his
satire, though keen, is never bitter. His laugh is an honest one. As
Thackeray says of Fielding, "it clears the air." His dramatic censure is
considered to have been instrumental in putting down the State-protected
gambling which was the plague-spot of Venice in those days, and further
in giving the first death-blows to that debased survival from the time
of chivalry, the _Cavaliere Servente_, or _Cicisbeo_.

Goldoni's diligence was as great and untiring as his invention was
fertile. Thus once, provoked by an unjust _fiasco_, he publicly promised
that he would write and produce sixteen new comedies in the course of
the next year, and he kept his pledge, though at the time of making it
he had not one of these plays even planned. And among this sixteen are
some of his Masterpieces, such as "Pamela" and the "Bottega del Caffe."
The theme of Pamela was not exactly his choice. He had been teased to
compose a play after the novel of Richardson, then all the fashion in
Italy. At first he believed it an impossible task, owing to the great
difference in the social rules of the two countries. In England a noble
may marry whom he likes; his wife becomes his equal, his children in no
wise suffer. Not so in the Venice of that time. The oligarchical rule
was so severe, that a patrician marrying a woman of the lower class
forfeited his right to participate in the government, and deprived his
offspring of the patriciate. "Comedy, which is or should be," says
Goldoni, "the school of society, should never expose the weakness of
humanity save to correct it, wherefore it is not right to recompense
virtue at the expense of posterity." However, the necessity of finding
themes, conjoined to this insistence on the part of his friends, induced
Goldoni to try his hand with Pamela. He changed the _denouement_,
however, in compliance with Venetian social prejudices, making Pamela
turn out to be the daughter of a Scotch peer under attainder, whose
pardon Bonfil obtains.

It must not be supposed, however, that Goldoni, although he had now
reached the apex of success and fame, was to find his course one of
plain sailing. Enmities, rivalries, assailed him on all sides; and
these, in the Italy of that date, took a peculiarly venomous character,
men's ambitions and energies having no such legitimate outlets as are
furnished to-day by politics and interests in the general welfare.
Everything was petty, everything was personal. Goldoni's chief rival