PASQUINADE is a variety of libel 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 (soine say near his shop) and was set up at the corner of the Palazzo Orsini (al. Palazzo Braschi). To this statue it became the custom to affix squibs on the papal Government and on prominent persons. At the beginning of the 16th century Pasquin had a partner pro-vided for him in the shape of another statue found in the Campus Martins, said to represent a, river god, and dubbed Marforio, foro Marti& 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 ar there abouts) Rabelais introduces books by Pasqualus and Marphurius 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 was indeed Pasquin's palmy time, and in not a few of the rare printed collections of his utterances Protestant polemic (which was pretty certainly not attempted on the actual statue) is mingled. These utterances were not only called pasquinades but simply pasquils (Pasquillvs, PasPasquale), and this form was sometimes used for the mythical personage himself. Under this title a considerable satirical literature of quite a different kind from the original personal squibs and political comments grew up in England at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the lith century under the titles of Pasquirs Apotogy, Pasqua's Nightcap, 4:e. The chief writers were Thomas Nash and, after his death, Nicholas Breton. These pieces (of extreme rarity, but lately reissued by the Rev. A. B. Grosart, in private reprints of the works of their authors) were in prose. The French pasquils (examples of which may be found in Fournier's Varietes Historives et Littoraires) were more usually in verse. In Italy itself Pasquin is said not to have condescended to the vernacular till the 18th century. During the first two hundred years of his career few mornings, if any, found him unplacarded, and the institution supplied a kind of rough and scurrilous gazette of public opinion. But the proceeding gradually lost its actuality, and was, inoreover, looked on with less and less favour by the authorities. Indeed a sentinel wa.s latterly posted to prevent the placarding. It is said, how-ever, that isolated pasquinades, having at least local ap-propriateness, occurred not many years ago. Marforio, it should be added, was soon removed from his companion's neighbourhood to the Capitol. Contemporary comic peri-odicals, especially in Italy, still occasionally use the Marforio-Pasquin dialogue form. But this survival is purely artificial and literary, and pasquinade has, as noted above, ceased to have any precise meaning.