Two erool,ed hills the rave; ous eagle hears The better to devour." The emperor recollected the passage, and when Ala manni was pronouncing a fine speech in his praise, be ginning ery sentence with the word ./y/itti, Charles no other reply than in the words already quoted. Alamanni evaded the severity of the retort, and gave great satisfaction to the emperor, by remarking, that he then spoke as a poet, whose province is fiction, but that he now spoke as an ambassador, who was bound to tell he truth.
After the death of Francis, Iris successor Henry II. em ployed Alamanni in various political missions. Upon his 70_11111, from an embassy to Italy, to Amboise, the resi dence of the court, he died of dysentery, on the 18th April 1556, in the 60th year of his age. His epitaph, written by his friend Benedict Varchi, concluded with the fol lowing lines: Spurge roses tumult) violasque ; hic ille Alrnannus %ersu proximus ut patria.
Although the character of Alamanni seems to have been generally esteemed, we cannot close this sketch of his life without sus crol y reprobating that barbarous resolution which formed the basis of his future tures. Ilad the restoration of liberty to the Florentines been the real object of the conspirators, we might have found some apology in human passions, for the cious deed by which they proposed to secure it. But
no consideration can lessen the villanv of the man who raises the aim of air assassin to gratify the malignity of private revenge. The cardinal Julius was entitled to praise, for fairly administering the laws which he had framed. He has shown, in the puniSh ment of Alanianni, that he had not one statute for thc rich and another for the poor; and for this part of his life posterity will do justice to his name. But whatever may have been the subsequent conduct of Alarnanni, and however high be the reputation which he has ob tained as a literary character, can only view him as a culprit who had the good fortune to elude the vigilance of justice.
The printed works of Alamanni are, I, Ogee re Toscane, 2. vols. 1532, 1533, containing Elegies, Eclogues, Son nets, Satires, Tragedies, Etc. 2. A Poem on Agricul ture, entitled, La Coltivuzione, 1546. 3. Girone it Cor tese, or Giron the Courteous, 1548. 4. An Epic Poem, called or the Siege of 1570. 5. Nora, a Comedy, 1556. 6. f.pigrainme. 7. His Gra zionc c .S'clva. 8. Rune, or Verses. Ile is also the au thor of Letters, Orations, Elegies, and several unpub lished works, ST.e. See Mazzuchelli's .Scrittori d'Itafia, tom. i. p.245. ((3)