Chapter VII: The Italian Influence (1)

Shortly after the momentous year 1816, an extraordinary development took place in the form and spirit of Byron’s satiric work in verse. Up to this date, as we have seen, his satires of any literary value had followed, as a rule, the general plan and manner used by the authors of such typical productions as the _Dunciad_, the _Rosciad_, and the _Baviad_. In some ephemeral verses, it is true, he had shown signs of breaking away from the English classical tradition; but few, if any, of these unimportant occasional poems had been printed in book form. They had appeared in newspapers or in letters to correspondents, and Byron himself would have made no claim for their permanence. His published satires, then, had deviated little from the standard set by Pope and Gifford, a fact all the more remarkable because his work in the other branches of literature in which he had distinguished himself had revealed a wide discrepancy between his utterances as a critic and his practice as a poet. The enthusiastic and often extravagant eulogist of Pope had been the author of the romantic _Childe Harold_ and _The Giaour_. In one field of letters, however, Byron had preserved some consistency; before 1818, considered as a satirist, he must be classed as one of the numerous disciples of the great Augustan.

The publication of _Beppo_, February 28, 1818, may serve roughly to denote the visible turning-point between the old era and the new one to come. It is significant that this poem is written, not in the characteristically English heroic couplet, but in the thoroughly foreign ottava rima. Responsive to an altered and agreeable environment, Byron found in Italy and its literature an inspiration which affected him even more profoundly than it had Goethe only a few decades before. The results of this influence, shown to some extent in his dramas though more decidedly in his satires, justify terming the years from 1817 until his death his Italian period. A mere mention of its contribution to satire indicates its importance: it produced _Beppo_, _The Vision of Judgment_, and _Don Juan_. Of these poems, _Beppo_ is, strictly speaking, a satiric novella; _The Vision of Judgment_ is a travesty; and _Don Juan_ is an “epic satire.” They are, however, all three closely related: first, in that, unlike most of the earlier satires, they are narrative in method; second, in that they are infused with what we may call, for want of a better phrase, the Italian spirit. What this spirit is we may well leave for future discussion. It is enough here to point out that it is characterized by a kind of playfulness, half gayety and half mockery, often tinged with irony and reflecting a cynical tolerance, and that it adopts a style informal and colloquial, in which the satirist unbends to his readers and feigns to let them into his confidence. The bare outlining of these features alone proves how far Byron departed from the usually serious, dignified, and formal satire of Pope and Gifford.

It would, of course, be erroneous to assume that Byron, before he first touched Italian soil in 1816, was unfamiliar with the language. If, as Moore says, he had read little of it up to 1807, he still must have gained some acquaintance with it on his early travels, for on January 14, 1811, he wrote his mother from Athens:--“Being tolerably master of the Italian and Modern Greek languages--I can order and discourse more than enough for a reasonable man.”[175] In a letter of August 24, 1811, he used Italian words,[176] and in 1812 he criticized with much intelligence the “Italian rhymes” of W. R. Spencer.[177] There are several references in his Diary to his study of Italian writers.[178] In his library, sold in 1816 to satisfy his creditors, were many Italian books; indeed Fuhrman computes that by that date he had gone through Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Bandello, Ariosto, Alfieri, Monti, and Goldoni, besides many minor historians, essayists, and poets.[179] Finally when he actually set foot in Italy, he was able to assure Murray:--“As for Italian, I am fluent enough.”[180] Nothing up to this time, however, had induced him to become an imitator of the Italians. Although he had commended Hunt’s _Rimini_ for having two excellent features, “originality and Italianism,” he had, apparently, no idea of emulating Hunt in seeking for a stimulus from Italian sources.

In mid-October, 1816, Byron arrived in Italy from Switzerland, making his first halt at Milan. From then on until he set out for Greece on July 23, 1823, he was a continuous dweller in the peninsula, settling for a time at and near Venice, in the meanwhile making an excursion to Florence and Rome, going later to Ravenna, and at last residing at Pisa and Genoa. The interesting details of his life in these places are sufficiently well known through his own letters and the records given to the world by Hunt, Medwin, the Countess of Blessington, Trelawney, Moore, and others. His reputation as the author of _Childe Harold_ served as a means of introduction to men of letters; his noble birth procured him admission into social circles; and naturally he acquired an intimate knowledge of Italian customs, as well as a wide acquaintance with the literature of the country, both mediæval and modern. He engaged in several liaisons in Venice, and in 1819 became the accepted _cicisbeo_ of the Countess Guiccioli. By aiding the secret organization of the Carbonari, he enrolled himself in the struggle for Italian independence and made himself an object of suspicion to the police. It is no wonder that he wrote to Moore in 1820:--“I suspect I know a thing or two of Italy--I have lived in the heart of their houses, in parts of Italy freshest and least influenced by strangers--have seen and become (_pars magna fui_) a portion of their hopes, and fears, and passions.”[181] The immediate consequences of this assimilation may be recognized in _Beppo_, composed in 1817, which, slight and inconsiderable though it seems, is nevertheless the prelude to the fuller voice of _Don Juan_, the product of Byron’s ripest genius.

