The English Della Cruscan School, although its nucleus was formed in
1785 by the publication of The Florence Miscellany, existed neither in
the consciousness of the group which formed it nor in that of the pu
blic until it was so dubbed as a term of reproach by William Gifford in
his bitter satire The Baviad (1791). As has already been mentioned
Merry, the leader of the group, claimed to be a member of the Real
Accademia Fiorentina which had swallowed up the Crusca and the two other
Floren- tine Academies in 1783; but it was not until the summer of 1787,
when during his lingering voyage of return to England he began to send
his contributions signed "Della Crusca" to the World, that the name
became publicly known or even employed by his friends. Merry uses it of
himself in a letter to Mrs. Piozzi after his arrival in England, on 27th
February, 1788. 1 His public avowal of his romantic yearning after the
suppressed Accademia della Crusca appears on the title-page of his
Paulina (1787); for whereas on the title-page of Robert Manners (1785)
he for the first time calls himself "A Member of the Royal Academy of
Florence," the author of Paulina, "Robert Merry, Esq.