As much from mobs as kings—from you as me.”[210]
A similar mood led them both to lay an emphasis on the seamy and gruesome side of war, and to condemn it as unnecessary and degrading. Casti, after picturing all the horrors of a battle-field, exclaims,
“Crudelissime bestie! O bestie nate
Per lo sterminio della vostra spezie.”[211]
This is in the same tone as Byron’s remark about the futility of war:
“Oh, glorious laurel! since for one sole leaf
Of thine imaginary deathless tree,
Of blood and tears must flow the unending sea.”[212]
Again and again in the two poems we meet with marked coincidences in the manifestations of the revolt of the two poets against the laws and customs of their respective periods.
Don Juan, moreover, has many of the peculiar methods which, partly the product of tradition in Italian burlesque poetry, and occasionally the idiosyncrasies of Casti himself, are used regularly in Gli Animali Parlanti. Casti, for instance, protests continually in humorous fashion that he is dealing only with facts: