minister for our foreign affairs; and grateful were we to Apollo, the
god of medicine, who had for once assisted us to overreach Mercury, the
god of rogues.

BIRBONE II.

COCO.

----"Adspice quanta
Voce negat quae sit ficti constantia vultus!"--JUV. _Sat._ vii.

We cut our pen afresh to say a few words concerning that arch-impostor,
that "Fourbum imperator," Coco the coiner. Had it not been for the
_prosperity_ of the St Angelo ministry at Naples, that three-headed
Cerberus of iniquity, of whom the people,

"Tre Angeli a noi piu recan danno
Che trenta orrendi Demoni non fanno,"

had it not been that _their_ success seemed to militate against such an
inference, we might have supposed that Coco, poor, starving, and in
utter disesteem, had been thus let to live, to prove by a sad contrast
the truth of the old adage--that "honesty is the best policy." Coco is
the very impersonation of wiliness and subtlety--a fox amongst
foxes--the Metternich of his craft;--he has cheated every dealer in
turn, and by turns has learnt to know the internal arrangements of every
prison throughout the kingdom. By sheer force of talent he has been
able, like Napoleon, to maintain his cause single-handed against a host
of rivals who would crush him, and cannot; and, whenever he is not
_closeted elsewhere_, he is either holding a privy council with St
Angelo, or transacting busines with his Serene Highness of Salerno,
against whom (_par parenthese_) we have not a word to say. Cicero's
oration for Milo is not better than Coco's oration for Coco; and to hear
him plead it personally for the first time, is certainly entertaining.
He seems to have taken _that_ oration for his model, setting out, as
Tully for that client did, with a staunch negation of the charges
alleged against him; but embarrassed, as he proceeds in his harangue, to
maintain himself strictly honest, he gradually throws off reserve,
converts your room into a court of justice, and, confronting imaginary
accusers, endeavours to shake their testimony by making out that they
are just as great rogues as himself! "Coco! say over again just half a
dozen of _those sentences_--you know where to begin--that you have so
often been the habit of indulging me with; not the _whole_ speech, Coco,
if you please." "Eccelenza, no! I was saying, then, that I was in
advance of my age, and that, if I had been born in France or England in
place of Naples, I should not now have be