"
III
Signor Torelli is less severe than Emiliani-Giudici upon the founders
of the Arcadia, and thinks they may have had intentions quite
different from the academical follies that resulted; while Leigh Hunt,
who has some account of the Arcadia in his charming essay on the
Sonnet, feels none of the national shame of the Italian critics, and
is able to write of it with perfect gayety. He finds a reason for its
amazing success in the childlike traits of Italian character; and,
reminding his readers that the Arcadia was established in 1690,
declares that what the Englishmen of William and Mary's reign would
have received with shouts of laughter, and the French under Louis XIV,
would have corrupted and made perilous to decency, "was so mixed up
with better things in these imaginative and, strange as it may seem,
most unaffected people, the Italians,--for such they are,--that, far
from disgusting a nation accustomed to romantic impulses and to the
singing of poetry in their streets and gondolas, their gravest and
most distinguished men and, in many instances, women, too, ran
childlike into the delusion. The best of their poets", the
sweet-tongued Filicaja among others, "accepted farms in Arcadia
forthwith; ... and so little transitory did the fashion turn out
to be, that not only was Crescimbeni its active officer for
eight-and-thirty years, but the society, to whatever state of
insignificance it may have been reduced, exists at the present
moment".
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