ain harmonious beauty of
expression, to felicitous development of thought, to just illumination
of ideas, and to the proper colouring of sentiment, especially in works
of wit and genius in our idiom.

In the third place, I resented the extinction of all sense for
proportion and propriety in style, that sense which prompts us to treat
matters sublime, familiar, and facetious upon various planes and in
different keys of feeling, whether the vehicle employed be verse or
prose. Instead of this, one monstrous style, now bombastically turgid,
now stupidly commonplace, has become the fashion for everything which is
written or sent to press, from the weightiest of arguments down to the
daily letter which a fellow scribbles to his mistress.

Let it not be supposed, however, that my resentment against these
literary curses of our century--for such I thought them--ever goaded me
beyond my naturally jesting humour. All the compositions I have printed
on the topics in dispute, regarding purity of diction, ancient authors,
and the corrupters of young minds in Italy, witness to my joviality and
coolness in the zeal and ardour of the conflict.

Finally, I must confess that all my endeavours in the good cause, joined
to those of others, have been impotent to stem the tide of extravagance,
the exaltation of heated brains, the absurdities of so-called
philosophical reforms; also, as regards the purity of Italian diction,
all that we have said and written has been thrown away. The charlatans
have had the upper hand of us, by persuading the vast multitude of
working brains that to seek purity in language is a waste of time and
hide-bound imbecility, and that to spare the pains of gaining it is a
mark of free and liberal talent. The remedy must be left to time and to
the inscrutable ebb and flow of fashion, which makes the world at one
time eager for the true, at another no less eager for the false, in
spite of any human efforts to control it.

It was about the year 1740, when an Academy was founded in Venice by
some people of gay humour, versed in literary studies, and amateurs of
polish and simplicity and nature. Caprice and chance brought us
together. But we followed in the wake of Chiabrera, Redi, Zeno,
Manfredi, Lazarini, valiant predecessors in the warfare against those
false, emphatic, metaphorical, and figured fashions, which had been
introduced like plague-germs by the Seicentisti.[16] This Academy imbued
the minds of young men