ad of disputing its authority. We cried to the winds, and were
obliged to look on while the world was deluged with fanatical, obscure,
bombastic lucubrations--laboured sophisms, rounded periods with nothing
in them, the flimsy dreams of sick folk, sentiments inverted and
distorted--and the whole of this farrago indited in a language mixed of
all the vernacular dialects, with interlarded bits of the Greek tongue,
but above all with so many French words and phrases that our own Italian
dictionaries and grammars seemed to have become superfluous.

XXXVIII.

_Sequel of my literary quarrels.--Goldoni and Chiari.--My resolve to
amuse my fellow-citizens with fantastic dramatic pieces on the stage._

This new fashion of unlicensed freedom and of sheer enthusiasm made
rapid strides, because it was convenient and comfortable. Intellects,
misled and muddled, lost the sense of what is good and bad in writing.
They applauded the worst and the best without distinction. Little by
little, commonplace and transparent stupidities on the one
hand--stupidities sonorous and oracular upon the other, were adopted in
the practice of literature. Pure, cultivated, judicious, and natural
style took on the aspect of debilitated languor and despicable
affectation.

The contagion spread so rapidly and so widely, that even men like
Doctor Carlo Goldoni and the Abbe Pietro Chiari were universally hailed
and eulogized as first-rate Italian authors. Their original and
incomparable achievements were lauded to the skies. To them we owed a
fit of fashion, which lasted some few lustres, and which helped to
overthrow the principles of sound and chaste expression.

These rivals, both of them dramatic poets, and each the critic of the
other, were strong enough to heat the brains of our Venetian folk to
boiling-point, so that the public formed two stormy parties, which came
well-nigh to fisticuffs over the sublimities of their respective idols.

A whirlwind of comedies, tragi-comedies, and tragedies, composts of
imperfections, occupied the public stage; the one genius of inculture
vying with the other in the quantity he could produce. A diarrhoea of
dramatic works, romances, critical epistles, poems, cantatas, and
apologies by both the Vandals poured from the press and deluged Venice.
All the youth were stunned, distracted, and diverted from good sense by
din and tumult. Only the Granelleschi kept themselves untainted by this
Goldonio-Chiaristic e