The ironical poet had to adorn the first story with his choicest flowers of style and feeling, to burlesque the second with his grossest realism.
This antithesis between sustained poetry and melodiously-worded slang, between radiant forms of beauty and grotesque ugliness, penetrates the _Secchia Rapita_ in every canto and in every detail.

We pass from battle-scenes worthy of Ariosto and Tasso at their best into ditches of liquid dung.

Ambassadors are introduced with touches that degrade them to the rank of _commis voyageurs_.

Before the senate the same men utter orations in the style of Livy.

The pomp of war is paraded, its machinery of catapults is put in motion, to discharge a dead ass into a besieged town; and when the beleagured garrison behold it flying through the air, they do not take the donkey for a taunt, but for a heavenly portent.