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.