The problem is to determine, as far as it is possible, in what way and to what extent Byron is indebted to Italy and Italian writers in _Beppo_, _The Vision of Judgment_, and _Don Juan_. The process of arriving at a satisfactory answer to these queries cannot be an easy one, because it so often necessitates dealing with qualities of style which are somewhat intangible. We may set aside at once any supposition that Byron stole habitually from the Italian satirists by translating their phrases or transferring their ideas, unacknowledged, to his own pages. He was rarely a plagiarist in the sense that he conveyed the words of others bodily into his own stanzas, and when, as in sections of _Don Juan_, he paraphrased the prose of historians, he frankly admitted his obligation. But his creative impulse was likely to be affected by any book which had recently aroused his admiration. Moore, who knew the operations of Byron’s mind as no one else did, said:--“There are few of his poems that might not ... be traced to the strong impulse given to his imagination by the perusal of some work that had just before interested him.”[182] Obviously, when a particular poem was composed under such inspiration, we shall find it difficult to measure the extent of Byron’s dependence upon the book which offered him a stimulus. Now and then, it is true, there are passages in his satires which recall at once similar lines in Italian writers, and occasionally we find him using a trick of theirs which it seems improbable he could have learned elsewhere: in such cases the relationship is clear enough. On the other hand, we may feel convinced that Byron drew from the Italian satirists something of their general tone, and yet be unable to clarify our reasons for this belief or to frame them into an effective argument. Of such a sort, indeed, is much of the influence which Pulci, Berni, and Casti had on Byron. It is vague and evasive, but it undoubtedly exists. Perhaps at bottom it is little more than the habit of thinking in a peculiar way or of surveying objects from an unusual point of view. But whatever is the basis of this satiric manner, it influenced Byron’s work, and made his later satires almost unique in English.

It is in _Beppo_, as has been said, that this new mood first has full expression. Yet, curiously enough, we are at once forced into the paradox that Byron may have been taught something of the Italian spirit in _Beppo_ through the medium of an English poem, to which he explicitly turns our attention. In 1817 a book was published by Murray with the odd title, _Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Slowmarket, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers, Intended to Comprise the Most Interesting Particulars Relating to King Arthur and his Round Table_. The volume contained only two short cantos in ottava rima, the whole making up, with the eleven stanzas of introduction, 99 stanzas, exactly the length of _Beppo_. Early in 1818 two more cantos were added, and in the same year the entire poem was printed as _The Monks, and the Giants_. Although no author’s signature was attached, credit was rightfully bestowed upon John Hookham Frere (1769–1846), already mentioned as a brilliant contributor to the poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_.[183] Like Mathias, Roscoe, Rose, and others among his contemporaries, Frere had been an assiduous student of Italian, and had read extensively in the Italian romantic and burlesque poets from Pulci to Casti. It was doubtless interest in this literature that led him to the composition of _The Monks, and the Giants_, for which work he borrowed from the Italians their octave stanza, an occasional episode, and as much of their manner as his nature could absorb.[184]

Byron’s first mention of _Beppo_ occurs in a letter of October 12, 1817, to Murray:--“I have written a poem (of 84 octave stanzas), humourous, in or after the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft (whom I take to be Frere), on a Venetian anecdote which amused me.”[185] On October 23d he repeats this assertion:--“Mr. Whistlecraft has no greater admirer than myself. I have written a story in 89 stanzas, in imitation of him, called _Beppo_.”[186] Although the definiteness of these statements is unquestionable, it is, nevertheless, essential to ascertain just how literally we are to accept Byron’s confession that _Beppo_ is “in the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft.”

The problem has been discussed in detail by Albert Eichler in his treatise, _John Hookham Frere, Sein Leben und seine Werke, Sein Einfluss auf Lord Byron_ (1905), and his conclusions are, in many respects, trustworthy. After comparing _Beppo_ with Frere’s poem, Dr. Eichler maintains that Byron’s inspiration may be traced to _The Monks, and the Giants_, and makes the following assertion regarding the sources of Byron’s work:--“Die Italien duerfen wir als Quellen hiebei mit Recht nach des Dichters eigenen Auesserungen und auch aus zeitlichen Gruenden ausschliessen.” This statement, which is certainly stronger than the evidence warrants, may be controverted on two grounds: first, that, in spite of some superficial resemblances between the two poems, there is much in _Beppo_ that Byron could not have gained from Frere, indeed which he could have learned only from a close study of the Italian poets; secondly, that Byron actually knew the work of Casti well at the time when he composed _Beppo_.

The likeness in stanza form and Byron’s own acknowledgment of his model have, in all probability, been somewhat over-emphasized. So much do the two works differ in plot that there is no single case in which Byron could have adopted a situation or an incident from Frere. The story of _The Monks, and the Giants_ is told by an imaginary personage, Robert Whistlecraft, just as _The Waltz_ is supposed to have been composed by the fictitious “Horace Hornem, Esq.,” and the language of the poem is fitted to the station and education of this figure, who is thoroughly British and entirely Frere’s creation. The poem itself, fragmentary and amorphous even in its final state, is a jumble of poorly organized themes. Beginning in Canto I with a description of Arthur’s court and of his three valorous knights, Lancelot, Tristram, and Gawain, it proceeds to treat in Canto II of an attack of the banded Arthurian chivalry on the castle of the Giants, a race who resemble, in some respects, the giants in Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_. At this point the knights disappear from the story, Arthur being mentioned only once during the rest of the tale, and Frere, imitating in part the first canto of the _Morgante Maggiore_, takes a monastery for his scene and a siege of the religious brethren by the Giants for his main action. Friar John’s quarrel with the Tintinabularians, his enforced leadership after the death of the venerable abbot, the assault of the Giants, the successful defence of the Monks, and the eventual retreat of the assailing party:--these are the significant incidents in the second half of a work which obviously depends little on the unity of its plot.

_Beppo_ is also a narrative, founded on a rather unimpressive anecdote. The merchant, Beppo, departed on a trading trip, fails to return to his wife, Laura, and she, thinking him dead, consoles herself with a Count for her lover. After some years, Beppo comes back, to meet his wife and her cavalier at a ball. She is reconciled to her husband, the Count becomes Beppo’s friend, and the story ends. Since these main features of the plot differ so widely from the incidents in _The Monks, and the Giants_, we are forced to seek, therefore, for similarities in manner and style between the two poems.

Unquestionably the fact that Frere’s work was written in ottava rima[187] did affect Byron. It is true that the latter poet had selected the octave stanza for his _Epistle to Augusta_, composed near Geneva in 1816, before he had entered Italy and before Frere’s poem had come to his attention; but the _Epistle_ had been serious and romantic, without a touch of humor or of satire. Byron had also been familiar with the use of the octave stanza in Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_, and, as we shall see, in Casti’s _Novelle_. But of its employment in English for humorous purposes there had been few examples, and Byron made no reference to any such experiments by English poets.

In managing the octave, Frere had resorted to a somewhat free and loose versification, diversified by frequent run-on lines and many novel rhymes. Probably this unconstrained metrical structure appealed greatly to Byron; but it must be remembered that since 1811 he had been avoiding the heroic couplet and practising in some less restricted measures. In _Childe Harold_ he had used a true stanzaic form, occasionally with humorous effect. He had also, even in his first published volume, shown facility in the rhyming of extraordinary words and combinations of syllables, an art in which he had as guides Butler, Swift, and Moore, all of whom were more skilful than Frere. Granting that Frere did suggest to Byron the possibility of making the octave a colloquial stanza, we cannot escape the conclusion that the latter went beyond his model. For one thing, he was less careful about accuracy in rhyming. Eichler, after a detailed examination of _The Monks, and the Giants_ and _Beppo_, estimates that in the former poem only one rhyme out of thirty is humorously inexact, in the latter, one out of six. Frere’s entire work, more than double the length of _Beppo_, has only eleven examples of “two-word rhymes,” while _Beppo_ has fifty-one. Eichler’s tables show conclusively that Byron employed for rhymes many more foreign words and proper names than Frere, and that he discovered more odd combinations of English words. In addition he utilized the enjambement in a more daring fashion. Certainly, in nearly every respect, Byron was more lax in his versification than Frere had been in his.[188]

Another uncommon feature of _The Monks, and the Giants_ is its adoption of a vocabulary drawn from the language of every-day life. Whistlecraft, the imaginary author, is, we are led to understand, a rather talkative bourgeois. In fitting his diction to this middle-class artisan, Frere introduced many expressions which seem unpoetic, and consciously avoiding any effort at elevated speech, aimed at a kind of colloquial talk, illustrated in such contractions as, “I’ll” and “I’ve” and slang phrases like “play the deuce.” The vigor and picturesqueness of this conversational style impressed Byron and doubtless had some influence in leading him, in _Beppo_, to sink into street-jargon, well adapted to the tone of his poem. To some extent, as Eichler indicates, this informal diction coaxed him away from the correctness of Pope, and enabled him to give freer rein to his shifting moods.

The fictitious Whistlecraft has a habit, corresponding somewhat to a peculiarity of the Italian burlesque poets, of digressing from the main thread of the story in order to gossip about himself or his opinions. The first lines in the poem,

“I’ve often wished that I might write a book
Such as all English people might peruse,”[189]

set a conversational key. The introduction of eleven stanzas is devoted to a prefatory monologue, and in the body of the work there are digressions in the same vein, never long continued, and each in the nature of a brief aside to the reader. Sometimes they are merely interpolations having reference to the narrator’s method:

“We must take care in our poetic cruise,
And never hold a single tack too long.”[190]

In other cases, they are comments suggested by a turn in the plot. With this feature of _The Monks, and the Giants_ Byron was, of course, familiar through his reading in one or more of the Italian writers from whom Frere had partly borrowed it, and when he adopted it in _Beppo_, he reverted to them rather than to the Englishman. The element of digression does not become conspicuous in Frere’s poem until the last two cantos, which could not have influenced Byron in _Beppo_.[191] Again Frere, who was deficient in aggressiveness, had not wished to employ the digression as a means of introducing personal satire. Since he himself remained anonymous and did not pretend to make his poem a polemic, he refused to utilize these opportunities for advancing his particular whims or prejudices. Byron, however, seeing the possibilities latent in the discursive method and recalling its importance in Italian satire, used it for the promulgation of his ideas, interesting himself more in his chat with the reader than he did in the story. In _Beppo_ he constantly wanders from the tale to pursue varied lines of thought, returning to the plot more from a sense of duty than from desire.[192] In these talks with his audience, full of satiric references to English manners and morals, and tinctured with mocking observations on his contemporaries, Byron follows Casti rather than Frere.

These resemblances in outward form seem to indicate along what lines Byron was affected by Frere’s poem. The differences in spirit and motive between the two men are indeed striking. _The Monks, and the Giants_ belongs unmistakably to the burlesque division of satire: it is, said Frere, “the burlesque of ordinary rude uninstructed common sense--the treatment of lofty and serious subjects by a thoroughly common, but not necessarily low-minded man--a Suffolk harness maker.”[193] The poem is, for the most part, satiric only in an indirect and impersonal way, and there is in it very little straightforward destructive criticism, like that in _English Bards_. Nor is there any underlying bitterness or indignation; it would be futile to seek, in these verses so marked by mildness, geniality, and urbanity, for any purpose beyond that of amusing, in a quiet way, a cultivated circle of friends. Even in the gossipy introduction there are few allusions to current events, and if, as has been claimed, the knights of the Round Table are intended to represent prominent living personages, no one uninitiated could have discovered the secret. Frere himself said of it: “Most people who read it at the time it was published would not take the work in a merely humorous sense; they would imagine it was some political satire, and went on hunting for a political meaning.” When we recall that Byron spoke of _Beppo_ as “being full of political allusions,”[194] we comprehend the gap which separates the two works.

