_Zobeide_, and the _Mostro Turchino_ to those dramatic fables which
I have already mentioned. This brought us down to the year 1766.[32]

The new _genre_ which I had brought into fashion, and which, by being
confined to Sacchi's company, inflicted vast damage on their
professional rivals, inspired other so-called poets with the wish to
imitate me. They relied on splendid decorations, transformation scenes,
and frigid buffooneries. They did not comprehend the allegorical
meanings, nor the polite satire upon manners, nor the art of
construction, nor the conduct of the plot, nor the real intrinsic force
of the species I had handled. I say they did not comprehend the value of
these things, because I do not want to say that they were deficient in
power to command and use them. The result was that their pieces met with
the condemnation which their contempt for me and for the public who
appreciated me richly deserved.

You cannot fabricate a drama worthy to impress the public mind for any
length of time by heaping up absurdities, marvels, scurrilities,
prolixities, puerilities, insipidities, and nonsense. The neglect into
which the imitations of my manner speedily fell proves this. Much the
same may be said about those other species--romantic or domestic,
intended to move tears or laughter--those cultured and realistic kinds
of drama, as people called them, though they were generally devoid of
culture and of realism, and were invariably as like each other as two
peas, which occupied our stage for thirty years at least.[33] All the
good and bad that has been written and printed about my fables; the fact
that they still hold the stage in Italy and other countries where they
are translated in spite of their comparative antiquity; the stupid
criticisms which are still being vented against them by starving
journalists and envious bores, who join the cry and follow these blind
leaders of the blind--criticisms only based upon the titles and
arguments I chose to draw from old wives' tales and stories of the
nursery--all this proves that there is real stuff in the fabulous,
poetical, allegorical _genre_ which I created. I say this without any
presumptuous partiality for the children of my fancy; nor do I resent
the attacks which have been made upon them, for I am humane enough to
pity the hungry and the passion-blinded.

Goldoni, who was then at Paris, vainly striving to revive the Italian
theatre in that metropolis, heard of the noi