THEOPHILUS, an Italian poet, was a native of Mantua. He was known also by the title of Merlin Cocciaye, a name which he gave to a poem, and which has been adopted ever since for all trifling performances of the same species, consisting of buffoonery, puns, anagrams, wit without wisdom, and humour without good sense. His poem was called The Macaroni, from an Italian cake of the same name, which is sweet to the taste, but has not the least alimentary virtue, on the contrary palls the appetite and clogs the stomach. These idle poems, however, became the reigning taste in Italy and in France; they gave birth to macaroni academies, and reaching England, to macaroni clubs; till, in the end, every thing insipid, contemptible, and ridiculous, in the character, dyes, or behaviour, of both men and women, is now summed up in the despicable appellation of a macaroni. Folengio died in 1544.