ats have
the forms of a miller's dossers, or great panniers, and the backs
consist of the long shovels used in ovens. The table is a baker's
kneading-trough, and the academician who reads has half his body thrust
out of a great bolting sack, with I know not what else for their
inkstands and portfolios. But the most celebrated of these academies is
that "degli Arcadi," at Rome, who are still carrying on their
pretensions much higher. Whoever aspires to be aggregated to these
Arcadian shepherds receives a personal name and a title, but not the
deeds, of a farm, picked out of a map of the ancient Arcadia or its
environs; for Arcadia itself soon became too small a possession for
these partitioners of moon-shine. Their laws, modelled by the twelve
tables of the ancient Romans; their language in the venerable majesty of
their renowned ancestors; and this erudite democracy dating by the
Grecian Olympiads, which Crescembini, their first _custode_, or
guardian, most painfully adjusted to the vulgar era, were designed that
the sacred erudition of antiquity might for ever be present among these
shepherds.[305] Goldoni, in his Memoirs, has given an amusing account of
these honours. He says "He was presented with two diplomas; the one was
my charter of aggregation to the _Arcadi_ of Rome, under the name of
_Polisseno_, the other gave me the investiture of the _Phlegraean_
fields. I was on this saluted by the whole assembly in chorus, under the
name of _Polisseno Phlegraeio,_ and embraced by them as a fellow-shepherd
and brother. The _Arcadians_ are very rich, as you may perceive, my dear
reader: we possess estates in Greece; we water them with our labours for
the sake of reaping laurels, and the Turks sow them with grain, and
plant them with vines, and laugh at both our titles and our songs." When
Fontenelle became an Arcadian, they baptized the new _Pastor_ by their
graceful diminutive--_Fontanella_--allusive to the charm, of his style;
and further they magnificently presented him with the entire Isle of
Delos! The late Joseph Walker, an enthusiast for Italian literature,
dedicated his "Memoir on Italian Tragedy" to the Countess Spencer; not
inscribing it with his Christian but his heathen name, and the title of
his Arcadian estate, _Eubante Tirinzio_! Plain Joseph Walker, in his
masquerade dress, with his Arcadian signet of Pan's reeds dangling in
his title-page, was performing a character to which, however well
adapted, not being