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.  Whither, then, are you bound?

“St. Peter.  I apprehend danger here;—­they’ll soon call me in question for denying my Master.

“St. Paul.  Nay, then, I had better be off, too; for they’ll question me for having persecuted the Christians before my conversion."[12]

In his distinction between the wit of thoughts, of words, and of images, Coleridge asserts that the first belongs eminently to the Italians.  Such broad assertions are always open to exceptions, and Pasquin shows that the Romans at least are not less clever in the wit of words than in that of thoughts.  Take, for example, the jest on Innocent X. which Howel reports in one of his entertaining letters.  This Pope, who, says the candid historian, Mosheim, “to a profound ignorance of all those things which it was necessary for a Christian bishop to know, joined the most shameless indolence and the most notorious profligacy,” abandoned his person, his dignity, and his government to the disposal of Donna Olympia Maldachini, the widow of his brother.  The portrait of the Pope may be seen in the Doria Gallery at Rome; for it is still esteemed an honor by the noble family to which the gallery belongs to be able to trace a relationship to a Pope, even though so vile a one as Innocent “Magis amat papa Olympiam quam Olympum” said Pasquin; and the pun still clings to the memory of him whom his authorized biographer calls “religiosissimo nelle cose divine e prudentissimo nelle umane." But superlatives often have a value in inverse ratio to their intention.  There is a curious story told by the Catholic historian, Novaes, that, after the death of Innocent, which took place in 1655, no one could be found willing to assume the charge of burying him.  Word was sent to Donna Olympia that she should provide a coffin for the corpse; but she replied that she was only a poor widow.  Of the cardinals he had made, of the relations he had enriched, none was to be found who had charity enough to treat his remains with decency.  His body was taken to a room where some masons were at work, and one of them out of compassion put a tallow candle at its head, while another, fearing lest the mice, of which there were many in the apartment, might disturb the corpse, secured a person to watch it through the night.  At length one of the officers of the court procured a cheap coffin, and one of the canons of Saint Peter’s gave five crowns to pay the expenses of the burial.[13] A moralist might comment on this story, and might compare it with another which is told in a life of Innocent, written during the reign