PASQUINADE is a variety of 1ibel or lampoon, of which it is not easy to give an exact definition, separating it from other kinds. It should, perhaps, more especially deal with public men and public things. The distinction, however, has been rarely observed in practice, and the chief interest in the word is in its curious and rather legendary origin. According to the received tradition, Pasquino was a tailor (others say a cobbler) who had a biting tongue, and lived in the 15th century at Rome. His name, at the end of that century or the beginning of the next, was transferred to a statue which had been dug up in a mutilated condition (some say near his shop) and was set up at the corner of the Palazzo Orsini (α∕. Palazzo Braschi). To this statue it became the custom to affix squibs on the papal Government aħd on prominent persons. At the beginning of the 16th century Pasquin had a partner provided for him in the shape of another statue found in the Campus Martius, said to represent a river god, and dubbed Marforio, a foro Martis. The regulation form of the pasquinade then became one of dialogue or rather question and answer, in which Marforio usually addressed leading inquiries to his friend. The proceeding soon attained a certain European notoriety, and a printed collection of the squibs due to it (they were long written in Latin verse, with an occasional excursion into Greek) appeared in 1510. In the first book of Pantagruel (1532 or there abouts) Rabelais introduces books by Pasquillus arid Marρhurius in the catalogue of the library of St Victor, and later he quotes some utterances of Pasquin’s in his letters to the bishop of Maillezais. These, by the way, show that Pasquin was by no means always satirical, but dealt in grave advice and comment. The 16th century ...