t his _Putta Onorata_ was not honest,
and that he had incited to vice while praising virtue with the dullness
of a tiresome sermon. With regard to this point, the four-mouthed Comic
Theatre kept protesting that it wished to drive the time-honoured masks
of improvised comedy off the stage, accusing them of imposture,
immodesty, and bad example for the public. I, on the other hand, clearly
proved that Goldoni's plays were a hundred times more lascivious, more
indecent, and more injurious to morals. My arguments were rendered
irrefutable by a whole bundle of obscene expressions, dirty
double-entendres, suggestive and equivocal situations, and other
nastinesses, which I had collected and textually copied from his works.
The monstrous mask defended itself but poorly, and at last fell to
abusing me personally with all its four mouths at once. This did not
serve it; and when I had argued it down and exposed it to the contempt
of the Granelleschi, it lifted up its clothes in front, and exhibited a
fifth mouth, which it carried in the middle of its stomach. This fifth
allegorical mouth raised up its voice and wept, declaring itself beaten
and begging for mercy. I admit that my satire here was somewhat harsh
and broad; but it had been provoked by an expression of Goldoni's, who
twitted me with being _a man out of temper with fortune_.

As a preface to these two little works, I composed an epistle in blank
verse, in which I dedicated them to a certain well-known
poverty-stricken citizen of Venice, called Pietro Carati. The man used
to go about the streets, wrapt in a ragged mantle, with a rusty
periwig, and black stockings, mended in a thousand places with green,
grey, or white silk (the surest signs of beggary), modestly demanding
from his acquaintances some trifle to support his dignity as cittadino.

In this epistle I repeated that I was not out of temper with fortune,
that I sought no favours from that goddess by my writings, and that my
only object was to carry on the war against bad authors, and to uphold
the rules and purity of literature. These two little pamphlets became
the property of the public before I had time and opportunity to print
them. The stir they made while yet in manuscript occasioned a series of
events which I will now relate.[24]

The noble gentleman, Giuseppe Farsetti, who was a member of our Academy,
came to me one day, and told me that another patrician, Count Ludovico
Widiman, and he would take it ve