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.