This is a little difference from a common hoy, hoy, in the streets, allowing for the difference of languages. I have met a party of Tuscan peasant girls going up hill to Fiesole on a holiday, and exclaiming oi-oi-oi-oi in rapid succession, as an evidence of their being tired. How much learning might be ingenious on this, especially as Tuscany is the land of Bacchus, and oè oè was a cry of deprecation as well as triumph? See Horace.

Note 45, page 21.

Under the great Tuscan dame,
Who sifts the flower and gives it fame.

The Della Cruscan Academy. Its device is a flour mill, with the motto-" Il più bel fior ne coglie." It collects the finest. Like all academies, it has done more harm than good, and

helped to render the national genius unoriginal and slavish. It was a great partizan of Ariosto, because the fame of that poet was established; and perhaps because Ariosto was a great admirer of Florence. But no sooner did a new poet arise, who was destined to rank among the four great Italian masters of the art, than it fell bitterly upon him, and disquieted his life.

Note 46, page 21.

Let the shout by Segni be

Registered immortally,

And dispatched by a courier

A Monsieur l'Abbé Regnier.

Segni was the Della Cruscan Secretary; Regnier (Regnier Des Marais) the Secretary of the

French Academy. There is something very plea

sant in turning the superscription of a letter Des Marais was such a master of

into a verse. Italian, that Redi says, the most lynx-eyed critic would not discover from his compositions in that language, that he was not born and bred in the heart of Tuscany. He is the author of an Italian translation of Anacreon.

Note 47, page 21.

It should be Malvagia,
Trebbio's praise and glory.

Trebbio is a place near Florence belonging to the Phillippine monks. In England, it is said that good water is always sure to be found on the sites of the old monasteries. In Italy the case seems to be the same with regard to wine. Pope has a fine couplet in the Dunciad, fat and full of colour as its subject:

"To happy convents, buried deep in vines, "Where slumber Abbots, purple as their wines."

Note 48, page 22.

Here's a health to thee and thy line,

Prince of Tuscany.

The original is Re, king, of Tuscany. The term is warranted by the language; but this was a piece of flattery to Cosmo the Third, who strained all his nerves to obtain a regal title, and was extremely jealous of the royalty of the king of Sardinia.

Note 49, page 22.

Flushing the brilliant Medicean stars.

He alludes to the arms of the Medici, which are six golden balls, often exalted by their cour

tiers into stars and planets. I wish they may

not have been gilded pills.

family renders it probable.

The name of the

Cosmo the Third,

here so extravagantly praised, was a weak, pompous prince, who I dare say was kind enough for his own sake to his pleasant physician, and who had just enough of his kindred in him to be led into a seeming love of the arts and literature. He passed his life in playing the sovereign, squabbling with his wife, and trying to find out vegetable luxuries, in the room of those which illness

and his physician made him leave off.

1

It was Galileo, I believe, who gave this name to the satellites of Jupiter, on his discovering them. Never have a box of pills been so cried up before.