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.