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,