Della-cruscan, any of the members of a late 18th-century school of English writers of pretentious, affected, rhetorically ornate poetry. The school was centred on Robert Merry, who belonged to the Italian Crusca Academy, and was satirized by William Gifford in The Baviad (1791) and The Maeviad (1795). The term Della-cruscan came to refer to an affectedly pedantic literary style.