tablets of marble.

According to one of the articles, the Academicians must study to
reproduce the customs of the ancient Arcadians and the character of
their poetry; and straightway "Italy was filled on every hand with
Thyrsides, Menalcases, and Meliboeuses, who made their harmonious
songs resound the names of their Chlorises, their Phyllises, their
Niceas; and there was poured out a deluge of pastoral compositions",
some of them by "earnest thinkers and philosophical writers, who were
not ashamed to assist in sustaining that miserable literary vanity
which, in the history of human thought, will remain a lamentable
witness to the moral depression of the Italian nation." As a pattern
of perfect poetizing, these artless nymphs and swains chose Constanzo,
a very fair poet of the sixteenth century. They collected his verse,
and printed it at the expense of the Academy; and it was established
without dissent that each Arcadian in turn, at the hut of some
conspicuous shepherd, in the presence of the keeper (such was the
jargon of those most amusing unrealities), should deliver a commentary
upon some sonnet of Constanzo. As for Crescimbeni, who declared that
Arcadia was instituted "strictly for the purpose of exterminating bad
taste and of guarding against its revival, pursuing it continually,
wherever it should pause or lurk, even to the most remote and
unconsidered villages and hamlets"--Crescimbeni could not do less than
write four dialogues, as he did, in which he evolved from four of
Constanzo's sonnets all that was necessary for Tuscan lyric poetry.

"Thus," says Emiliani-Giudici, referring to the crusading intent of
Crescimbeni, "the Arcadians were a sect of poetical Sanfedista, who,
taking for example the zeal and performance of San Domingo de Gruzman,
proposed to renew in literature the scenes of the Holy Office among