B E R 



311 



B E R 



to those literary undertakings for which alone he is now 

 remembered. 



His great work, the translation of Froissart's Chronicles, 

 was undertaken by the king's command, and the first 

 volume was printed by Pynson in the year 1523, and the 

 second volume in 1525. For common use this translation 

 has now been superseded by the modernone of Mr.Johnes; 

 but we nevertheless rejoice that Lord Berners's translation 

 was reprinted in 1812, under the direction of Mr. Utterson, 

 who very properly considered that it was still of great value 

 for the appropriate colours with which it pourtrays the man- 

 ners and customs of our ancestors. ' Considering,' says this 

 editor, ' the unusual task imposed upon him, that of trans- 

 lating so voluminous a work into the English language, 

 which was very seldom used as a vehicle for aught but col- 

 loquial purposes, we cannot but feel admiration at the man- 

 ner in which the task was completed This having 



been the first historical work of magnitude in the English 

 language, the title of a valuable if not the earliest English 

 classic writer, may be conceded to his lordship, although his 

 production was not original.' The other works of Lord 

 Berners are thus characterized by Horace Walpole : 



' Others of his works were a whimsical medley of trans- 

 lations from French, Italian, and Spanish novels, which 

 seem to have been the mode then, as they were afterwards 

 in the reign of Charles II., 



' When ev'ty flow'ry courtier wrote romance.' 



The following is a list of the works thus noticed : 



' The Hystorye of the moost noble and valyaunt knyght, 

 Arthur of Lytell Brytayne ;' ' The antient, honourable, fa- 

 mous, and delightful Historic of Huon of Bourdeux, enter- 

 laced with the Love of many Ladies ;' ' The Golden Boke of 

 Marcus Aurelius ;' all translations from the French. ' The 

 Castle of Love,' from the Spanish. He also composed a 

 work, ' Of the Duties of the Inhabitants of Calais ;' and a 

 comedy called, ' Ite in vineam meam,' which was usually 

 acted in the great church of Calais after vespers. Neither 

 of the two last-named works were printed, and it is not 

 known whether the comedy was in Latin or English. 



(Preface to Utterson's edition of Lord Berners' transla- 

 tion : Wood's Athenep Oxonienies, by Bliss ; Walpole's 

 Royal and Noble Authors, &c.) 



BERNI, FRANCESCO, was born about 1490 at Lam- 

 porecchio, a village of the Val di Nievole in Tuscany, of a 

 noble but poor family. He studied for the church, and be- 

 came a priest. Having gone to Rome to try his fortune, 

 he entered the service of Cardinal Divizio da Bibbiena, his 

 countryman and relative, who was in great favour with 

 Leo X. After the cardinal's death, he passed into the 

 service of the cardinal's nephew, Angelo Divizio, a prelate 

 of the court of Rome. We are not told in what capacity he 

 served either the uncle or the nephew, but Berni complains 

 that neither of them did any thing to better his fortune, 

 and he says he was driven by want to seek a more liberal 

 master. His next employment was as secretary to Ghiberti, 

 who was datario to Pope Clement VII., and also bishop of 

 Verona; but, according to his own confession, he found 

 himself little qualified for his office. In fact, Berni was 

 idle, dissipated, and continually in love with some woman or 

 other. He contrived, however, to remain with Ghiberti for 

 seven years, during which he accompanied his master, or 

 was sent by him on business, to several parts of Italy. He 

 was present at the plunder of Rome by the Spaniards and 

 Germans in 1527, of which he speaks in his 'Orlando In- 

 namorato.' (See canto xiv. St. 23-27 of Molini's edition, 

 Florence, 1827.) About the year 1530, or 1531, he left 

 Ghiberti and went to Florence, where he was made a canon 

 of the cathedral, a preferment which enabled him to live in 

 a sort of affluence for the rest of his days. His facetious- 

 ness and social conviviality recommended him to the Duke 

 Alessandro, as well as to his cousin, Cardinal Ippolito do' 

 Medici, the son of Giuliano, and nephew of Leo X. The 

 two cousins were secret enemies, and Cardinal Ippolito, 

 through jealousy or ambition, favoured the projects of the 

 Florentine malcontents, who wished to shake oft' the tyran- 

 nical yoke of Duke Alessandro. Ippolito, however, died 

 suddenly in 1 535, of poison administered to him by one of 

 his domestics, at the instigation, as was generally believed, 

 of the duke. A story became current soon after, that Bemi, 

 who was intimate witli both, had been solicited by Ales- 

 sandro to poison Ippolito, and at the same time by Ippolito 

 to poison Alessandro, and that, in consequence of his re- 

 liual, he waa hmuelf poisoned by one of the two rivals. 



