Historically, as the precursor of Berni, Ariosto, and the other singers of Carolingian romance, Pulci occupies the position of pioneer. For our purposes, however, the significance of his work lies less in the incidents of his narrative, the greater part of which he purloined, than in the poet’s personality and the transformation which his grotesque and fanciful genius accomplished with its material. Through much humorous and ironic digression, through some amusing interpolated episodes, through a balancing of the serious and the comic elements of the story, through a style popular in origin and humorous in effect, and through the creation of two new characters, the giant Margutte and the demon Astarotte, he made his poem a reflection of his own bourgeois individuality, clever, tolerant, and irrepressible in its inclination to seize upon the burlesque possibilities in men or events. That the _Morgante Maggiore_ is a burlesque poem is due not so much to deliberate design on Pulci’s part as to the unconscious reflection of his boisterous, full-blooded, yet at the same time, meditative nature. It is unwise to attribute to him any motive beyond that of amusing his audience. In spite of its apparent irreverence, the _Morgante_ was probably not planned as a satire on chivalry or on the church, Pulci--“the lively, affecting, hopeful, charitable, large-hearted Luigi Pulci,” as Hunt called him--was at bottom kindly and sympathetic, and his work displays a robust geniality and good-humor which had undoubtedly some influence on _Don Juan_. We rarely find Pulci in a fury; at times his merriment is not far from Rabelaisian, however always without a trace of indignation, for his levity and playfulness seem genuine. This very tolerance is perhaps the product of Renaissance skepticism, which viewed both dogmatism and infidelity with suspicion. Deep emotion, tragedy, and pathos are all to be met with in the _Morgante_, but each is counter-balanced by mockery, comedy, or realism. It is this recurring antithesis, this continual introduction of the grotesque into the midst of what is, by itself, dignified and serious, that is the distinctive peculiarity of Pulci’s manner. The mere turn of a phrase makes a situation absurd. There is no intensity about this Florentine; he espouses no theories and advocates no creeds; he is content to have his laugh and to set others chuckling. This summary may be of service in suggesting one reason why, in the later cantos of _Don Juan_, we sometimes are met with a tolerance almost sympathetic, widely differing from the passionate narrowness of _English Bards_. Pulci, unlike Byron, was not a declared satirist; his theme was in the past, steeped in legend and myth; but something of his spirit, difficult to analyze as that spirit may be, tempered and modified the satire of the older Byron. Byron’s first definite reference to Pulci occurs in a portion of _Don Juan_ written in November, 1819: