CHAPTER XXII.
ITALIAN CARICATURE.
As soon as comic art in Italy is mentioned, we think of Pasquino, the merry Roman tailor, whose name has enriched all the languages of Europe with an effective word. Many men whose names have been put to a similar use have, notwithstanding, been completely forgotten; but Pasquino, after having been the occasion of pasquinades for four centuries, is still freshly remembered, and travelers tell his story over again to their readers.
Pasquino was the fashionable tailor at Rome about the time when the discovery of America was a recent piece of news. In his shop, as tradition reports, bishops, courtiers, nobles, literary men, were wont to meet to order their clothes, and retail the scandal of the city. The master of the shop, a wit himself, and the daily receptacle of others' wit, uttered frequent epigrams upon conspicuous persons, which passed from mouth to mouth, as such things will in an idle and luxurious community. Whatever piece of witty malice was afloat in the town came to be attributed to Pasquino; and men who had more wit than courage attributed to him the satire they dared not claim.
Catholics who have seen the inside of Roman life, who have been domiciled with bishops and cardinals, report that the magnates of Rome, to this day, associate in the informal manner in which we should suppose they did four centuries ago, from the traditions of Pasquino and his sayings. The Pope sends papers of bonbons to the Sisters who have charge of infant schools, and shares among the cardinals the delicacies and interesting objects which are continually sent to him. Upon hearing their accounts of the easy familiarities and light tone of the higher ecclesiastical society of recent times, we can the better understand the traditions that have come down to us of Pasquino and his shop full of highnesses and eminences.
Pasquino, like the "fellow of infinite jest" upon whose skull Hamlet moralized in the church-yard, died, and was buried. Soon after his death it became necessary to dig up an ancient statue half sunk in the ground of his street; and, to get it out of the way, it was set up close to his shop. "Pasquino has come back," said some one. Rome accepted the jest, and thus the statue acquired the name of Pasquino, which it retains to the present day. Soon it became a custom to stick to it any epigram or satirical verse the author of which desired to be unknown. So many of these sharp sayings were aimed at the ecclesiastical lords of Rome, that one of the popes was on the point of having the statue thrown into the river, just as modern tyrants think to silence criticism by suppressing the periodical in which it appears. Pasquino, properly enough, was saved by an epigram.
"Do not throw Pasquino into the Tiber," said the Spanish embassador, "lest he should teach all the frogs in the river to croak pasquinades."
We can not wonder that the popes should have objected to Pasquino's biting tongue, if the specimens of his wit which are given by Mr. Story[38] fairly represent him. There was a volume of six hundred and thirty-seven pages of epigrams and satires, published in 1544, claiming to be pasquinades, many of which doubtless were such. Here is one upon the infamous pope, Alexander Sextus:
"Sextus Tarquinius, Sextus Nero—this also is Sextus.
Always under the Sextuses Rome has been ruined."
After the sudden death of Pope Leo X., two Latin lines to the following effect were found upon Pasquino:
"If you desire to hear why at his last hour Leo
Could not the sacraments take, know he had sold them."