be lost; and this among the first. For who would risque the making
impromptu poems at Paris? _pour s'attirer persiflage_ in every _Coterie
comme il faut_[Footnote: To draw upon one's self the ridicule of every
polite assembly.]? Or in London, at the hazard of being _taken off, and
held up for a laughing-stock at every print-seller's window_? A man must
have good courage in England, before he ventures at diverting a little
company by such devices: while one would yawn, and one would whisper, a
third would walk gravely out of the room, and say to his friend upon the
stairs, "Why sure we had better read our old poets at home, than be
called together, like fools, to hear what comes uppermost in
such-a-one's head, about his _Daphne_! In good time! Why I have been
tired of _Daphne_ since I was fourteen years old." But the best jest of
all would be, to see an ordinary fellow, a strolling player for example,
set seriously to make or repeat verses in our streets or squares
concerning his sweetheart's _cruelty_; when he would be in more danger
from that of the mob and the magistrates; who, if the first did not
throw dirt at him, and drive him home quickly, would come themselves,
and examine into his sanity, and if they found him not _statutably mad_,
commit him for a vagrant.

Different amusements, like different sorts of food, suit different
countries; and this is among the efforts of those who have learned to
refine their _pleasures_ without so refining their _ideas_ as to be able
no longer to hit on any pleasure subtle enough to escape their own power
of ridiculing it.

This city of Ferrara has produced some curious and opposite characters
in times past, however empty it may now be thought: one painter too, and
one singer, both super-eminent in their professions, have dropped their
own names, and are best known to fame by that of _Il_ and _La