Page:Carducci - Poems of Italy.djvu/18

 ," he wrote to a friend during this period, "which latter, as our great Leopardi teaches us, is more natural to man and more worthy of him than the other."

The next year saw Carducci's entrance into the literary lists—an entrance which was, however, anonymously made. A short while before, one Gargani, a school comrade of Giosue's in Florence, had published a booklet entitled "Remarks on the Ultra Modern Poets" ("Diceria su i poeti odiernissimi"), which attacked without mercy the servility and degradation to which poetry had been reduced by the verse-makers of the day. The "Remarks" created a considerable stir among Florentine critics, and were assailed with every sarcasm and opprobrious epithet that the editorial pen could furnish. Gargani, however, was one of a group of friends all the members of which had participated in the compilation of the volume and were eager to defend it from attack; and there presently appeared a second pamphlet under the title: "Interest on the Principle; the Pedantic Friends to the Ultra Modern Poets and their Defenders" ("Giunta alia derrata; ai poeti odiernissimi e lor difensori gli amici pedanti.") The four

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