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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44566 ***
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+Typographical features such as italic and bold fonts are indicated
+as _italic_ and =bold=. The 'oe' ligature is given as separate
+characters. Text shown in mixed 'small capital' letters has been
+shifted to all uppercase. Superscripted letters are prefixed with
+a carat (^) character. When multiple letters appear as superscripts,
+they are enclosed in brackets ({}).
+
+Illustrations appear as [Illustration: caption] in their approximate
+positions in the text. There are several decorative illustrations which
+appear merely as [Illustration]. Two illustrations, on pp. 199 and 204,
+were labelled No. 127. To resolve this, the second of them, and
+references to it, were changed to No. 127a.
+
+Footnotes have been moved to the end of the paragraphs where they are
+referenced.
+
+Please consult the Transcriber's Note at the end of this text for
+details regarding the resolution of any other textual issues.
+
+
+
+
+                               A HISTORY
+
+                                   OF
+
+                       CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.
+
+  [Illustration: _ARISTOTLE AND PYTHAÏS._
+                 _From an Engraving by Burgmair_ (_15th cent._)]
+
+
+
+
+                               A HISTORY
+
+                                   OF
+
+                        CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE
+
+                         In Literature and Art.
+
+                     BY THOMAS WRIGHT, M.A., F.S.A.
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                THE ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN AND ENGRAVED BY
+
+                         F. W. FAIRHOLT, F.S.A.
+
+                                London:
+
+                     CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY.
+
+                                 1875.
+
+
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+          SAVILL, EDWARDS, AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
+                             COVENT GARDEN.
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I have felt some difficulty in selecting a title for the contents of
+the following pages, in which it was, in fact, my design to give, as
+far as may be done within such moderate limits, and in as popular a
+manner as such information can easily be imparted, a general view of
+the History of Comic Literature and Art. Yet the word comic seems to
+me hardly to express all the parts of the subject which I have sought
+to bring together in my book. Moreover, the field of this history is
+very large, and, though I have only taken as my theme one part of it,
+it was necessary to circumscribe even that, in some degree; and my
+plan, therefore, is to follow it chiefly through those branches which
+have contributed most towards the formation of modern comic and satiric
+literature and art in our own island.
+
+Thus, as the comic literature of the middle ages to a very great
+extent, and comic art in a considerable degree also, were founded
+upon, or rather arose out of, those of the Romans which had preceded
+them, it seemed desirable to give a comprehensive history of this
+branch of literature and art as it was cultivated among the peoples of
+antiquity. Literature and art in the middle ages presented a certain
+unity of general character, arising, probably, from the uniformity of
+the influence of the Roman element of society, modified only by its
+lower degree of intensity at a greater distance from the centre, and
+by secondary causes attendant upon it. To understand the literature
+of any one country in Western Europe, especially during what we may
+term the feudal period--and the remark applies to art equally--it
+is necessary to make ourselves acquainted with the whole history of
+literature in Western Europe during that time. The peculiarities in
+different countries naturally became more marked in the progress of
+society, and more strongly individualised; but it was not till towards
+the close of the feudal period that the literature of each of these
+different countries was becoming more entirely its own. At that period
+the plan I have formed restricts itself, according to the view stated
+above. Thus, the satirical literature of the Reformation and pictorial
+caricature had their cradle in Germany, and, in the earlier half of
+the sixteenth century, carried their influence largely into France and
+England; but from that time any influence of German literature on these
+two countries ceases. Modern satirical literature has its models in
+France during the sixteenth century, and the direct influence of this
+literature in France upon English literature continued during that and
+the succeeding century, but no further. Political caricature rose to
+importance in France in the sixteenth century, and was transplanted
+to Holland in the seventeenth century, and until the beginning of the
+eighteenth century England owed its caricature, indirectly or directly,
+to the French and the Dutch; but after that time a purely English
+school of caricature was formed, which was entirely independent of
+Continental caricaturists.
+
+There are two senses in which the word history may be taken in regard
+to literature and art. It has been usually employed to signify a
+chronological account of authors or artists and their works, though
+this comes more properly under the title of biography and bibliography.
+But there is another and a very different application of the word, and
+this is the meaning which I attach to it in the present volume. During
+the middle ages, and for some period after (in special branches),
+literature--I mean poetry, satire, and popular literature of all
+kinds--belonged to society, and not to the individual authors, who
+were but workmen who gained a living by satisfying society's wants;
+and its changes in form or character depended all upon the varying
+progress, and therefore changing necessities, of society itself. This
+is the reason why, especially in the earlier periods, nearly the whole
+mass of the popular--I may, perhaps, be allowed to call it the social
+literature of the middle ages, is anonymous; and it was only at rare
+intervals that some individual rose and made himself a great name by
+the superiority of his talents. A certain number of writers of fabliaux
+put their names to their compositions, probably because they were names
+of writers who had gained the reputation of telling better or racier
+stories than many of their fellows. In some branches of literature--as
+in the satirical literature of the sixteenth century--society still
+exercised this kind of influence over it; and although its great
+monuments owe everything to the peculiar genius of their authors, they
+were produced under the pressure of social circumstances. To trace all
+these variations in literature connected with society, to describe the
+influences of society upon literature and of literature upon society,
+during the progress of the latter, appears to me to be the true meaning
+of the word history, and it is in this sense that I take it.
+
+This will explain why my history of the different branches of popular
+literature and art ends at very different periods. The grotesque and
+satirical sculpture, which adorned the ecclesiastical buildings,
+ceased with the middle ages. The story-books, as a part of this social
+literature, came down to the sixteenth century, and the history of
+the jest-books which arose out of them cannot be considered to extend
+further than the beginning of the seventeenth; for, to give a list of
+jest-books since that time would be to compile a catalogue of books
+made by booksellers for sale, copied from one another, and, till
+recently, each more contemptible than its predecessor. The school of
+satirical literature in France, at all events as far as it had any
+influence in England, lasted no longer than the earlier part of the
+seventeenth century. England can hardly be said to have had a school of
+satirical literature, with the exception of its comedy, which belongs
+properly to the seventeenth century; and its caricature belongs
+especially to the last century and to the earlier part of the present,
+beyond which it is not a part of my plan to carry it.
+
+These few remarks will perhaps serve to explain what some may consider
+to be defects in my book; and with them I venture to trust it to the
+indulgence of its readers. It is a subject which will have some novelty
+for the English reader, for I am not aware that we have any previous
+book devoted to it. At all events, it is not a mere compilation from
+other people's labours.
+
+                                             THOMAS WRIGHT.
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+                                                                 PAGE
+  ORIGIN OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE--SPIRIT OF CARICATURE
+     IN EGYPT--MONSTERS: PYTHON AND GORGON--GREECE--THE
+     DIONYSIAC CEREMONIES, AND ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA--THE OLD
+     COMEDY--LOVE OF PARODY--PARODIES ON SUBJECTS TAKEN
+     FROM GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY: THE VISIT TO THE LOVER; APOLLO
+     AT DELPHI--THE PARTIALITY FOR PARODY CONTINUED AMONG
+     THE ROMANS: THE FLIGHT OF ÆNEAS                                 1
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  ORIGIN OF THE STAGE IN ROME--USES OF THE MASK
+     AMONG THE ROMANS--SCENES FROM ROMAN COMEDY--THE
+     SANNIO AND MIMUS--THE ROMAN DRAMA--THE ROMAN
+     SATIRISTS--CARICATURE--ANIMALS INTRODUCED IN THE
+     CHARACTERS OF MEN--THE PIGMIES, AND THEIR INTRODUCTION
+     INTO CARICATURE; THE FARM-YARD; THE PAINTER'S STUDIO;
+     THE PROCESSION--POLITICAL CARICATURE IN POMPEII; THE
+     GRAFFITI                                                       23
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE
+     AGES--THE ROMAN MIMI CONTINUED TO EXIST--THE TEUTONIC
+     AFTER-DINNER ENTERTAINMENTS--CLERICAL SATIRES:
+     ARCHBISHOP HERIGER AND THE DREAMER; THE SUPPER OF THE
+     SAINTS--TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TO MEDIÆVAL ART--TASTE
+     FOR MONSTROUS ANIMALS, DRAGONS, ETC.; CHURCH OF SAN
+     FEDELE, AT COMO--SPIRIT OF CARICATURE AND LOVE OF
+     GROTESQUE AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS--GROTESQUE FIGURES OF
+     DEMONS--NATURAL TENDENCY OF THE EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS
+     TO DRAW IN CARICATURE--EXAMPLES FROM EARLY MANUSCRIPTS
+     AND SCULPTURES                                                 40
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  THE DIABOLICAL IN CARICATURE--MEDIÆVAL LOVE OF THE
+     LUDICROUS--CAUSES WHICH MADE IT INFLUENCE THE NOTIONS
+     OF DEMONS--STORIES OF THE PIOUS PAINTER AND THE ERRING
+     MONK--DARKNESS AND UGLINESS CARICATURED--THE DEMONS IN
+     THE MIRACLE PLAYS--THE DEMON OF NOTRE DAME                     61
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  EMPLOYMENT OF ANIMALS IN MEDIÆVAL SATIRE--POPULARITY
+     OF FABLES; ODO DE CIRINGTON--REYNARD THE
+     FOX--BURNELLUS AND FAUVEL--THE CHARIVARI--LE MONDE
+     BESTORNÉ--ENCAUSTIC TILES--SHOEING THE GOOSE, AND
+     FEEDING PIGS WITH ROSES--SATIRICAL SIGNS; THE MUSTARD
+     MAKER                                                          75
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  THE MONKEY IN BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE--TOURNAMENTS
+     AND SINGLE COMBATS--MONSTROUS COMBINATIONS OF
+     ANIMAL FORMS--CARICATURES ON COSTUME--THE HAT--THE
+     HELMET--LADIES' HEAD-DRESSES--THE GOWN, AND ITS LONG
+     SLEEVES                                                        95
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  PRESERVATION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE MIMUS AFTER THE FALL
+     OF THE EMPIRE--THE MINSTREL AND JOGELOUR--HISTORY OF
+     POPULAR STORIES--THE FABLIAUX--ACCOUNT OF THEM--THE
+     CONTES DEVOTS                                                 106
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  CARICATURES OF DOMESTIC LIFE--STATE OF DOMESTIC LIFE
+     IN THE MIDDLE AGES--EXAMPLES OF DOMESTIC CARICATURE
+     FROM THE CARVINGS OF THE MISERERES--KITCHEN
+     SCENES--DOMESTIC BRAWLS--THE FIGHT FOR THE
+     BREECHES--THE JUDICIAL DUEL BETWEEN MAN AND WIFE AMONG
+     THE GERMANS--ALLUSIONS TO WITCHCRAFT--SATIRES ON THE
+     TRADES: THE BAKER, THE MILLER, THE WINE-PEDLAR AND
+     TAVERN KEEPER, THE ALE-WIFE, ETC.                             118
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+
+  GROTESQUE FACES AND FIGURES--PREVALENCE OF THE TASTE FOR
+     UGLY AND GROTESQUE FACES--SOME OF THE POPULAR FORMS
+     DERIVED FROM ANTIQUITY: THE TONGUE LOLLING OUT, AND
+     THE DISTORTED MOUTH--HORRIBLE SUBJECTS: THE MAN
+     AND THE SERPENTS--ALLEGORICAL FIGURES: GLUTTONY AND
+     LUXURY--OTHER REPRESENTATIONS OF CLERICAL GLUTTONY
+     AND DRUNKENNESS--GROTESQUE FIGURES OF INDIVIDUALS,
+     AND GROTESQUE GROUPS--ORNAMENTS OF THE BORDERS OF
+     BOOKS--UNINTENTIONAL CARICATURE; THE MOTE AND THE BEAM        144
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+
+  SATIRICAL LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES--JOHN
+     DE HAUTEVILLE AND ALAN DE LILLE--GOLIAS AND
+     THE GOLIARDS--THE GOLIARDIC POETRY--TASTE FOR
+     PARODY--PARODIES ON RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS--POLITICAL
+     CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES--THE JEWS OF
+     NORWICH--CARICATURE REPRESENTATIONS OF
+     COUNTRIES--LOCAL SATIRE--POLITICAL SONGS AND POEMS            159
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+
+  MINSTRELSY A SUBJECT OF BURLESQUE AND
+     CARICATURE--CHARACTER OF THE MINSTRELS--THEIR JOKES
+     UPON THEMSELVES AND UPON ONE ANOTHER--VARIOUS
+     MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS REPRESENTED IN THE SCULPTURES
+     OF THE MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS--SIR MATTHEW GOURNAY AND
+     THE KING OF PORTUGAL--DISCREDIT OF THE TABOR AND
+     BAGPIPES--MERMAIDS                                            188
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+
+  THE COURT FOOL--THE NORMANS AND THEIR GABS--EARLY
+     HISTORY OF COURT FOOLS--THEIR COSTUME--CARVINGS IN
+     THE CORNISH CHURCHES--THE BURLESQUE SOCIETIES OF THE
+     MIDDLE AGES--THE FEASTS OF ASSES, AND OF FOOLS--THEIR
+     LICENCE--THE LEADEN MONEY OF THE FOOLS--THE BISHOP'S
+     BLESSING                                                      200
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  THE DANCE OF DEATH--THE PAINTINGS IN THE CHURCH OF
+     LA CHAISE DIEU--THE REIGN OF FOLLY--SEBASTIAN
+     BRANDT; THE SHIP OF FOOLS--DISTURBERS OF
+     CHURCH SERVICE--TROUBLESOME BEGGARS--GEILER'S
+     SERMONS--BADIUS, AND HIS SHIP OF FOOLISH WOMEN--THE
+     PLEASURES OF SMELL--ERASMUS; THE PRAISE OF FOLLY              214
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  POPULAR LITERATURE AND ITS HEROES; BROTHER RUSH, TYLL
+     EULENSPIEGEL, THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM--STORIES AND
+     JEST-BOOKS--SKELTON, SCOGIN, TARLTON, PEELE                   228
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+
+  THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION--THOMAS MURNER; HIS GENERAL
+     SATIRES--FRUITFULNESS OF FOLLY--HANS SACHS--THE
+     TRAP FOR FOOLS--ATTACKS ON LUTHER--THE POPE AS
+     ANTICHRIST--THE POPE-ASS AND THE MONK-CALF--OTHER
+     CARICATURES AGAINST THE POPE--THE GOOD AND BAD
+     SHEPHERDS                                                     244
+
+  CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  ORIGIN OF MEDIÆVAL FARCE AND MODERN
+     COMEDY--HROTSVITHA--MEDIÆVAL NOTIONS OF TERENCE--THE
+     EARLY RELIGIOUS PLAYS--MYSTERIES AND MIRACLE
+     PLAYS--THE FARCES--THE DRAMA IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY         264
+
+  CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  DIABLERIE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY--EARLY TYPES OF THE
+     DIABOLICAL FORMS--ST. ANTHONY--ST. GUTHLAC--REVIVAL OF
+     THE TASTE FOR SUCH SUBJECTS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE
+     SIXTEENTH CENTURY--THE FLEMISH SCHOOL OF BREUGHEL--THE
+     FRENCH AND ITALIAN SCHOOLS--CALLOT, SALVATOR ROSA             288
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  CALLOT AND HIS SCHOOL--CALLOT'S ROMANTIC HISTORY--HIS
+     "CAPRICI," AND OTHER BURLESQUE WORKS--THE "BALLI"
+     AND THE BEGGARS--IMITATORS OF CALLOT; DELLA
+     BELLA--EXAMPLES OF DELLA BELLA--ROMAIN DE HOOGHE              300
+
+  CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  THE SATIRICAL LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH
+     CENTURY--PASQUIL--MACARONIC POETRY--THE EPISTOLÆ
+     OBSCURORUM VIRORUM--RABELAIS--COURT OF THE QUEEN OF
+     NAVARRE, AND ITS LITERARY CIRCLE; BONAVENTURE DES
+     PERIERS--HENRI ETIENNE--THE LIGUE, AND ITS SATIRE: THE
+     "SATYRE MENIPPEE"                                             312
+
+  CHAPTER XX.
