The “most readable poem in the language” is also one of the most gratulant acts of homage to Byron’s Mother Tongue. Framed in a critical relation to Wordsworth and Coleridge and their influential ideas about language and poetry, Don Juan makes its case by poetic example, not prose precept. The poem’s kaleidoscopic show-and-tell performance of unrestrained poetic expression unfolds to a broad demonstration of Freedom and free expression as primary social, moral, and poetic values.