It is possible that Byron began his translation of the First Canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore (so called to distinguish the entire poem of twenty-eight cantos from the lesser Morgante [or, to coin a title, "Morganid"] which was published separately) in the late autumn of 1819, before he had left Venice (see his letter to Bankes, February 19, 1820, Letters, 1900, iv. 403). It is certain that it was finished at Ravenna during the first week of his "domestication" in the Palazzo Guiccioli (Letters to Murray, February 7, February 21, 1820). He took a deal of pains with his self-imposed task, "servilely translating stanza from stanza, and line from line, two octaves every night;" and when the first canto was finished he was naturally and reasonably proud of his achievement. More than two years had elapsed since Frere's Whistlecraft had begotten Beppo, and in the interval he had written four cantos of Don Juan, outstripping his "immediate model," and equalling if not surpassing his model's parents and precursors, the masters of "narrative romantic poetry among the Italians."

In attempting this translation—something, as he once said of his Armenian studies, "craggy for his mind to break upon" (Letter to Moore, December 5, 1816, Letters, 1900, iv. 10)—Byron believed that he was working upon virgin soil. He had read, as he admits in his "Advertisement," John Herman Merivale's poem, Orlando in Roncesvalles, which is founded upon the Morgante Maggiore; but he does not seem to have been aware that many years before (1806, 1807) the same writer (one of the "associate bards") had published in the Monthly Magazine (May, July, 1806, etc., vide ante Introduction to Beppo, p. 156) a series of translations of selected passages of the poem. There is no resemblance whatever between Byron's laboured and faithful rendering of the text, and Merivale's far more readable paraphrase, and it is evident that if these selections ever passed before his eyes, they had left no impression on his memory. He was drawn to the task partly on account of its difficulty, but chiefly because in Pulci he recognized a kindred spirit who suggested and compelled a fresh and final dedication of his genius to the humorous epopee. The translation was an act of devotion, the offering of a disciple to a master.

"The apparent contradictions of the Morgante Maggiore ... the brusque transition from piety to ribaldry, from pathos to satire," the paradoxical union of persiflage with gravity, a confession of faith alternating with a profession of mockery and profanity, have puzzled and confounded more than one student and interpreter. An intimate knowledge of the history, the literature, the art, the manners and passions of the times has enabled one of his latest critics and translators, John Addington Symonds, to come as near as may be to explaining the contradictions; but the essential quality of Pulci's humour eludes analysis.

We know that the poem itself, as Pio Rajna has shown, "the rifacimento of two earlier popular poems," was written to amuse Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the mother of Lorenzo de' Medici, and that it was recited, canto by canto, in the presence of such guests as Poliziano, Ficino, and Michelangelo Buonarotti; but how "it struck these contemporaries," and whether a subtler instinct permitted them to untwist the strands and to appraise the component parts at their precise ethical and spiritual value, are questions for the exercise of the critical imagination. That which attracted Byron to Pulci's writings was, no doubt, the co-presence of faith, a certain simplicity of faith, with an audacious and even outrageous handling of the objects of faith, combined with a facile and wanton alternation of romantic passion with a cynical mockery of whatsoever things are sober and venerable. Don Juan and the Vision of Judgment owe their existence to the Morgante Maggiore.

The MS. of the translation of Canto I. was despatched to England, February 28, 1820. It is evident (see Letters, March 29, April 23, May 18, 1820, Letters, 1900, iv. 425, 1901, v. 17, 21) that Murray looked coldly on Byron's "masterpiece" from the first. It was certain that any new work by the author of Don Juan would be subjected to the severest and most hostile scrutiny, and it was doubtful if a translation of part of an obscure and difficult poem, vaguely supposed to be coarse and irreligious, would meet with even a tolerable measure of success. At any rate, in spite of many inquiries and much vaunting of its excellence (see Letters, June 29, September 12, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 314, 362), the MS. remained for more than two years in Murray's hands, and it was not until other arrangements came into force that the translation of the First Canto of the Morgante Maggiore appeared in the fourth and last number of The Liberal, which was issued (by John Hunt) July 30, 1823.

For critical estimates of Luigi Pulci and the Morgante Maggiore, see an article (Quarterly Review, April, 1819, vol. xxi. pp. 486-556), by Ugo Foscolo, entitled "Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians;" Preface to the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo, by A. Panizzi, 1830, i. 190-302; Poems Original and Translated, by J. H. Merivale, 1838, ii. 1-43; Stories of the Italian Poets, by J. H. Leigh Hunt, 1846, i. 283-314; Renaissance in Italy, by J. A. Symonds, 1881, iv. 431, 456, and for translations of the Morgante Maggiore, vide ibid., Appendix V. pp. 543-560; and Italian Literature, by R. Garnett, C.B., LL.D., 1898, pp. 128-131.