+
+  POLITICAL CARICATURE IN ITS INFANCY--THE REVERS DU
+     JEU DES SUYSSES--CARICATURE IN FRANCE--THE THREE
+     ORDERS--PERIOD OF THE LIGUE; CARICATURES AGAINST HENRI
+     III.--CARICATURES AGAINST THE LIGUE--CARICATURE IN
+     FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY--GENERAL GALAS--THE
+     QUARREL OF AMBASSADORS--CARICATURE AGAINST LOUIS XXV.;
+     WILLIAM OF FURSTEMBERG                                        347
+
+  CHAPTER XXI.
+
+  EARLY POLITICAL CARICATURE IN ENGLAND--THE SATIRICAL
+     WRITINGS AND PICTURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH
+     PERIOD--SATIRES AGAINST THE BISHOPS; BISHOP
+     WILLIAMS--CARICATURES ON THE CAVALIERS; SIR JOHN
+     SUCKLING--THE ROARING BOYS; VIOLENCE OF THE ROYALIST
+     SOLDIERS--CONTEST BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND
+     INDEPENDENTS--GRINDING THE KING'S NOSE--PLAYING-CARDS
+     USED AS THE MEDIUM FOR CARICATURE; HASELRIGGE AND
+     LAMBERT--SHROVETIDE                                           360
+
+  CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  ENGLISH COMEDY--BEN JONSON--THE OTHER WRITERS OF HIS
+     SCHOOL--INTERRUPTION OF DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES--COMEDY
+     AFTER THE RESTORATION--THE HOWARDS BROTHERS; THE DUKE
+     OF BUCKINGHAM; THE REHEARSAL--WRITERS OF COMEDY IN THE
+     LATTER PART OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY--INDECENCY OF
+     THE STAGE--COLLEY CIBBER--FOOTE                               375
+
+  CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+  CARICATURE IN HOLLAND--ROMAIN DE HOOGHE--THE ENGLISH
+     REVOLUTION--CARICATURES ON LOUIS XIV. AND
+     JAMES II.--DR. SACHEVERELL--CARICATURE BROUGHT
+     FROM HOLLAND TO ENGLAND--ORIGIN OF THE WORD
+     "CARICATURE"--MISSISSIPPI AND THE SOUTH SEA; THE YEAR
+     OF BUBBLES                                                    406
+
+  CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  ENGLISH CARICATURE IN THE AGE OF GEORGE II.--ENGLISH
+     PRINTSELLERS--ARTISTS EMPLOYED BY THEM--SIR ROBERT
+     WALPOLE'S LONG MINISTRY--THE WAR WITH FRANCE--THE
+     NEWCASTLE ADMINISTRATION--OPERA INTRIGUES--ACCESSION
+     OF GEORGE III., AND LORD BUTE IN POWER                        420
+
+  CHAPTER XXV.
+
+  HOGARTH--HIS EARLY HISTORY--HIS SETS OF PICTURES--THE
+     HARLOT'S PROGRESS--THE RAKE'S PROGRESS--THE MARRIAGE A
+     LA MODE--HIS OTHER PRINTS--THE ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY, AND
+     THE PERSECUTION ARISING OUT OF IT--HIS PATRONAGE BY
+     LORD BUTE--CARICATURE OF THE TIMES--ATTACKS TO WHICH
+     HE WAS EXPOSED BY IT, AND WHICH HASTENED HIS DEATH            434
+
+  CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  THE LESSER CARICATURISTS OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE
+     III.--PAUL SANDBY--COLLET: THE DISASTER,
+     AND FATHER PAUL IN HIS CUPS--JAMES SAYER:
+     HIS CARICATURES IN SUPPORT OF PITT, AND HIS
+     REWARD--CARLO KHAN'S TRIUMPH--BUNBURY'S: HIS
+     CARICATURES ON HORSEMANSHIP--WOODWARD: GENERAL
+     COMPLAINT--ROWLANDSON'S INFLUENCE ON THE STYLE OF
+     THOSE WHOSE DESIGNS HE ETCHED--JOHN KAY OF EDINBURGH:
+     LOOKING A ROCK IN THE FACE                                    450
+
+  CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+  GILLRAY--HIS FIRST ATTEMPTS--HIS CARICATURES BEGIN
+     WITH THE SHELBURNE MINISTRY--IMPEACHMENT OF
+     WARREN HASTINGS--CARICATURES ON THE KING; NEW
+     WAY TO PAY THE NATIONAL DEBT--ALLEGED REASON FOR
+     GILLRAY'S HOSTILITY TO THE KING--THE KING AND THE
+     APPLE-DUMPLINGS--GILLRAY'S LATER LABOURS--HIS IDIOTCY
+     AND DEATH                                                     464
+
+  CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+  GILLRAY'S CARICATURES ON SOCIAL LIFE--THOMAS
+     ROWLANDSON--HIS EARLY LIFE--HE BECOMES A
+     CARICATURIST--HIS STYLE AND WORKS--HIS DRAWINGS--THE
+     CRUIKSHANKS                                                   480
+
+
+
+
+                               A HISTORY
+
+                                   OF
+
+                       CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+  ORIGIN OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.--SPIRIT OF CARICATURE IN
+     EGYPT.--MONSTERS: PYTHON AND GORGON.--GREECE.--THE DIONYSIAC
+     CEREMONIES, AND ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA.--THE OLD COMEDY.--LOVE OF
+     PARODY.--PARODIES ON SUBJECTS TAKEN FROM GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY: THE
+     VISIT TO THE LOVER: APOLLO AT DELPHI.--THE PARTIALITY FOR PARODY
+     CONTINUED AMONG THE ROMANS: THE FLIGHT OF ÆNEAS.
+
+
+It is not my intention in the following pages to discuss the question
+what constitutes the comic or the laughable, or, in other words, to
+enter into the philosophy of the subject; I design only to trace
+the history of its outward development, the various forms it has
+assumed, and its social influence. Laughter appears to be almost a
+necessity of human nature, in all conditions of man's existence,
+however rude or however cultivated; and some of the greatest men of
+all ages, men of the most refined intellects, such as Cicero in the
+ages of antiquity, and Erasmus among the moderns, have been celebrated
+for their indulgence in it. The former was sometimes called by his
+opponents _scurra consularis_, the "consular jester;" and the latter,
+who has been spoken of as the "mocking-bird," is said to have laughed
+so immoderately over the well-known "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,"
+that he brought upon himself a serious fit of illness. The greatest of
+comic writers, Aristophanes, has always been looked upon as a model of
+literary perfection. An epigram in the Greek Anthology, written by the
+divine Plato, tells us how, when the Graces sought a temple which would
+not fall, they found the soul of Aristophanes:--
+
+       Ἁι χάριτες τέμενός τι λαβεῖν ὁπερ οὐχὶ πεσεῖται
+            Ζητοῦσαι, ψυχὴν εὔρον Ἀριστοφάνους.
+
+On the other hand, the men who never laughed, the ἀγέλαστοι, were
+looked upon as the least respectable of mortals.
+
+A tendency to burlesque and caricature appears, indeed, to be a feeling
+deeply implanted in human nature, and it is one of the earliest talents
+displayed by people in a rude state of society. An appreciation of, and
+sensitiveness to, ridicule, and a love of that which is humorous, are
+found even among savages, and enter largely into their relations with
+their fellow men. When, before people cultivated either literature or
+art, the chieftain sat in his rude hall surrounded by his warriors,
+they amused themselves by turning their enemies and opponents into
+mockery, by laughing at their weaknesses, joking on their defects,
+whether physical or mental, and giving them nicknames in accordance
+therewith,--in fact, caricaturing them in words, or by telling stories
+which were calculated to excite laughter. When the agricultural slaves
+(for the tillers of the land were then slaves) were indulged with a
+day of relief from their labours, they spent it in unrestrained mirth.
+And when these same people began to erect permanent buildings, and
+to ornament them, the favourite subjects of their ornamentation were
+such as presented ludicrous ideas. The warrior, too, who caricatured
+his enemy in his speeches over the festive board, soon sought to give
+a more permanent form to his ridicule, which he endeavoured to do by
+rude delineations on the bare rock, or on any other convenient surface
+which presented itself to his hand. Thus originated caricature and
+the grotesque in art. In fact, art itself, in its earliest forms, is
+caricature; for it is only by that exaggeration of features which
+belongs to caricature, that unskilful draughtsmen could make themselves
+understood.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 1. An Egyptian Lady at a Feast._]
+
+Although we might, perhaps, find in different countries examples of
+these principles in different states of development, we cannot in any
+one country trace the entire course of the development itself: for in
+all the highly civilised races of mankind, we first become acquainted
+with their history when they had already reached a considerable
+degree of refinement; and even at that period of their progress, our
+knowledge is almost confined to their religious, and to their more
+severely historical, monuments. Such is especially the case with
+Egypt, the history of which country, as represented by its monuments
+of art, carries us back to the remotest ages of antiquity. Egyptian
+art generally presents itself in a sombre and massive character, with
+little of gaiety or joviality in its designs or forms. Yet, as Sir
+Gardner Wilkinson has remarked in his valuable work on the "Manners
+and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," the early Egyptian artists
+cannot always conceal their natural tendency to the humorous, which
+creeps out in a variety of little incidents. Thus, in a series of grave
+historical pictures on one of the great monuments at Thebes, we find
+a representation of a wine party, where the company consists of both
+sexes, and which evidently shows that the ladies were not restricted
+in the use of the juice of the grape in their entertainments; and,
+as he adds, "the painters, in illustrating this fact, have sometimes
+sacrificed their gallantry to a love of caricature." Among the
+females, evidently of rank, represented in this scene, "some call the
+servants to support them as they sit, others with difficulty prevent
+themselves from falling on those behind them, and the faded flower,
+which is ready to drop from their heated hands, is intended to be
+characteristic of their own sensations." One group, a lady whose
+excess has been carried too far, and her servant who comes to her
+assistance, is represented in our cut No. 1. Sir Gardner observes that
+"many similar instances of a talent for caricature are observable in
+the compositions of the Egyptian artists, who executed the paintings
+of the tombs" at Thebes, which belong to a very early period of the
+Egyptian annals. Nor is the application of this talent restricted
+always to secular subjects, but we see it at times intruding into the
+most sacred mysteries of their religion. I give as a curious example,
+taken from one of Sir Gardner Wilkinson's engravings, a scene in the
+representation of a funeral procession crossing the Lake of the Dead
+(No. 2), that appears in one of these early paintings at Thebes, in
+which "the love of caricature common to the Egyptians is shown to have
+been indulged even in this serious subject; and the retrograde movement
+of the large boat, which has grounded and is pushed off the bank,
+striking the smaller one with its rudder, has overturned a large table
+loaded with cakes and other things, upon the rowers seated below, in
+spite of all the efforts of the prowman, and the earnest vociferations
+of the alarmed steersman." The accident which thus overthrows and
+scatters the provisions intended for the funeral feast, and the
+confusion attendant upon it, form a ludicrous scene in the midst of a
+solemn picture, that would be worthy of the imagination of a Rowlandson.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 2. Catastrophe in a Funeral Procession._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 3. An Unfortunate Soul._]
+
+Another cut (No. 3), taken from one of the same series of paintings,
+belongs to a class of caricatures which dates from a very remote
+period. One of the most natural ideas among all people would be to
+compare men with the animals whose particular qualities they possessed.
+Thus, one might be as bold as a lion, another as faithful as a dog,
+or as cunning as a fox, or as swinish as a hog. The name of the
+animal would thus often be given as a nickname to the man, and in
+the sequel he would be represented pictorially under the form of the
+animal. It was partly out of this kind of caricature, no doubt, that
+the singular class of apologues which have been since distinguished
+by the name of fables arose. Connected with it was the belief in
+the metempsychosis, or transmission of the soul into the bodies of
+animals after death, which formed a part of several of the primitive
+religions. The earliest examples of this class of caricature of mankind
+are found on the Egyptian monuments, as in the instance just referred
+to, which represents "a soul condemned to return to earth under the
+form of a pig, having been weighed in the scales before Osiris and
+been found wanting. Being placed in a boat, and accompanied by two
+monkeys, it is dismissed the sacred precinct." The latter animals, it
+may be remarked, as they are here represented, are the cynocephali, or
+dog-headed monkeys (the _simia inuus_), which were sacred animals among
+the Egyptians, and the peculiar characteristic of which--the dog-shaped
+head--is, as usual, exaggerated by the artist.
+
+The representation of this return of a condemned soul under the
+repulsive form of a pig, is painted on the left side wall of the long
+entrance-gallery to the tomb of King Rameses V., in the valley of
+royal catacombs known as the Biban-el-Molook, at Thebes. Wilkinson
+gives the date of the accession of this monarch to the throne as 1185,
+B.C. In the original picture, Osiris is seated on his throne
+at some distance from the stern of the boat, and is dismissing it from
+his presence by a wave of the hand. This tomb was open in the time of
+the Romans, and termed by them the "Tomb of Memnon;" it was greatly
+admired, and is covered with laudatory inscriptions by Greek and Roman
+visitors. One of the most interesting is placed beneath this picture,
+recording the name of a _daduchus_, or torch-bearer in the Eleusinian
+mysteries, who visited this tomb in the reign of Constantine.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 4. The Cat and the Geese._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 5. The Fox turned Piper._]
+
+The practice having been once introduced of representing men under the
+character of animals, was soon developed into other applications of the
+same idea--such as that of figuring animals employed in the various
+occupations of mankind, and that of reversing the position of man and
+the inferior animals, and representing the latter as treating their
+human tyrant in the same manner as they are usually treated by him.
+The latter idea became a very favourite one at a later period, but
+the other is met with not unfrequently among the works of art which
+have been saved from the wrecks of antiquity. Among the treasures
+of the British Museum, there is a long Egyptian picture on papyrus,
+originally forming a roll, consisting of representations of this
+description, from which I give three curious examples. The first (see
+cut No. 4) represents a cat in charge of a drove of geese. It will be
+observed that the cat holds in her hand the same sort of rod, with a
+hook at the end, with which the monkeys are furnished in the preceding
+picture. The second (No. 5) represents a fox carrying a basket by means
+of a pole supported on his shoulder (a method of carrying burthens
+frequently represented on the monuments of ancient art), and playing on
+the well-known double flute, or pipe. The fox soon became a favourite
+personage in this class of caricatures, and we know what a prominent
+part he afterwards played in mediæval satire. Perhaps, however, the
+most popular of all animals in this class of drolleries was the monkey,
+which appears natural enough when we consider its singular aptitude
+to mimic the actions of man. The ancient naturalists tell us some
+curious, though not very credible, stories of the manner in which this
+characteristic of the monkey tribes was taken advantage of to entrap
+them, and Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. viii. c. 80) quotes an older writer,
+who asserted that they had even been taught to play at draughts. Our
+third subject from the Egyptian papyrus of the British Museum (No. 6)
+represents a scene in which the game of draughts--or, more properly
+speaking, the game which the Romans called the _ludus latrunculorum_,
+and which is believed to have resembled our draughts--is played by two
+animals well known to modern heraldry, the lion and the unicorn. The
+lion has evidently gained the victory, and is fingering the money; and
+his bold air of swaggering superiority, as well as the look of surprise
+and disappointment of his vanquished opponent, are by no means ill
+pictured. This series of caricatures, though Egyptian, belongs to the
+Roman period.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 6. The Lion and the Unicorn._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 7. Typhon._]
+
+The monstrous is closely allied to the grotesque, and both come within
+the province of caricature, when we take this term in its widest
+sense. The Greeks, especially, were partial to representations of
+monsters, and monstrous forms are continually met with among their
+ornaments and works of art. The type of the Egyptian monster is
+represented in the accompanying cut (No. 7), taken from the work of
+Sir Gardner Wilkinson before quoted, and is said to be the figure
+of the god Typhon. It occurs frequently on Egyptian monuments, with
+some variation in its forms, but always characterised by the broad,
+coarse, and frightful face, and by the large tongue lolling out. It is
+interesting to us, because it is the apparent origin of a long series
+of faces, or masks, of this form and character, which are continually
+recurring in the grotesque ornamentation, not only of the Greeks and
+Romans, but of the middle ages. It appears to have been sometimes given
+by the Romans to the representations of people whom they hated or
+despised; and Pliny, in a curious passage of his "Natural History,"[1]
+informs us that at one time, among the pictures exhibited in the Forum
+at Rome, there was one in which a Gaul was represented, "thrusting
+out his tongue in a very unbecoming manner." The Egyptian Typhons had
+their exact representations in ancient Greece in a figure of frequent
+occurrence, to which antiquaries have, I know not why, given the name
+of Gorgon. The example in our cut No. 8, is a figure in terra-cotta,
+now in the collection of the Royal Museum at Berlin.[2]
+
+ [1] Plin. Hist. Nat., lib. xxxv. c. 8.
+
+ [2] Panoska Terracotten des Museums Berlin, pl. lxi. p. 154.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 8. Gorgon._]
+
+In Greece, however, the spirit of caricature and burlesque
+representation had assumed a more regular form than in other
+countries, for it was inherent in the spirit of Grecian society.
+Among the population of Greece, the worship of Dionysus, or Bacchus,
+had taken deep root from a very early period--earlier than we can
+trace back--and it formed the nucleus of the popular religion and
+superstitions, the cradle of poetry and the drama. The most popular
+celebrations of the people of Greece, were the Dionysiac festivals,
+and the phallic rites and processions which accompanied them, in
+which the chief actors assumed the disguise of satyrs and fawns,
+covering themselves with goat-skins, and disfiguring their faces by
+rubbing them over with the lees of wine. Thus, in the guise of noisy
+bacchanals, they displayed an unrestrained licentiousness of gesture
+and language, uttering indecent jests and abusive speeches, in which
+they spared nobody. This portion of the ceremony was the especial
+attribute of a part of the performers, who accompanied the procession
+in waggons, and acted something like dramatic performances, in which
+they uttered an abundance of loose extempore satire on those who
+passed or who accompanied the procession, a little in the style of
+the modern carnivals. It became thus the occasion for an unrestrained
+publication of coarse pasquinades. In the time of Pisistratus, these
+performances are assumed to have been reduced to a little more order by
+an individual named Thespis, who is said to have invented masks as a
+better disguise than dirty faces, and is looked upon as the father of
+the Grecian drama. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the drama arose
+out of these popular ceremonies, and it long bore the unmistakable
+marks of its origin. Even the name of tragedy has nothing tragic in
+its derivation, for it is formed from the Greek word _tragos_
+(τράγος), a goat, in the skins of which animal the satyrs clothed
+themselves, and hence the name was given also to those who personated
+the satyrs in the processions. A _tragodus_ (τραγῳδὸς) was the singer,
+whose words accompanied the movements of a chorus of satyrs, and the
+term _tragodia_ was applied to his performance. In the same manner,
+a _comodus_ (κωμωδὸς) was one who accompanied similarly, with chants
+of an abusive or satirical character, a _comus_ (κῶμος), or band of
+revellers, in the more riotous and licentious portion of the
+performances in the Bacchic festivals. The Greek drama always betrayed
+its origin by the circumstance that the performances took place
+annually, only at the yearly festivals in honour of Bacchus, of which
+in fact they constituted a part. Moreover, as the Greek drama became
+perfected, it still retained from its origin a triple division, into
+tragedy, comedy, and the satiric drama; and, being still performed
+at the Dionysiac festival in Athens, each dramatic author was expected
+to produce what was called a _trilogy_, that is, a tragedy, a satirical
+play, and a comedy. So completely was all this identified in the
+popular mind with the worship of Bacchus, that, long afterwards, when
+even a tragedy did not please the audience by its subject, the common
+form of disapproval was, τί ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον--"What has this
+to do with Bacchus?" and, οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον--"This has nothing
+to do with Bacchus."
+
+We have no perfect remains of the Greek satiric drama, which was,
+perhaps, of a temporary character, and less frequently preserved; but
+the early Greek comedy is preserved in a certain number of the plays
+of Aristophanes, in which we can contemplate it in all its freedom of
+character. It represented the waggon-jesting, of the age of Thespis, in
+its full development. In its form it was burlesque to a wanton degree
+of extravagance, and its essence was personal vilification, as well as
+general satire. Individuals were not only attacked by the application
+to them of abusive epithets, but they were represented personally on
+the stage as performing every kind of contemptible action, and as
+suffering all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful treatment. The drama
+thus bore marks of its origin in its extraordinary licentiousness
+of language and costume, and in the constant use of the mask. One
+of its most favourite instruments of satire was parody, which was
+employed unsparingly on everything which society in its solemn moments
+respected--against everything that the satirist considered worthy of
+being held up to public derision or scorn. Religion itself, philosophy,
+social manners and institutions--even poetry--were all parodied in
+their turn. The comedies of Aristophanes are full of parodies on the
+poetry of the tragic and other writers of his age. He is especially
+happy in parodying the poetry of the tragic dramatist Euripides. The
+old comedy of Greece has thus been correctly described as the comedy of
+caricature; and the spirit, and even the scenes, of this comedy, being
+transferred to pictorial representations, became entirely identical
+with that branch of art to which we give the name of caricature in
+modern times. Under the cover of bacchanalian buffoonery, a serious
+purpose, it is true, was aimed at; but the general satire was chiefly
+implied in the violent personal attacks on individuals, and this became
+so offensive that when such persons obtained greater power in Athens
+than the populace the old comedy was abolished.
+
+Aristophanes was the greatest and most perfect poet of the Old Comedy,
+and his remaining comedies are as strongly marked representations of
+the hostility of political and social parties in his time, as the
+caricatures of Gillray are of party in the reign of our George III.,
+and, we may add, even more minute. They range through the memorable
+period of the Peloponnesian war, and the earlier ones give us the
+regular annual series of these performances, as far as Aristophanes
+contributed them, during several years. The first of them, "The
+Acharnians," was performed at the Lenæan feast of Bacchus in the sixth
+year of the Peloponnesian war, the year 425 B.C., when it gained the
+first prize. It is a bold attack on the factious prolongation of the
+war through the influence of the Athenian demagogues. The next, "The
+Knights," brought out in B.C. 424, is a direct attack upon Cleon, the
+chief of these demagogues, although he is not mentioned by name; and
+it is recorded that, finding nobody who had courage enough to make a
+mask representing Cleon, or to play the character, Aristophanes was
+obliged to perform it himself, and that he smeared his face with lees
+of wine, in order to represent the flushed and bloated countenance of
+the great demagogue, thus returning to the original mode of acting
+of the predecessors of Thespis. This, too, was the first of the
+comedies of Aristophanes which he published in his own name. "The
+Clouds," published in 423, is aimed at Socrates and the philosophers.
+The fourth, "The Wasps," published in B.C. 422, presents a satire on
+the litigious spirit of the Athenians. The fifth, entitled "Peace"
+(Ἔιρηνη), appeared in the year following, at the time of the peace of
+Nicias, and is another satire on the bellicose spirit of the Athenian
+democracy. The next in the list of extant plays comes after an interval
+of several years, having been published in B.C. 414, the first year of
+the Sicilian war, and relates to an irreligious movement in Athens,
+which had caused a great sensation. Two Athenians are represented as
+leaving Athens, in disgust at the vices and follies of their fellow
+citizens, and seeking the kingdom of the birds, where they form a new
+state, by which the communication between the mortals and the immortals
+is cut off, and is only opened again by an arrangement between all
+the parties. In the "Lysistrata," believed to have been brought out
+in 411, when the war was still at its height, the women of Athens are
+represented as engaging in a cunning and successful plot, by which
+they gain possession of the government of the state, and compel their
+husbands to make peace. "The Thesmophoriazusæ," appears to have been
+published in B.C. 410; it is a satire upon Euripides, whose writings
+were remarkable for their bitter attacks on the character of the
+female sex, who, in this comedy, conspire against him to secure his
+punishment. The comedy of "The Frogs" was brought out in the year
+405 B.C., and is a satire on the literature of the day; it
+is aimed especially at Euripides, and was perhaps written soon after
+his death, its real subject being the decline of the tragic drama,
+which Euripides was accused of having promoted. It is perhaps the most
+witty of the plays of Aristophanes which have been preserved. "The
+Ecclesiazusæ," published in 392, is a burlesque upon the theories of
+republican government, which were then started among the philosophers,
+some of which differed little from our modern communism. The ladies
+again, by a clever conspiracy, gain the mastery in the estate, and they
+decree a community of goods and women, with some laws very peculiar
+to that state of things. The humour of the piece, which is extremely
+broad, turns upon the disputes and embarrassments resulting from this
+state of things. The last of his comedies extant, "Plutus," appears to
+be a work of the concluding years of the active life of Aristophanes;
+it is the least striking of them all, and is rather a moral than a
+political satire.
+
+In a comedy brought out in 426, the year before "The Archarnians,"
+under the title of "The Babylonians," Aristophanes appears to have
+given great offence to the democratic party, a circumstance to which
+he alludes more than once in the former play. However, his talents and
+popularity seem to have carried him over the danger, and certainly
+nothing can have exceeded the bitterness of satire employed in his
+subsequent comedies. Those who followed him were less fortunate.
+
+One of the latest writers of the Old Comedy was Anaximandrides,
+who cast a reflection on the state of Athens in parodying a line of
+Euripides. This poet had said,--
+
+                ἡ φύσις ἐβούλεθ’ ἦ νόμων οὐδεν μέλει
+       (Nature has commanded, which cares nothing for the laws);
+
+which Anaximandrides changed to--
+
+                ἡ πόλις ἐβούλεθ’ ἦ νόμων οὐδεν μέλει
+      (The state has commanded, which cares nothing for the laws).
+
+Nowhere is oppression exercised with greater harshness than under
+democratic governments; and Anaximandrides was prosecuted for this
+joke as a crime against the state, and condemned to death. As may be
+supposed, liberty of speech ceased to exist in Athens. We are well
+acquainted with the character of the Old Comedy, in its greatest
+freedom, through the writings of Aristophanes. What was called the
+Middle Comedy, in which political satire was prohibited, lasted from
+this time until the age of Philip of Macedon, when the old liberty of
+Greece was finally crushed. The last form of Greek comedy followed,
+which is known as the New Comedy, and was represented by such names as
+Epicharmus and Menander. In the New Comedy all caricature and parody,
+and all personal allusions, were entirely proscribed; it was changed
+entirely into a comedy of manners and domestic life, a picture of
+contemporary society under conventional names and characters. From this
+New Comedy was taken the Roman comedy, such as we now have it in the
+plays of Plautus and Terence, who were professed imitators of Menander
+and the other writers of the new comedy of the Greeks.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 9. A Greek Parody._]
+
+Pictorial caricature was, of course, rarely to be seen on the public
+monuments of Greece or Rome, but must have been consigned to objects
+of a more popular character and to articles of common use; and,
+accordingly, modern antiquarian research has brought it to light
+somewhat abundantly on the pottery of Greece and Etruria, and on the
+wall-paintings of domestic buildings in Herculaneum and Pompeii. The
+former contains comic scenes, especially parodies, which are evidently
+transferred to them from the stage, and which preserve the marks and
+other attributes--some of which I have necessarily omitted--proving the
+model from which they were taken. The Greeks, as we know from many
+sources, were extremely fond of parodies of every description, whether
+literary or pictorial. The subject of our cut No. 9 is a good example
+of the parodies found on the Greek pottery; it is taken from a fine
+Etruscan vase,[3] and has been supposed to be a parody on the visit of
+Jupiter to Alcmena. This appears rather doubtful, but there can be no
+doubt that it is a burlesque representation of the visit of a lover
+to the object of his aspirations. The lover, in the comic mask and
+costume, mounts by a ladder to the window at which the lady presents
+herself, who, it must be confessed, presents the appearance of giving
+her admirer a very cold reception. He tries to conciliate her by a
+present of what seem to be apples, instead of gold, but without much
+effect. He is attended by his servant with a torch, to give him light
+on the way, which shows that it is a night adventure. Both master and
+servant have wreaths round their heads, and the latter carries a third
+in his hand, which, with the contents of his basket, are also probably
+intended as presents to the lady.
+
+ [3] Given in Panofka, "Antiques du Cabinet Pourtalès," pl. x.
+
+A more unmistakable burlesque on the visit of Jupiter to Alcmena is
+published by Winckelmann from a vase, formerly in the library of the
+Vatican, and now at St. Petersburg. The treatment of the subject is
+not unlike the picture just described. Alcmena appears just in the
+same posture at her chamber window, and Jupiter is carrying his ladder
+to mount up to her, but has not yet placed it against the wall. His
+companion is identified with Mercury by the well-known caduceus he
+carries in his left hand, while with his right hand he holds a lamp
+up to the window, in order to enable Jupiter to see the object of his
+amour.
+
+It is astonishing with how much boldness the Greeks parodied and
+ridiculed sacred subjects. The Christian father, Arnobius, in writing
+against his heathen opponents, reproached them with this circumstance.
+The laws, he says, were made to protect the characters of men from
+slander and libel, but there was no such protection for the characters
+of the gods, which were treated with the greatest disrespect.[4] This
+was especially the case in their pictorial representations.
+
+ [4] Arnobius (_contra Gentes_), lib. iv. p. 150. Carmen malum
+     conscribere, quo fama alterius coinquinatur et vita, decemviralibus
+     scitis evadere noluistis impune: ac ne vestras aures convitio
+     aliquis petulantiore pulsaret, de atrocibus formulas constituistis
+     injuriis. Soli dii sunt apud vos superi inhonorati, contemtibiles,
+     viles: in quos jus est vobis datum quæ quisque voluerit dicere
+     turpitudinem, jacere quas libido confinxerit atque excogitaverit
+     formas.
+
+Pliny informs us that Ctesilochus, a pupil of the celebrated Apelles,
+painted a burlesque picture of Jupiter giving birth to Bacchus, in
+which the god was represented in a very ridiculous posture.[5] Ancient
+writers intimate that similar examples were not uncommon, and mention
+the names of several comic painters, whose works of this class were
+in repute. Some of these were bitter personal caricatures, like a
+celebrated work of a painter named Ctesicles, described also by Pliny.
+It appears that Stratonice, the queen of Seleucus Nicator, had received
+this painter ill when he visited her court, and in revenge he executed
+a picture in which she was represented, according to a current scandal,
+as engaged in an amour with a common fisherman, which he exhibited in
+the harbour of Ephesus, and then made his escape on ship-board. Pliny
+adds that the queen admired the beauty and accuracy of the painting
+more than she felt the insult, and that she forbade the removal of the
+picture.[6]
+
+ [5] Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. xxxv. c. 40.
+
+ [6] Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. xxxv. c. 40.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 10. Apollo at Delphi._]
+
+The subject of our second example of the Greek caricature is better
+known. It is taken from an oxybaphon which was brought from the
+Continent to England, where it passed into the collection of Mr.
+William Hope.[7] The _oxybaphon_ (ὀξύβαφον), or, as it was called
+by the Romans, _acetabulum_, was a large vessel for holding vinegar,
+which formed one of the important ornaments of the table, and was
+therefore very susceptible of pictorial embellishment of this
+description. It is one of the most remarkable Greek caricatures
+of this kind yet known, and represents a parody on one of the most
+interesting stories of the Grecian mythology, that of the arrival of
+Apollo at Delphi. The artist, in his love of burlesque, has spared
+none of the personages who belonged to the story. The Hyperborean
+Apollo himself appears in the character of a quack doctor, on his
+temporary stage, covered by a sort of roof, and approached by wooden
+steps. On the stage lies Apollo's luggage, consisting of a bag, a
+bow, and his Scythian cap. Chiron (ΧΙΡΩΝ) is represented as labouring
+under the effects of age and blindness, and supporting himself by the
+aid of a crooked staff, as he repairs to the Delphian quack-doctor for
+relief. The figure of the centaur is made to ascend by the aid of a
+companion, both being furnished with the masks and other attributes of
+the comic performers. Above are the mountains, and on them the nymphs
+of Parnassus (ΝΥΜΦΑΙ), who, like all the other actors in the scene, are
+disguised with masks, and those of a very grotesque character. On the
+right-hand side stands a figure which is considered as representing the
+_epoptes_, the inspector or overseer of the performance, who alone wears
+no mask. Even a pun is employed to heighten the drollery of the scene,
+for instead of ΠΥΘΙΑΣ, the Pythian, placed over the head of the
+burlesque Apollo, it seems evident that the artist had written ΠΕΙΘΙΑΣ,
+the consoler, in allusion, perhaps, to the consolation which the
+quack-doctor is administering to his blind and aged visitor.
+
+ [7] Engraved by Ch. Lenormant et J. de Witt, "Elite des Monuments
+     Céramographiques," pl. xciv.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 11. The Flight of Æneas from Troy._]
+
+The Greek spirit of parody, applied even to the most sacred subjects,
+however it may have declined in Greece, was revived at Rome, and we
+find examples of it on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. They
+show the same readiness to turn into burlesque the most sacred and
+popular legends of the Roman mythology. The example given (cut No. 11),
+from one of the wall-paintings, is peculiarly interesting, both from
+circumstances in the drawing itself, and because it is a parody on
+one of the favourite national legends of the Roman people, who prided
+themselves on their descent from Æneas. Virgil has told, with great
+effect, the story of his hero's escape from the destruction of Troy--or
+rather has put the story into his hero's mouth. When the devoted
+city was already in flames, Æneas took his father, Anchises, on his
+shoulder, and his boy, Iulus, or, as he was otherwise called, Ascanius,
+by the hand, and thus fled from his home, followed by his wife--
+
+    _Ergo age, care pater, cervici imponere nostræ;
+    Ipse subibo humeris, nec me labor iste gravabit.
+    Quo res cumque cadent, unum et commune periclum,
+    Una salus ambobus erit. Mihi parvus Iulus
+    Sit comes, et longe servat vestigia conjux._
+                                          --Virg. Æn., lib. ii. l. 707.
+
+Thus they hurried on, the child holding by his father's right hand, and
+dragging after with "unequal steps,"--
+
+                                _dextræ se parvus Iulus
+    Implicuit sequiturque patrem non passibus æquis._
+                                          --Virg. Æn., lib. ii. 1. 723.
+
+And thus Æneas bore away both father and son, and the penates, or
+household gods, of his family, which were to be transferred to another
+country, and become the future guardians of Rome--
+
+    _Ascanium, Anchisemque patrem, Tencrosque penates._--Ib., 1. 747.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 12. The Flight of Æneas._]
+
+In this case we know that the design is intended to be a parody, or
+burlesque, upon a picture which appears to have been celebrated at the
+time, and of which at least two different copies are found upon ancient
+intaglios. It is the only case I know in which both the original and
+the parody have been preserved from this remote period, and this is so
+curious a circumstance, that I give in the cut on the preceding page
+a copy of one of the intaglios.[8] It represented literally Virgil's
+account of the story, and the only difference between the design on the
+intaglios and the one given in our first cut is, that in the latter
+the personages are represented under the forms of monkeys. Æneas,
+personified by the strong and vigorous animal, carrying the old monkey,
+Anchises, on his left shoulder, hurries forward, and at the same time
+looks back on the burning city. With his right hand he drags along
+the boy Iulus, or Ascanius, who is evidently proceeding _non passibus
+æquis_, and with difficulty keeps up with his father's pace. The boy
+wears a Phrygian bonnet, and holds in his right hand the instrument
+of play which we should now call a "bandy"--the pedun. Anchises has
+charge of the box, which contains the sacred penates. It is a curious
+circumstance that the monkeys in this picture are the same dog-headed
+animals, or cynocephali, which are found on the Egyptian monuments.
+
+ [8] These intaglios are engraved in the Museum Florentinum of Gorius,
+     vol. ii. pl. 30. On one of them the figures are reversed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  When this chapter was already given for press, I first became
+  acquainted with an interesting paper, by Panofka, on the "Parodieen
+  und Karikaturen auf Werken der Klassischen Kunst," in the
+  "Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin," for the
+  year 1854, and I can only now refer my readers to it.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+  ORIGIN OF THE STAGE IN ROME.--USES OF THE MASK AMONG THE
+     ROMANS.--SCENES FROM ROMAN COMEDY.--THE SANNIO AND MIMUS.--THE
+     ROMAN DRAMA.--THE ROMAN SATIRISTS.--CARICATURE.--ANIMALS
+     INTRODUCED IN THE CHARACTERS OF MEN.--THE PIGMIES, AND THEIR
+     INTRODUCTION INTO CARICATURE; THE FARM-YARD; THE PAINTER'S STUDIO;
+     THE PROCESSION.--POLITICAL CARICATURE IN POMPEII; THE GRAFFITI.
+
+
+The Romans appear to have never had any real taste for the regular
+drama, which they merely copied from the Greeks, and from the earliest
+period of their history we find them borrowing all their arts of this
+description from their neighbours. In Italy, as in Greece, the first
+germs of comic literature may be traced in the religious festivals,
+which presented a mixture of religious worship and riotous festivity,
+where the feasters danced and sung, and, as they became excited with
+wine and enthusiasm, indulged in mutual reproaches and abuse. The
+oldest poetry of the Romans, which was composed in irregular measure,
+was represented by the _versus saturnini_, said to have been so called
+from their antiquity (for things of remote antiquity were believed to
+belong to the age of Saturn). Nævius, one of the oldest of Latin poets,
+is said to have written in this verse. Next in order of time came the
+Fescennine verses, which appear to have been distinguished chiefly
+by their license, and received their name because they were brought
+from Fescennia, in Etruria, where they were employed originally in the
+festivals of Ceres and Bacchus. In the year 391 of Rome, or 361 B.C.,
+the city was visited by a dreadful plague, and the citizens hit upon
+what will appear to us the rather strange expedient of sending for
+performers (_ludiones_) from Etruria, hoping, by employing them, to
+appease the anger of the gods. Any performer of this kind appears to
+have been so little known to the Romans before this, that there was
+not even a name for him in the language, and they were obliged to adopt
+the Tuscan word, and call him a _histrio_, because _hister_ in that
+language meant a player or pantomimist. This word, we know, remained
+in the Latin language. These first Etrurian performers appear indeed
+to have been mere pantomimists, who accompanied the flute with all
+sorts of mountebank tricks, gestures, dances, gesticulations, and the
+like, mixed with satirical songs, and sometimes with the performance of
+coarse farces. The Romans had also a class of performances rather more
+dramatic in character, consisting of stories which were named _Fabulæ
+Atellanæ_, because these performers were brought from Atella, a city of
+the Osci.
+
+A considerable advance was made in dramatic Art in Rome about the
+middle of the third century before Christ. It is ascribed to a freedman
+named Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth, who is said to have brought
+out, in the year 240 B.C., the first regular comedy ever performed in
+Rome. Thus we trace not only the Roman comedy, but the very rudiments
+of dramatic art in Rome, either direct to the Greeks, or to the Grecian
+colonies in Italy. With the Romans, as well as with the Greeks, the
+theatre was a popular institution, open to the public, and the state
+or a wealthy individual paid for the performance; and therefore the
+building itself was necessarily of very great extent, and, in both
+countries open to the sky, except that the Romans provided for throwing
+an awning over it. As the Roman comedy was copied from the new comedy
+of the Greeks, and therefore did not admit of the introduction of
+caricature and burlesque on the stage, these were left especially to
+the province of the pantomime and farce, which the Romans, as just
+stated, had received from a still earlier period.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 13. A Scene from Terence._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 14. Geta and Demea._]
+
+Whether the Romans borrowed the mask from the Greeks, or not, is
+rather uncertain, but it was used as generally in the Roman theatres,
+whether in comedy or tragedy, as among the Greeks. The Greek actors
+performed upon stilts, in order to magnify their figures, as the area
+of the theatre was very large and uncovered, and without this help
+they were not so well seen at a distance; and one object of utility
+aimed at by the mask is said to have been to make the head appear
+proportionate in size to the artificial height of the body. It may
+be remarked that the mask seems generally to have been made to cover
+the whole head, representing the hair as well as the face, so that
+the character of age or complexion might be given complete. Among the
+Romans the stilts were certainly not in general use, but still the
+mask, besides its comic or tragic character, is supposed to have served
+useful purposes. The first improvement upon its original structure
+is said to have been the making it of brass, or some other sonorous
+metal, or at least lining the mouth with it, so as to reverberate, and
+give force to the voice, and also to the mouth of the mask something
+of the character of a speaking-trumpet.[9] All these accessories could
+not fail to detract much from the effect of the acting, which must in
+general have been very measured and formal, and have received most of
+its importance from the excellence of the poetry, and the declamatory
+talents of the actors. We have pictures in which scenes from the Roman
+stage are accurately represented. Several rather early manuscripts of
+Terence have been preserved, illustrated with drawings of the scenes
+as represented on the stage, and these, though belonging to a period
+long subsequent to the age in which the Roman stage existed in its
+original character, are, no doubt, copied from drawings of an earlier
+date. A German antiquary of the last century, Henry Berger, published
+in a quarto volume a series of such illustrations from a manuscript of
+Terence in the library of the Vatican at Rome, from which two examples
+are selected, as showing the usual style of Roman comic acting, and
+the use of the mask. The first (No. 13) is the opening scene in the
+_Andria_. On the right, two servants have brought provisions, and on
+the left appear Simo, the master of the household, and his freedman,
+Sosia, who seems to be entrusted with the charge of his domestic
+affairs. Simo tells his servants to go away with the provisions, while
+he beckons Sosia to confer with him in private:--
+
+      Si. _Vos istæc intro auferte; abite. Sosia,
+      Adesdum; paucis te volo._ So. _Dictum puta
+      Nempe ut curentur recte hæc._ Si. _Imo aliud_.
+                                       Terent. Andr., Actus i., Scena 1.
+
+When we compare these words with the picture, we cannot but feel
+that in the latter there is an unnecessary degree of energy put into
+the _pose_ of the figures; which is perhaps less the case in the
+other (No. 14), an illustration of the sixth scene of the fifth act
+of the _Adelphi_ of Terence. It represents the meeting of Geta, a
+rather talkative and conceited servant, and Demea, a countryfied and
+churlish old man, his acquaintance, and of course superior. To Geta's
+salutation, Demea asks churlishly, as not at first knowing him, "Who
+are you?" but when he finds that it is Geta, he changes suddenly to an
+almost fawning tone:--
+
+        G. ... _Sed eccum Demeam. Salvus fies._
+        D. _Oh, qui vocare?_ G. _Geta._ D. _Geta, hominem maximi
+      Pretii esse te hodie judicavi animo mei._
+
+ [9] It is said to have received its Latin name from this circumstance,
+     _persona, a personando_. See Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att., lib. v.
+     c. 7.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 15. Comic Scene from Pompeii._]
+
+That these representations are truthful, the scenes in the
+wall-paintings of Pompeii leave us no room to doubt. One of these is
+produced in our cut No. 15, which is no doubt taken from a comedy
+now lost, and we are ignorant whom the characters are intended to
+represent. The _pose_ given to the two comic figures, compared with
+the example given from Berger, would lead us to suppose that this
+over-energetic action was considered as part of the character of comic
+acting.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 16. Cupids at Play._]
+
+The subject of the Roman masks is the more interesting, because they
+were probably the origin of many of the grotesque faces so often met
+with in mediæval sculpture. The comic mask was, indeed, a very popular
+object among the Romans, and appears to have been taken as symbolical
+of everything that was droll and burlesque. From the comic scenes of
+the theatre, to which it was first appropriated, it passed to the
+popular festivals of a public character, such as the Lupercalia, with
+which, no doubt, it was carried into the carnival of the middle ages,
+and to our masquerades. Among the Romans, also, the use of the mask
+soon passed from the public festivals to private supper parties. Its
+use was so common that it became a plaything among children, and was
+sometimes used as a bugbear to frighten them. Our cut No. 16, taken
+from a painting at Resina, represents two cupids playing with a mask,
+and using it for this latter purpose, that is, to frighten one another;
+and it is curious that the mediæval gloss of Ugutio explains _larva_,
+a mask, as being an image, "which was put over the face to frighten
+children."[10] The mask thus became a favourite ornament, especially on
+lamps, and on the antefixa and gargoyls of Roman buildings, to which
+were often given the form of grotesque masks, monstrous faces, with
+great mouths wide open, and other figures, like those of the gargoyls
+of the mediæval architects.
+
+ [10] "Simulacrum ... quod opponitur faciei ad terrendos parvos."
+      (Ugutio, ap. Ducange, v. _Masca_.)
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 17. The Roman Sannio, or Buffoon._]
+
+While the comic mask was used generally in the burlesque
+entertainments, it also became distinctive of particular characters.
+One of these was the _sannio_, or buffoon, whose name was derived from
+the Greek word σάννος, "a fool," and who was employed in performing
+burlesque dances, making grimaces, and in other acts calculated to
+excite the mirth of the spectator. A representation of the _sannio_
+is given in our cut No. 17, copied from one of the engravings in the
+"Dissertatio de Larvis Scenicis," by the Italian antiquary Ficoroni,
+who took it from an engraved gem. The sannio holds in his hand what is
+supposed to be a brass rod, and he has probably another in the other
+hand, so that he could strike them together. He wears the _soccus_, or
+low shoe peculiar to the comic actors. This buffoon was a favourite
+character among the Romans, who introduced him constantly into their
+feasts and supper parties. The _manducus_ was another character of this
+description, represented with a grotesque mask, presenting a wide mouth
+and tongue lolling out, and said to have been peculiar to the Atellane
+plays. A character in Plautus (Rud., ii. 6, 51) talks of hiring himself
+as a _manducus_ in the plays.
+
+           "_Quid si aliquo ad ludos me pro manduco locem?_"
+
+The mediæval glosses interpret _manducus_ by _joculator_, "a jogelor,"
+and add that the characteristic from which he took his name was the
+practice of making grimaces like a man gobbling up his food in a vulgar
+and gluttonous manner.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 18. Roman Tom Fool._]
+
+Ficoroni gives, from an engraved onyx, a figure of another burlesque
+performer, copied in our cut No. 18, and which he compares to the
+Catanian dancer of his time (his book was published in 1754), who was
+called a _giangurgolo_. This is considered to represent the Roman
+_mimus_, a class of performers who told with mimicry and action scenes
+taken from common life, and more especially scandalous and indecent
+anecdotes, like the jogelors and performers of farces in the middle
+ages. The Romans were very much attached to these performances, so much
+so, that they even had them at their funeral processions and at their
+funeral feasts. In our figure, the _mimus_ is represented naked, masked
+(with an exaggerated nose), and wearing what is perhaps intended as a
+caricature of the Phrygian bonnet. In his right hand he holds a bag,
+or purse, full of objects which rattle and make a noise when shaken,
+while the other holds the _crotalum_, or castanets, an instrument in
+common use among the ancients. One of the statues in the Barberini
+Palace represents a youth in a Phrygian cap playing on the _crotalum_.
+We learn, from an early authority, that it was an instrument especially
+used in the satirical and burlesque dances which were so popular among
+the Romans.
+
+As I have remarked before, the Romans had no taste for the regular
+drama, but they retained to the last their love for the performances
+of the popular _mimi_, or _comædi_ (as they were often called), the
+players of farces, and the dancers. These performed on the stage, in
+the public festivals, in the streets, and were usually introduced at
+private parties.[11] Suetonius tells us that on one occasion, the
+emperor Caligula ordered a poet who composed the Atellanes (_Attellanæ
+poetam_) to be burnt in the middle of the amphitheatre, for a pun. A
+more regular comedy, however, did flourish, to a certain degree, at
+the same time with these more popular compositions. Of the works of
+the earliest of the Roman comic writers, Livius Andronicus and Nævius,
+we know only one or two titles, and a few fragments quoted in the
+works of the later Roman writers. They were followed by Plautus, who
+died B.C. 184, and nineteen of whose comedies are preserved and well
+known; by several other writers, whose names are almost forgotten, and
+whose comedies are all lost; and by Terence, six of whose comedies are
+preserved. Terence died about the year 159 B.C. About the same time
+with Terence lived Lucius Afranius and Quinctius Atta, who appear to
+close the list of the Roman writers of comedy.
+
+ [11] See, for allusions to the private employment of these
+      performances, Pliny, Epist. i. 15, and ix. 36.
+
+But another branch of comic literature had sprung out of the satire of
+the religious festivities. A year after Livius Andronicus produced the
+first drama at Rome, in the year 239 B.C., the poet Ennius was born
+at Rudiæ, in Magna Græcia. The satirical verse, whether Saturnine or
+Fescennine, had been gradually improving in its form, although still
+very rude, but Ennius is said to have given at least a new polish, and
+perhaps a new metrical shape, to it. The verse was still irregular, but
+it appears to have been no longer intended for recitation, accompanied
+by the flute. The Romans looked upon Ennius not only as their earliest
+epic poet, but as the father of satire, a class of literary composition
+which appears to have originated with them, and which they claimed
+as their own.[12] Ennius had an imitator in M. Terentius Varro. The
+satires of these first writers are said to have been very irregular
+compositions, mixing prose with verse, and sometimes even Greek with
+Latin; and to have been rather general in their aim than personal. But
+soon after this period, and rather more than a century before Christ,
+came Caius Lucilius, who raised Roman satirical literature to its
+perfection. Lucilius, we are told, was the first who wrote satires in
+heroic verse, or hexameters, mixing with them now and then, though
+rarely, an iambic or trochaic line. He was more refined, more pointed,
+and more personal, than his predecessors, and he had rescued satire
+from the street performer to make it a class of literature which was
+to be read by the educated, and not merely listened to by the vulgar.
+Lucilius is said to have written thirty books of satires, of which,
+unfortunately, only some scattered lines remain.
+
+ [12] Quintilian says, "_Satira quidem tota nostra est_." De Instit.
+      Orator., lib. x. c. 1.
+
+Lucilius had imitators, the very names of most of whom are now
+forgotten, but about forty years after his death, and sixty-five
+years before the birth of Christ, was born Quintus Horatius Flaccus,
+the oldest of the satirists whose works we now possess, and the most
+polished of Roman poets. In the time of Horace, the satire of the
+Romans had reached its highest degree of perfection. Of the two other
+great satirists whose works are preserved, Juvenal was born about the
+year 40 of the Christian era, and Persius in 43. During the period
+through which these writers flourished, Rome saw a considerable number
+of other satirists of the same class, whose works have perished.
+
+In the time of Juvenal another variety of the same class of literature
+had already sprung up, more artificial and somewhat more indirect
+than the other, the prose satiric romance. Three celebrated writers
+represent this school. Petronius, who, born about the commencement
+of our era, died in A.D. 65, is the earliest and most remarkable of
+them. He compiled a romance, designed as a satire on the vices of the
+age of Nero, in which real persons are supposed to be aimed at under
+fictitious names, and which rivals in license, at least, anything
+that could have been uttered in the Atellanes or other farces of the
+_mimi_. Lucian, of Samosata, who died an old man in the year 200, and
+who, though he wrote in Greek, may be considered as belonging to the
+Roman school, composed several satires of this kind, in one of the
+most remarkable of which, entitled "Lucius, or the Ass," the author
+describes himself as changed by sorcery into the form of that animal,
+under which he passes through a number of adventures which illustrate
+the vices and weaknesses of contemporary society. Apuleius, who was
+considerably the junior of Lucian, made this novel the groundwork of
+his "Golden Ass," a much larger and more elaborate work, written in
+Latin. This work of Apuleius was very popular through subsequent ages.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 19. The Farm-yard in Burlesque._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 20. An Asilla-Bearer._]
+
+Let us return to Roman caricature, one form of which seems to have
+been especially a favourite among the people. It is difficult to
+imagine how the story of the pigmies and of their wars with the cranes
+originated, but it is certainly of great antiquity, as it is spoken
+of in Homer, and it was a very popular legend among the Romans, who
+eagerly sought and purchased dwarfs to make domestic pets of them. The
+pigmies and cranes occur frequently among the pictorial ornamentations
+of the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum; and the painters of Pompeii
+not only represented them in their proper character, but they made use
+of them for the purpose of caricaturing the various occupations of
+life--domestic and social scenes, grave conferences, and many other
+subjects, and even personal character. In this class of caricatures
+they gave to the pigmies, or dwarfs, very large heads, and very small
+legs and arms. I need hardly remark that this is a class of caricature
+which is very common in modern times. Our first group of these pigmy
+caricatures (No. 19) is taken from a painting on the walls of the
+Temple of Venus, at Pompeii, and represents the interior of a farm-yard
+in burlesque. The structure in the background is perhaps intended for a
+hayrick. In front of it, one of the farm servants is attending on the
+poultry. The more important-looking personage with the pastoral staff
+is possibly the overseer of the farm, who is visiting the labourers,
+and this probably is the cause why their movements have assumed so much
+activity. The labourer on the right is using the _asilla_, a wooden
+yoke or pole, which was carried over the shoulder, with the _corbis_,
+or basket, suspended at each end. This was a common method of carrying,
+and is not unfrequently represented on Roman works of art. Several
+examples might be quoted from the antiquities of Pompeii. Our cut No.
+20, from a gem in the Florentine Museum, and illustrating another class
+of caricature, that of introducing animals performing the actions and
+duties of men, represents a grasshopper carrying the _asilla_ and the
+_corbes_.
+
+  [Illustration: _No. 21. A Painter's Studio._]
+
+A private house in Pompeii furnished another example of this style
+of caricature, which is given in our cut No. 21. It represents the
+interior of a painter's studio, and is extremely curious on account
+of the numerous details of his method of operation with which it
+furnishes us. The painter, who is, like most of the figures in these
+pigmy caricatures, very scantily clothed, is occupied with the portrait
+of another, who, by the rather exaggerated fulness of the gathering
+of his toga, is evidently intended for a dashing and fashionable
+patrician, though he is seated as bare-legged and bare-breeched as the
+artist himself. Both are distinguished by a large allowance of nose.
+The easel here employed resembles greatly the same article now in use,
+and might belong to the studio of a modern painter. Before it is a
+small table, probably formed of a slab of stone, which serves for a
+palette, on which the painter spreads and mixes his colours. To the
+right a servant, who fills the office of colour-grinder, is seated by
+the side of a vessel placed over hot coals, and appears to be preparing
+colours, mixed, according to the directions given in old writers,
+with punic wax and oil. In the background is seated a student, whose
+attention is taken from his drawing by what is going on at the other
+side of the room, where two small personages are entering, who look as
+if they were amateurs, and who appear to be talking about the portrait.
+Behind them stands a bird, and when the painting was first uncovered
+there were two. Mazois, who made the drawing from which our cut is
+taken, before the original had perished--for it was found in a state
+of decay--imagined that the birds typified some well-known singers or
+musicians, but they are, perhaps, merely intended for cranes, birds so
+generally associated with the pigmies.
+
+  [Illustration: _No. 22. Part of a Triumphal Procession._]
+
+According to an ancient writer, combats of pigmies were favourite
+representations on the walls of taverns and shops;[13] and, curiously
+enough, the walls of a shop in Pompeii have furnished the picture
+represented in our cut No. 22, which has evidently been intended for
+a caricature, probably a parody. All the pigmies in this picture
+are crowned with laurel, as though the painter intended to turn to
+ridicule some over-pompous triumph, or some public, perhaps religious,
+ceremony. The two figures to the left, who are clothed in yellow
+and green garments, appear to be disputing the possession of a bowl
+containing a liquid. One of these, like the two figures on the right,
+has a hoop thrown over his shoulder. The first of the latter personages
+wears a violet dress, and holds in his right hand a rod, and in his
+left a statuette, apparently of a deity, but its attributes are not
+distinguishable. The last figure to the right has a robe, or mantle, of
+two colours, red and green, and holds in his hand a branch of a lily,
+or some similar plant; the rest of the picture is lost. Behind the
+other figure stands a fifth, who appears younger and more refined in
+character than the others, and seems to be ordering or directing them.
+His dress is red.
+
+ [13] ἐπί των καπηλίων. Problem. Aristotelic. Sec. x. 7.
+
+We can have no doubt that political and personal caricature flourished
+among the Romans, as we have some examples of it on their works of art,
+chiefly on engraved stones, though these are mostly of a character
+we could not here conveniently introduce; but the same rich mine of
+Roman art and antiquities, Pompeii, has furnished us with one sample
+of what may be properly considered as a political caricature. In the
+year 59 of the Christian era, at a gladiatorial exhibition in the
+amphitheatre of Pompeii, where the people of Nuceria were present,
+the latter expressed themselves in such scornful terms towards the
+Pompeians, as led to a violent quarrel, which was followed by a pitched
+battle between the inhabitants of the two towns, and the Nucerians,
+being defeated, carried their complaints before the reigning emperor,
+Nero, who gave judgment in their favour, and condemned the people of
+Pompeii to suspension from all theatrical amusements for ten years.
+The feelings of the Pompeians on this occasion are displayed in the
+rude drawing represented in our cut No. 23, which is scratched on the
+plaster of the external wall of a house in the street to which the
+Italian antiquarians have given the name of the street of Mercury. A
+figure, completely armed, his head covered with what might be taken
+for a mediæval helmet, is descending what appear to be intended for
+the steps of the amphitheatre. He carries in his hand a palm-branch,
+the emblem of victory. Another palm-branch stands erect by his side,
+and underneath is the inscription, in rather rustic Latin, "CAMPANI
+VICTORIA VNA CVM NVCERINIS PERISTIS"--"O Campanians, you perished in
+the victory together with the Nucerians." The other side of the picture
+is more rudely and hastily drawn. It has been supposed to represent
+one of the victors dragging a prisoner, with his arms bound, up a
+ladder to a stage or platform, on which he was perhaps to be exhibited
+to the jeers of the populace. Four years after this event, Pompeii
+was greatly damaged by an earthquake, and sixteen years later came
+the eruption of Vesuvius, which buried the town, and left it in the
+condition in which it is now found.
+
+  [Illustration: _No. 23. A Popular Caricature._]
+
+  [Illustration: _No. 24. Early Caricature upon a Christian._]
+
+This curious caricature belongs to a class of monuments to which
+archæologists have given technically the Italian name of _graffiti_,
+scratches or scrawls, of which a great number, consisting chiefly of
+writing, have been found on the walls of Pompeii. They also occur
+among the remains on other Roman sites, and one found in Rome itself
+is especially interesting. During the alterations and extensions which
+were made from time to time in the palace of the Cæsars, it had been
+found necessary to build across a narrow street which intersected the
+Palatine, and, in order to give support to the structure above, a
+portion of the street was walled off, and remained thus hermetically
+sealed until about the year 1857, when some excavations on the spot
+brought it to view. The walls of the street were found to be covered
+with these _graffiti_, among which one attracted especial attention,
+and, having been carefully removed, is now preserved in the museum
+of the Collegio Romano. It is a caricature upon a Christian named
+Alexamenos, by some pagan who despised Christianity. The Saviour is
+represented under the form of a man with the head of an ass, extended
+upon a cross, the Christian, Alexamenos, standing on one side in the
+attitude of worship of that period. Underneath we read the inscription,
+ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ CΕΒΕΤΕ (for σεβεται), "Alexamenos worships God." This
+curious figure, which may be placed among the most interesting as well
+as early evidences of the truth of Gospel history, is copied in our cut
+No. 24. It was drawn when the prevailing religion at Rome was still
+pagan, and a Christian was an object of contempt.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+  THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE AGES.--THE
+     ROMAN MIMI CONTINUED TO EXIST.--THE TEUTONIC AFTER-DINNER
+     ENTERTAINMENTS.--CLERICAL SATIRES; ARCHBISHOP HERIGER AND THE
+     DREAMER; THE SUPPER OF THE SAINTS.--TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT
+     TO MEDIÆVAL ART.--TASTE FOR MONSTROUS ANIMALS, DRAGONS, ETC.;
+     CHURCH OF SAN FEDELE, AT COMO.--SPIRIT OF CARICATURE AND LOVE
+     OF GROTESQUE AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS.--GROTESQUE FIGURES OF
+     DEMONS.--NATURAL TENDENCY OF THE EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS TO DRAW IN
+     CARICATURE.--EXAMPLES FROM EARLY MANUSCRIPTS AND SCULPTURES.
+
+
+The transition from antiquity to what we usually understand by the name
+of the middle ages was long and slow; it was a period during which much
+of the texture of the old society was destroyed, while at the same
+time a new life was gradually given to that which remained. We know
+very little of the comic literature of this period of transition; its
+literary remains consist chiefly of a mass of heavy theology and of
+lives of saints. The stage in its perfectly dramatic form--theatre and
+amphitheatre--had disappeared. The pure drama, indeed, appears never
+to have had great vitality among the Romans, whose tastes lay far more
+among the vulgar performances of the mimics and jesters, and among
+the savage scenes of the amphitheatre. While probably the performance
+of comedies, such as those of Plautus and Terence, soon went out of
+fashion, and tragedies, like those of Seneca, were only written as
+literary compositions, imitations of the similar works which formed
+so remarkable a feature in the literature of Greece, the Romans of
+all ranks loved to witness the loose attitudes of their _mimi_, or
+listen to their equally loose songs and stories. The theatre and the
+amphitheatre were state institutions, kept up at the national expense,
+and, as just stated, they perished with the overthrow of the western
+empire; and the sanguinary performances of the amphitheatre, if the
+amphitheatre itself continued to be used (which was perhaps the case
+in some parts of western Europe), and they gave place to the more
+harmless exhibitions of dancing bears and other tamed animals,[14] for
+deliberate cruelty was not a characteristic of the Teutonic race. But
+the mimi, the performers who sung songs and told stories, accompanied
+with dancing and music, survived the fall of the empire, and continued
+to be as popular as ever. St. Augustine, in the fourth century, calls
+these things _nefaria_, detestable things, and says that they were
+performed at night.[15] We trace in the capitularies the continuous
+existence of these performances during the ages which followed the
+empire, and, as in the time of St. Augustine, they still formed the
+amusement of nocturnal assemblies. The capitulary of Childebert
+proscribes those who passed their nights with drunkenness, jesting,
+and songs.[16] The council of Narbonne, in the year 589, forbade
+people to spend their nights "with dancings and filthy songs."[17] The
+council of Mayence, in 813, calls these songs "filthy and licentious"
+(_turpia atque luxuriosa_); and that of Paris speaks of them as
+"obscene and filthy" (_obscæna et turpia_); while in another they are
+called "frivolous and diabolic." From the bitterness with which the
+ecclesiastical ordinances are expressed, it is probable that these
+performances continued to preserve much of their old paganism; yet it
+is curious that they are spoken of in these capitularies and acts of
+the councils as being still practised in the religious festivals, and
+even in the churches, so tenaciously did the old sentiments of the
+race keep their possession of the minds of the populace, long after
+they had embraced Christianity. These "songs," as they are called,
+continued also to consist not only of general, but of personal satire,
+and contained scandalous stories of persons living, and well known to
+those who heard them. A capitulary of the Frankish king Childeric III.,
+published in the year 744, is directed against those who compose and
+sing songs in defamation of others (_in blasphemiam alterius_, to use
+the rather energetic language of the original); and it is evident that
+this offence was a very common one, for it is not unfrequently repeated
+in later records of this character in the same words or in words to the
+same purpose. Thus one result of the overthrow of the Roman empire was
+to leave comic literature almost in the same condition in which it was
+found by Thespis in Greece and by Livius Andronicus in Rome. There was
+nothing in it which would be contrary to the feelings of the new races
+who had now planted themselves in the Roman provinces.
+
+ [14] On this subject, see my "History of Domestic Manners and
+      Sentiments," p. 65. The dancing bear appears to have been a
+      favourite performer among the Germans at a very early period.
+
+ [15] Per totam noctem cantabantur hic nefaria et a cantatoribus
+      saltabatur. Augustini Serm. 311, part v.
+
+ [16] Noctes pervigiles cum ebrietate, scurrilitate, vel canticis. See
+      the Capitulary in Labbei Concil., vol. v.
+
+ [17] Ut populi.....saltationibus et turpibus invigilant canticis.
+
+The Teutonic and Scandinavian nations had no doubt their popular
+festivals, in which mirth and frolic bore sway, though we know little
+about them; but there were circumstances in their domestic manners
+which implied a necessity for amusement. After the comparatively early
+meal, the hall of the primitive Teuton was the scene--especially in the
+darker months of winter--of long sittings over the festive board, in
+which there was much drinking and much talking, and, as we all know,
+such talking could not preserve long a very serious tone. From Bede's
+account of the poet Cædmon, we learn that it was the practice of the
+Anglo-Saxons in the seventh century, at their entertainments, for all
+those present to sing in their turns, each accompanying himself with a
+musical instrument. From the sequel of the story we are led to suppose
+that these songs were extemporary effusions, probably mythic legends,
+stories of personal adventure, praise of themselves, or vituperation
+of their enemies. In the chieftain's household there appears to have
+been usually some individual who acted the part of the satirist, or, as
+we should perhaps now say, the comedian. Hunferth appears as holding
+some such position in Beowulf; in the later romances, Sir Kay held a
+similar position at the court of king Arthur. At a still later period,
+the place of these heroes was occupied by the court fool. The Roman
+_mimus_ must have been a welcome addition to the entertainments of the
+Teutonic hall, and there is every reason to think that he was cordially
+received. The performances of the hall were soon delegated from the
+guests to such hired actors, and we have representations of them in
+the illuminations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.[18] Among the earliest
+amusements of the Anglo-Saxon table were riddles, which in every form
+present some of the features of the comic, and are capable of being
+made the source of much laughter. The saintly Aldhelm condescended to
+write such riddles in Latin verse, which were, of course, intended for
+the tables of the clergy. In primitive society, verse was the ordinary
+form of conveying ideas. A large portion of the celebrated collection
+of Anglo-Saxon poetry known as the "Exeter Book," consists of riddles,
+and this taste for riddles has continued to exist down to our own
+times. But other forms of entertainment, if they did not already
+exist, were soon introduced. In a curious Latin poem, older than the
+twelfth century, of which fragments only are preserved, and have been
+published under the title of "Ruodlieb," and which appears to have
+been a translation of a much earlier German romance, we have a curious
+description of the post-prandial entertainments after the dinner of a
+great Teutonic chieftain, or king. In the first place there was a grand
+distribution of rich presents, and then were shown strange animals, and
+among the rest tame bears. These bears stood upon their hind legs, and
+performed some of the offices of a man; and when the minstrels (_mimi_)
+came in, and played upon their musical instruments, these animals
+danced to the music, and performed all sorts of strange tricks.
+
+          _Et pariles ursi....
+          Qui vas tollebant, ut homo, bipedesque gerebant.
+          Mimi quando fides digitis tangunt modulantes,
+          Illi saltabant, neumas pedibus variabant.
+          Interdum saliunt, seseque super jaciebant.
+          Alterutrum dorso se portabant residendo,
+          Amplexando se, luctando deficiunt se._
+
+Then followed dancing-girls, and exhibitions of other kinds.[19]
+
+ [18] The reader is referred, for further information on this subject,
+      to my "History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments," pp. 33-39.
+
+ [19] This curious Latin poem was printed by Grimm and Schmeller, in
+      their Lateinische Gedichte des x. und xi. Jh., p. 129.
+
+Although these performances were proscribed by the ecclesiastical laws,
+they were not discountenanced by the ecclesiastics themselves, who, on
+the contrary, indulged as much in after-dinner amusements as anybody.
+The laws against the profane songs are often directed especially at
+the clergy; and it is evident that among the Anglo-Saxons, as well as
+on the Continent, not only the priests and monks, but the nuns also,
+in their love of such amusements, far transgressed the bounds of
+decency.[22] These entertainments were the cradle of comic literature,
+but, as this literature in the early ages of its history was rarely
+committed to writing, it has almost entirely perished. But, at the
+tables of the ecclesiastics, these stories were sometimes told in
+Latin verse, and as Latin was not so easily carried in the memory as
+the vernacular tongue, in this language they were sometimes committed
+to writing, and thus a few examples of early comic literature have
+fortunately been preserved. These consist chiefly of popular stories,
+which were among the favourite amusements of mediæval society--stories
+many of which are derived from the earliest period of the history of
+our race, and are still cherished among our peasantry. Such are the
+stories of the Child of Snow, and of the Mendacious Hunter, preserved
+in a manuscript of the eleventh century.[21] The first of these was
+a very popular story in the middle ages. According to this early
+version, a merchant of Constance, in Switzerland, was detained abroad
+for several years, during which time his wife made other acquaintance,
+and bore a child. On his return, she excused her fault by telling him
+that on a cold wintry day she had swallowed snow, by which she had
+conceived; and, in revenge, the husband carried away the child, and
+sold it into slavery, and returning, told its mother, that the infant
+which had originated in snow, had melted away under a hotter sun. Some
+of these stories originated in the different collections of fables,
+which were part of the favourite literature of the later Roman period.
+Another is rather a ridiculous story of an ass belonging to two sisters
+in a nunnery, which was devoured by a wolf.[20] curious how soon the
+mediæval clergy began to imitate their pagan predecessors in parodying
+religious subjects and forms, of which we have one or two very curious
+examples. Visits to purgatory, hell, and paradise, in body or spirit,
+were greatly in fashion during the earlier part of the middle ages,
+and afforded extremely good material for satire. In a metrical Latin
+story, preserved in a manuscript of the eleventh century, we are
+told how a "prophet," or visionary, went to Heriger, archbishop of
+Mayence from 912 to 926, and told him that he had been carried in a
+vision to the regions below, and described them as a place surrounded
+by thick woods. It was the Teutonic notion of hell, and indeed of
+all settlements of peoples; and Heriger replied with a sneer that he
+would send his herdsmen there with his lean swine to fatten them. Each
+"mark," or land of a family or clan, in the early Teutonic settlements,
+was surrounded by woodland, which was common to all members of the clan
+for fattening their swine and hunting. The false dreamer added, that he
+was afterwards carried to heaven, where he saw Christ sitting at the
+table and eating. John the Baptist was butler, and served excellent
+wine round to the saints, who were the Lord's guests. St. Peter was
+the chief cook. After some remarks on the appointments to these two
+offices, archbishop Heriger asked the informant how he was received in
+the heavenly hall, where he sat, and what he eat. He replied that he
+sat in a corner, and stole from the cooks a piece of liver, which he
+eat, and then departed. Instead of rewarding him for his information,
+Heriger took him on his own confession for the theft, and ordered him
+to be bound to a stake and flogged, which, for the offence, was rather
+a light punishment.
+
+ [20] On the character of the nuns among the Anglo-Saxons, and indeed of
+      the inmates of the monastic houses generally, I would refer my
+      readers to the excellent and interesting volume by Mr. John
+      Thrupp, "The Anglo-Saxon Home: a History of the Domestic
+      Institutions and Customs of England from the fifth to the eleventh
+      century." London, 1862.
+
+ [21] These will be found in M. Edélestand du Méril's Poésies Populaires
+      Latines antérieures au douzième siècle, pp. 275, 276.
+
+ [22] This, and the metrical story next referred to, were printed in
+      the "Altdeutsche Blätter," edited by Moriz Haupt and Heinrich
+      Hoffmann, vol. i. pp. 390, 392, to whom I communicated them from
+      a manuscript in the University Library at Cambridge.
