The vigorous satires of Luigi Alamanni, imitated in English by Sir Thomas Wyat, evince a remarkable freedom of speech. Bentivoglio, Aretino, Anguillara, and other writers of note followed in his track with varying success. The first to employ blank verse in satire was Lodovico Paterno, who is perhaps more exceptionally distinguished for having achieved an epithalamium to Queen Mary of England without the least allusion to her restoration of the Roman Catholic religion. The _Decennali_ of Machiavelli, a highly-condensed sketch in verse of the events of his time, may also be regarded as a satire; but his reputation as a poet rather arises from his _Capitoli_, disquisitions in verse in which Tansillo and many others also excelled, and whose easy familiarity is hardly to be paralleled in any other literature, and from his elegant versification of portions of Apuleius’s _Golden Ass_. FRANCESCO COPPETTA (1510-1554), an excellent writer of sonnets, extended the domain of poetry by constituting himself the first laureate of the feline species. His ode on the loss of his cat (_di tutta la Soria gloria e splendore_, and consequently an Angora) is a curious blending of parodies of Petrarch with genuine feeling. He eventually finds comfort in the conclusion that the object of his affections has been appropriated by Jupiter and placed among the constellations. Two brilliant stars never seen before have of late been observable in the firmament, and the inference is obvious. Ariosto and Machiavelli, nevertheless, although geniuses of the first order, rank in familiar poetry below FRANCESCO BERNI, better equipped for it by nature and entirely devoted to its practice. Berni, born at Lamporecchio, near Florence, about 1497, was a dependant of the Medici, successively attached to Cardinal Bibbiena and to Bishop Ghiberti, Papal datary. His life was consequently for a long time spent at Rome, where he enjoyed the friendship of the most eminent men of letters of the period, executed the remodelled version of Boiardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_ by which his name is best known, and produced the numerous _Capitoli_, which would stand high as examples of easy familiar verse, were it not for their frequent indecency. They gave the pattern of the style (_Bernesque_) which has derived its name from him, and in which he has had many successors, but no absolute rival. Humour, as Roscoe remarks, is very local. Berni loses much, not merely by translation, but on perusal by a foreigner. It is enough for his fame if he continues to be appreciated in his own country, and that nothing worse happens to him abroad than must equally happen to the author of a _Hudibras_ or a _Jobsiad_. How well some portions of his work lend themselves to translation in congenial hands may appear from a specimen, rendered by Leigh Hunt, of the poem whose subject is the author’s own prodigious laziness. His portrait of himself is very lifelike, and probably very accurate: