Della Crusʹcans or Della Crusʹcan School

So called from Crusca, the Florentine academy. The name is applied to a school of poetry started by some young Englishmen at Florence in the latter part of the eighteenth century. These silly, sentimental affectations, which appeared in the World and the Oracle, created for a time quite a furore. The whole affair was mercilessly gibbeted in the Baviad and Mæviad of Gifford. (Academia della Crusca literally means, the Academy of Chaff, and its object was to sift the chaff from the Italian language, or to purify it.)