prodigious laziness. His portrait of himself is very lifelike, and probably very accurate:
"The man, for all that, was a happy man;
Thought not too much; indulged no gloomy fit;
Folks wished him well. Prince, peasant, artisan,
Every one loved him; for the rogue had wit,
And knew how to amuse. His fancy ran
On thousands of odd things which he had writ:
Certain mad waggeries in the shape of poems,
With strange elaborations of their proems.
Choleric he was withal, when fools reproved him;
Free of his tongue, as he was frank of heart;
Ambition, avarice, neither of these moved him;
True to his word; caressing without art;
A lover to excess of those that loved him;
Yet, if he met with hate, could play a part
Which showed the fiercest he had found his mate
Still he was pronerfar to love than hate.
In person he was big, yet tight and lean,
Had long thin legs, big nose, and a large face;
Eyebrows which there was little space between;
Deep-set, blue eyes; and beard in such good case
That the poor eyes would scarcely have been seen
Had it been suffered to forget its place;
But, not approving beards to that amount,
The owner brought it to a sharp account."
Berni's death did him more honour than his life. The suppressed dedication to the twentieth canto of his Orlando seems to prove that he had become serious in his later years, and fallen under Protestant influences; but this was unknown to Cardinal Cibo, who deemed him the right sort of man to commend a poisoned chalice to the lips of Cardinal Salviati; and his refusal, there is every reason to believe, cost him his own life (1535). He died with strong symptoms of poison, was
