Volume II Part 5 (1/2)

In the course of our playful and airy polemics--polemics which had more the form of witty squibs than forned to aiainst the outpoured torrents of Goldoni and Chiari, but which we ish youths, besotted by that trash and froth of ignorance--I once defied the whole world to point out a single play of Goldoni's which could be styled perfect I confined myself to one, because I did not care to be drowned in an ocean; and I felt confident that I could fulfileven boys and children see how the public had been taken in No one stooped to take oad and lash of pleasantry, hich I exposed Goldoni's stupidities, only elicited the following two verses, which he wrote and printed, and which exactly illustrate the stupidity I accused him of:--

”Pur troppo io so che buon scrittor non sono, E che ai fonti ood writer, And that I have not drunk at the best fountains”)

Proceeding next to Abbe Chiari In him I found a brain inflamed, disordered, bold to rashness, and pedantic; plots dark as astrological predictions; leaps and juue boots; scenes isolated, disconnected from the action, foisted in for the display of philosophical sententious verbiage; soood theatrical surprises, some descriptions felicitous in their blunt _naivete_; pernicious ethics; and, as for the writer, I found hiid, the most inflated, of this century I once saw a sonnet of his, printed and posted on the shops in Venice; it was composed to celebrate the recovery froan with this verse:--

”Sull'incude fatal del nostro pianto”

(”Upon the fatal anvil of our tears”)

Nothing more need be said With such e to proclaim hiull of the lagoons Yet, such as he was, Chiari succeeded ina thousand e a line he wrote

It is not to be wondered at if a Goldoni and a Chiari, with a few disciples and adherents, were able to create a temporary _furore_, e consider that this _furore_ flamed up in the precincts of the theatres Here all the population was divided into hostile canise the infinite superiority of Goldoni as a cohteous indignation when a vogue of this sort has been launched on its career? That of Goldoni and Chiari was bound to run its natural course, and when it died away, the other, which I have described in the foregoing chapter, the vogue of immoderate, unnatural, incorrect enthusiasts, so-styled sublime philosophers, came in, who discovered neorlds in literature, and who are fawning now upon the youngnew vocabularies, nay, new alphabets, treating antiquity as a short-sighted idiot, and involving huuishable chaos of literary follies

With regard to the ined, I looked upon it as a fungus growth upon opinion, worthy at the best of laughter I deeht to be the hts; and a trifle in verse which I wrote forit to press, was the accidental cause of obliging ood-natured _jeux d'esprit_ My real friends know that I harboured no envy, no sentiainst them and their swamps of volumes in octavo Any one who has the justice to reratis whatever issued froe that I was prompted by a disinterested zeal in the cause of pure and unaffected writing May Heaven pardon those, and there are nant satirist, seeking to found my own fame and fortune upon the ruin of others! The players and publishers would be able to disabuse the for testienerosity; and perhaps I have not told the whole truth about it in the chapter already written upon my own character[22]

It was in the year 1757 then that I composed the little book in verse which I have ood old Tuscan l'influssi per l'anno bisestile 1757_[23] This little work contained a gay critique in abstract on the uses and abuses of the times It was composed upon certain verses of that obscure Florentine poet Burchiello, which I selected as prophetic texts for my own disquisitions It took the humour of our literary club, and I dedicated it to a patrician of Venice, Daniele Farsetti, to who any copy for my own use This Cavaliere, a man of excellent culture, and a Mecaenas of the Granelleschi, wishi+ng to giveperhaps that he wouldthe poem printed at Venice, sent it to Paris to be put in type, and distributed the few copies which were struck off aht have gone the round ofinnocent amusement by its broad and humorous survey over characters and custoent ink, e the bad writers of those days, had not played the part of venoular deluge of dramatic works, had in his in verse, songs, rhy diatribes, and other such-like poeift he now exercised, while putting together a collection of panegyrics on the patrician Veniero's retireaainst li influssi_ He abused the book as a stale piece ofits author as an angry man who deserved compassion, because (he chose to say) I had wooed fortune in vain Many other polite expressions of the same stanor Lami, who at that tiht my _Tartana_ worthy of notice in his journal, and extracted souage Padre Calogera, too, as then editing the _Giornale de'

Letterati d'Italia_, composed and published praises on it, which were certainly above its merits I flatter myself that my readers will not think I record these facts out of vanity I was not personally acquainted with either Laera It is not my habit to correspond with celebrated men of letters in order toreplies I do not condescend to wheedle journalists and reviewers into iood and good things bad in my behoof I have always been so far sensible as to check self-esteem, and to appreciate my literary toys at their due worthlessness Writers who by tricks of this kind, extortions, canvassings, and subterfuges, seek to gratify their thirst for faed for attestations, are the objects of era I cherished sentiratitude I seemed to find in them a spirit kindred to my own, and a conviction that I had uttered as useful in the cause of culture

