Still gentler purchaser! the Bard—that’s I—
Must, with your permission, shake you by the hand,
And so—‘your humble servant, and Good-bye!’”[218]
These asides recall the personal paragraphs and short essays which Fielding, and after him, Thackeray, were accustomed to insert in their novels. Their importance in Don Juan cannot be overestimated, for, as it will be necessary to emphasize later, the satiric element in that poem is brought out chiefly through these digressions, in which the author gives free vent to his personality. Some traces of this method had appeared even in the first two cantos of Childe Harold[219]; and, to some degree, it had been utilized in several of Byron’s short verse epistles to friends. However the discursive style is not common in the poet’s work before Beppo, and after that, at least in his satires, it comes to be conspicuous. Even Frere, familiar as he was with the Italians, did not realize the full value of the digression until he wrote the last two cantos of The Monks and the Giants, and, moreover, he never used it as an instrument for satire. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that Byron found a pattern for his procedure in the burlesque writers themselves and particularly in Casti. There are, however, some variations in Byron’s employment of this device. He extended the colloquial aside until it verged almost into a prolonged monologue or satirical sermon; and whereas Casti, in Gli Animali Parianti, seldom made use of the digression as an opportunity for personal satire, Byron improved the chance to speak out directly, in the first person, against his enemies. Casti advanced his destructive criticism largely through his narrative, by allusion, insinuation, and irony, in a manner quite indirect, keeping himself, as far as open satire was concerned, very much in the background. In Don Juan, on the contrary, as the poem lengthened into the later cantos, Byron tended more and more to neglect the plot and to reveal himself as a commentator on life.
In many respects, Casti’s third poem, Il Poema Tartaro, which has never been mentioned in connection with Byron and which was never referred to by the English poet, is even more closely akin than Gli Animali Parlanti to Don Juan. It is possible that it may have offered a suggestion for a portion of the plot of Don Juan—the episode of Catharine II. It shows Casti speaking, for once, directly against great personages, bestowing upon them fictitious titles, but not at any pains to conceal the significance of his allusions. As Il Poema Tartaro is little known, it is essential to dwell somewhat upon its plot and general character.
The poem, which is made up of twelve cantos in ottava rima, treats mainly of the Russia of the Empress Catharine II. Most of the important actors are historical figures, disguised under pseudonyms: thus Catharine is called Cattuna or Turrachina; Potemkin, her famous minister, is Toto; and Joseph II, who receives his share of adulation, is Orenzebbe. No one of these characters is drawn with any effort at secrecy; indeed, in most editions, a complete key is provided.
In its chief features the narrative element of Il Poema Tartaro is not unlike that of some sections of Don Juan. The hero, a wandering Irishman, Tomasso Scardassale, like Juan a child of pleasure and fortune unembarrassed by moral convictions, joins a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Eventually he is captured by the infidels, falls into the hands of the Caliph of Bagdad, and while a prisoner at his court, engages in a liaison with Zelmira, a member of the harem. An appointment to the office of Chief Eunuch having been forced upon him, he flees with his inamorata and, after some escapades, arrives at St. Petersburg, where he has the good luck to please the Empress. Soon, without any manifest reluctance on his part, he occupies the position of official favorite, is loaded with money and honors, and becomes, for a time, the second highest personage in the realm. After various incidents, including a rebellion against the empress suppressed only with difficulty, and visits of many contemporary monarchs to the capital, Potemkin, Catharine’s former lover, jealous of Tomasso’s rise to power, succeeds in bringing about his downfall, and the discarded Irishman, suffering the usual penalty of the Empress’s caprices, is exiled to a far corner of Russia. At this point, Casti’s poem, becoming prophetic, diverges entirely from history. There is an uprising led by the Grand Duke; Catharine and Potemkin are seized and banished; and the Grand Duke is declared emperor. Somewhat dramatically the poet describes the meeting between the dethroned Catharine and Tomasso. Finally the latter, recalled to St. Petersburg, dies in the arms of his earlier love, Zelmira, and is buried with elaborate ceremony.
The Catharine II episode in Don Juan begins with Canto IX, 42, and ends with Canto X, 48. That, there is a superficial resemblance between the adventures of the two heroes, Tomasso and Juan, is sufficiently obvious. Both are modern picaresque knights at the sport of circumstances. Each comes to St. Petersburg from Turkey, bringing with him a Turkish girl; each is installed as a favorite at the court and attains, at one bound, nobility and riches; each falls from his lofty state, and is sent away. It is evident, of course, that Byron in no sense borrowed from Casti’s plot as he did from other writers in his description of the shipwreck. However, since Casti’s poem is probably the only one of the period dealing with the court of Catharine II, and since Byron was well acquainted with the other two long works of the Italian, there are grounds for surmising that he took Il Poema Tartaro, in its general scheme, as a model for a part of Don Juan.
This supposition is strengthened by some resemblances in details between the two poems. Catharine II is portrayed by both authors in much the same way. Casti says of her that,
“Per uso e per natura