Serassi, Peter Anthony

, an Italian biographer, was born at Bergamo in 1721, and at the age of twenty had so distinguished himself as to be elected a member of the academy of Transforrnati at Milan, and on his return to Bergamo, was appointed professor of the belles lettres. In 1742, he published his “Opinion concerning the country of Bernardo and of Torquato Tasso,” a tract in which he vindicated, to the district of Bergamo, the honour of being the native country of these poets, which had been denied by Seghezzi, the author of a very elegant life of Bernardo; but Seghezzi now candidly confessed that his opponent was right, and that he should treat the subject differently, were he again to write on it. In the succeeding years, | Serassi published editions of several of the best Italian writers, with their lives, particularly Maffei, Molza, Politian, Capelia, Dante, Petrarch, &c. The most distinguished of his biographical productions, however, was his life of Tasso, 17b5, 2 vols. 4to, on which he had been employed during twenty years. Mr. Black, in his life of that eminent poet, has availed himself of Serassi' s work, but not without discovering its delects. Serassi also published a life of “Jacopo Mazzoni, patrician of Cessena,” 3. personage little known, but whose history he has rendered interesting. Serassi was employed in some offices under the papal government, and in the college of Propaganda. he died Feb. 19, 1791, at Rome, in the seventieth year of his age. A monument was erected to his memory in the church of St. Maria, in Via lata, where he-was interred; and the city of Bergamo ordered a medal to be struck to his honour, with the inscription “Propagatori pcitriae laudis.” ¹