Bersmann, Gregory

, a native of Germany, was born March 11, 1538, at Annaberg, a little town of Misnia, near the river Schop, on the side of Bohemia. He waseducated with care, and made great progress in the sciences. He was particularly fond of the study of medicine, physics, the belles-lettres, and the learned languages. He excelled in Latin and Greek, and took delight in travelling over France and Italy for forming acquaintance with those who were in most reputation among the literati. On his return, he was successively professor of poetry and Greek at Wittemberg and Leipsic, but being unwilling to sign the formulary of concord, he was dismissed in 1580, and went into the territories of the priuce of Anhalt-Zerbst, where he died the 5th of October 1611, in the seventy-third year of his age. Bersmann put into verse the Psalms of David, and published editions of Virgil, 1581, Ovid, 1582, JEsop,1590, and of Horace, Lucan, Cicero, and other authors of antiquity. He was not less fertile in body than in mind having fourteen sons and six daughters by his marriage with a daughter of Peter Hellebron. Freyer, however, says that he had only four sons. ¹