One thinks for instance of Manzoni, Beccaria, Vico (the last sometimes perhaps quite despite himself) — and for their “enthusiasm” Mazzini, Verdi, Carducci, and Gramsci, too, though they were but latecomers. It was not by accident that Thomas Mann in his Magic Mountain made an Italian the most suave and devilish, thus the most tempting, mouthpiece for the Enlightenment. (The same character was even supposed to be a pupil of the aforementioned Carducci, and did not hesitate to mention one of his master’s most telling bits of poesy.)