sions of this kind. The whole tenor of my
writings, on the other hand, and particularly my poem _Marfisa
bizzarra_, which conceals philosophy beneath the mantle of burlesque
humour, prove that I was keenly alive to the disastrous results which
had to be expected from revolutionary science sown broadcast during the
past age. I always dreaded and predicted a cataclysm as the natural
consequence of those pernicious doctrines. Yet my Cassandra warnings
were doomed to remain as useless as these Memoirs will certainly be--as
ineffectual as a doctor's prescriptions for a man whose lungs are
rotten. The sweet delusive dream of our physically impossible democracy
will end in the evolution of....

But Palese calls on me to staunch this flow of ink upon the paper. Let
us leave to serious and candid historians the task of relating what we
are sure, if we live, to see.

To-day is the 18th of March in the year 1798; and here I lay my pen
down, lest I injure my good publisher. Farewell, patient and benign
readers of my useless Memoirs!

LXV.

SEQUEL TO GOZZI'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

SUPPLIED BY THE TRANSLATOR.

Gozzi broke off his Memoirs on the 18th of March 1798. He lived another
eight years, and died upon the 4th of April 1806, aged eighty-six. On
reviewing his life, we find four clearly marked periods. The first ends
with the death of his father in 1745, and includes his three years'
service in Dalmatia. The second closes with the year 1756, and is marked
by the break-up of the Gozzi family and his engagement in those
litigations and affairs of business which formed his real occupation for
a long series of years. Short as was this second period, it gave a
decisive tone to his character by confirming the man's natural obstinacy
and litigiousness. Undoubtedly it was not for nothing that he frequented
the Venetian law-courts and studied the arts of chicanery. In all his
polemical writings we detect the habit of forensic warfare, the wariness
of an experienced pleader, and the licensed plausibility of one who is
accustomed to conceal the weak points in his own case while magnifying
the shortcomings of his adversary. His unremitting attention to
practical matters made him an experienced man of business. This was the
true Carlo Gozzi; not that fantastic dreamy plaything of the sprites and
fairies which his romantic French and German critics have discerned in
the author of the _Fiabe_. At the same time, during this second period,