Vegio, Maffei

, or Mapheus Veqids, a Latin poet of the fifteenth century, was born at Lodi in 1406. He studied law, in compliance with his father, but had a stronger predilection for poetry. He made, however, such proficiency as to be successively chosen professor of both in the university of Pavia. He went afterwards to Rome, and was secretary of the briefs under the popes Eugenius IV. Nicholas V. and Pius II. and died there in 1458. He wrote a great many works in prose, as “Dialogues de miseria et felicitate,” “Disputatio inter solem, terrain et aurum,” and others of the ascetic kind, ali inserted in the Library of the fathers. Dupin and other writers of the Romish church, bestow the highest commendations on one of | his treatises “De educatione liberorum,” in which he borrows much from St. Augustine. Such was his enthusiasm for this saint, that he built a chapel in his church at Rome on the right hand of the great altar, and having caused the bones of St. Augustine, and of St. Monica his mother, to be placed in a very fine shrine, he removed them from Ostia to that chapel. He wrote a poem on the death of Astyanax, four books on the expedition of the Argonauts, four on the life of St. Antony, and other poems, in which there is more of copiousness than force, and more of ease than elegance. But his supplement to Virgil is his most remarkable effort. Fancying that the Æneid was imperfect, and wanted a denouement, he wrote a thirteenth book, which has been printed in some editions of Virgil, and even translated into Italian and French. In English we have likewise a translation, published in 1758, but it is of the burlesque kind, in imitation of Cotton. ¹