shine benignantly. Popery is at present, as you
say, suing for grace in these regions _in forma pauperis_; but let
royalty once take it up, let old gouty George once patronise it, and I
would consent to drink puddle-water if, the very next time the canny Scot
was admitted to the royal symposium, he did not say, "By my faith, yere
Majesty, I have always thought, at the bottom of my heart, that popery,
as ill-scrapit tongues ca' it, was a very grand religion; I shall be
proud to follow your Majesty's example in adopting it."'

'I doubt not,' said I, 'that both gouty George and his devoted servant
will be mouldering in their tombs long before Royalty in England thinks
about adopting popery.'

'We can wait,' said the man in black; 'in these days of rampant
gentility, there will be no want of kings nor of Scots about them.'

'But not Walters,' said I.

'Our work has been already tolerably well done by one,' said the man in
black; 'but if we wanted literature, we should never lack in these
regions hosts of literary men of some kind or other to eulogise us,
provided our religion were in the fashion, and our popish nobles
chose--and they always do our bidding--to admit the canaille to their
tables--their kitchen tables. As for literature in general,' said he,
'the Santa Sede is not particularly partial to it, it may be employed
both ways. In Italy, in particular, it has discovered that literary men
are not always disposed to be lickspittles.'

'For example, Dante,' said I.

'Yes,' said the man in black, 'a dangerous personage; that poem of his
cuts both ways; and then there was Pulci, that _Morgante_ of his cuts
both ways, or rather one way, and that sheer against us; and then there
was Aretino, who dealt so hard with the _poveri frati_; all writers, at
least Italian ones, are not lickspittles. And then in Spain,--'tis true,
Lope de Vega and Calderon were most inordinate lickspittles; the
_Principe Constante_ of the last is a curiosity in its way; and then the
_Mary Stuart_ of Lope; I think I shall recommend the perusal of that work
to the Birmingham ironmonger's daughter--she has been lately thinking of
adding "a slight knowledge of the magneeficent language of the Peninsula"
to the rest of her accomplishments, he! he! he! But then there was
Cervantes, starving, but straight; he deals us some hard knocks in that
second part of his _Quixote_. Then there were some of the writers of the
picaresque novels. No, all li