See "Capitolo sopra l'epiteto della poverta, à Messer Carlo Capponi," by Matteo Francesi in the Rime Piacevoli del Berni, Copetta, Francesi, &c., vol.

The first edition of Berni was prohibited in consequence of its containing a severe attack on the clergy; but even the prohibition did not help to make it popular.

I do not mean to compare Chaucer with Boiardo, or Dryden with Berni.

Dryden did not apprehend the sentiment of Chaucer in any such degree as Berni did that of his original.

Indeed, Mr. Panizzi himself, to whom the world is indebted both for the only good edition of Boiardo and for the knowledge of the most curious facts respecting Berni's rifacimento, declares himself unable to pronounce which of the two poems is the better one, the original Boiardo, or the re-modelled.

My first acquaintance, for example, with the Orlando Innamorato was through the medium of Berni; and on turning to those stories in his version, which I have translated from his original for the present volume, I found that every passage but one, to which I had given a mark of admiration, was the property of the old poet.

And then, in the celebrated introductions to his cantos, and the additions to Boiardo's passages of description and character (those about Rodamonte, for example, so admired by Foscolo), if Berni occasionally spews a comparative want of faith which you regret, he does it with a regret on his own part, visible through all his jesting.

If I were asked, in short, which of the two poems I should prefer keeping, were I compelled to choose, I should first complain of being forced upon so hard an alternative, and then, with many a look after Berni, retain Boiardo.

Besides, after all, one cannot be sure that Berni could have invented as Boiardo did.

And Panizzi has observed, with striking and conclusive truth, that "without Berni the Orlando Innamorato will be read and enjoyed; without Boiardo not even the name of the poem remains.

Berni raised a fine polished edifice, copied and enlarged after that of Boiardo;on the other hand, the old house, thank Heaven, remains; and our best way of settling the question between the two is, to be glad that we have got both.

Let the reader who is rich in such possessions look upon Berni's as one of his town mansions, erected in the park-like neighbourhood of some metropolis; and Boiardo's as the ancient country original of it, embosomed in the woods afar off, and beautiful as the Enchanted Castle of Claude "Lone sitting by the shores of old romance.

[Footnote 7: A late amiable man of wit, Mr. Stewart Rose, has given a prose abstract of Berni's Orlando Innamorato, with occasional versification; but it is hardly more than a dry outline, and was, indeed, intended only as an introduction to his version of the Furioso.

A good idea, however, of one of the phases of Berni's humour may be obtained from the same gentleman's abridgment of the Animali Parlanti of Casti, in which he has introduced a translation of the Tuscan's description of himself and of his way of life, out of his additions to Boiardo's poem.

The verses in the prohibited edition of Berni's Orlando, in which he denounced the corruptions of the clergy, have been published, for the first time in this country, in the notes to the twentieth canto of Mr. Panizzi's Boiardo.

" Since writing this note I have called to mind that a translation of Berni's account of himself is to be found in Mr. Rose's prose abstract of the Innamorato.]

"] [Footnote 2: Berni has here introduced the touching words, "Would I were not so!"

He knew Vittoria Colonna, and Veronica da Gambera, and Giulia Gonzaga (whom the Turks would have run away with), and Ippolita Sforza, the beautiful blue-stocking, who set Bandello on writing his novels, and Bembo, and Flaminio, and Berni, and Molza, and Sannazzaro, and the Medici family, and Vida, and Macchiavelli; and nobody doubts that he might have shone at the court of Leo the brightest of the bright.

Even the great Galileo, who was a man of wit, bred up in the pure Tuscan school of Berni and Casa, and who was an idolator of Ariosto, wrote, when he was young, a "review" of the Jerusalem Delivered, which it is painful to read, it is so unjust and contemptuous.

As examples of his lighter vein, we might allude to the sonnet on the Sistine and the capitolo in answer to Francesco Berni, written in the name of Fra Sebastiano.

One seemed sick; he was thin, and his back was scarred with marks of the grub of the loathsome berni fly.

This epistle is to be found in Opere burlesche del Berni, Aretino ed altri, vol.

In the same manner Berni travestied the courtly pastoral of vernacular writers in his realistic pictures of village love.

This serves to differentiate it from the style of pastoral, and suggests that we should rather class it along with such works as Berni's Caccia d'amore.

BERNI, FRANCESCO, an Italian poet, born in Tuscany, who excelled in the burlesque, to whom the Italian as a literary language owes much; remodelled Boiardo's "Orlando Innamorato" in a style surpassing that of the original.