In the dearth of material for the
popular history of modern Rome, it is of value as affording
indications of the turn of feeling and the opinions of the Romans, and
of the regard in which they held their rulers. The free speech, which
was prohibited and dangerous to the living subjects of the temporal
power of the Popes, was a privilege which, in spite of prohibition,
Pasquin insisted upon exercising. Whatever precautions might be taken,
whatever penalties imposed, means were always found, when occasion
arose, to affix to the battered marble papers bearing stinging
epigrams or satirical verses, which, once read, fastened themselves in
the memory, and spread quickly by repetition. He could not be
silenced. "Great sums," said he one day, in an epigram addressed to
Paul III., who was Pope from 1534 to 1549, "great sums were formerly
given to poets for singing: how much will you give me, O Paul, to be
silent?"
"Ut canerent data multa olim sunt vatibus aera:
Ut taceam, quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?"
In his life of Adrian VI., the successor of Leo X., Paulus Jovius, not
indeed the most trustworthy of authorities, tells a story which, if
not true, might well be so. He says, that the Pope, being vexed at the
free speech of Pasquin, proposed to have him thrown into the Tiber,
thinking thus to stop his tongue; but the Spanish legate dissuaded
him, by suggesting, with grave Spanish wisdom, that all the frogs of
the river, becoming infected with his spirit, would adopt his style of
speech and croak only pasquinades.
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