“Costernata è la corte epicurea E venne a Toctabei la diarrea.”[234] The exiled Empress, coming upon her old favorite, Tomasso, cries, “Ah, non m’inganno no, quegli è Tomasso Mel dice il core e lo cognosco al naso.”[235] No reader of _Don Juan_ needs to be reminded how often Byron cuts short a sentimental passage with a remark which makes the entire situation ridiculous. The secret of this continual interplay between gravity and absurdity had never been mastered by Frere; undoubtedly it is one of the tricks for which Byron was particularly indebted to Casti and to Casti’s predecessors, Pulci and Berni. Casti’s style and language is usually flat and insipid, undistinguished by beauty or rhythm. “His diction,” says Foscolo, “is without grace or purity.” He is often coarse and unnecessarily obscene. These considerations make it improbable that Byron could have been affected by Casti’s poetic style, for, despite the sensuousness of some portions of _Don Juan_, the English poet rarely allowed himself to sink into the positive indecencies so common in Casti’s work. On the other hand, the two men are united by their aims and motives. With all that is petty and offensive in Casti’s satire, there is mingled a real love of liberty and an unswerving hatred of despotism. No other poet in English or Italian literature of the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries attempted an indictment of his age, at once so hostile and so comprehensive as those which Casti and Byron tried to make. More significant still, Casti, unlike Pulci, Berni, and Frere, was modern in spirit, and played with vital questions in society and government. He was close to Byron’s own epoch, and the objects of his wrath, as far as systems and institutions are concerned, were the objects of Byron’s satire. Up to a certain point, too, Byron followed Casti’s methods: he is colloquial, discursive, and gossipy; he cares little for plot structure; he employs irony and mockery, as well as invective; and he skips, in a single stanza, from seriousness to absurdity. The differences between the two poets are to be attributed chiefly to the Englishman’s genius and powerful personality. He was more of an egotist than Casti, more vehement, more straightforward, more impulsive, and was able to fill _Don Juan_ with his individuality as Casti was never able to do with _Gli Animali Parlanti_ and _Il Poema Tartaro_.