Still Pasquin deserves credit for his
efforts; and while other liberty is denied, the Romans may be glad
that there is a single voice that cannot be silenced, and a single
censor who is not to be corrupted.
[Footnote 1: Bernini, being asked what was the most beautiful statue
in Rome, replied, "That of Pasquin." This reply the sensible Milizia
taxes with affectation,--saying, that, although an artist may discover
in the work some marks of good design, it is now too maimed to pass
for a beautiful statue. Possibly Bernini was thinking of his own works
in comparison with it.]
[Footnote 2: Andreas Schott,--who published an Itinerary of Italy
about the beginning of the seventeenth century, copies this account,
and adds,--"At present this custom is prohibited under the heaviest
penalties."]
[Footnote 3: Mrs. Piozzi, in her amusing _Journey through Italy_, ii.
113, quotes these verses and gives a translation of them which shows
that she quite mistook their point. In spite of her quoting Latin,
Greek, and even on occasion Hebrew, her scholarship was not very
accurate or deep.]
[Footnote 4: The Historie of Guicciardin, reduced into English by
Geffray Fenton. 1579. p. 308. Another epigram of barbarous bitterness
against Alexander refers, if we understand it aright, to one of the
gloomiest events of his pontificate, the murder of his son Giovanni,
Duca di Gandia, by his other son, Caesar Borgia. Giovanni was killed
at night, and his body was thrown into the Tiber, from which it was
recovered the next morning.
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