became so envenomed about the whole affair that Gratarol was finally banished from Venice, on the ground of having slanderously attacked the reputation of Gozzi in a pamphlet which was suppressed; and he withdrew to Stockholm, where he died. But for that episode of his picturesque life Gozzi would never have given us his memoirs. He wrote them not from a motive of vanity, but only to let the world have a fair chance of judging his character correctly. Surely, a man as conspicuous as he was in his day had the right to get a hearing before his contemporaries, and to leave unblurred by prejudices or false impressions the mirror of public memory in which his figure was to reflect itself. When Aristophanes amused the Athenians with his satirical or comical allusions to those great men of the republic who were his contemporaries--Euripides, Plato, Socrates or Cleon--was he not mostly prompted by his indomitable conservatism, which made him the avowed enemy of all innovation in ideas and customs? It is that resemblance between the Greek poet and the Venetian writer which has made some critics call Gozzi the Aristophanes of the eighteenth century. He hated the bold and sacrilegious hands of modern philosophy, because it pulled down and trampled under foot the traditions and the usages which the cherishing care of centuries had consecrated as the guiding-star of honor in the heart of the people. He hated the inroad of foreign ideas and of foreign independence in the conduct of life. He believed in the sacredness of custom and authority, and he preached it _con amore_ in all his writings. Gozzi lived an isolated and studious life. He seldom left his old ruined palace, where at night "dances of rats" alone disturbed his quiet, except on his way to rehearsals or to the evening representations. No man in Venice was more loved; and well might he be, for he gave bread and support to the whole of that little dramatic world of which he was the centre and the inspiration. As he never consented to sell his work, he remained very poor. His habits were simple, and with his own inimitable _naivete_ he confesses that the whole of his worldly care consists in having the largest of silver buckles on his shoes and keeping his wig in the fashion.