[20] This paragraph reads amusingly like a satire upon English "æsthetes."
[21] See above, vol i. p. 367.
[22] See above, chap. xxxi.
[23] The first or Paris edition bears, however, the date 1756.
[24] I have to say that what follows in this chapter has been very considerably abridged from Gozzi's text. Apology is owed to him by the translator for condensing his narrative and confining it to points of permanent interest, if indeed there is any interest at all in bygone literary squabbles, while retaining the first person.
[25] This poem is printed in vol. viii. of Colombani's edition of Carlo Gozzi's Works.
[26] I may remind my readers that Truffaldino was the specific form invented for the mask of Arlecchino by Sacchi. See above, vol. i. p. 53. Truffaldino was originally a character in Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, where he played the part of a consummate rogue, traitor, and coward, and was killed by the paladin Rinaldo (Bk. i. Cant. 26).
[27] This passage indicates Gozzi's justice, his habit of conceding the suum cuique, however grudgingly. Goldoni, as we learn from his Memoirs, piqued himself upon the study he made of actors like Darbes, Golinetti, and Collalto.
[28] A singular piece of self-criticism. Gozzi appeals to posterity on points which seem to us the least noteworthy in his work. Nothing is needed beyond the above sentences to dispel the illusion of his having been a free romantic genius.
[29] Gozzi uses the word squarci for these stock passages. The expression is partly explained by what follows in the paragraph, and has been further illustrated by me above: vol. i. p. 62. See Bartoli's Scenari, pp. lxxv. et seq.