But I must not linger over the Florence Miscellany, which was but the prelude to those melodious bursts which filled the spacious times of George III. with the music of Della Crusca and Anna Matilda. A year or two after its publication the Florence coterie broke up, and returned to England.
The first note of the concert was struck by Robert Merry, who, in June 1787, sent to the World a poem entitled The Adieu and Recall to Love, subscribing himself Della Crusca, a nickname which had been given to him at Florence, on account of his connection, already mentioned, with the Italian Academy. The World was a daily morning paper, price threepence, which in more than one respect resembled its modern namesake. A contemporary satirist, writing under the modest pseudonym of “Horace Juvenal,” describes how the young lady of 1787—
Reluctant opes her eyes, 'twixt twelve and one,
To skim the World, or criticise the Sun,
And when she sees her darling friend abused
Is half enraged, yet more than half-amused.
And another poet portrays two unlucky baronets, Sir Gregory Turner and Sir John Miller—husband of Lady Miller of Bath Easton vase celebrity—lamenting the ridicule with which the same newspaper had overwhelmed them:—
Woe wait the week, Sir John, and cursed the hour,
When harmless gentlemen felt satire's power,
When, raised from insignificance and sloth,