Egnazio, Batista

, a learned Italian, was born at Venice of poor parents 1 abont 1473, and was a disciple of Politian, and educated along with Leo X. He then opened a private school, and taught the belles lettres when he was only eighteen years of age. This excited the jealousy of Sabellico, a public professor of tha same city; but they became reconciled at last, when Sabclltco, finding himself near his end, sent for Egnazio, besought his forgiveness, and entrusted to his care a work in manuscript, which Egnazio published, and pronounced the funeral oration over the ashes of Sabellico. Egnazio had now conferred upon him the right of citizenship, and was afterwards presented with ecclesiastical preferment. In 1515 he was sent with others to Milan, to compliment king Francis I. to whose honour Egnazio composed a panegyric, for which he was rewarded with a gold medal. In 1520 he was elected public professor of eloquence at Venice, in opposition to many competitors; and so high was his reputation in this department of literature, that he had frequently five hundred auditors to hear him daily, and even when towards the decline of life he was desirous of resigning his employment, and to be declared Emeritus, they refused a demand which might be so prejudicial to his school, and persuaded him to continue. He at length, however, was permitted to retire, and out of respect to him, all his emoluments were continued, and his property declared free of all taxation. He died July 4, 1553, and bequeathed his property and library to three illustrious families of Venice. His principal works are a treatise “De Romania principibus vel Csesaribus,” containing the lives of the Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Palaeologus, and from Charlemagne to Maximilian, Cologn, 1519, and reprinted in various editions of Suetonius, with notes on that author by Egnazio; some orations and epistles, a panegyric on Francis I. king of France, in heroic verse, printed at Venice in 1540, and “De exemplis virorum illustrium,” a work compiled in the manner of | Valerius Maximus, which he did not quite finish, but which was published after his death, at Venice in 1554, 4to. ¹