he 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. {159}

"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 choose, 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 lick-spittles."

"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 lick spittles. And then in Spain,--'tis true, Lope
de Vega and Calderon were most inordinate lick-spittles; 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 literary men are not lick-spittles, whether
in Italy or Spain, or, indeed, upon the Continent; it is only in England
that all--"

"Come," said I, "mind what you are about to say of English literary men."

"Why should I mind?" said the man in blac