Berti, Alexander Pompey

, a learned Italian, was born at Lucca, Dec. 23, 1686. He entered when sixteen into the congregation, called the Mother of God at Naples, and prosecuted his studies with success and perseverance. On his return to Lucca he acquired great reputation as a general scholar and preacher, and in 1717, taught | rhetoric at Naples. The marquis cie Vasto having appointed him to be his librarian, he increased the collection with a number of curious books, of which he had an accurate knowledge, and also greatly enlarged the library of his convent. He introduced among his brethren a taste for polite literature, and t brined a colony of Arcadians. In 1739, he settled finally at Rome, where he was appointed successively vice-rector, assistant-general, and historian of his order. He was one of the most distinguished members of the society of the Arcadians at Home, and of many other societies. He died at Rome, of an apoplexy, March 23, 1752. Mazzuihelli has given a catalogue of twentyfour works published by him, and of twenty-one that remain in manuscript. Among these we^may notice, I. “La Caduta de‘ decemviri clella Roman a republica per la funzione della serenissima republica di Lucca,” Lucca, 1717. 2. “Canzone per le vittorie coritro il Turco del principe Eugenio,” ibid, without date, 4to. 3. The lives of several of the Arcadians, printed in the prose memoirs of that academy, under his academic name of Nicasio Poriniano. 4. Translations into the Italian of several French authors and poetical pieces in various collections. 5. We owe to him chiefly an important bibliographical work, “Catalogo della iibreria Capponi, con annotazioni in diversi luoghi,” Rome, 1747, 4to. It is the more necessary to notice this work, because the editor Giorgi, who has given very little of his own, does not once mention Berti’ name. Among his unpublished works is one of the biographical kind, “Memorie degli scrittori Lucchesi,” a collection of the lives of the writers of Lucca. It being well known, as early as 1716, that this was ready for the press, Mazzuchelii, who had waited very patiently for what was likely to be of so much service to himself, at length, in 1739, took the liberty to inquire of Berti the cause of a delay so unusual. Berti answered that the difficulties he had met -with had obliged him to re- write his work, and dispose it in a new order that the names were ranged according to the families the most ancient families had been replaced by new ones in the various offices of dignity in that little republic, and the new heads and all, their relations were not very fond of being reminded that their ancestors were physicians, men of learning, and “people of that sort.” ¹

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