ACCORSO, Mariangelo, a learned and ingenious critic, was a native of Aquila, in the kingdom of Naples, and lived about the beginning of the sixteenth century. To a perfect knowledge of Greek and Latin, he added an intimate acquaintance with several modern languages. Classical literature was much improved and promoted by his labours. In discovering and collating ancient manuscripts he displayed uncommon assiduity and diligence. His work, entitled "Diatriba," printed at Rome, in folio, in 1524, is a singular monument of erudition and critical skill. He bestowed, it is said, unusual pains on Claudian, and made above seven hundred corrections in the works of that poet, from different manuscripts. Unfortunately the world has been deprived of the advantage of these criticisms; for they were never published. These corrections were made while he travelled on horseback during a tour through Germany, a circumstance which is strongly characteristic of his industry and assiduity. An edition of Ammianus Marcellinus, which he published at Augsburg in 1533, contains five books more than any former one. He was the first editor of the "Letters of Cassiodorus," with his "Treatise on the Soul." The affected
Account use of antiquated terms introduced by some of the Latin writers of that age, is humorously ridiculed in a dialogue published in 1531, entitled, "Ofio, Vol-
Accretion. fee, Romanque, Eloquentia, Interlocutoribus, Dialogus Ludis Romanis usus." He composed a book on the invention of printing. On the first leaf of a grammar of Donatus, printed on vellum, there is written with his own hand: "This Donatus, with another book entitled "Confessionalia," were the first books printed; and John Fausius, citizen of Mentz, inventor of the art, had put them to the press in the year 1450." He had been accused of plagiarism in his notes on Auonius; and the solemn and determined manner in which he repelled this charge of literary theft, presents us with a singular instance of his anxiety and care to preserve his literary reputation unstained and pure. It is in the following oath: "In the name of gods and men, of truth and sincerity, I solemnly swear, and, if any declaration be more binding than an oath, I in that form declare, and I desire that my declaration may be received as strictly true, that I have never read or seen any author, from which my own lucubrations have received the smallest assistance or improvement; nay, that I have even laboured, as far as possible, whenever any writer has published any observations which I myself had before made, immediately to blot them out of my own works. If in this declaration I am forsworn, may the pope punish my perjury; and may an evil genius attend my writings, so that whatever in them is good, or at least tolerable, may appear to the unskilful multitude exceedingly bad, and even to the learned trivial and contemptible; and may the small reputation I now possess be given to the winds, and regarded as the worthless boon of vulgar levity." (Gen. Biog.)