The real divergence between the poems--and it is a wide one--is due, as Eichler intimates, to the characters of the authors. Whistlecraft’s words:--

“I’m strongly for the present state of things:
I look for no reform or innovation,”[195]

summarize Frere’s conservative position. He was a Tory, and Byron was a radical. Frere approached his theme from the standpoint of a scholar; Byron, from that of a man of the world. The former, actuated by antiquarian interest, built up a background in a fabulous age and took his characters from legend; the latter, urged by a desire for vividness and reality, laid his action in a city which he knew well and placed his men and women in modern times. The Tristram and Gawain of _The Monks, and the Giants_ are puppets and abstractions; Laura and the Count, on the other hand, are drawn from life and consequently seem to throb with warmth and passion. There are no women in Frere’s poem who receive more than cursory notice; in _Beppo_ the central figure is a woman, and the atmosphere vibrates with love and intrigue. One result of these contrasts is that _The Monks, and the Giants_, unexceptionable in morality, lacks charm and is somewhat chastely cold; while _Beppo_, sensuous and frequently sensual, is never dull. It is obvious, then, that the two poems, however much they may resemble each other superficially, have fundamentally little in common.

What, then, did Byron take from Frere to substantiate his assertion that _Beppo_ is “in the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft”? He may have learned from him some lessons in the management of the English octave, particularly as employed in humorous verse; he probably accepted a hint concerning the use of the language of every-day life; and he may have drawn a suggestion as to the value of the colloquial and discursive method. In each of these features, as we have seen, he surpassed his predecessor. Specifically in the matter of direct satire he could have gained little from Frere, for the latter was but a feeble satirist. Eichler sums up the logical conclusion: “Die _Monks and Giants_, eine amuesante Burleske, haben in Beppo eine moralische Satire gezeugt.”[196] The same idea is brought out by the anonymous writer of a _Letter to Lord Byron, by John Bull_ (1820), in comparing Frere’s poem with _Don Juan_;--“Mr. Frere writes elegantly, playfully, very like a gentleman, and a scholar, and a respectable man, and his poem never sold, nor ever will sell. Your _Don Juan_, again, is written strongly, lasciviously, fiercely, laughingly--and accordingly the _Don_ sells, and will sell, until the end of time.” In habits of mind and in temperament, Byron was more akin to Frere’s Italian masters than he was to Frere himself; and therefore, in his knowledge of Casti, later of Berni and Pulci, and possibly of Ariosto, Forteguerri, Tassoni, and Buratti, we shall be more likely to discover the sources of the spirit of _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_.

Of these men it is probable that Giambattista Casti (1721–1804) is the nearest congener of Byron in the satiric field. The fact that his work has never been subjected to careful scrutiny by critics in either Italy or England accounts possibly for the general ignoring of Casti as an inspiration for Byron’s Italian satires.[197] In spite of Eichler’s positive statement that the Italians “aus zeitlichen Gruenden” may be neglected as sources for Byron’s work,[198] it is certain that Byron had read Casti before he wrote _Beppo_; for in 1816 he said to Major Gordon, referring to a copy of Casti’s _Novelle_ which the latter had presented to him at Brussels: “I cannot tell you what a treat your gift of Casti has been to me: I have got him almost by heart. I had read his _Animali Parlanti_, but I think these _Novelle_ much better. I long to go to Venice to see the manners so admirably described.”[199] Not until March 25, 1818, does he mention Berni, and he does not refer to Pulci until November, 1819. There is, then, presumptive evidence for maintaining that Byron, coming in 1816 or before in contact with the work of Casti, found in him some inspiration for the satiric method of _Beppo_, a method somewhat modified in _Don Juan_ after a perusal of Berni and Pulci.

The _Novelle_, praised so highly by Byron, consist of forty-eight tales in ottava rima, printed together in 1804, although at least eighteen had been completed by 1778. Their author, a sort, of itinerant rhymester,[200] had acquired notoriety through his attacks on the reigning sovereigns of Europe, especially on Catharine II, whom he had assailed in _Il Poema Tartaro_, a realistic and venomous portrayal of Russian society and politics, containing a violent assault on the Empress. Although Casti’s poems are now forgotten, their vogue during his lifetime was considerable. His greatest work, _Gli Animali Parlanti_, was translated into several languages, including English, and Casti, as an apostle of revolt, was recognized as energetic and dangerous. His coarseness and vulgarity, however, combined with his slovenly verse structure and his neglect of art, prevented him from reaching a high position as a poet, and his literary importance was thus only temporary, occasioned principally by the popular interest in his timely satiric allusions. He, like Byron, was at heart a rebel, and in his own uncultivated way, he anticipated the spirit of the English poet. Indeed it is curious how often the two pursue the same general plan of attack on their respective ages.

The _Novelle Amorose_ are verse tales of the type which Boccaccio, and after him, Bandello, Straparola, and their imitators, had made popular in prose. Dealing in a laughing and lenient fashion with the indiscretions of gallants, usually monks and priests, they are marred by grossness and indecency in plot and language. The cynical immorality of the stories has subjected Casti to much unfavorable criticism. Foscolo, his countryman, speaks of him as “spitting his venom at virtue and religion, as the sole expedient by which he can palliate his own immorality.”[201] However, the coarse tone of the _Novelle_ is hardly unique with Casti; he is merely adhering to the standard of the earlier prose novelists.

