Born in Venice in fair social position, Goldoni spent his childhood chiefly in Chiozza, a ruder and humbler miniature of the island city some twenty-five miles away. Though an incurable wanderer,—indeed, so filled with the true Bohemian's feverish love for change that he never could endure even success anywhere for many summers,—he yet gave more of his best years, and a heartier loyalty, to Venice than to any other home. He knew best, and delineated best, the ordinary life of the lagoons. Mr. Howells, himself by long residence and love a half-Venetian, declares that the comedies in the local dialect are invariably the best, and next best the Italian plays whose scenes are at least laid in Venice. Perhaps the critic is here himself unduly swayed by his affections. Goldoni knew well nearly all Italian lands. He had even, for a series of years, a career as an advocate in Pisa. "My comic genius was not extinguished, but suppressed," he explains. He did not even then give up play-writing, and a traveling theatre manager easily beguiled him back to Venice. This was in 1747, and this same manager, Medebac, setting up a new theatre in Venice, absorbed Goldoni's energies for several years. It was in 1750 that he successfully carried out a rash vow to produce sixteen new comedies in a single year! Among these are a goodly number of his best, including 'The Coffee-House,' from which a few scenes are given below.[Pg 6477] Though he passed over into the service of a different theatre, traveled constantly with his actors, accepted invitations to Parma, Rome, etc., to oversee the performance of his plays, yet he never gave up his home in Venice altogether, until summoned to Paris in 1761. These fourteen years, moreover, form the happiest period of his life. His income from the theatres, from published editions of his comedies, and from his inherited property, would have made him wealthy, but for his extravagant and careless mode of life. Despite one notable success in French with the comedy 'The Surly Benefactor' (1771), Goldoni's life in France was relatively unprofitable and ignoble. He became Italian teacher of various royal princesses, with the utmost uncertainty and delay as to his salaries or pensions. Yet he could never break the fascination of Paris. The art of the French actors was a never-failing delight to him. There, at the age of eighty, in French, he wrote and published his 'Memoirs.' The Revolution swept away his negligent patrons. In poverty and utter neglect he died at last, just as the republicans were ready to restore his royal pension.