Guarino Of Verona

, surnamed Veronese, the first branch of a family celebrated in the republic of letters, and one of the revivers of literature, was born at Verona in 1370. After being taught Latin by John of Ravenna, he went to Constantinople, with the sole view of learning Greek in the school of Emanuel Chrysoloras, who had not then come to Italy. Pontico Virunio, in his life of Chrysoloras, says that Guarino was of an advanced age when he set out for Constantinople, and that he returned to Italy with a large collection of Greek manuscripts, the loss of which by shipwreck so affected him, that his hair turned white in one night; but Maffei and Apostolo Zeno have justly considered this as a fable. It appears, on the other hand, on comparing various circumstances, that Guarino was very young when he went into Greece, and was only twenty years of age when he returned. After this return he first kept school at Florence, and afterwards successively at Verona, Padua, Bologna, Venice, and Ferrara, in which last city he resided longest. Nicolas III. of Este had invited him thither in 1429 to superintend the education of his son Lionel. Six or seven years after, he was appointed professor of Greek and Latin in the university of Ferrara. This office he filled until the assembling of the grand council, to which the emperor John Paleologus came, accompanied with several Greeks, who found Guarino. sufficient employment, as he mentions in his letters, and on | the council being removed to Florence, he accompanied them thither as interpreter between the Latins and Greeks. He returned again to Ferrara, where he held his professorship until his death in 1460. His principal works consist of Latin translations from Greek authors; particularly of many of Plutarch’s lives, part of Plutarch’s morals, and Strabo’s geography. Of this author he at first translated only ten books, by order of pope Nicholas V.; the other seven were translated by Gregory of Typhernuin, and in this state the work was first printed at Rome in 1470, folio. But, at the request of the Venetian senator Marcello, Guarino made a translation of these seven books, of which there are manuscript copies at Venice, Modena, &c. Maffei, in his “Verona Illustrata,” mentions also a translation of the whole seventeen in the hand-writing of Guarino, which was at one time in the library of the senator Soranzo at Venice. To his translation of Plutarch’s lives, he added those of Aristotle and Plato. He also compiled a Greek grammar, “Em. Chrysolorae erotemata lingusc Graecse, in compendium redacta, a Guarino Veronesi,” Ferrar. 1509, 8vo and a Latin grammar, “Grammatical institutiones,” without date or place, but printed at Verona, 1487, and reprinted in 1540, the model, says Maffei, from which all others have been taken. Annexed are some lesser treatises, “Carmina ditiferentialia,” “Liber de Diphtongis,” &c. Guarino also wrote commentaries or notes on various authors, both Greek and Latin, among the latter on Cicero’s orations and Persius’s satires, and was the author of various Latin orations delivered at Verona, Ferrara, and other places, and of some Latin poems, and a great number of letters which have not been printed. He was the first who recovered the poems of Catullus, a manuscript which was mouldering in a garret, and almost destroyed, and rendered the whole legible, with the exception of a very few verses. If it be thought that even all this is insufficient to justify the high reputation which Guarino enjoyed in his lifetime, and for ages afterwards, we must add that, independently of rendering these services to the cause of learning, which were of great importance at its revival, Guarino derived no small share of fame from the vast number of scholars whom he formed, with a like taste for classical literature, which they dispersed throughout all Europe. Guarino, likewise, was one of the most indefatigable student* of his time. Even in old age his memory was | extraordinary, and his application incessant. He took little nourishment and little sleep, and rarely went abroad, yet he preserved his strength and faculties to the last. By his wife he had at least twelve children, two of whom followed his steps Jerome became secretary to Alphonso, king of Naples and Baptist, or Battista, rather better known, was professor of Greek and Latin at Ferrara, like his fathev, and like him educated some eminent scholars, among whom were Giraldi and Aldus Manutius. He left a collection of Latin poetry, “Baptists Guarini Veronensis poemata Latina,Modena, 1496; a treatise on study, “De ordine docendi ac studendi,” without place or date; but there is a subsequent edition of Heidelberg, 1489. He wrote also other treatises, translations from the Greek, discourses, and letters, which latter remain in manuscript. It is to him we owe the first edition of the Commentaries of Servius on Virgil; and he assisted his father in recovering and making legible the manuscript of Catullus above mentioned. 1

1 Hist. Litt, d’ltalie. —Tiraboschi.Moreri,