The likeness between _Beppo_, which is an English novella in verse, and some of Casti’s _Novelle_, is one in manner and spirit rather than in plot and style.[202] Byron’s story, taken as it was from an episode with which he had met in his own experience, has no exact parallel in Casti’s collection, but his method of handling it is not unlike that followed by the Italian in treating of themes not greatly dissimilar. Choosing practically at random among the _Novelle_--for Casti’s plan was much the same in all--we may discover certain peculiarities which have their counterparts in _Beppo_. Novella IX, _Lo Spirito_, has, like _Beppo_, a humorous introduction, in which the narrator, speaking, like Byron, in the first person, analyzes what is meant by “spirit” in man or woman. He then proceeds with the adventure of the Lady Amalia and her two lovers, describing each of the three in a rather clever character sketch, not unlike the pictures which Byron gives of Laura and the Count. The rival suitors pursue different tactics in their struggles to win the lady’s favors and in dwelling on their actions, Casti often pauses to indulge in a chuckling aside to the reader, never so long continued as Byron’s digressions, but in very much the same vein. Finally one of the wooers meets with success, and the tale concludes with a bantering moral.

Doubtless this summary of _Lo Spirito_ fails to bring out any convincing parallelisms between it and _Beppo_; and it must be granted at once that the alleged relationship is somewhat elusive. But there are some features common to the two poems: an easy-going tolerance towards gallantry and the social vices; a pretence of taking the reader into the author’s confidence; a general lack of formality and rigidity in stanza structure; and a witty and burlesque manner of turning phrases. Although one or two of these characteristics had appeared singly in Byron’s work before 1818, they had appeared in conjunction in no poem of his previous to _Beppo_, with the possible exception of _The Devil’s Drive_, which was not in ottava rima. Obviously he could not have learned the secret of this new mood from Frere. Thus, when we consider that until Byron’s acquaintance with Casti’s work, this specific quality of mockery had not existed in his satire, we have reason for thinking that he was indebted to some extent to the Italian poet. Somehow the English writer, once a pretended defender of clean morals, began to take a tolerant attitude towards lapses from virtue; he changed from formal and dignified discourse to a style easy and colloquial; and he partly abandoned savage invective for scornful and ironic mockery. In _Beppo_ we realize the full purport of the transformation which had been taking place in Byron’s satiric mood ever since his return from Greece. Credit for this development must be given partly to Moore and partly to Frere; but it must be assigned even more to Casti, who first put Byron in touch directly with the Italian burlesque spirit.

If only the _Novelle_ were considered, however, Byron’s obligation to Casti would be confined chiefly to _Beppo_, for in his tales the Italian seldom leaves his theme, as Byron does in _Don Juan_, to assail individuals or institutions. He touches lightly on the weaknesses of human nature, on the frailties and illicit indulgences of full-blooded men and women, but he is swayed by no impelling purpose, and he wants the fundamental seriousness of the genuine satirist. Byron, on the other hand, in _Beppo_, and still more in _Don Juan_, never quite forgot the vituperative vigor which he had shown in _English Bards_.

But before he had seen the _Novelle_, Byron had read _Gli Animali Parlanti_, a mammoth work which, in its scope, in its antipathies, and in its manner, has some likeness to _Don Juan_. Published first in Paris in 1802, it was pirated in a London edition a year later, and before long had been translated into several languages. An English version in a greatly abridged paraphrase appeared in 1816 under the title _The Court of Beasts_, in seven cantos, without the translator’s name.[203] The same volume, with revisions and additions, was reprinted in 1819 as _The Court and Parliament of Beasts_,--freely translated, by Wm. St. Rose.

The Italian poem in three parts and twenty-six cantos is written, not, as has been often taken for granted, in the ottava rima, but in the less common sesta rima, a stanza of six endecasyllabic lines, rhyming ababcc. As its title suggests, it is a beast epic, an elaboration of the fables of Æsop and La Fontaine; but the allegory veils deliberate and continuous satire. In his prose preface, Casti explains his object as being the presentation, with talking animals as actors, of “un quadro generale delle costumanze, delle opinioni, e dei pregiudizi dal pubblico adottati, riguardo al governo, all’ amministrazione ed alla politica degli Stati, come delle passioni dominanti di coloro, che in certe eminenti e pubbliche situazioni collocati si trovano, colorandolo con tinte forti, ed alquanto caricate, le quali facilmente ne relevino l’expressione--un quadro in somma della cosa, e non delle persone.” Casti, then, planned a comprehensive satire on his own age, and despite his assertion that his poem is “a picture of things, and not of persons,” his real object was, like Byron’s, to “play upon the surface of humanity.”

The actual plot of _Gli Animali Parlanti_ may be briefly told. The animals gather to organize a scheme of government, and, deciding on an hereditary monarchy, choose the lion for their king. At his death, a regency, headed by the lioness, is established for his son, and conspiracy and corruption develop. The dog, the first Prime Minister, is superseded by the wolf, and becomes a rebel. Civil war ensues, and when, at length, all the conflicting parties unite for a conference, they are destroyed by a terrible storm. This, of course, is the barest outline of the story; the framework is filled out by argument and criticism by the various protagonists, many of whom, notably the dog, the horse, and the bear, represent political factions, conservative, moderate, and progressive. No small amount of satire lies in the actions and speeches of the beasts, who are intended to represent different types of humanity; their court is a mirror of the courts of western Europe, and the abuses which pervade it are those which Casti had seen on his travels. The animals are, in all save external appearances, like men.

Not enough of a reformer to evolve remedies, Casti was, nevertheless, alert in detecting faults in the inert institutions of his time and daring in his methods of assailing them. His poem, thus, is a hostile picture of politics and society in the Europe of the latter half of the eighteenth century, painted by a man who had studied his subject from a cosmopolitan standpoint. _Gli Animali Parlanti_ is a radical document, designed to expose the flaws in existing systems. Even fads and foibles are not beneath its notice. It jeers at the academies so popular in Italy in Casti’s youth, especially the notorious Accademia dell’ Arcadia[204]; it makes sport of pedants and antiquaries[205]; it scorns literary and political sycophants[206]; it is bitter against theological quibbles, against monks,[207] and against superstitious practices.[208] Throughout it all runs Casti’s hatred of despotism, and his dislike of hypocrisy and cant. It is not, indeed, unfair to Byron to declare that the scope of _Gli Animali Parlanti_ is, in some respects, as broad and comprehensive as that of _Don Juan_.

