that William Roberts’comments on CHP are useful: as demonstrations of the heterogeneity of thecontemporary religious context, and thus the unrepresentative nature of theconservative religious views espoused by some. Going on to talk about Don Juan’salleged obscenity, Lockhart compares it with the ‘obscenity’ of Tom Jones and‘blasphemy’ of Voltaire, to declare,it is not within fifty miles of either of them: and as to obscenity, there is moreof that in the pious Richardson’s pious Pamela, than all the novels and poemsthat have been written since. 135This is the argument which Byron had been making about Don Juan and Cain sincetheir inception. Interestingly, the reviewer uses “pious” as Byron does, includingoften within Don Juan, to mean ‘religious in appearance’, rather than ‘devoted inintention’, and thus the reviewer highlights hypocrisy and validates the poet’s attacksupon it. In the poem, the “pious reason /For making squares and streets anonymous”(13.26.201-2) is to conceal the identities of the perpetrators of scandalous acts, and, inregard to the slaughter at Ismail, the reader is alliteratively directed to “ponder what apious pastime war is” (8.124.992). Steel and lead, for blades and bullets, are “The134 Monthly Magazine, September 1823: pp.112, 113-14 (1705, 6-7). Identified as Campbell inGalignani Edition, p.778B.135 John Gibson Lockhart, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, XIV (September 1823), 282-93, RR, I,210-21: p.283 (211).83