he is following the methods of Pulci, who made his giants gluttons and his Rinaldo a master of Billingsgate.[246] In the _Morgante_ warriors are continually being put into ludicrous situations: Morgante fights his battles with a bell-clapper; Rinaldo knocks a Saracen into a bowl of soup[247]; and the same noble, turned robber, threatens to steal from St. Peter and to seize the mantles of St. Ursula and the Angel Gabriel.[248] Pulci compares Roncesvalles to a pot in much the same spirit that Byron likens a rainbow to a black eye.[249] Pulci is fond of cataloguing objects, especially the varieties of food served at banquets; and Byron shows the same propensity in describing in detail the viands provided for the feast of Haidée and Juan, and the dinner at Norman Abbey. Pulci’s realism is also manifest in his use of slang and the language of low life. In this respect, too, Byron is little behind him: Juan fires his pistol “into one assailant’s pudding”; slang phrases are frequently introduced into _Don Juan_, and elevated poetic style is made more vivid by contrast with intentionally prosaic passages. Another peculiarity of Pulci is his tendency to make use of many Tuscan proverbs and to coin sententious apothegms of his own. The framework of the octave lends itself easily to compact maxims in the final couplet, and perhaps it is due to this fact that _Don Juan_ and the _Morgante_ are both crammed with epigrams. In Pulci’s poetry one meets on nearly every page with such apt sayings as “La fede è fatta, come fa il solletico”[250] and “Co’ santi in chiesa, e co’ ghiotti in taverna.”[251] One example out of the many in _Don Juan_ will suffice for quotation:-- “Adversity is the first path to truth.”[252] Possibly the fact that the _Morgante_ was first recited to the members of Lorenzo’s circle is chiefly responsible for Pulci’s habit of turning often to his listeners, inviting them, as it were, to draw nearer and share his confidence. Thus he confesses: “Non so se il vero appunto anche si disse; Accetta il savio in fin la veria gloria; E cosi seguirem la nostra storia.”[253] Byron speaks repeatedly in this sort of mocking apology: “If my thunderbolt not always rattles, Remember, reader! you have had before, The worst of tempests and the best of battles.”[254] Both poets assume, at times, an affected modesty: thus at the very end of the _Morgante_ Pulci asserts that he is not presumptuous: “Io non domando grillanda d’alloro, Di che i Greci e i Latini chieggon corona.... Anzi non son prosuntuoso tanto, Quanto quel folle antico citarista A cui tolse gia Apollo il vivo ammanto;... E cio ch’ io penso colla fantasia, Di piacere ad ognuno e ’l mio disegno.”[255] So Byron refers to his own lack of ambition: “I perch upon an humbler promontory, Amidst Life’s infinite variety; With no great care for what is nicknamed Glory.”[256]