The extensive and execrable controversy which followed did not, however, turn wholly, though it very largely turned, on the actual case of Ariosto _v._ Tasso. But, as usually happens, the partisans of the latter provoked it by unadvised laudations of him, and worse-advised attacks on his great predecessor. The Florentines had not, as such, any special reason for championing the “turnip-eating” Ariosto; but Tasso had offended the coteries of the Della Crusca, and a Della Cruscan chief, the Salviati already mentioned, took the field against the author of the _Gerusalemme_. He sallied forth in turn; and the bickering became universal. Five mortal volumes of the standard edition of Tasso appear to be occupied with an incomplete collection of the documents on the subject—a collection which I have not read and do not intend to read, but which whosoever rejoices in such things may, if he likes, supplement with all the _Histories of Italian Literature_ from Tiraboschi downwards, and all the Lives of Tasso, especially those of Serassi in the eighteenth century and Solerti in the nineteenth. The most important upshot of the controversy is not itself in dispute. The impregnable historical position of Cinthio was strangely neglected by both sides (except by Ishmaelite outsiders like Bruno and Patrizzi); nor was even the modified Aristotelianism and “Unitarianism” of Castelvetro, as a rule, attempted. Both sides swore fealty to Aristotle, and all debated what Aristotle meant—what Unity was. And, in spite of the exceptions, this was the condition in which the question was left to the next century.