ore a conspicuous
person, and whatever happened to him became an object of general
interest to people as frivolous as he. It was of course impossible for
him to remain indifferent to the spectacle of his own ridicule placed
before the laughter of the public. His indignation was immense, and with
the help of such of his admirers as he could rally around him he formed
a clique bent upon destroying Gozzi as a writer. They employed every
means of calumny to effect it, but failed. The piece, which for a time
had been withdrawn by superior order, was again given, and was received
with triumphant applause. It was something gained to have in a manner
brought the censorship to terms and forced it to change its verdict. The
star of Gratarol set for ever. He was no longer admired, but he was
pitilessly laughed at or patronized with crushing compassion wherever he
appeared; and wounded self-love, wounded vanity, everything, combined to
excite a desire for revenge. But honest Gozzi had not intended any
personal allusion in the writing of his play, and was hardly responsible
for the characterization of a quick-witted public. Parties, however,
became so envenomed about the whole affair that Gratarol was finally
banished from Venice, on the ground of having slanderously attacked the
reputation of Gozzi in a pamphlet which was suppressed; and he withdrew
to Stockholm, where he died.

But for that episode of his picturesque life Gozzi would never have
given us his memoirs. He wrote them not from a motive of vanity, but
only to let the world have a fair chance of judging his character
correctly. Surely, a man as conspicuous as he was in his day had the
right to get a hearing before his contemporaries, and to leave unblurred
by prejudices or false impressions the mirror of public memory in which
his figure was to reflect itself.

When Aristophanes amused the Athenians with his satirical or comical
allusions to those great men of the republic who were his
contemporaries--Euripides, Plato, Socrates or Cleon--was he not mostly
prompted by his indomitable conservatism, which made him the avowed
enemy of all innovation in ideas and customs? It is that resemblance
between the Greek poet and the Venetian writer which has made some
critics call Gozzi the Aristophanes of the eighteenth century. He hated
the bold and sacrilegious hands of modern philosophy, because it pulled
down and trampled under foot the traditions and the usages which the
cher