Gabriel, a celebrated modern Latin poet, was a native of Cremona, and flourished during the sixteenth century. He was so eminently skilled in all parts of polite literature, that the Cardinal de Medici, afterwards Pope Pius IV, held him in high estimation. He was the author of some Latin elegies, of a hundred Latin fables in iambic verse, selected from the ancients, and of several pieces of criticism. He was also remarkably dexterous in deciphering manuscripts, and in restoring ancient authors; and he took such pains with Terence, that Bentley has adopted all his notes in the edition which he published of that dramatist. Faernus died at Rome in 1561; and De Thou, who wrote his eulogy, says that the learned world was greatly indebted to him, and would have been still more so, if, instead of suppressing the then unknown fables of Phaedrus, from fear of lessening the value of his own Latin fables, written in imitation of Æsop, he had been content with imitating them. Perrault, however, who translated the fables of Faernus into French, has defended him from this imputation, by showing that the first manuscript of Phaedrus's fables, found in the dust of an old library, was not discovered till about thirty years after the death of Faernus. In fact, Plautus and Terence were his models; and the merit of his elegant style is enhanced by the circumstance that he was not an imitator of Phaedrus, whom it has been satisfactorily shown he did not know. His fables, immediately upon their appearance, obtained universal applause, and were reprinted at Cologne, at Antwerp, and at Brussels. Faernus also wrote, 1. Two Books of Corrections on the philippics and three other speeches of Cicero, from a manuscript which had been discovered in the Vatican Library, and which he regarded as the most ancient of all those that existed of the works of Cicero; and, 2. Notes on Catullus and Plautus, and a Commentary on Terence, which was printed by Fagott Pietro Vettori, Florence, 1567, in 8vo, and reprinted at Paris, 1602, in 4to.