Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/223

Rh prodigious laziness. His portrait of himself is very lifelike, and probably very accurate:

Berni's death did him more honour than his life. The suppressed dedication to the twentieth canto of his Orlando seems to prove that he had become serious in his later years, and fallen under Protestant influences; but this was unknown to Cardinal Cibo, who deemed him the right sort of man to commend a poisoned chalice to the lips of Cardinal Salviati; and his refusal, there is every reason to believe, cost him his own life (1535). He died with strong symptoms of poison, was