scholar, the pleasing and desultory philosopher, offered any profound or original solutions. In 1797 he defined poetry as "the art of representing and perfecting nature by means of picturesque, animated, imaginative and harmonious discourse."[22] [Sidenote: _Bettinelli and Pagano._] The fashion of the day in philosophy made men impatient of the ideas found in writers of treatises of former times. Arteaga praises Cesarotti for "that fine tact, that impartial criticism, that logical spirit derived not from the trickling streamlets of Sperone, Castelvetro, Casa and Bembo, but from the profound and inexhaustible springs of Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire, d'Alembert, Sulzer, and writers of like temper."[23] Writing to Saverio Bettinelli, who was preparing a work on _Enthusiasm,_ Paradisi hoped it would prove "a metaphysical history of enthusiasm which shall outweigh all those Poetics which are only fit to be burned," and would "make waste paper of Castelvetro, the 'Mintumo,' and that stupid creature, Quadrio."[24] In spite of these aspirations Bettinelli's book (1769) contains little beyond vivacious and eloquent empirical observations concerning the psychology of poets, "poetic enthusiasm," to which he assigns six degrees, namely, elevation, vision, rapidity, novelty and surprise, passion and transfusion. Equally empirical was Mario Pagano in his two fragments, _Gusto e le belle arti_ and _Origine e natura della poesia_ (1783-1785), in which he grotesquely combines some ideas from Vico with the current sensationalism. Theoretico-imaginative form and sensuous pleasure are presented by him as two historical periods of art. "In their cradle the fine arts are directed towards making a true imitation of nature rather than towards loveliness. Their first steps are towards expression rather than charm.... In the most ancient poetry, even in the ballads of barbarous ages, there lives a most compelling pathos: passions are expressed naturally, even the sound of the words is alive with the expression of the things described." But "the period of perfection is reached at the moment when exact imitation of nature is coupled with complete beauty, accord and harmony," when "the taste is refined and society reaches its most complete form of culture." Fine arts "precede by a short time the dawn of philosophy, that is to say, the time of the most intense perfection of society"; indeed, certain modes of art, such as tragedy, must necessarily come later than philosophy whose aid must be invoked to further "the purgation of manners."[25] [Sidenote: _German disciples of Baumgarten. G. F. Meier._]