Cruscans or Della Cruscan 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.)
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