As a h the _Tartana_ ritten in strict literary Tuscan, although its style was modelled upon that of antiquated Tuscan authors, especially of Luigi Pulci, and was therefore ”caviare to the general,” the book obtained a rapid and wide success The partisans of Goldoni and Chiari took it for a gross nant satire

Possibly the rarity of copies, and the fact that it came from Paris, helped to float the little poem Anyhow, it created such a sensation, raised sostudents into relations withthe Granelleschi, that I almost dared to hope for a new turn of the tide in literature

It was this hope which made me follow up the missile I had cast into the wasp's nest of bad authorshi+p by a pleasant retort against Goldoni's strictures on ood fellow at bottoun life as a pleader at the bar of Venice, he never succeeded in throwing off a certain air of professional coarseness and a tincture of forensic rhetoric I seized upon this point of weakness, and indited an epistle, which he was supposed to have written on of the law-courts The object of the letter was to introduce his terzets totitle: _Scrittura contestativa al taglio della Tartana degli Influssi stai l'anno 1757_ After this I set myself to exa a long list of stupidities, i the low and trivial sentireater elegance and elevation, so as to prove that even the race by choiceness of diction Finally, I dissuaded hi his unhappy pa soed theation of co in verse

I did not stop here My _Tartana_ contained soue upon our stage; and Goldoni had appropriated these to himself In his invective he inserted a couple of forensic lines against e Here they are:--

”Chi non prova l'assunto e l'argomento, Fa come il cane che abbaja alla luna”

(”He who proves not both theainst the moon”)

This excited me to write another little book, in which I proved the proposition and the argument, and at the saned that the Granelleschi were asse Carnival, to dine at the tavern of the Pellegrino, which looks out upon the Piazza di San Marco My coa ly-marked and different faces, entered the inn They entreated it to coht examine it at leisure This mask of the the four faces and four mouths represented the Comic Theatre of Goldoni, personified by ht of e, but was forced to stay and sustain an argument with me upon the theue which ensued, I ain popularity rather by changing the aspect of his wares than by any realplots in outline for the old-fashi+oned comedy of improvisation, which he afterwards attacked and repudiated, he had begun by putting into written dialogue certainthat this first an to pall, he dropped his so-called Refore, and assailed the public with his _Pamelas_ and other romances When this novelty in its turn ceased to draw, he bethought himself of those Venetian farces, which were indeed the best and longest-lived of his dramatic hashes In time they suffered the fate of their predecessors, because such vulgar scenes froly, he tried another novelty, tickling the ears of his audience with rhyic pieces, stuffed out with absurdities, improprieties, and the licentiousness of Oriental manners These _Spose Persiane_, brutal _Ircane_, dirty _Eunuchi_, and unspeakable _Curcume_, by the mere fact of their bad morality,a crowd of fools and fanatics, who learned his long-winded Martellian lines by heart, and went about the alleys of the town reciting theood poetry really is

I edy of the sublime style, but had prudently fallen back on such plebeian representations as the _Pettegolezzi delle Donne_, the _Fenora Lucrezia_, the _Putta Onorata_, the _Bona Muger_, the _Rusteghi_, the _Todero Brontolone_ The arguments of comedies like these ell adapted to his talent He displayed in theues in the Venetian dialect, taken down by him with pencil and notebook in the houses of the cohetti_, coffee-houses, places of ill-fame, and the hted by the realism of these plays, a realism which had never before been so brilliantly illustrated, illuminated, and adorned, as it noas by the ability of actors who faithfully responded to the spirit of this new and popular type of farce

I ed the noble persons of his plays with fraud, absurdity, and baseness, reserving serious and heroic virtues for personages of the lower class, in order to curry favour with the n the great I also showed that his _Putta Onorata_ was not honest, and that he had incited to vice while praising virtue with the dullness of a tiresoard to this point, the four- that it wished to drive the ti them of imposture, immodesty, and bad example for the public I, on the other hand, clearly proved that Goldoni's plays were a hundred times more lascivious, uments were rendered irrefutable by a whole bundle of obscene expressions, dirty double-entendres, suggestive and equivocal situations, and other nastinesses, which I had collected and textually copied from his works

The monstrousme personally with all its four ued it down and exposed it to the contempt of the Granelleschi, it lifted up its clothes in front, and exhibited a fifth mouth, which it carried in the oricalitself beaten and begging for mercy I admit that my satire here was somewhat harsh and broad; but it had been provoked by an expression of Goldoni's, itted_a man out of temper with fortune_