have recorded its existence in various libraries. At this moment two
copies are lying before us, probably the only copies in America.[8]

The editor of this publication was the Piedmontese scholar and
Reformer, Coelius Secundus Curio. His early life had been eventful,
and he had experienced the tender mercies of the Roman Church. He had
been persecuted, his property had been seized, he himself compelled to
fly, on account of his liberal views. He had been in the prisons of
the Inquisition, from which he had escaped only by a successful and
ingenious stratagem. At length, wearied with contention, he took up
his abode in Protestant Switzerland, where he passed in quiet the
latter years of his useful and honored life.[9] It was while here that
he compiled this book, and sent it as a missile into the camp of his
opponents, the enemies of freedom of thought and of the right of
private judgment. From this time Pasquin's fame became universal. The
words _pasquil_ or _pasquinade_ were adopted info almost every
European tongue, and soon embraced in their widening signification all
sorts of satiric epigrams. A great part of the volume published by
Curio is made up, indeed, of attacks on the Roman Church which have no
connection with Pasquin as their author. The style and the subject of
many of them betray a German origin; and some of the longer pieces so
closely resemble, in point, in humor, and in expression, the
celebrated "Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum," that there can be little
doubt that Ulrich von Hutten, or some one of his coadjutors in that
clever satire on the monks and clergy, had a hand in their
composition.[10]

But, leaving the pasquinades of other people, let us come back to the
sayings of Pasquin himself. No one has surpassed him in his own way,
and his store of epigrams, illustrating life and manners at Rome, is