At the close of the Capitolo written on the occasion of Adrian VI.'s election to the Papacy, Berni declared that it had never been his custom to speak ill of people:

L'usanza mia non fu mai di dir male;
E che sia il ver, leggi le cose mie,
Leggi l'Anguille, leggi l'Orinale,
Le Pesche, i Cardi e l'altre fantasie:
Tutte sono inni, salmi, laudi ed ode.

We have reason to believe this declaration. Genial good humor is a characteristic note of his literary temperament. At the same time he was no mean master of caricature and epigram. The Capitolo in question is a sustained tirade against the Fleming, who had come to break the peace of polished Rome—a shriek of angry lamentation over altered times, intolerable insults, odious innovations. The amazement and discomfiture of the poet, contrasted with his burlesque utterance, render this composition comic in a double sense. Its satire cuts both ways, against the author and the object of his rage. Yet when Adrian gave place to Giulio de' Medici, and Berni discovered what kind of a man the new Pope was, he vented nobler scorn in verse of far more pungent criticism. His sonnet on Clement is remarkable for exactly expressing the verdict posterity has formed after cool and mature inquiry into this Pope's actions. Clement's weakness and irresolution must end, the poet says, by making even Adrian seem a saint:[470]

Un Papato composto di rispetti,
Di considerazioni e di discorsi,
Di più, di poi, di ma, di sì, di forsi,
Di pur, di assai parole senza effetti;
Di pensier, di consigli, di concetti,
Di congetture magre per apporsi
D'intrattenerti, purchè non si sborsi,
Con audienze, risposte, e bei detti:
Di piè di piombo e di neutralità,
Di pazienza, di dimostrazione,
Di Fede, di Speranza e Carità,
D'innocenza, di buona intenzione;
Ch'è quasi come dir, semplicità.
Per non le dare altra interpretazione,
Sia con sopportazione,
Lo dirò pur, vedrete che pian piano
Farà canonizzar Papa Adriano.

The insight into Clement's character displayed in this sonnet, the invective against Adrian, and the acerbity of another sonnet against Alessandro de' Medici:

Empio Signor, che de la roba altrui
Lieto ti vai godendo, e del sudore:

would gain in cogency, could we attach more value to the manliness of Berni's utterances. But when we know that, while he was showering curses on the Duke of Cività di Penna, he frequented the Medicean Court and wrote a humorous Capitolo upon Gradasso, a dwarf of Cardinal Ippolito, we feel forced to place these epigrammatic effusions among the ebullitions of personal rather than political animosity. There was nothing of the patriot in Berni, not even so much as in Machiavelli, who himself avowed his readiness to roll stones for the Signori Medici.

As a satirist, Berni appears to better advantage in his caricatures of private or domestic personages. The portrait of his housekeeper, who combined in her single person all the antiquities of all the viragos of romance:

Io ho per cameriera mia l'Ancroja
Madre di Ferraù, zia di Morgante,
Arcavola maggior dell'Amostante,
Balia del Turco e suocera del Boja: