“Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme, Who sang when chivalry was not Quixotic, And revelled in the fancies of the time, True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, Kings despotic.”[239] However, _Don Juan_, III, 45, presenting a possible parallelism with the _Morgante_, XVIII, 115, would indicate that Byron was familiar with Pulci’s poem at least some months before.[240] On February 7, 1820, he wrote Murray: “I am translating the first canto of Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_, and have half done it.”[241] In speaking of the completion of the translation, of which he was very proud, he told Murray, February 12, 1820: “You must print it side by side with the original Italian, because I wish the reader to judge of the fidelity; it is stanza for stanza, and often line for line, if not word for word.”[242] In the Preface to the translation, printed with it in _The Liberal_, July 30, 1823, Byron uttered his final word on the Italian writer: “Pulci may be regarded as the precursor and model of Berni altogether.... He is no less the founder of a new style of poetry lately sprung up in England. I allude to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft.” It is evident, then, that Byron estimated Pulci’s work very highly, that he was acquainted, probably, with the entire _Morgante Maggiore_ and had studied the first canto, at least, in detail, and that he considered him the original model of Berni and Frere. It remains to point out specific qualities in manner and style which link the two poets together.[243] Towards the narrative portion of the _Morgante_, Byron seems to have been indifferent. In _Don Juan_ there is but one clear allusion to the Carolingian legend: “Just now, enough; but bye and bye I’ll prattle Like Roland’s horn in Roncesvalles’ battle.”[244] There is a fairly close parallel already pointed out between the response of a servant to Lambro in _Don Juan_, III, 45, and Margutte’s speech in the _Morgante_, XVIII, 115. There are, however, no other incidents in _Don Juan_ which resemble any part of the earlier poem. Pulci’s realism, a quality which is usually in itself burlesque when it is applied to a romantic subject, is shown in his fondness for homely touches and minute details, in his use of words out of the street and proverbs from the lips of the populace. The interjection of the lower-class spirit into the poem helped to make the _Morgante_ in actuality what Frere had tried to produce in _The Monks, and the Giants_--a treatment of heroic characters and deeds by a bourgeois mind. The spectacle of the common vulgar details in the every-day life of men supposedly great naturally somewhat degrades the heroes. When Byron portrays General Suwarrow as “Hero, buffoon, half-demon, and half-dirt,”[245]