+
+                    _Heriger illum
+                    jussit ad palum
+                    loris ligari,
+                    scopisque cedi,
+                    sermone duro
+                    hunc arguendo._
+
+These lines will serve as a specimen of the popular Latin verse in
+which these monkish after-dinner stories were written; but the most
+remarkable of these early parodies on religious subjects, is one which
+may be described as the supper of the saints; its title is simply
+_Cœna_. It is falsely ascribed to St. Cyprian, who lived in the
+third century; but it is as old as the tenth century, as a copy was
+printed by professor Endlicher from a manuscript of that period at
+Vienna. It was so popular, that it is found and known to have existed
+in different forms in verse and in prose. It is a sort of drollery,
+founded upon the wedding feast at which the Saviour changed water into
+wine, though that miracle is not at all introduced into it. It was a
+great king of the East, named Zoel, who held his nuptial feast at Cana
+of Galilee. The personages invited are all scriptural, beginning with
+Adam. Before the feast, they wash in the river Jordan, and the number
+of the guests was so great, that seats could not be provided for them,
+and they took their places as they could. Adam took the first place,
+and seated himself in the middle of the assembly, and next to him Eve
+sat upon leaves (_super folia_),--fig-leaves, we may suppose. Cain sat
+on a plough, Abel on a milk-pail, Noah on an ark, Japhet on tiles,
+Abraham on a tree, Isaac on an altar, Lot near the door, and so with
+a long list of others. Two were obliged to stand--Paul, who bore it
+patiently, and Esau, who grumbled--while Job lamented bitterly because
+he was obliged to sit on a dunghill. Moses, and others, who came late,
+were obliged to find seats out of doors. When the king saw that all
+his guests had arrived, he took them into his wardrobe, and there, in
+the spirit of mediæval generosity, distributed to them dresses, which
+had all some burlesque allusion to their particular characters. Before
+they were allowed to sit down to the feast, they were obliged to go
+through other ceremonies, which, as well as the eating, are described
+in the same style of caricature. The wines, of which there was great
+variety, were served to the guests with the same allusions to their
+individual characters; but some of them complained that they were badly
+mixed, although Jonah was the butler. In the same manner are described
+the proceedings which followed the dinner, the washing of hands, and
+the dessert, to the latter of which Adam contributed apples, Samson
+honey; while David played on the harp and Mary on the tabor; Judith led
+the round dance; Jubal played on the psalter; Asael sung songs, and
+Herodias acted the part of the dancing-girl:--
+
+          _Tunc Adam poma ministrat, Samson favi dulcia.
+          David cytharum percussit, et Maria tympana.
+          Judith choreas ducebat, et Jubal psalteria.
+          Asael metra canebat, saltabat Herodias._
+
+Mambres entertained the company with his magical performances; and
+the other incidents of a mediæval festival followed, throughout which
+the same tone of burlesque is continued; and so the story continues,
+to the end.[23] We shall find these incipient forms of mediæval comic
+literature largely developed as we go on.
+
+ [23] The text of this singular composition, with a full account of the
+      various forms in which it was published, will be found in M. du
+      Méril's "Poésies Populaires Latines antérieures au douzième
+      siècle," p. 193.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 25. Saturn Devouring his Child._]
+
+The period between antiquity and the middle ages was one of such great
+and general destruction, that the gulf between ancient and mediæval art
+seems to us greater and more abrupt than it really was. The want of
+monuments, no doubt, prevents our seeing the gradual change of one into
+the other, but nevertheless enough of facts remain to convince us that
+it was not a sudden change. It is now indeed generally understood that
+the knowledge and practice of the arts and manufactures of the Romans
+were handed onward from master to pupil after the empire had fallen;
+and this took place especially in the towns, so that the workmanship
+which had been declining in character during the later periods of the
+empire, only continued in the course of degradation afterwards. Thus,
+in the first Christian edifices, the builders who were employed, or at
+least many of them, must have been pagans, and they would follow their
+old models of ornamentation, introducing the same grotesque figures,
+the same masks and monstrous faces, and even sometimes the same
+subjects from the old mythology, to which they had been accustomed. It
+is to be observed, too, that this kind of iconographical ornamentation
+had been encroaching more and more upon the old architectural purity
+during the latter ages of the empire, and that it was employed more
+profusely in the later works, from which this taste was transferred
+to the ecclesiastical and to the domestic architecture of the middle
+ages. After the workmen themselves had become Christians, they still
+found pagan emblems and figures in their models, and still went on
+imitating them, sometimes merely copying, and at others turning them
+to caricature or burlesque. And this tendency continued so long, that,
+at a much later date, where there still existed remains of Roman
+buildings, the mediæval architects adopted them as models, and did not
+hesitate to copy the sculpture, although it might be evidently pagan in
+character. The accompanying cut (No. 25) represents a bracket in the
+church of Mont Majour, near Nismes, built in the tenth century. The
+subject is a monstrous head eating a child, and we can hardly doubt
+that it was really intended for a caricature on Saturn devouring one of
+his children.
+
+Sometimes the mediæval sculptors mistook the emblematical designs
+of the Romans, and misapplied them, and gave an allegorical meaning
+to that which was not intended to be emblematical or allegorical,
+until the subjects themselves became extremely confused. They readily
+employed that class of parody of the ancients in which animals were
+represented performing the actions of men, and they had a great taste
+for monsters of every description, especially those which were made up
+of portions of incongruous animals joined together, in contradiction to
+the precept of Horace:--
+
+          _Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam
+          Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas,
+          Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
+          Desinet in piscem mulier formosa superne;
+          Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?_
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 26. Sculpture from San Fedele, at Como._]
+
+The mediæval architects loved such representations, always and in all
+parts, and examples are abundant. At Como, in Italy, there is a very
+ancient and remarkable church dedicated to San Fedele (Saint Fidelis);
+it has been considered to be of so early a date as the fifth century.
+The sculptures that adorn the doorway, which is triangular-headed, are
+especially interesting. On one of these, represented in our cut No. 26,
+in a compartment to the left, appears a figure of an angel, holding in
+one hand a dwarf figure, probably intended for a child, by a lock of
+his hair, and with the other hand directing his attention to a seated
+figure in the compartment below. This latter figure has apparently the
+head of a sheep, and as the head is surrounded with a large nimbus,
+and the right hand is held out in the attitude of benediction, it
+may be intended to represent the Lamb. This personage is seated on
+something which is difficult to make out, but which looks somewhat
+like a crab-fish. The boy in the compartment above carries a large
+basin in his arms. The adjoining compartment to the right contains the
+representation of a conflict between a dragon, a winged serpent, and a
+winged fox. On the opposite side of the door, two winged monsters are
+represented devouring a lamb's head. I owe the drawing from which this
+and the preceding engraving were made to my friend Mr. John Robinson,
+the architect, who made the sketches while travelling with the medal
+of the Royal Academy. Figures of dragons, as ornaments, were great
+favourites with the peoples of the Teutonic race; they were creatures
+intimately wrapped up in their national mythology and romance, and they
+are found on all their artistic monuments mingled together in grotesque
+forms and groups. When the Anglo-Saxons began to ornament their books,
+the dragon was continually introduced for ornamental borders and
+in forming initial letters. One of the latter, from an Anglo-Saxon
+manuscript of the tenth century (the well-known manuscript of Cædmon,
+where it is given as an initial V), is represented in our cut on the
+next page, No. 27.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 27. Anglo-Saxon Dragons._]
+
+Caricature and burlesque are naturally intended to be heard and seen
+publicly, and would therefore be figured on such monuments as were most
+exposed to popular gaze. Such was the case, in the earlier periods of
+the middle ages, chiefly with ecclesiastical buildings, which explains
+how they became the grand receptacles of this class of Art. We have few
+traces of what may be termed comic literature among our Anglo-Saxon
+forefathers, but this is fully explained by the circumstance that very
+little of the popular Anglo-Saxon literature has been preserved. In
+their festive hours the Anglo-Saxons seem to have especially amused
+themselves in boasting of what they had done, and what they could do;
+and these boasts were perhaps often of a burlesque character, like the
+_gabs_ of the French and Anglo-Norman romancers of a later date, or
+so extravagant as to produce laughter. The chieftains appear also to
+have encouraged men who could make jokes, and satirise and caricature
+others; for the company of such men seems to have been cherished, and
+they are not unfrequently introduced in the stories. Such a personage,
+as I have remarked before, is Hunferth in Beowulf; such was the Sir
+Kay of the later Arthurian romances; and such too was the Norman
+minstrel in the history of Hereward, who amused the Norman soldiers at
+their feasts by mimicry of the manners of their Anglo-Saxon opponents.
+The too personal satire of these wits often led to quarrels, which
+ended in sanguinary brawls. The Anglo-Saxon love of caricature is
+shown largely in their proper names, which were mostly significant of
+personal qualities their parents hoped they would possess; and in these
+we remark the proneness of the Teutonic race, as well as the peoples
+of antiquity, to represent these qualities by the animals supposed to
+possess them, the animals most popular being the wolf and the bear.
+But it is not to be expected that the hopes of the parents in giving
+the name would always be fulfilled, and it is not an uncommon thing
+to find individuals losing their original names to receive in their
+place nicknames, or names which probably expressed qualities they did
+possess, and which were given to them by their acquaintances. These
+names, though often not very complimentary, and even sometimes very
+much the contrary, completely superseded the original name, and were
+even accepted by the individuals to whom they applied. The second names
+were indeed so generally acknowledged, that they were used in signing
+legal documents. An Anglo-Saxon abbess of rank, whose real name was
+Hrodwaru, but who was known universally by the name Bugga, the Bug,
+wrote this latter name in signing charters. We can hardly doubt that
+such a name was intended to ascribe to her qualities of a not agreeable
+character, and very different to those implied by the original name,
+which perhaps meant, a dweller in heaven. Another lady gained the name
+of the Crow. It is well known that surnames did not come into use
+till long after the Anglo-Saxon period, but appellatives, like these
+nicknames, were often added to the name for the purpose of distinction,
+or at pleasure, and these, too, being given by other people, were
+frequently satirical. Thus, one Harold, for his swiftness, was called
+Hare-foot; a well-known Edith, for the elegant form of her neck,
+was called Swan-neck; and a Thurcyl, for a form of his head, which
+can hardly have been called beautiful, was named Mare's-head. Among
+many other names, quite as satirical as the last-mentioned, we find
+Flat-nose, the Ugly Squint-eye, Hawk-nose, &c.
+
+Of Anglo-Saxon sculpture we have little left, but we have a few
+illuminated manuscripts which present here and there an attempt at
+caricature, though they are rare. It would seem, however, that the two
+favourite subjects of caricature among the Anglo-Saxons were the clergy
+and the evil one. We have abundant evidence that, from the eighth
+century downwards, neither the Anglo-Saxon clergy nor the Anglo-Saxon
+nuns were generally objects of much respect among the people; and their
+character and the manner of their lives sufficiently account for it.
+Perhaps, also, it was increased by the hostility between the old clergy
+and the new reformers of Dunstan's party, who would no doubt caricature
+each other. A manuscript psalter, in the University Library, Cambridge
+(Ff. 1, 23), of the Anglo-Saxon period, and apparently of the tenth
+century, illustrated with rather grotesque initial letters, furnishes
+us with the figure of a jolly Anglo-Saxon monk, given in our cut No.
+28, and which it is hardly necessary to state represents the letter Q.
+As we proceed, we shall see the clergy continuing to furnish a butt for
+the shafts of satire through all the middle ages.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 28. A Jolly Monk._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 29. Satan in Bonds._]
+
+The inclination to give to the demons (the middle ages always looked
+upon them as innumerable) monstrous forms, which easily ran into the
+grotesque, was natural, and the painter, indeed, prided himself on
+drawing them ugly; but he was no doubt influenced in so generally
+caricaturing them, by mixing up this idea with those furnished by the
+popular superstitions of the Teutonic race, who believed in multitudes
+of spirits, representatives of the ancient satyrs, who were of a
+playfully malicious description, and went about plaguing mankind in
+a very droll manner, and sometimes appeared to them in equally droll
+forms. They were the Pucks and Robin Goodfellows of later times;
+but the Christian missionaries to the west taught their converts to
+believe, and probably believed themselves, that all these imaginary
+beings were real demons, who wandered over the earth for people's ruin
+and destruction. Thus the grotesque imagination of the converted people
+was introduced into the Christian system of demonology. It is a part of
+the subject to which we shall return in our next chapter; but I will
+here introduce two examples of the Anglo-Saxon demons. To explain the
+first of these, it will be necessary to state that, according to the
+mediæval notions, Satan, the arch demon, who had fallen from heaven
+for his rebellion against the Almighty, was not a free agent who went
+about tempting mankind, but he was himself plunged in the abyss,
+where he was held in bonds, and tormented by the demons who peopled
+the infernal regions, and also issued thence to seek their prey upon
+God's newest creation, the earth. The history of Satan's fall, and the
+description of his position (No. 29), form the subject of the earlier
+part of the Anglo-Saxon poetry ascribed to Cædmon, and it is one of
+the illuminations to the manuscript of Cædmon (which is now preserved
+at Oxford), which has furnished us with our cut, representing Satan
+in his bonds. The fiend is here pictured bound to stakes, over what
+appears to be a gridiron, while one of the demons, rising out of a
+fiery furnace, and holding in his hand an instrument of punishment,
+seems to be exulting over him, and at the same time urging on the troop
+of grotesque imps who are swarming round and tormenting their victim.
+The next cut, No. 30, is also taken from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript,
+preserved in the British Museum (MS. Cotton., Tiberius, C. vi.), which
+belongs to the earlier half of the eleventh century, and contains a
+copy of the psalter. It gives us the Anglo-Saxon notion of the demon
+under another form, equally characteristic, wearing only a girdle
+of flames, but in this case the especial singularity of the design
+consists in the eyes in the fiend's wings.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 30. Satan._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 31. The Temptation._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 32. David and the Lion._]
+
+Another circumstance had no doubt an influence on the mediæval taste
+for grotesque and caricature--the natural rudeness of early mediæval
+art. The writers of antiquity tell us of a remote period of Grecian
+art when it was necessary to write under each figure of a picture the
+name of what it was intended to represent, in order to make the whole
+intelligible--"this is a horse," "this is a man," "this is a tree."
