Ambrogi, Antoine Marie

, an eminent Italian scholar, was born at Florence, June 13, 1713, and died at Rome in 1788, where he had been professor of eloquence for thirty years with great reputation. Most of the present Italian literati are indebted to him for their taste for study and the happy manner in which he taught them to employ their talents. He published a “Translation of Virgil into blank verse,” of which the edition printed at Rome, 3 vols. fol. 1763, a most superb book, is very scarce: he translated likewise some of the tragedies of Voltaire, Florence, 1752, and a selection of Cicero’s epistles; he published a Latin oration on the election of Joseph II. to be king of the Romans; but he is principally known for the “Museum Kicheranum,” in 2 vols. folio, 1765. The care of this valuable museum was long confided to him, and he prevailed upon the learned cardinal De Zelada to enrich it by his collections. He left in manuscript, a Latin poem on the cultivation of the lemon-tree. One other publication remains to be noticed; his translation of the Jesuit Noceti’s two poems on the Iris and the Aurora Borealis, which were printed in the same magnificent manner with his Virgil. ²