th my trouble. _O Cavaliere Gualtiero_, _avete fatto molto in favore
della Santa Sede_!"

"If he has," said I, "he has done it unwittingly; I never heard before
that he was a favourer of the popish delusion."

"Only in theory," said the man in black. "Trust any of the clan
MacSycophant for interfering openly and boldly in favour of any cause on
which the sun does not 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 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 Birmingha