and the backs consist of the long shovels used in ovens.  The table is a baker’s kneading-trough, and the academician who reads has half his body thrust out of a great bolting sack, with I know not what else for their inkstands and portfolios.  But the most celebrated of these academies is that “degli Arcadi,” at Rome, who are still carrying on their pretensions much higher.  Whoever aspires to be aggregated to these Arcadian shepherds receives a personal name and a title, but not the deeds, of a farm, picked out of a map of the ancient Arcadia or its environs; for Arcadia itself soon became too small a possession for these partitioners of moon-shine.  Their laws, modelled by the twelve tables of the ancient Romans; their language in the venerable majesty of their renowned ancestors; and this erudite democracy dating by the Grecian Olympiads, which Crescembini, their first custode, or guardian, most painfully adjusted to the vulgar era, were designed that the sacred erudition of antiquity might for ever be present among these shepherds.[305] Goldoni, in his Memoirs, has given an amusing account of these honours.  He says “He was presented with two diplomas; the one was my charter of aggregation to the Arcadi of Rome, under the name of Polisseno, the other gave me the investiture of the Phlegraean fields.  I was on this saluted by the whole assembly in chorus, under the name of Polisseno Phlegraeio, and embraced by them as a fellow-shepherd and brother.  The Arcadians are very rich, as you may perceive, my dear reader:  we possess estates in Greece; we water them with our labours for the sake of reaping laurels, and the Turks sow them with grain, and plant them with vines, and laugh at both our titles and our songs.”  When Fontenelle became an Arcadian, they baptized the new Pastor by their graceful diminutive—­Fontanella—­allusive to the charm, of his style; and further they magnificently presented him with the entire Isle of Delos!  The late Joseph Walker, an enthusiast for Italian literature, dedicated his “Memoir on Italian Tragedy” to the Countess Spencer; not inscribing it with his Christian but his heathen name, and the title of his Arcadian estate, Eubante Tirinzio!  Plain Joseph Walker, in his masquerade dress, with his Arcadian signet of Pan’s reeds dangling in his title-page, was performing a character to which, however well adapted, not being understood, he got stared at for his affectation!  We have lately heard of some licentious revellings of these Arcadians, in receiving a man of genius from our own country, who, himself composing Italian Rime, had “conceit” enough to become a shepherd![306] Yet let us inquire before we criticise.

Even this ridiculous society of the Arcadians became a memorable literary institution; and Tiraboschi has shown how it successfully arrested the bad taste which was then prevailing throughout Italy, recalling its muses to purer sources; while the lives of many of its shepherds have furnished an interesting volume of literary history under the title of “The illustrious Arcadians.”  Crescembini, and its founders, had formed the most elevated conceptions of the society at its origin; but poetical vaticinators are prophets only while we read their verses—­we must not look for that dry matter of fact—­the event predicted!