Tanquam gemma stercori et pictura luto.
Divites divitibus dant, ut sumant ibi,
Et occurrunt munera relative sibi:
Lex est ista celebris, quam fecerunt scribi,
Si tu michi dederis, ego dabo tibi. Finit.
Translation.—I will use against vices rebelling song; others put forward honey, while under the honey they lay on gall; the iron breast is concealed under the gilt skin, and asses put on the lion’s spoil.—The rebelling face disputes with the soul within; honey flows from the mouth, the mind is full of gall; it is not all sweet that looks like honey; the breast has a different countenance from the skin.—While vice is in the work, virtue is in the face; they cover the pitchy blackness of the mind with a white colour; each of the members suffers by the pain of the head, and the flavour of the apple depends upon the root from whence it springs.—Rome is the head of the world; but it receives nothing clean; all that depends from the head is unclean; for the first vice passes on into the second, and that which is near the bottom smells of the bottom.—Rome receives all, and the goods of all; the court of the Romans is but a market. There are offered for sale the rights of the senators, and abundance of money dissolves all differences of opinion.—Here, in the consistory, if any body plead a cause, be it his own or another’s, let him first read this,—“Unless he give money, Rome denies every thing; he who gives most money will come off the best.”—The Romans have a chapter in the decretals, that they should listen to petitions from those who come with their hands full; thou shalt give, or nothing shall be granted thee; they ask because thou askest; by the same measure as you sow, you shall reap.—A bribe and a petition go side by side, and it is with a bribe that you must work if you wish to succeed: then you need have no fear, even of Tully, were he pleading against you; for money possesses a singular eloquence.—There is nobody in this court who does not look after money: the cross on the coin pleases them; the roundness of it, and the whiteness thereof, pleases them; and since every part of it pleases, and it is the Romans whom it pleases, where money speaks, there all law is silent.—If you only feed the hand well with some goodly bribe, it will be in vain even to quote Justinian against you, or the canons of the saints, because they would throw them away as vanity and chaff, and pocket the grain.—Penurious Rome claims acquaintance with nothing but avarice; she spares to him who brings gifts, but she spares not to him who is penurious: money stands in the place of God, and a marc for Mark, and the altar is less attended than the coffer.—When you come to the Pope, take it as a rule, that there is no place for the poor, he favours only the giver; or if there is not a bribe of some value or another forthcoming, he answers you, “I am not able.”—The Pope, if we come to the truth of the matter, has his name from the fact, that, whatever others have, he alone will suck the pap; or if you like to apocopate a French word, “pay, pay,” saith the word, if you wish to obtain anything.—The Pope begs, the brief begs, the bull begs, the gate begs, the cardinal begs, the cursor begs,—all beg! and if you have not wherewith to bribe them all, your right is wrong, and the whole cause comes to nothing.—You give to these, you give to the others, you add gifts to those already given, and when you should have given enough, they seek as much more. O, you full purses, come to Rome! at Rome there is choice medicine for costive pockets.—They all prey upon the purse by little and little; great, greater, or greatest, gradually becomes a prey to them. Why should I go through all the particulars? I will put it in a few words; they all choke the purse, and it expires immediately.—Yet the purse imitates the liver of Tityus; the substance flies in order to return; dies that it may be born: and on this condition Rome preys upon the pocket, that when it has given all, it may all be filled again.—They return from the court with mitred heads; Jupiter is placed in the Infernal Regions, Pluto holds Heaven, and dignity is given to a brute animal, as a jewel to the dung and a picture to the mud.—The rich give to the rich, that they may receive again, and gifts mutually meet one another: that law is most in use, which they have caused to be written, “If you give to me, I will give to you.”
[KING HENRY III. 1216–1272.]
The death of King John offered an opportunity of putting an end to the distractions that had become so universal during the latter years of his reign, which most of the belligerents were glad to embrace. The following short, but highly spirited poem, was probably written immediately after the pacification which followed the taking of Lincoln, apparently by a churchman, and certainly a partizan of King Henry. Some of the expressions in it, such as “the iron-girt bees of war,” and the like, remind us of the lofty metaphors of Saxon verse.