“Io me n’andro con la barchetta mia,
Quanto l’acqua comporta un picciol legno.”[258]
Byron’s employment of the metaphor is also somewhat frequent:—
“At the least I have shunned the common shore,
And leaving land far out of sight, would skim
The Ocean of Eternity: the roar
Of breakers has not daunted my slight, trim,
But still seaworthy skiff; and she may float,
Where ships have foundered, as doth many a boat.”[259]
It should be added that the brief “grace before meat,” so apparently truely devotional in phraseology, which Pulci prefixed to each of his cantos, and the equally orthodox epilogues in which he gave a benediction to his readers, are his own peculiarity, borrowed unquestionably from the street improvisatori. There is nothing corresponding to them in Don Juan.