Fulvio Orsini was born in 1529. He began life as a beggar, though for many years before his death he was the leader of Italian learning. A poor girl had been abandoned with her child and was forced to beg her bread in the streets of Rome. The boy obtained a place in the Lateran when he was only seven years old: the Canon Delfini recognised his precocious talents and undertook to find him a classical education. The student obtained some small preferment, and succeeded to his patron's appointment. His marvellous acquaintance with ancient books secured him a place as librarian to the Cardinal Farnese, and he received many offers of more lucrative employment: but he found that if he accepted he would have to live away from Rome; and he refused everything that could cause inconvenience to his mother, whose comfort was his constant care. On his death, in the year 1600, he bequeathed his vast collections to the Vatican, and the gift can only be compared to such important events as the arrival of the spoils of Urbino, or the great purchase of MSS. from the Queen of Sweden. Orsini has been ridiculed for having more books than he could read, and for an excessive devotion to the antique. 'Here is a library like an arsenal,' said the satirist, 'stored with all the requisites for any campaign. The owner buys all the books that come in his way: it is true that he will not read them; but he will have them magnificently bound, and ranged on the shelves with a mighty show, and there he will salute them several times a day, and will bring his friends and servants to make their acquaintance.' Orsini is rebuked for his admiration of a dusty manuscript. 'When one of these old parchments falls into his hands, he makes you examine the decayed leaves on which the eye can hardly trace any marks of an ancient pen. 'What is this treasure that we have here?' he cries, 'and oh! what joy, here we have the delight of mankind, and the world's desire, and pleasures not to be matched in Paradise!' 'There,' says our satirist, 'you have the very portrait of Fulvio Orsini. Why, he once took a manuscript _Terence_, full of holes and mistakes, in writing to Cardinal Toletus, and told him that it was worth all the gold in the world'; and, to convince his Spanish Eminence, he said that the book was a thousand years' old. '_Est-il possible?_' replies the Cardinal, 'you don't say so. I can only say, my friend, I would rather have a book hot from the press than all the old parchments that the Sibyl had for sale.'