LAZY CORNER;

OR,

BED VERSUS BUSINESS.

FRANCESCO BERNI, one of the most popular wits and poets of Italy, flourished in the fifteenth century at the courts of Clement the Seventh and Alessandro de Medici. A tragical story used to be told of his having been poisoned by Alessandro, for refusing to administer a like death to the poisoner's brother; but nobody now believes it. Berni was related to Cardinal Bibbiena, who wrote one of the earliest Italian comedies; but the cardinal, in spite of his comedy and his kinsmanship, did nothing for him; and he got as little from his eminence's nephew, his heir; he therefore entered the service of the pope's datary, which he ultimately quitted to reside on a small canonry he possessed at Florence; where he died, after a life of ease and good-fellowship, varied with serious as well as lively studies.

Berni was a real poet, grave as well as gay; but unfortunately he was thrown on one of the corruptest ages of Italy, and condescended to write many things unworthy of the finer parts of his genius, to amuse a dissolute nobility. He wrote such pure, unaffected Tuscan, and his manner in his lighter pieces was so exquisitely naïve, full of those unexpected turns in which carelessness and significance meet, that although Pulci began it, and Marot and La Fontaine excelled in it in France, it was called after his name among his countrymen, by whom it is still known as the "Bernesque" style. It had many followers who became celebrated, such as Casa, Molza, Firenzuola, Mauro, and others, most of them friends of his, and members of a club called Vine-Dressers, ( Vignaiuoli,) who each took the name of something in connection with winemaking. They probably composed (next to our Elizabethan club at the "Mermaid,") the most brilliant assemblage of wits that Europe has seen, not excepting those of Charles the Second's time, or the coteries of the Chaulieus and Chapelles. Voltaire profited greatly by

this style; and nobody needs to be reminded what lustre it has received from the pen of Lord Byron.

But the greatest and best work of Berni, after all, was his modernization of Boiardo's beautiful old poem, the Orlando Innamorato, in which he exhibited a genius of the most solid description. Indeed, it is a production unique in the history of letters, having contested the palm of superiority with its original. The stanzas here attempted in English, form part of the sixty-seventh canto of this work. Berni inserted them in the account of a Fairy Palace, in which the fine old poet had brought his knights together to lead a luxurious life of dancing and love-making. The remodeller introduces himself as a "certain Florentine," living in the same age, and brought here for the same purpose of doing as he pleased (for that was the order of the house); only his pleasure was, not to dance, or trouble himself with action of any kind, but to lie in bed and do nothing, his brain and all his other faculties, having, he says, been worn out by eternal writing and correspondence, as secretary to the aforesaid pope's datary, a prelate, whose office it was to date the papal bulls, and to do a world of chancery business besides. Berni was a man unfit for business of any kind, except to write poetry and enjoy himself; and accordingly he here gives a ludicrous account of his official toils, and of the luxurious revenge he took of them out of the very prostration of his powers. Some dull biographers have taken the caricature for a history of his actual way of life; whereas, though it is not to be doubted that he could be lazy enough when he chose, he must have been any thing but a sluggard in ordinary, his company having been in the greatest request during the sprightliest period of Italian wit, besides his having been a visitor of divers cities, and rewritten the whole of Boiardo's poem, which is a long one.

It has been supposed, and I cannot help thinking justly, that Thomson owed the idea of his charming Castle of Indolence to this fancy of Berni's. Mr. Stewart Rose, in his abstract of the new Orlando Innamorato, (p. xliv.) doubts whether the author of the Seasons was sufficiently conversant with Italian poetry; but surely, whether he was conversant with it or not, (and the probability, I should think, was the other way,) he who had been intimate with so many scholars of all kinds, and who had also travelled in Italy himself, and could have required nothing but a hint for a fiction so congenial, might, or rather must, have heard of Berni often enough for such a result.

Thomson, a notorious lier in bed, was fifteen years writing his Castle of Indolence; and he is said to have been seen in his garden at Richmond eating a peach off a tree with his hands in his waistcoat pockets. I doubt if the big, but not corpulent Berni, ever went so far on the wrong side of activity as that.

AMONG the rest a Florentine there came,
A boon companion, of a gentle kin.
I say a Florentine, although the name
Had taken root some time in Casentin,
Where his good father wedded a fair dame,
And pitch'd his tent. The place he married in
Was call'd Bibbiena, as it is at present;
A spot upon the Arno, very pleasant.

Nigh to this place was Lamporecchio (scene
Of great Masetto's gardening recreations);
There was our hero born;-then, till nineteen,
Bred up in Florence, not on the best rations;
Then, it pleas'd God, settled at Rome; I mean,
Drawn there by hopes from one of his relations;
Who, though a cardinal, and Pope's right arm,
Did the poor devil neither good nor harm.75

This great man's heir vouchsafed him then his grace,

With whom he fared as he was wont to fare; Whence, finding himself still in sorry case, He thought he might as well look out elsewhere; So hearing people wish they had a place

With the good Datary of St. Peter's chair, A thing they talk'd of with a perfect unctionPlace get he did in that enchanting function.

This was a business which he thought he knew; Alas! he found he didn't know a bit of it; Nothing went right, slave as he might, and stew; And yet he never, somehow, could get quit of it; The more he did, the more he had to do;

Desk, shelves, hands, arms, whatever could admit of it,

Were always stuff'd with letters and with dockets,
Turning his brains, and bulging out his pockets.

Luckless in all, perhaps not worth his hire,
He even miss'd the few official sweets;
Some petty tithes assign'd him did but tire

His patience; nil was always on their sheets. :
Now 'twas bad harvests, now a flood, now fire,
Now dev'l himself, that hinder'd his receipts.
There were some fees his due ;-God knows, not
many;

No matter;-never did he touch a penny.

The man, for all that, was a happy man;

Thought not too much; indulg'd no gloomy fit: Folks wish'd him well. Prince, peasant, artisan, Every one lov'd him; for the rogue had wit, And knew how to amuse. His fancy ran

On thousands of odd things, on which he writ Certain mad waggeries in the shape of poems, With strange elaborations of their proems.76

Choleric he was withal, when fools reprov'd him;
Free of his tongue, as he was frank of heart;
Ambition, avarice, neither of them mov'd him;
True to his word; caressing without art;
A lover to excess of those that lov'd him;

Yet if he met with hate, could play a part Which show'd the fiercest he had found his mate; Still he was proner far 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 suffer'd to forget its place;

But not approving beards to that amount,
The owner brought it to a sharp account.

But of all things, all servitude loath'd he;

Why then should fate have wound him in its bands?

Freedom seem'd made for him, yet strange to see,
His lot was always in another's hands;
His! who had always thirsted instantly

To disobey commands, because commands !
Left to his own free will, the man was glad
To further yours.

Command him, he went mad.

Yet field-sports, dice, cards, balls, and such like

courses,

Things which he might be thought to set store

by,

Gave him but little pleasure.

He liked horses; But was content to let them please his eye, Buying them squaring not with his resources; Therefore his summum bonum was to lie Stretch'd at full length;-yea, frankly be it said, To do no single thing but lie in bed.

'Twas owing all to that infernal writing.

Body and brain had borne such grievous rounds Of kicks, cuffs, floors, from copying and inditing, That he could find no balsam for his wounds, No harbour for his wreck, half so inviting As to lie still, far from all sights and sounds, And So, in bed, do nothing on God's earth, But try and give his senses a new birth.

Bed, bed's the thing, by Heav'n! (thus would he swear,)

Bed is your only work; your only duty.

Bed is one's gown, one's slippers, one's arm-chair, Old coat; you're not afraid to spoil its beauty. Large you may have it, long, wide, brown, or fair,