But Berni survived Ippolito one year, when neither the 

 cardinal could any longer poison him, nor the duke stood 

 any more in need of Berni's instrumentality. Besides, the 

 well-known jocular, good-humoured, and careless disposition 

 of Berni renders it unlikely that he codld be thought a fit 

 instrument for such a crime. Accordingly, Mazzuchelli and 

 other critics have utterly discarded the story as having no 

 foundation in truth. 



The epoch of Berni's death has been long a matter of dis- 

 pute : some place it in 1 543, but Molini, in the introduction 

 to his edition of the 'Orlando' above-mentioned, fixes it on 

 the 26th of May, 1536, on the authority of Salvino Salvini's 

 chronological register of the canons of the cathedral. The 

 latter years of Berni's life were spent at Florence or in its 

 neighbourhood, in a dissipated sort of existence. That was 

 an age of general profligacy, and Berni shared in the com- 

 mon licentiousness, though he must not be compared in 

 this respect with Aretino and others of his notorious con- 

 temporaries. The very fact of his remaining for seven years 

 with Ghiberti, a prelate generally respected for his conduct, 

 shows that Berni could not be such an abandoned character 

 as he has been supposed by some. Berni's poetry though 

 often licentious, according to the universal taste of the 

 times, exhibits many traits of moral feeling which seem in- 

 compatible with total deprayity. 



Berni is the principal writer of Italian jocose poetry, 

 which has ever since retained the name of po'esia Bernesca. 

 Burchiello, Pucci, Bellincioni, and others, had introduced 

 this style of poetry before him, but Berni gave it a variety 

 of forms, and carried it to a perfection which has seldom 

 been equalled by any one since. Berni had an inex- 

 haustible fund of humour, and a most quick perception of 

 the absurd and ridiculous. His lively imagination placed in 

 juxtaposition the most incongruous images and ideas, and 

 thus derived fresh food for pleasantry from its own inven- 

 tion. Berni's reading of the Latin and Italian writers was 

 extensive, and he often alludes to them for the purpose of 

 contrasting some of their lofty images with others which are 

 trivial. In one of his ' Capitoli,' which he addresses to 

 Ghiberti's French cook, after giving an account of Aris- 

 totle's works, he exclaims at the end, in a tone of apparently 

 sincere regret, ' what a pity it is that Aristotle did not write 

 also a work on cookery ! ' In another place, complaining of 

 a mule which a friend had lent him for an excursion, and 

 which was continually stumbling on the road, he says that 

 it had the power of conjuring up stones from the very 

 bottom of one of the circles of Dante's ' Hell,' as if for the 

 express purpose of knocking its feet against them. In a 

 chapter which he wrote in praise of the plague, he discovers 

 a number of advantages resulting to mankind from that 

 scourge. At other times he is satirical on the real vices 

 and follies of courts and princes. His description of the 

 irresolute, timorous, time-gaining policy of the court of 

 Rome under Clement VII., is characteristic : 



' l"n Pnpato composto di rispetti, 

 Di considerazioni, e di discorsi, 

 Di piu, di poi, di mil, di si, di ibrsi, 

 Di pur, di nssai parole seiiza cffutti.' 



His satire is generally of the milder sort, but at times it 

 rises to a most bitter strain of invective. Such, for instance, 

 is his ' Capitolo ' against Pope Adrian VI., whose very vir- 

 tues made him unpopular with the Romans. Berni's 

 humour may be said to be untranslateable, for it depends 

 on the genius of the Italian language, the constitution of 

 the Italian mind, and the habits and associations of the 

 Italian people. Berni's expressions are carefully and happily 

 selected for effect, and although he speaks of the haste in 

 which he wrote, it is proved by the MSS. of his burlesque 

 poems that he corrected 'and recorrected every line. (See 

 Mazzuchelli, Scrittori d Italia, art. ' Berni.') His lan- 

 guage is choice Tuscan. The worst feature in Berni's hu- 

 mourous poems is his frequent licentious allusions and 

 equivocations, which, although clothed in decent language, 

 are well understood by Italian readers. Berni's poems 

 were not collected till after his death, with the exception of 

 one or two published in his lifetime. The first edition of 

 part of his poems was made at Ferrara in ] 537. Grazzini 

 published one volume of Berni's Poesie Burlesche, together 

 with those of Mauro, Varchi, Delia Casa, &c., in 1 548. A 

 second volume appeared in 1555 ; a third volume was pub- 

 lished at Naples with the date of Florence, in 1 723. There 

 is also an edition of the Poesie Burlesche in two vols. 8vo. 

 London, 1721-24, with notes by Salvini. 



Berni is also known for hia Rifacimento,' or recasting of 