It is interesting, as far as the material of Casti’s poem is concerned, to notice that Casti is an advocate of what were to be some of Byron’s pet theories. For both men liberty is a favorite watchword. The horse, who seems to be spokesman for Casti himself, cries out,

“Noi d’ogni giogo pria liberi, e sciolti,”[209]

an assertion exactly in the spirit of Byron’s words,

“I wish men to be free
As much from mobs as kings--from you as me.”[210]

A similar mood led them both to lay an emphasis on the seamy and gruesome side of war, and to condemn it as unnecessary and degrading. Casti, after picturing all the horrors of a battle-field, exclaims,

“Crudelissime bestie! O bestie nate
Per lo sterminio della vostra spezie.”[211]

This is in the same tone as Byron’s remark about the futility of war:

“Oh, glorious laurel! since for one sole leaf
Of thine imaginary deathless tree,
Of blood and tears must flow the unending sea.”[212]

Again and again in the two poems we meet with marked coincidences in the manifestations of the revolt of the two poets against the laws and customs of their respective periods.

_Don Juan_, moreover, has many of the peculiar methods which, partly the product of tradition in Italian burlesque poetry, and occasionally the idiosyncrasies of Casti himself, are used regularly in _Gli Animali Parlanti_. Casti, for instance, protests continually in humorous fashion that he is dealing only with facts:

“Poeta son io, non son causidico,
E mio difetto è sol d’esser veridico.”[213]

His unfailing insistence on this point gives his repeated professions an air of stock conventionality. Byron also employs this mocking manner of calling attention to the verisimilitude of his own work:

“My muse by no means deals in fiction;
She gathers a repertory of facts.”[214]

More significant, perhaps, is the colloquial tone which Casti habitually adopts towards his readers, turning to them constantly to speak about himself, his plans, and his difficulties, sometimes to apologize, sometimes to make a confession:--

“M’attengo a ciò che tocco, a ciò che vedo,
Ne mi diverto a far castella in aria.”[215]

This sort of intimate gossip is also characteristic of _Don Juan_; indeed Byron has elucidated his theory of procedure:

“I rattle on exactly as I’d talk
With anybody in a ride or walk.”[216]

At the end of cantos this affectation of taking the public into confidence often becomes in _Gli Animali Parlanti_ a kind of sham humility, coupled usually with the poet’s promise to return another day, if encouraged. Thus Casti closes a canto in this fashion:

“Ma spossatello omai mi sento e roco,
Ne in grado più proseguire il canto,
Permettetemi dunque, almen per poco,
Ch’io prenda fiato, e mi riposi alquanto.
Che poi, qualor vi piaccia, io sarò pronto
A riprendere il fil del mio racconto.”[217]

There is space for quoting only one of several similar endings from _Don Juan_:

“But, for the present, gentle reader! and
Still gentler purchaser! the Bard--that’s I--
Must, with your permission, shake you by the hand,
And so--‘your humble servant, and Good-bye!’”[218]

These asides recall the personal paragraphs and short essays which Fielding, and after him, Thackeray, were accustomed to insert in their novels. Their importance in _Don Juan_ cannot be overestimated, for, as it will be necessary to emphasize later, the satiric element in that poem is brought out chiefly through these digressions, in which the author gives free vent to his personality. Some traces of this method had appeared even in the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_[219]; and, to some degree, it had been utilized in several of Byron’s short verse epistles to friends. However the discursive style is not common in the poet’s work before _Beppo_, and after that, at least in his satires, it comes to be conspicuous. Even Frere, familiar as he was with the Italians, did not realize the full value of the digression until he wrote the last two cantos of _The Monks and the Giants_, and, moreover, he never used it as an instrument for satire. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that Byron found a pattern for his procedure in the burlesque writers themselves and particularly in Casti. There are, however, some variations in Byron’s employment of this device. He extended the colloquial aside until it verged almost into a prolonged monologue or satirical sermon; and whereas Casti, in _Gli Animali Parianti_, seldom made use of the digression as an opportunity for personal satire, Byron improved the chance to speak out directly, in the first person, against his enemies. Casti advanced his destructive criticism largely through his narrative, by allusion, insinuation, and irony, in a manner quite indirect, keeping himself, as far as open satire was concerned, very much in the background. In _Don Juan_, on the contrary, as the poem lengthened into the later cantos, Byron tended more and more to neglect the plot and to reveal himself as a commentator on life.

In many respects, Casti’s third poem, _Il Poema Tartaro_, which has never been mentioned in connection with Byron and which was never referred to by the English poet, is even more closely akin than _Gli Animali Parlanti_ to _Don Juan_. It is possible that it may have offered a suggestion for a portion of the plot of _Don Juan_--the episode of Catharine II. It shows Casti speaking, for once, directly against great personages, bestowing upon them fictitious titles, but not at any pains to conceal the significance of his allusions. As _Il Poema Tartaro_ is little known, it is essential to dwell somewhat upon its plot and general character.

The poem, which is made up of twelve cantos in ottava rima, treats mainly of the Russia of the Empress Catharine II. Most of the important actors are historical figures, disguised under pseudonyms: thus Catharine is called Cattuna or Turrachina; Potemkin, her famous minister, is Toto; and Joseph II, who receives his share of adulation, is Orenzebbe. No one of these characters is drawn with any effort at secrecy; indeed, in most editions, a complete key is provided.

