Navagero, Andrew,

a learned Italian scholar and poet, was born at Venice, of a patrician family, in 1483, and was instructed in Latin and Greek at Venice and Padua, under Sabellicus and Marcus Musurus. In the Latin language and composition he acquired great facility and taste, as appeared by his subsequent productions; and also cultivated Italian poetry, in his youth, with equal success. He appears to have embarked both in military and political life. He attended his friend Livanius, the Venetian general, in some of his expeditions and | one of his most elegant Latin poems was a funeral elogy on that officer. His political talents recommended him t6 the office of Venetian ambassador at the court of Charles V. when the Italian States began to take the alarm at that monarch’s apparent projects of aggrandizement. He was afterwards deputed on a similar mission to Francis I.; but too great solicitude on this occasion is supposed to have been fatal to him. After travelling with great speed to France, he had scarce paid his respects to the monarch when he was seized with a fever, at Blois, and died in 1529, in his forty-sixth year.

In 1515, he was nominated by the senate of Venice historiographer of iiis native country, and was at that time deemed the most elegant Latin writer that Italy could boast. He appears however to have been so fastidious as to be rarely satisfied with any thing he wrote, and is supposed to have destroyed ten books of the history of Venice a few hours before his death. Many of his poems shared the same fate, either because they fell short of that standard of excellence which he had formed in his own mind, or had been composed after models which he deemed illchosen. If he could be thus severe to himself, we cannot wonder that he should be equally so to others. It is said, that he every year burnt a copy of Martial, as a corrupter of that pure taste which distinguished the writers of the Augustan age. Navagero’s Latin poems are how consequently few in number, but sufficient to justify the character bestowed by his countrymen, and the esteem in which they held him. They were printed in 1530, under the title “Andreas Naugerii Patricii Veneti Orationes duse, Carminaque nonnulla,” Venice, folio. Considerable additions were made by Vulpius, although improperly called “opera omnia;” and printed at Padua, in quarto, 1718.

Navagero was also distinguished for his Greek literature, and was such an admirer of Pindar that he transcribed his works more than once. He was a great encourager of the labours of Aldus Manutius, and diligently revised and corrected the texts of Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Quintilian, and especially of Cicero. Irt inscribing to Navagero, by a most interesting preface, the volume which comprizes the “Rhetorica Ciceronis,” printed at Venice in 1514, 8vo, Aldus testified the high sense which he entertained of these obligations. ¹

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