MALESPINI, CELIO. — Man of letters, born in Venice in 1531, died there around 1610. A descendant—if he did not falsify this as well—of the M. of Lunigiana. A notorious adventurer, he tried his luck in various ways and places, including as a mercenary soldier; then, to use a verb dear to him, he “vaulted” into Venice and laid his hands on the printing press, which at that time flattered his peers, just as seventy years earlier it had deluded the learned.
Aided by his singular instinct for forgery, he brought out books of every kind, but without the imagination—at times ingenious and even honest—of a Dolei, a Doni, a Ruscelli, or a Sansovino. Yet his dishonesty also benefited poetry, when certain ottave came into his hands from the madhouse of Ferrara—ottave that were the first cantos of the Gerusalemme Liberata. He published them unworthily under the title Goffredo (Venice 1579). From this there arose Ingegneri’s nearly complete edition and a more honest edition of his own. He also wrote two hundred Novelle (ibid. 1609), most of them, naturally, stolen, but all useful for knowledge of customs, and all marked by his “candid” cynicism.