Pasquin. Prithee, sweetheart, been’t frighted; I am Pasquin, very Pasquin, thy old pot-companion. Why shouldst thou wish for holy water to drive me hence, since I am miraculously risen?... And prithee, by the way, be no longer cheated with that fond opinion that holy water is able to drive away devils. Those are old wives’ fables, fit only to bubble fools withal; for, were there any such thing, since there can be no worse devil than the priests and friars, they had been all driven out of the church long ago.

Marforio. Where the devil hadst thou this knowledge? Sure, thou hast not been in hell to fetch it? I am almost in an ague to think of it, and the more I look on thee the more I tremble.

Pasquin. Been’t such a fool to be afraid to look upon a friend, for true friendship should last even to the other world: but I am no ghost or goblin, but verily alive; or were I dead (as indeed I have been), what reason hast thou to fear me? The dead are honest, quiet people: they neither kill nor steal; they ramble not about the streets in the night to murder poor tailors; they break no glass windows, nor beat no watches, nor are any violators of the laws. Whilst I was in the world I was never afraid of the dead. If I could but guard myself from the living, who are a proud, revengeful generation, that scarce pardon men in their graves, I thought all well enough; therefore, prithee, be of my mind.... Take my counsel, keep as fair as thou canst with the living, and leave the dead to their fate.

Marforio. Yet at least let me have commune with thee, that com’st to seek mine with so much grace and civility.

Pasquin. I am alive and not dead, for my death was rather a wonderful ecstasy than anything else.

Marforio. But tell me, prithee, how is it possible that thou, who art a body of stone, as thou art, couldst first be animated, then die, and be revived again?

Pasquin. And canst thou that art born a Roman be such a noddy as to wonder at that—thou that seest daily so many greater wonders before thy eyes? With how much more reason mayst thou wonder to see so many tun-bellied friars (the good always excepted) that feed like pigs and drink like fishes; that fatten themselves in the scoundrel laziness of the convents, and yet have the impudence to think they shall one day enjoy the felicities of Paradise? And yet greater wonders than this there are. For thou knowest, or at least shouldst know, that all divines agree that there is nothing in the world that can be equal in weight to the nature of sin; for, say they, iron, lead, stones, brass, or gold are, in comparison, lighter than feathers when put in the scale with sin. So that he must needs be worse than a sot that believes that so many bouncing friars, as well seculars as regulars, who are laden with such a mass of sins that only to lift one of them from the ground would require an engine like that wherewith Sixtus V. raised the great Pyramid of St. Peter,[[33]] can ever mount up to heaven.... This, brother, must needs be so great a folly that any man of reason cannot but imagine it a less wonder to see a stone mount up to heaven than one of those sinful monks.

Pasquin then describes his journey through the Unseen World, which is made the vehicle for a great deal of strong invective against the Pope and Clergy. No Pope, he says, has ever entered heaven since the year 800, “that is, soon after corruption was crept into the Pontificate;” and the infernal regions are peopled with the various religious orders. Pasquin sought in vain among them for the Jesuits—but only because a separate and special place of torment was reserved for the latter.

EPIGRAMS.

I do not please all my readers?—But see,——