Querno, Camillo

, an Italian poet, was born at Monopolis in the kingdom of Naples; and acquired in his early years a great facility in extempore verses. He went to Rome about 1514, with a poem of twenty thousand lines, called Alexias. Some young gentlemen of that city professed great friendship to him they treated him in the country, and at a feast crowned him arch-poet so that he | was not known afterwards by any other name. Leo X. who, upon certain occasions, was not averse to buffoonery, delighted in his company, and caused him to be served with meat from his own table and Querno, being an excellent parasite, humoured him very exactly. He was obliged to make a distich extempore, upon whatever subject was given him even though he was at the time ill of the gout, with which he was extremely troubled. Once, when the fit was on him, he made this verse, “Archipoeta facit versus pro mille poetis,” and, as he hesitated in composing the second, the pope readily and wittily added, “Et pro mille aliis Archipoeta bibit.” Querno, hastening to repair his fault, cried, “Porrige, quod faciat mihi carmina docta, Falernum,” to which the pope instantly replied, “Hoc vinum enervat, debilitatque pedes,” alluding either to the gout in his feet, or to the feet of his verses. After the taking of Rome, he retired to Naples, where he suffered much during the wars in 1528, and died there in the hospital. He used to say, “He had found a thousand wolves, after he had lost one lion.” ¹