Casanova, Mark Anthony

, a Latin poet of the sixteenth century, was a native of Rome, and gained a reputation in the epigrammatic species of poetry, for which he had a natural bent. He imitated Martial, particularly in his lively style, and was master of the art of pointing his terminations, which he exercised with the greatest ease. In the verses he composed for the illustrious characters of antient Rome he proposed Catullus for his model; but he is far from attaining to that purity and delicacy which charm us in the Latin poet; and though he sometimes comes up to him in elegance, yet his diction is more strong than mellow. His poems are to be found in the “Delicise Poetaruin Italorum.” Having exercised his wit at the expence of pope Clement VII. to please the Colonna family, he was imprisoned and condemned to death, but received a pardon. When Rome was taken by the Imperialists in 1527, he was stripped of all, reduced to beggary, and died in that year, either of famine or the plague. ²