Betussi, Joseph

, an Italian scholar of considerable celebrity, was born about the beginning of the sixteenth century, at Bassano. In his early years he shewed a taste for polite literature, and published some poems that were read as very extraordinary productions, but unfortunately he took for his guide the famous, or rather infamous, Peter Aretin, both in his studies and his morals. Under such an instructor, we are not to wonder that his irregularities obstructed his advancement in life. For some time he earned a subsistence at Venice in the printing-office of Giolito, and afterwards wandered over Italy and even France, in quest of better employment, which his misconduct always prevented. At length he was recommended | as secretary to a person of rank, and is said to have gone to Spain in 1562, in this character, but on his return to Italy, he resumed his irregularities, and lived as usual on precarious supplies. The time of his death is not ascertained, but according to a letter of Goselini, a contemporary writer, he was living in 1565. His works are, 1. “Dialogo amoroso e rime di Giuseppe Betussi e d’altri autori,” Venice, 1545, 8vo. This dialogue is in prose and verse; and the speakers are Pigna, Sansovino, and Baffa, a poetess of his time. 2. “II Raverta, dialogo, &c.” Venice, 1544, 1545, &c. 8vo. 3. Italian translations of Boccaccio’s three Latin works, “De casibus Virorum etFoerninarum illustrium” “De claris Mulieribus;” and “De Genealogia deorum” the first, Venice, 1545^, 8vo the second, with the addition of illustrious ladies from the time of Boccaccio to his own, ibid. 1S47, 8vo; and the third, same year, 4to. Of this last there have been at least thirteen editions, and many of the others. 4. “An Italian translation of the” Seventh book of the Eneid,“Venice, 154G, 8vo, which afterwards made part of an entire translation of that poem by different hands. 5. li La Leonora, Ragionamento sopra la vera bellezza,” Lucca, 1557, 8vo, noticed by Mazzuchelli and Fontanini among the rarest books. 6. “Ragionamento sopra il Catajo, luogo del signor Pio Enea Obizzi,” Padua, 1573, 4to, Ferrara, 1669, with additions. If this description of a magnificent villa was published by Betussi himself, it proves that he was alive much later than we have before conjectured. 7. “L‘Immagine del tempio di Dorina Giovanna d’Aragona, dialogo,” Venice, 1557, 8vo. 8. “Letters” and “Poems” in various collections. ¹