Note 59 — Chapter 5 Details of Home Life—Eighteenth-Century People in Russia—A Day in our House—Visitors and Habitués—Sonnenberg—The Valet and Others

Casti (1721–1803), an Italian poet, ‘attached by habit and taste to the polished and frivolous society of the ancien regime, his sympathies were nevertheless liberal,’ satirised Catherine II. and, when exiled on that account from Vienna, had the spirit to resign his Austrian pension. The Talking Animals, a satire on the predominance of the foreigner in political life, is his best work. The influence of his poems on Byron is apparent in ‘Don Juan.’—(Translator’s Notes.)