ee 
228 Ltahan literature. Fune 20. 
clined to poetry, and evidently perceiving that it 
had deviated from the right road, they knew but too 
well, that if, in their compositions, they had followed 
the footsteps of the good authors, it would be the 
same as to reject applause, and to renounce that fame 
which is the only reward ofthose who turn their mind 
to-poetry. They took therefore to a jocose kind of 
composition, in order to get applause in their own days, 
and they interspersed their poems with the most just 
poetical traits, to the purpose that, when Italy fhould 
open its ,eyes to the true beauties of poetry, posteri-« 
ty might perceive that they had been free from the ge- 
neral corruption. Hence it came that Antonio Malates- 
ta wrote his beautiful riddles in sonnets, that Domenico 
Lazxarini produced his much applauded Centurie of 
sonnets against the ridiculed Don Cicero, that dlefrandro 
Fafsoni composed the heroi-comic poem of the Secchia 
rapita, that Franceseo Berniert publifheda very regular- 
epic poem, and interpersed with many poetical beau- 
ties in Romanesco, that is the common dialect of 
the low people of Rome, intitled 7/ Meo Patacea, and- 
Bartolomeo Nappini, imitating Fidenzio, exprefsed 
his sentiments in what is called stile pedantesco, or pe- 
dantic stile, which requires. a thorough knowledge of 
the Latin and of the Italian languages which in this 
way of writing are very nicely intermixed. Several 
of these were alive when Maggi and Lemene in Lom- 
bardy, Red, Filicaja, and: Menzimi, in. Tuscany, 
Buragna, Schettini, and others in Naples, and Vincen- 
zo Leomo in Rome, set about writing their poetical 
performances according to the rules of the ancients ; 
but except the Dio of Lemene, the Bacco in Toscana. 
