Certain facts in the relationship between Casti and Byron seem, then, to be clear. At a period before the composition of _Beppo_, Byron had read and enjoyed in the original Italian, the _Novelle_ and _Gli Animali Parlanti_. Numerous features in _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_ which resemble characteristics of Casti’s poems had, apparently, existed combined in no English work before Byron’s time. In addition, internal evidence makes it a possibility that Byron was familiar with _Il Poema Tartaro_, and that he borrowed from it something of its material and its spirit. The probability is that Byron was influenced, to an extent greater than has been ordinarily supposed, by the example and the methods of Casti. Byron’s acquaintance with Pulci and Berni did not, apparently, begin until after the publication of _Beppo_. On March 25, 1818, he wrote Murray, in speaking of _Beppo_: “Berni is the original of all--Berni is the father of that kind of writing, which, I think, suits our language, too, very well.”[236] On February 21, 1820, while he was busy with his translation of Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_, he said of Pulci’s poem, to Murray: “It is the parent, not only of _Whistlecraft_, but of all jocose Italian poetry.”[237] These assertions indicate that Byron classed _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_ with the work of the Italian burlesque writers, eventually coming to recognize Pulci as the founder of the school. Luigi Pulci (1432–1484), a member of the literary circle which gathered at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the latter half of the sixteenth century and which included, among others, Poliziano, Ficino, and Michelangelo, composed the _Morgante Maggiore_, “the first romantic poem of the Renaissance.” Designed probably to be read or recited at Lorenzo’s table, it was finally completed in February, 1483, as a poem in ottava rima, containing twenty-eight cantos and some 30,000 lines.[238] Although the plotting and consummation of Gan’s treason against Charlemagne lends a crude unity to the romance, it is actually a series of battles, combats, and marvellous adventures loosely strung together. The titular hero, Morgante, dies in the twentieth canto. The matter is that of the Carolingian legend, now so well-known in the work of Pulci’s successors.