tre of San Samuele at Venice during the Carnival of 1761. Its
novelty and unexpectedness,--the surprise created by a fairy-tale
adapted to the drama, seasoned with trenchant parodies of both Chiari's
and Goldoni's plays, and not withal devoid of moral allegory--created
such a sudden and noisy revolution of taste that these poets saw in it
the sentence of their doom.

Who could have imagined that this twinkling spark of a child's fable on
the stage should have outshone the admired and universally applauded
illumination of two famous talents, condemning them to obscurity, while
my own dramatised fairy-tales throve and enthralled the public for a
period of many years? So wags the world!

XXXIX.

_My plan of campaign for assailing Goldoni and Chiari through the
militia of actors I had chosen.--The four Fiabe: Il Corvo, Il Re Cervo,
La Turandotte, I Pitocchi Fortunati._

In the long course of my observations upon human nature and the
different sorts of men, I had not as yet enjoyed an opportunity of
studying the race of actors. I was curious to do so, and the time had
come.

With the view of attacking my two poet adversaries in the theatre, I
made choice of the comic troupe of Sacchi, the famous Truffaldino.[26]
It was composed for the most part of close relatives, and bore the
reputation of being better behaved and more honest than any others.
Professionally, they sustained our old national comedy of improvisation
with the greatest spirit. This type of drama, as I have said above,
Goldoni and Chiari, under the mask of zeal for culture, but really with
an eager eye to gain, had set themselves to ruin and abolish.

Antonio Sacchi, Agostino Fiorelli, Atanagio Zannoni, and Cesare Derbes,
all of them excellent players in their several lines, represented the
four masks, Truffaldino, Tartaglia, Brighella, and Pantalone. Each of
these men could boast of perfect practice in their art, readiness of
wit, grace, fertility of ideas, variety of sallies, bye-play, drollery,
naturalness, and some philosophy. The soubrette of the company, Andriana
Sacchi-Zannoni, possessed the same qualities. Its other members, at the
time when I took up their cause, were old men and women, persons of good
parts but unattractive physique, lifeless sticks, and inexperienced
children. Some time earlier, the troupe had been extremely well-to-do
and popular in Italy. But the two playwrights in question, after having
lived in partnership with them