Probably the most eminent man of letters of the last ten years of the Seventeenth Century was CRESCIMBENI, the historian of Italian poetry, and the founder of the Arcadian Academy, still flourishing in Rome. He was a writer of great talent and judgment, and he was more alive than his contemporaries to the evils resulting from the exaggerated metaphors and wild hyperboles introduced by the followers of Marino. He looked out for a perfect model of poetry, and he found it in the works of Angelo di Costanzo, and certainly that writer's equable sweetness and refinement are unruffled by tempestuous passion or towering sublimity. Crescimbeni might, we think, with greater propriety have selected Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto to reform the degraded taste of the age; but still, the beauties of Costanzo are of a high order, and the recommendation bore good fruit. If it cannot be said of any writer of the Seventeenth Century that he rises to the highest pinnacle of Art, yet, on a review of the whole period, there remains an impression of much ingenuity and much vigour of thought. [Footnote 1: His poems, chiefly Sonnets, are in Italian.] CHAPTER XII. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. The precepts of Crescimbeni bore good fruit, and both prose and poetry gradually freed themselves from the faults of taste so obvious in the preceding generation. Verse became lighter and more flowing, although there was, unhappily, no diminution of conventional phraseology or of mythological allusion. The comic poets were numerous and gifted. But, on the other hand, there was less seriousness and perhaps less originality. The influence of French Literature began to prevail, and it has not been shaken off even to the present day. The tyranny of governments was not quite so oppressive. Public opinion began to revolt against the most flagrant abuses, and a succession of enlightened sovereigns and statesmen carried into practice the enlightened philanthropy of Voltaire and the sentimental philanthrophy of Rousseau. Indeed, all over Europe, there was a desire, in the second half of the Eighteenth Century, to promote the welfare of the people, such as was never evinced in the age of Davila or of Filicaia. Louis XVI and Turgot in France, Charles III and Aranda in Spain, Pombal in Portugal, the Grand Duke Leopold in Tuscany, were all zealous in the cause of humanity and enlightenment. It seemed even to acute observers that a golden age was awaiting the human race. Unhappily, the horrors and crimes of the French Revolution rudely dispelled these pleasing visions and produced a reaction, the effects of which threw back the progress of humanity for many generations. It is heart-breaking to think how different the development of Europe might have been, had the extreme section of the French Republicans been kept in subordination and had Roland guided the destinies of France instead of Robespierre.