But Heinslus was mistaken in supposing his copy to be unique; and bibliographers of later date, while marking the rarity of the book, 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 abundant.  The pontificate of Sixtus V., from 1585 to 1590, was full of material for his wit.  The only man in Rome who did not tremble under the rod with which this hard old monk ruled his people and the Church was the free-spoken marble jester.  The very morning after the election of Sixtus, Pasquin appeared with a plate of toothpicks, and to the question of Marforio, what he was doing with them, he replied, “I am taking them to Alexandrino, Medicis, and Rusticucci,” the three cardinals who had been most active in securing the Papacy for the new Pope.  The point of the joke was plain to the Romans:  it meant that his adherents, instead of gaining anything by their efforts, had been deceived, and would have nothing to do now but to pick their teeth at leisure.