Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/184

Baretti introductory pages, but not on the title-page. The materials for the volume were gradually collected during eighteen years by Baret's many pupils, and he entitled it, on that account, an ‘Alvearie,’ or beehive. Every English word is first explained, and its equivalent given in Latin and French. Two indexes at the end of the volume collect the Latin and French words occurring in the text. The expenses of publication were mainly borne by Sir Thomas Smith, ‘principall secretarie to the queenes majestie,’ and ‘Maister Nowell, deane of Pawles’ (, Life of Alexander Nowell, p. 220). Latin, Greek, and English verses in praise of the compiler and his work were prefixed to the book, among the writers being Richard Mulcaster and Arthur Golding. A second edition of the dictionary, in which Greek took almost as important a place as the other languages, was published shortly after Baret's death, and bore the date 2 Jan. 1580–1. A lengthy poem ‘to the reader,’ signed ‘Tho. M.,’ laments the recent death of the author, and new Latin elegiacs are added by Mulcaster. The title of the book in its final form runs: ‘An Alvearie, or quadruple Dictionarie containing foure sundrie tongues, namely, English, Latine, Greeke, and Frenche, newlie enriched with varietie of wordes, phrases, proverbs, and divers lightsome observations of Grammar.’ Baret's dictionary is still of great service in enabling us to trace the meaning of Elizabethan words and phrases that are now obsolete.

[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses, i. 421; Tanner's Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica; the Prefaces of Baret's Alvearie.]  BARETTI, GIUSEPPE MARC' ANTONIO (1719–1789), miscellaneous writer, traced his descent from a family which formerly flourished in the duchy of Monferrato in Italy. His grandfather, Marc' Antonio, a physician, settled at Mombertaro, where he married a lady who belonged to the illustrious family of the Marquises of Carretto, and who bore him two sons, Luca (born in 1688) and Giambattista. Luca established himself at Turin, where he studied architecture under the Abbé Filippo Juvara. By his first wife, Caterina, Luca had four sons, of whom Giuseppe Marc' Antonio, the eldest, was born at Turin on 25 April 1719. His education was much neglected by his father, who fostered the vanity of his children by reminding them of their descent from the Marquises of Carretto. On two occasions, when secrecy seemed expedient, Giuseppe assumed the name of Giuseppe del Carretto. His father at first destined him for the priesthood. Then it was thought he might become an architect, but the plan was abandoned on account of his habitual short-sightedness. He read much Italian; but a pedantic master disgusted him with Latin, and his father would not let him learn Greek. His father's marriage with a young opera-dancer rendered his position so intolerable that he left Turin for Guastalla (June 1735), where his uncle Giambattista procured for him employment as a merchant's clerk. There he became acquainted with two men of letters, Carlo Cantoni and Dr. Vittore Vettori. After staying more than two years at Guastalla, Baretti removed to Venice, where he contracted a friendship with Count Gaspare Gozzi, the ‘Venetian Addison.’ Subsequently he settled at Milan, and obtained introductions to the men of letters of the Accademia de' Trasformati. He sojourned at Milan nearly three years, studying hard and executing the metrical translation, published several years subsequently, of two of the works of Ovid.

His father having died, he returned to Piedmont, spent the autumn of 1742 at Cuneo, and from 1743 till 1745 was keeper there of the stores of the new fortifications. He returned to Turin in 1747, where he lived with his brothers for three years. He contributed to poetical collections issued in 1741 and the subsequent years. In 1744 he addressed to Father Serafino Bianchi his forty-five ‘Stanze,’ in which he interwove an account of his own career. Next he brought out an insipid translation in blank verse of the tragedies of Pierre Corneille, printed with the French original on the opposite pages. In 1750 he printed a small volume of ‘Piacevoli Poesie.’ Literary academies were the fashion in Italy in that age, and Baretti became a member of the Trasformati of Milan and the Granelleschi of Venice.

Baretti's frank and impetuous disposition brought him into various controversies. He had a literary passage of arms with Dr. Biogio Schiavo, and in 1750 he, in a satirical piece entitled ‘Primo Cicalamento,’ ridiculed Dr. Giuseppe Bartoli, professor of literature in the university of Turin, who pretended that he had discovered the true meaning of an ancient ivory bas-relief. His hopes of public employment were destroyed by this attack upon Bartoli, who appealed to the authorities. The matter was referred to the first president of the senate and rector of the university. Baretti escaped with a severe reproof and the forfeiture of the unsold copies of the obnoxious work; but he found that all chance of employment in his own country was at an end, and he seized the opportunity