Note 135 — CARLO GOZZI. (continued 2)

The Italian is democraziano. Perhaps Gozzi wrote democriziano, from Democritus, the sage who laughed at all things. In either case the adjective is wrongly formed. It ought to be either democratico or democritico. But democrazia may have led him to democraziano. He not infrequently employs this phrase, which always puzzles me, because nobody was really less democratic than Carlo Gozzi, and as yet, in 1780, he had no reason, under the pressure of the Revolution, to dissemble.