Both Pulci and Byron were men of wide reading, and not averse to displaying and making use of their information. Pulci treats the older poets without reverence: he quotes Dante’s “dopo la dolorosa rotta” without acknowledgment[260]; he burlesques the famous phrase about Aristotle by having Morgante call Margutte “il mæstro di color che sanno”; and he alludes to Petrarch with a wink:—
“O sommo amore, o nuova cortesia!
Vedi che forse ognun si crede ancora,
Che questo verso del Petrarca fa:
Ed è gia tanto, e’ lo disse Rinaldo;
Ma chi non ruba è chiamato rubaldo.”[261]
This recalls Byron’s exhortation at the end of Don Juan, I, when, after quoting four lines from Southey, he adds:
“The first four rhymes are Southey’s every line:
For God’s sake, reader! take them not for mine.”
In a similar way Byron gives four lines from Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming, and comments upon them in Don Juan, I, 88–89.