SALVATOR ROSA; TASSONI; MAFFEI.--The great painter Salvator Rosa devoted
himself hardly less to literature; he left lyrical poems and particularly
satires which are far from lacking spirit, though often destitute of
taste. Satiric, too, was the paradoxical Tassoni, who scoffed at
Petrarch, and who in his _Thoughts_, long prior to J.J. Rousseau, was the
first, perhaps (but who knows?), to maintain that literature is highly
prejudicial to society and humanity, and who achieved fame by his _Rape
of the Bucket_: that is, by a burlesque poem on the quarrel between
the Bolognese and the inhabitants of Modena about a bucket.

Maffei (intruding somewhat on the eighteenth century), good scholar and
respected historian, produced in 1714 his _Merope_, which was an
excellent tragedy, as Voltaire well knew and also testified.

HISTORIANS AND CRITICS.--In prose there are none to point out in the
eighteenth century in Italy except historians and critics. Among
the historians must be noted Davila, who spent his youth in France near
Catherine de' Medici, served in the French armies, and on his return to
Padua devoted his old age to history. He wrote a _History of the Civil
Wars in France_ which was highly esteemed, and which Fenelon recollected
when writing his _Letter on the Pursuits of the French Academy_. The
foregoing are what must be mentioned as notable manifestations of
literary activity in Italy during the seventeenth century, but let it
not be forgotten that the scientific activity of the period was
magnificent, and that it was the century of Galileo, of Torricelli; of
the _four_ Cassini, as well as of so many others who were praised, as
they deserved to be, in the _Eulogies of the Learned_ of Fontenelle.