In its chief features the narrative element of _Il Poema Tartaro_ is not unlike that of some sections of _Don Juan_. The hero, a wandering Irishman, Tomasso Scardassale, like Juan a child of pleasure and fortune unembarrassed by moral convictions, joins a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Eventually he is captured by the infidels, falls into the hands of the Caliph of Bagdad, and while a prisoner at his court, engages in a liaison with Zelmira, a member of the harem. An appointment to the office of Chief Eunuch having been forced upon him, he flees with his inamorata and, after some escapades, arrives at St. Petersburg, where he has the good luck to please the Empress. Soon, without any manifest reluctance on his part, he occupies the position of official favorite, is loaded with money and honors, and becomes, for a time, the second highest personage in the realm. After various incidents, including a rebellion against the empress suppressed only with difficulty, and visits of many contemporary monarchs to the capital, Potemkin, Catharine’s former lover, jealous of Tomasso’s rise to power, succeeds in bringing about his downfall, and the discarded Irishman, suffering the usual penalty of the Empress’s caprices, is exiled to a far corner of Russia. At this point, Casti’s poem, becoming prophetic, diverges entirely from history. There is an uprising led by the Grand Duke; Catharine and Potemkin are seized and banished; and the Grand Duke is declared emperor. Somewhat dramatically the poet describes the meeting between the dethroned Catharine and Tomasso. Finally the latter, recalled to St. Petersburg, dies in the arms of his earlier love, Zelmira, and is buried with elaborate ceremony.

The Catharine II episode in _Don Juan_ begins with Canto IX, 42, and ends with Canto X, 48. That, there is a superficial resemblance between the adventures of the two heroes, Tomasso and Juan, is sufficiently obvious. Both are modern picaresque knights at the sport of circumstances. Each comes to St. Petersburg from Turkey, bringing with him a Turkish girl; each is installed as a favorite at the court and attains, at one bound, nobility and riches; each falls from his lofty state, and is sent away. It is evident, of course, that Byron in no sense borrowed from Casti’s plot as he did from other writers in his description of the shipwreck. However, since Casti’s poem is probably the only one of the period dealing with the court of Catharine II, and since Byron was well acquainted with the other two long works of the Italian, there are grounds for surmising that he took _Il Poema Tartaro_, in its general scheme, as a model for a part of _Don Juan_.

This supposition is strengthened by some resemblances in details between the two poems. Catharine II is portrayed by both authors in much the same way. Casti says of her that,

“Per uso e per natura
Ne’ servigi d’amor troppo esigea,”[220]

and Byron echoes precisely the same idea:

“She could repay each amatory look you lent
With interest, and, in turn, was wont with rigor
To exact of Cupid’s bills the full amount
At sight, nor would permit you to discount.”[221]

She is generous to her favorites: Casti makes her confess,

“Amare e premiar l’amato ogetto
Sole è per me felicita e diletto,”[222]

And Byron refers particularly to her Kindness:

“Love had made Catharine make each lover’s fortune.”[223]

Tomasso himself is described in language which might apply to Juan:

“Éra grande e bel giovine,--
Forte, complesso, capel biondo, e un paio
D’occhi di nobilita pieni e di fuoco;
Un carattere franco, un umor gaio,
E colle donne avea sempre un buon giucco.”[224]

The scene in which Tomasso has just been especially favored by the Empress and is receiving congratulations from courtiers is paralleled by that in which Juan is being flattered after a warm greeting by Catharine.[225] Another curious coincidence occurs in the efforts of the court physician to cure the apparent debility of Tomasso and Juan.[226] These similarities are striking enough to furnish some probability that Byron was familiar with the plot of _Il Poema Tartaro_, and, consciously or unconsciously, reproduced some of its features in _Don Juan_.

Casti’s satire in this poem, as in _Gli Animali Parlanti_, is comprehensive. Like Byron, he ridicules the Russian language,[227] attacks literary fads, criticises customs-duties,[228] and enters into a vigorous denunciation of war. In speaking of soldiers who clash in civil strife, he says, with bitter truth:

“Non è nobil coraggio e valor vero
Con queste schiere e quello incontro mena,
Ma l’impunito di ladron mestiero
Cui legge alcuna, alcun poter non frena.”[229]

Byron makes a charge of the same kind in portraying mercenary warriors as,

“Not fighting for their country or its crown,
But wishing to be one day brigadiers;
Also to have the sacking of a town.”[230]

The whole of Canto VI in _Il Poema Tartaro_ may be compared with Byron’s description of the siege of Ismail in _Don Juan_, VII and VIII. Both scenes are presented with grim and graphic realism, without any softening of the horrors and disgusting incidents of warfare.

In _Il Poema Tartaro_, more than in his other productions, Casti ventured to resort to genuine personal satire. He assailed not only Catharine, but also Potemkin, Prince Henry of Prussia, Gustavus III of Sweden, the Sultan of Egypt, and the king of Denmark, to mention only figures who have a prominent place in history. His method being still usually indirect and dramatic, Casti seldom lets himself appear as accuser, but puts criticism of these sovereigns into the mouths of his characters, especially Tomasso’s friend, Siveno, who acts as the favorite’s mentor and guide. A whole race may arouse Casti’s anger--

“Contro il mogol superbo, e vile
Mi sento in sen esaltar la bile”--

but he is too wise to let himself be entangled in any controversy. This discretion does not, necessarily, imply cowardice or fear, for his indirect attacks are often as malignant as any of Byron’s more direct invectives, and their victims cannot be mistaken. Byron, however, always wished to meet his enemies face to face, while Casti preferred to reach his in a less open way.

