[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.

  Piscatorem hominum ne te non, Sexte, putemus,
     Piscaris natum retibus ecce tuum.”

  “Lest we should not fancy you, O Sextus,
  a fisher of men, you fish for your own son
  with nets.”]

[Footnote 5:  Vasari relates, that Michel Angelo, when he was making the bronze statue of Julius, at Bologna, having asked the Pope if he should put a book in his left hand,—­“No,” replied the fiery old man, “put a sword in it, for I know not letters”:  “Mettivi una spada, che io non so lettere.”]

[Footnote 6:  At the beginning of his pontificate, upon occasion of Leo’s taking possession of the Lateran with a solemn procession, an arch of triumph was erected at the bridge of Sant’ Angelo, which bore an inscription worthy of the tailor’s successor:—­

  “Olim habuit Cypria sua tempera, tempora Mavors
     Olim habuit, sua nunc tempora Pallas habet.”

  “Venus once had her time, Mars also has
  had his, but now Minerva rules.”]

[Footnote 7:  In Murray’s Handbook for Rome, a book for the most part of great accuracy, there is a curious blunder in the account of Pasquin.  It is said, that, “on the election of Pope Leo X., in 1440, the following satirical acrostic appeared, to mark the date MCCCCXL:—­’Multi caeci cardinales creaverunt caecum decimum (X) Leonem: ‘Many blind cardinals have created a tenth blind Lion.’” Now in 1440 Leo was not born, and no Pope was chosen in that year.  Leo was not made Pope till 1513, and the acrostic has apparently nothing to do with the date of his accession to the pontificate.]

[Footnote 8:  One of those copies was formerly in the Royal Library at Munich, and sold as a duplicate.  The other has the bookplate of the Baron de Warenghien.  Colonel Stanley’s copy sold for L11 lls.  The book was printed at Basle, by Jean Oporin.  See Clement, Bibl.  Cur.  Hist, et Crit., vii. 371.  See also, for an account of it, Salleugre, M.m. de Litt., ii. 6, 203; and Schelhorn, Amoen.  Lit., iii. 151.]

[Footnote 9:  An entertaining and curious account of Curio and his family is to be found in a commemorative oration delivered in 1570 before the Academy of Basle by Stupanus, and printed by Schelhorn in Amoen.  Lit., Tom. xiv.]