in
Literaz'ure and Art.
34-5
" Satyre Menippee," each of the others executed his part in the competi-
tion, and Pithou finally revifed it. For feveral years this remarkable
fatire circulated only fecretly, and in manufcript, and it was not printed
until Henri IV. was eflablithed on the throne.
The fatire opens with an account of the virtues of the " Catholicon."
or noftrum for curing all political difeafes, or the higuiero d'i2gfie1"no, which
had been fo effective in the hands of the Spaniards, who invented it. Some
of thefe are extraordinary enough. If, we are told, the lieutenant of Don
Philip " have fome of this Catholicon on his flags, he will enter without a
blow into an enemy's country, and they will meet him with croties and
banners, legates and primates ; and though he ruin, ravage, ufurp, maffacre,
and fack everything, and carry away, ravith, burn, and reduce everything
to a defert, the people of the country will fay, 'Thefe are our friends,
they are good Catholics; they do it for our peace, and for our mother
holy church."' " If an indolent king arnufe himfelf with refining this
drug in his efcurial, let him write a word into Flanders to Father Ignatius,
fealed with the Catholicon, he will iind him a man who (falva 0012-
fcicntia) will atiatlinate his enemy whom he has not been able to conquer
by arms in twenty years." This, of courfe, is an allulion to the murder
of the prince of Orange. " If this king propofes to affure his eftates to
his children after his death, and to invade another's kingdom at little
expenfe, let him write a word to Mendoza, his ambaifador, or to Father
Commelet (one of the mott feditious orators of the Ligue), and if he
write with the higuiero a'el irgfierno, at the bottom of his letter, the words
Yo cl Rey, they will furnifh him with an apoftate monk, who will go
under a fair femblance, like a Judas, and afiaflinate in cold blood a great
king of France, his brother-in-law, in the middle of his camp, without
fear of God or men ; they will do more, they will canonite the murderer,
and place this Judas above St. Peter, and baptife this prodigious and
horrible crime with the name of a providential event, of which the god-
fathers will be cardinals, legates, and primates." The allufion here is to
the affafiination of Henri III. by Jacques Clement. Thefe are but a
few of the marvellous properties of the political drug, after the enumera-
tion of which the report of the meeting of the Etiates is introduced by a
Y Y burlefque