A statement so plain by a man of Beyle’s authority deserves some attention. The first question which arises in connection with his assertion is naturally, what work Buratti had done before 1817, when Byron began the composition of _Beppo_.[271] After a dissipated boyhood, Buratti had become a member of the _Corte dei Busoni_, a pseudo-Academy which devoted its attention chiefly to satire. Although he was the author of several early lampoons, his first political satire was recited in 1813 among a party of friends at the home of Counsellor Galvagna in Venice. It is, in substance, a lamentation over the fate of Venice, with invective directed against the French army of occupation; Malamani styles it “a masterpiece of subtle sarcasm.” Eventually, through the treachery of apparent friends, the verses came to French ears, and Buratti was imprisoned for thirty days, his punishment, however, being somewhat lightened by powerful patrons. Shortly after this episode, he circulated some quatrains of a scurrilous nature on Filippo Scolari, a pedantic youth who had criticised contemporary literary men in a supercilious way. For these insults, Scolari tried to have Buratti apprehended again, but the latter, although he was forced to sign an agreement to write no more satires, received only a reprimand. During this period he had also directed several pasquinades at an eccentric priest, Don Domenico Marienis, who seems to have been a general object of ridicule in Venice. Such, according to Malamani, was the extent of Buratti’s work up to 1816. His masterpiece, the _Storia dell’ Elefante_, was not written until 1819, too late to have been a strong influence even on _Don Juan_. Of this early satiric verse, no one important poem was composed in ottava rima. The poems, all short and of no especial value as literature, used the Venetian dialect, as far removed from pure Tuscan as Scotch is from English. Their most noticeable characteristic is their prevailing irony, a method of satire of which Byron only occasionally availed himself. With these facts in mind, and with the additional knowledge that Byron was unquestionably influenced by the burlesque writers, it is improbable that Beyle’s theory deserves any credence. Beyle has made it clear that Byron, at one time, read Buratti’s work with interest; but he has failed to show how the English poet could have acquired anything, either in matter or in style, from the Italian satirist.[272] Of other Italian poems sometimes mentioned as possibly contributing something to _Don Juan_, no one is worth more than a cursory notice. _La Secchia Rapita_, by Tassoni (1565–1635), is a genuine mock-heroic, the model for Boileau’s _Lutrin_ and, to some extent, for Pope’s _Rape of the Lock_. So far as can be ascertained, Byron has no reference either to the author or to his poem; and since _La Secchia Rapita_ preserves consistently the grand style, applying it to trivial subjects, it has little in common with Byron’s satires.[273]