It was near about this time that a caricature was circulated in Rome,
representing Sixtus as King Stork and the Romans as frogs vainly
attempting to escape from his devouring beak. _Merito haec patimur_,
"We suffer deservedly," was the legend of the picture, and the moral
it conveyed was a true one. Rome was in such a state as to require the
harshest applications, and the despotic severity of Sixtus did much to
restore decency and security to life. He left the Romans in a far
better condition than he found them; and it would have been well for
Rome, if among his successors there had been more to follow his
example in repressing vice and violence,--in a word, had there been
more King Storks and fewer King Logs.
The most poetic of pasquinades, and one in which wit rises into
imagination, belongs to the pontificate of Urban VIII. (1623-1644.)
This Pope issued a bull excommunicating all persons who took snuff in
the churches of Seville; whereupon Pasquin quoted the following verse
from Job (xiii. 25):--"_Contra folium_ _quod vento rapitur ostendis
potentiam tuam? et stipulam siccam persequeris?_"
This is a very model of satire in its kind, and of a higher kind than
the pasquil, which Coleridge quotes as an example of wit, upon the
Pope who had employed a committee to rip up the errors of his
predecessors.
"Some one placed a pair of spurs on the statue of St. Peter, and a
label from the opposite statue of St. Paul.
"_St. Paul_.
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