Berenicius

, a man utterly unknown, who appeared in Holland in 1670, was thought to be a Jesuit, or a renegade from some other religious fraternity. He got his bread by sweeping chimnies and grinding knives, and died at length in a bog, suffocated in a fit of drunkenness. His talents, if the historians that mention him are to be credited, were extraordinary. He versified with so much ease, that he could recite extempore, and in tolerably good poetry, whatever was said to him in prose. He has been known to translate the Flemish gazettes from that language into Greek or Latin verse with the utmost facility. The dead languages, the living languages, Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, were us familiar to him as his mother tongue. He could repeat by heart Horace, Virgil, Homer, Aristophanes, and several pieces of Cicero and of the Plinies; and, after reciting long passages from them, point out the book and the chapter from whence they were taken. It is supposed that the “Georgarchontomachia sive expugnatae Messopolis” is by him. ²