In general, the methods employed in _Il Poema Tartaro_ are those used in _Gli Animali Parlanti_. There are the same short digressions, illustrated in such passages as,

“Ciò di Toto piccar dovea la boria
E con ragion; ma proseguiam la storia,”[231]

in which the author pulls himself away in order to continue his narrative, and which have frequently almost the same phraseology as Byron’s “Return we to our story.” Sometimes the digressions take the form of philosophical reflections on various abstract subjects such as death, mutability, or love:

“Amor, la bella passion che i petti
Empie si soavissima dolcezza.”[232]

We meet often with the familiar insistence on the veracious character of the author’s writing.[233] Irony occurs intermittently, mingled at times with sarcasm.

One peculiarity of Casti’s manner deserves particular attention, although it is not unique with him and is derived originally from the earlier burlesque poets. This is his habit of shifting the mood from the serious to the ludicrous by the use of unexpected phrases. Examples of this sudden turn in thought are numerous in _Il Poema Tartaro_. When the report of rebellion arrives at the Russian court, the description of terrible alarm ends with the couplet,

“Costernata è la corte epicurea
E venne a Toctabei la diarrea.”[234]

The exiled Empress, coming upon her old favorite, Tomasso, cries,

“Ah, non m’inganno no, quegli è Tomasso
Mel dice il core e lo cognosco al naso.”[235]

No reader of _Don Juan_ needs to be reminded how often Byron cuts short a sentimental passage with a remark which makes the entire situation ridiculous. The secret of this continual interplay between gravity and absurdity had never been mastered by Frere; undoubtedly it is one of the tricks for which Byron was particularly indebted to Casti and to Casti’s predecessors, Pulci and Berni.

Casti’s style and language is usually flat and insipid, undistinguished by beauty or rhythm. “His diction,” says Foscolo, “is without grace or purity.” He is often coarse and unnecessarily obscene. These considerations make it improbable that Byron could have been affected by Casti’s poetic style, for, despite the sensuousness of some portions of _Don Juan_, the English poet rarely allowed himself to sink into the positive indecencies so common in Casti’s work.

On the other hand, the two men are united by their aims and motives. With all that is petty and offensive in Casti’s satire, there is mingled a real love of liberty and an unswerving hatred of despotism. No other poet in English or Italian literature of the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries attempted an indictment of his age, at once so hostile and so comprehensive as those which Casti and Byron tried to make. More significant still, Casti, unlike Pulci, Berni, and Frere, was modern in spirit, and played with vital questions in society and government. He was close to Byron’s own epoch, and the objects of his wrath, as far as systems and institutions are concerned, were the objects of Byron’s satire. Up to a certain point, too, Byron followed Casti’s methods: he is colloquial, discursive, and gossipy; he cares little for plot structure; he employs irony and mockery, as well as invective; and he skips, in a single stanza, from seriousness to absurdity. The differences between the two poets are to be attributed chiefly to the Englishman’s genius and powerful personality. He was more of an egotist than Casti, more vehement, more straightforward, more impulsive, and was able to fill _Don Juan_ with his individuality as Casti was never able to do with _Gli Animali Parlanti_ and _Il Poema Tartaro_.

Certain facts in the relationship between Casti and Byron seem, then, to be clear. At a period before the composition of _Beppo_, Byron had read and enjoyed in the original Italian, the _Novelle_ and _Gli Animali Parlanti_. Numerous features in _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_ which resemble characteristics of Casti’s poems had, apparently, existed combined in no English work before Byron’s time. In addition, internal evidence makes it a possibility that Byron was familiar with _Il Poema Tartaro_, and that he borrowed from it something of its material and its spirit. The probability is that Byron was influenced, to an extent greater than has been ordinarily supposed, by the example and the methods of Casti.

Byron’s acquaintance with Pulci and Berni did not, apparently, begin until after the publication of _Beppo_. On March 25, 1818, he wrote Murray, in speaking of _Beppo_: “Berni is the original of all--Berni is the father of that kind of writing, which, I think, suits our language, too, very well.”[236] On February 21, 1820, while he was busy with his translation of Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_, he said of Pulci’s poem, to Murray: “It is the parent, not only of _Whistlecraft_, but of all jocose Italian poetry.”[237] These assertions indicate that Byron classed _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_ with the work of the Italian burlesque writers, eventually coming to recognize Pulci as the founder of the school.

Luigi Pulci (1432–1484), a member of the literary circle which gathered at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the latter half of the sixteenth century and which included, among others, Poliziano, Ficino, and Michelangelo, composed the _Morgante Maggiore_, “the first romantic poem of the Renaissance.” Designed probably to be read or recited at Lorenzo’s table, it was finally completed in February, 1483, as a poem in ottava rima, containing twenty-eight cantos and some 30,000 lines.[238] Although the plotting and consummation of Gan’s treason against Charlemagne lends a crude unity to the romance, it is actually a series of battles, combats, and marvellous adventures loosely strung together. The titular hero, Morgante, dies in the twentieth canto. The matter is that of the Carolingian legend, now so well-known in the work of Pulci’s successors.

Historically, as the precursor of Berni, Ariosto, and the other singers of Carolingian romance, Pulci occupies the position of pioneer. For our purposes, however, the significance of his work lies less in the incidents of his narrative, the greater part of which he purloined, than in the poet’s personality and the transformation which his grotesque and fanciful genius accomplished with its material. Through much humorous and ironic digression, through some amusing interpolated episodes, through a balancing of the serious and the comic elements of the story, through a style popular in origin and humorous in effect, and through the creation of two new characters, the giant Margutte and the demon Astarotte, he made his poem a reflection of his own bourgeois individuality, clever, tolerant, and irrepressible in its inclination to seize upon the burlesque possibilities in men or events.