PALLA VICINO, Ferrante (1618-1644), a writer of pasquinades, who is now known chiefly for his early and tragical end, was a member of the old and widely ramified Italian family of the Pallavicini, and was born at Piacenza in 1618. He received a good education at Padua and elsewhere, and early in life entered the Augustinian order, residing chiefly in Venice. For a year he accompanied Ottavio Piccolomini, duke of Amalfi, in his German campaigns as field chaplain, and shortly after his return he published a number of clever but exceedingly scurrilous satires on the Roman curia and on the powerful house of the Barberini, which were so keenly resented at Rome that a price was set on his head. A Frenchman of the name of Charles de Breche decoyed him from Venice, where he was comparatively safe, to the neighbourhood of Avignon, and there betrayed him into his enemies’ hands. After fourteen months’ imprisonment and some observance of the formalities of a trial he was beheaded at Avignon on March 6, 1644.

His Opere Permesse was published at Venice in 1655, but being, as may be imagined, inferior in scurrility and grossness (Pallavicino’s specialities), are much less prized by the curious than the Opere Scelte (Geneva, 1660), which were more than once reprinted in Holland, and were translated into German in 1663....