ACCORSO

ACCORSO, or ACCURSIUS, MARIANGEL, 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 Diatribae in Ausonium, Solinum, et Oridianum, 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 on 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. An edition of Amianus 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 use of antiquated terms, introduced by

Account
Accubation
some of the Latin writers of that age, is humorously ridiculed by him, in a dialogue published in 1531, entitled Oseo, Volseo, Romanaque Eloquentia Interlocutoribus, Dialogus Ludis Romanis actus. It was republished at Rome in 1574, in 4to, with his name. He was also the author of a poem entitled Protrepticum ad Corycium, published in a scarce collection named Coryciana, printed at Rome in 1524. Accorso had been accused of plagiarism in his notes on Ausonius; 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."