+Without being quite so rude as this, the early mediæval artists,
+through ignorance of perspective, want of knowledge of proportion, and
+of skill in drawing, found great difficulty in representing a scene in
+which there was more than one figure, and in which it was necessary
+to distinguish them from each other; and they were continually trying
+to help themselves by adopting conventional forms or conventional
+positions, and by sometimes adding symbols that did not exactly
+represent what they meant. The exaggeration in form consisted chiefly
+in giving an undue prominence to some characteristic feature, which
+answered the same purpose as the Anglo-Saxon nickname and distinctive
+name, and which is, in fact, one of the first principles of all
+caricature. Conventional positions partook much of the character of
+conventional forms, but gave still greater room for grotesque. Thus
+the very first characteristics of mediæval art implied the existence
+of caricature, and no doubt led to the taste for the grotesque. The
+effect of this influence is apparent everywhere, and in innumerable
+cases serious pictures of the gravest and most important subjects are
+simply and absolutely caricatures. Anglo-Saxon art ran much into this
+style, and is often very grotesque in character. The first example we
+give (cut No. 31) is taken from one of the illustrations to Alfric's
+Anglo-Saxon version of the Pentateuch, in the profusely illuminated
+manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton., Claudius B iv.), which
+was written at the end of the tenth, or beginning of the eleventh,
+century. It represents the temptation and fall of man; and the subject
+is treated, as will be seen, in a rather grotesque manner. Eve is
+evidently dictating to her husband, who, in obeying her, shows a
+mixture of eagerness and trepidation. Adam is no less evidently going
+to swallow the apple whole, which is, perhaps, in accordance with the
+mediæval legend, according to which the fruit stuck in his throat. It
+is hardly necessary to remark that the tree is entirely a conventional
+one; and it would be difficult to imagine how it came to bear apples at
+all. The mediæval artists were extremely unskilful in drawing trees;
+to these they usually gave the forms of cabbages, or some such plants,
+of which the form was simple, or often of a mere bunch of leaves. Our
+next example (cut No. 32) is also Anglo-Saxon, and is furnished by
+the manuscript in the British Museum already mentioned (MS. Cotton.,
+Tiberius C vi.) It probably represents young David killing the lion,
+and is remarkable not only for the strange posture and bad proportions
+of the man, but for the tranquillity of the animal and the exaggerated
+and violent action of its slayer. This is very commonly the case in the
+mediæval drawings and sculptures, the artists apparently possessing
+far less skill in representing action in an animal than in man, and
+therefore more rarely attempting it. These illustrations are both taken
+from illuminated manuscripts. The two which follow are furnished by
+sculptures, and are of a rather later date than the preceding. The
+abbey of St. George of Boscherville, in the diocese of Auxerre (in
+Normandy), was founded by Ralph de Tancarville, one of the ministers of
+William the Conqueror, and therefore in the latter half of the eleventh
+century. A history of this religious house was published by a clever
+local antiquary--M. Achille Deville--from whose work we take our cut
+No. 33, one of a few rude sculptures on the abbey church, which no
+doubt belonged to the original fabric. It is not difficult to recognise
+the subject as Joseph taking the Virgin Mary with her Child into
+Egypt; but there is something exceedingly droll in the unintentional
+caricature of the faces, as well as in the whole design. The Virgin
+Mary appears without a nimbus, while the nimbus of the Infant Jesus
+is made to look very like a bonnet. It may be remarked that this
+subject of the flight into Egypt is by no means an uncommon one in
+mediæval art; and a drawing of the same subject, copied in my "History
+of Domestic Manners and Sentiments" (p. 115), presents a remarkable
+illustration of the contrast of the skill of a Norman sculptor and of
+an almost contemporary Anglo-Norman illuminator. Our cut also furnishes
+us with evidence of the error of the old opinion that ladies rode
+astride in the middle ages. Even one, who by his style of art must have
+been an obscure local carver on stone, when he represented a female on
+horseback, placed her in the position which has always been considered
+suitable to the sex.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 33. The flight into Egypt._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 34. David and Goliah._]
+
+For the drawing of the other sculpture to which I allude, I am indebted
+to Mr. Robinson. It is one of the subjects carved on the façade of
+the church of St. Gilles, near Nismes, and is a work of the twelfth
+century. It appears to represent the young David slaying the giant
+Goliah, the latter fully armed in scale armour, and with shield and
+spear, like a Norman knight; while to David the artist has given a
+figure which is feminine in its forms. What we might take at first
+sight for a basket of apples, appears to be meant for a supply of
+stones for the sling which the young hero carries suspended from his
+neck. He has slain the giant with one of these, and is cutting off his
+head with his own sword.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+  THE DIABOLICAL IN CARICATURE.--MEDIÆVAL LOVE OF THE
+     LUDICROUS.--CAUSES WHICH MADE IT INFLUENCE THE NOTIONS
+     OF DEMONS.--STORIES OF THE PIOUS PAINTER AND THE ERRING
+     MONK.--DARKNESS AND UGLINESS CARICATURED.--THE DEMONS IN THE
+     MIRACLE PLAYS.--THE DEMON OF NOTRE DAME.
+
+
+As I have already stated in the last chapter, there can be no doubt
+that the whole system of the demonology of the middle ages was
+derived from the older pagan mythology. The demons of the monkish
+legends were simply the elves and hobgoblins of our forefathers, who
+haunted woods, and fields, and waters, and delighted in misleading
+or plaguing mankind, though their mischief was usually of a rather
+mirthful character. They were represented in classical mythology by
+the fauns and satyrs who had, as we have seen, much to do with the
+birth of comic literature among the Greeks and Romans; but these
+Teutonic elves were more ubiquitous than the satyrs, as they even
+haunted men's houses, and played tricks, not only of a mischievous,
+but of a very familiar character. The Christian clergy did not look
+upon the personages of the popular superstitions as fabulous beings,
+but they taught that they were all diabolical, and that they were
+so many agents of the evil one, constantly employed in enticing and
+entrapping mankind. Hence, in the mediæval legends, we frequently find
+demons presenting themselves under ludicrous forms or in ludicrous
+situations; or performing acts, such as eating and drinking, which are
+not in accordance with their real character; or at times even letting
+themselves be outwitted or entrapped by mortals in a very undignified
+manner. Although they assumed any form they pleased, their natural form
+was remarkable chiefly for being extremely ugly; one of them, which
+appeared in a wild wood, is described by Giraldus Cambrensis, who wrote
+at the end of the twelfth century, as being hairy, shaggy, and rough,
+and monstrously deformed.[24] According to a mediæval story, which
+was told in different forms, a great man's cellar was once haunted by
+these demons, who drank all his wine, while the owner was totally at a
+loss to account for its rapid disappearance. After many unsuccessful
+attempts to discover the depredators, some one, probably suspecting
+the truth, suggested that he should mark one of the barrels with holy
+water, and next morning a demon, much resembling the description given
+by Giraldus, was found stuck fast to the barrel. It is told also of
+Edward the Confessor, that he once went to see the tribute called
+the Danegeld, and it was shown to him all packed up in great barrels
+ready to be sent away--for this appears to have been the usual mode
+of transporting large quantities of money. The saintly king had the
+faculty of being able to see spiritual beings--a sort of spiritual
+second-sight--and he beheld seated on the largest barrel, a devil, who
+was "black and hideous."
+
+          _Vit un déable saer desus
+          Le tresor, noir et hidus._--Life of S. Edward, l. 944.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 35. The Demon of the Treasure._]
+
+An early illuminator, in a manuscript preserved in the library of
+Trinity College, Cambridge (MS. Trin. Col., B x. 2), has left us a
+pictorial representation of this scene, from which I copy his notion
+of the form of the demon in cut No. 35. The general idea is evidently
+taken from the figure of the goat, and the relationship between the
+demon and the classical satyr is very evident.
+
+ [24] "Formam quandam villosam, hispidam, et hirsutam, adeoque enormiter
+      deformem." Girald. Camb., Itiner. Camb., lib. i. c. 5.
+
+Ugliness was an essential characteristic of the demons, and, moreover,
+their features have usually a mirthful cast, as though they greatly
+enjoyed their occupation. There is a mediæval story of a young
+monk, who was sacristan to an abbey, and had the directions of the
+building and ornamentation. The carvers of stone were making admirable
+representations of hell and paradise, in the former of which the demons
+"seemed to take great delight in well tormenting their victims"--
+
+          _Qui par semblant se delitoit
+          En ce que bien les tormentoit._
+
+The sacristan, who watched the sculptors every day, was at last moved
+by pious zeal to try and imitate them, and he set to work to make a
+devil himself, with such success, that his fiend was so black and ugly
+that nobody could look at it without terror.
+
+          _Tant qu'un déable à fere emprist;
+          Si i mist sa poine et sa cure,
+          Que la forme fu si oscure
+          Et si laide, que cil doutast
+          Que entre deus oilz l'esgardast._
+
+The sacristan, encouraged by his success--for it must be understood
+that his art was a sudden inspiration (as he had not been an artist
+before)--continued his work till it was completed, and then "it was so
+horrible and so ugly, that all who saw it affirmed upon their oaths
+that they had never seen so ugly a figure either in sculpture or in
+painting, or one which had so repulsive an appearance, or a devil which
+was a better likeness than the one this monk had made for them"--
+
+      _Si horribles fu et si lez,
+      Que trestouz cels que le véoient
+      Seur leur serement afermoient
+      C'onques mès si laide figure,
+      Ne en taille ne en peinture,
+      N'avoient à nul jor véue,
+      Qui si éust laide véue,
+      Ne déable miex contrefet
+      Que cil moines leur avoit fet._--Meon's Fabliaux, tom. ii. p. 414.
+
+The demon himself now took offence at the affront which had been
+put upon him, and appearing the night following to the sacristan,
+reproached him with having made him so ugly, and enjoined him to break
+the sculpture, and execute another representing him better looking, on
+pain of very severe punishment; but, although this visit was repeated
+thrice, the pious monk refused to comply. The evil one now began to
+work in another way, and, by his cunning, he drew the sacristan into a
+disgraceful amour with a lady of the neighbourhood, and they plotted
+not only to elope together by night, but to rob the monastery of its
+treasure, which was of course in the keeping of the sacristan. They
+were discovered, and caught in their flight, laden with the treasure,
+and the unfaithful sacristan was thrown into prison. The fiend now
+appeared to him, and promised to clear him out of all his trouble on
+the mere condition that he should break his ugly statue, and make
+another representing him as looking handsome--a bargain to which the
+sacristan acceded without further hesitation. It would thus appear that
+the demons did not like to be represented ugly. In this case, the fiend
+immediately took the form and place of the sacristan, while the latter
+went to his bed as if nothing had happened. When the other monks found
+him there next morning, and heard him disclaim all knowledge of the
+robbery or of the prison, they hurried to the latter place, and found
+the devil in chains, who, when they attempted to exorcise him, behaved
+in a very turbulent manner, and disappeared from their sight. The
+monks believed that it was all a deception of the evil one, while the
+sacristan, who was not inclined to brave his displeasure a second time,
+performed faithfully his part of the contract, and made a devil who
+did not look ugly. In another version of the story, however, it ends
+differently. After the third warning, the monk went in defiance of the
+devil, and made his picture uglier than ever; in revenge for which the
+demon came unexpectedly and broke the ladder on which he was mounted
+at his work, whereby the monk would undoubtedly have been killed. But
+the Virgin, to whom he was much devoted, came to his assistance, and,
+seizing him with her hand, and holding him in the air, disappointed
+the devil of his purpose. It is this latter _dénouement_ which is
+represented in the cut No. 36, taken from the celebrated manuscript in
+the British Museum known as "Queen Mary's Psalter" (MS. Reg. 2 B vii.).
+The two demons employed here present, well defined, the air of mirthful
+jollity which was evidently derived from the popular hobgoblins.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 36. The Pious Sculptor._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 37. The Monk's Disaster._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 38. The Demons Disappointed._]
+
+There was another popular story, which also was told under several
+forms. The old Norman historians tell it of their duke Richard
+Sans-Peur. There was a monk of the abbey of St. Ouen, who also held
+the office of sacristan, but, neglecting the duties of his position,
+entered into an intrigue with a lady who dwelt in the neighbourhood,
+and was accustomed at night to leave the abbey secretly, and repair
+to her. His place as sacristan enabled him thus to leave the house
+unknown to the other brethren. On his way, he had to pass the little
+river Robec, by means of a plank or wooden bridge, and one night
+the demons, who had been watching him on his errand of sin, caught
+him on the bridge, and threw him over into the water, where he was
+drowned. One devil seized his soul, and would have carried it away,
+but an angel came to claim him on account of his good actions, and
+the dispute ran so high, that duke Richard, whose piety was as great
+as his courage, was called in to decide it. The same manuscript from
+which our last cut was taken has furnished our cut No. 37, which
+represents two demons tripping up the monk, and throwing him very
+unceremoniously into the river. The body of one of the demons here
+assumes the form of an animal, instead of taking, like the other, that
+of a man, and he is, moreover, furnished with a dragon's wings. There
+was one version of this story, in which it found its place among the
+legends of the Virgin Mary, instead of those of duke Richard. The
+monk, in spite of his failings, had been a constant worshipper of the
+Virgin, and, as he was falling from the bridge into the river, she
+stepped forward to protect him from his persecutors, and taking hold
+of him with her hand, saved him from death. One of the compartments
+of the rather early wall-paintings in Winchester Cathedral represents
+the scene according to this version of the story, and is copied in
+our cut No. 38. The fiends here take more fantastic shapes than we
+have previously seen given to them. They remind us already of the
+infinitely varied grotesque forms which the painters of the age of the
+Renaissance crowded together in such subjects as "The Temptation of
+St. Anthony." In fact these strange notions of the forms of the demons
+were not only preserved through the whole period of the middle ages,
+but are still hardly extinct. They appear in almost exaggerated forms
+in the illustrations to books of a popular religious character which
+appeared in the first ages of printing. I may quote, as an example, one
+of the cuts of an early and very rare block-book, entitled the _Ars
+Moriendi_, or "Art of Dying," or, in a second title, _De Tentationibus
+Morientium_, on the temptations to which dying men are exposed. The
+scene, of which a part is given in the annexed cut (No. 39), is in the
+room of the dying man, whose bed is surrounded by three demons, who
+are come to tempt him, while his relatives of both sexes are looking
+on quite unconscious of their presence. The figures of these demons
+are particularly grotesque, and their ugly features betray a degree of
+vulgar cunning which adds not a little to this effect. The one leaning
+over the dying man suggests to him the words expressed in the label
+issuing from his mouth, _Provideas amicis_, "provide for your friends;"
+while the one whose head appears to the left whispers to him, _Yntende
+thesauro_, "think of your treasure." The dying man seems grievously
+perplexed with the various thoughts thus suggested to him.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 39. A Mediæval Death-bed._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 40. Condemned Souls carried to their Place of
+                         Punishment._]
+
+Why did the mediæval Christians think it necessary to make the devils
+black and ugly? The first reply to this question which presents itself
+is, that the characteristics intended to be represented were the
+blackness and ugliness of sin. This, however, is only partially the
+explanation of the fact; for there can be no doubt that the notion
+was a popular one, and that it had previously existed in the popular
+mythology; and, as has been already remarked, the ugliness exhibited
+by them is a vulgar, mirthful ugliness, which makes you laugh instead
+of shudder. Another scene, from the interesting drawings at the foot
+of the pages in "Queen Mary's Psalter," is given in our cut No. 40. It
+represents that most popular of mediæval pictures, and, at the same
+time, most remarkable of literal interpretations, hell mouth. The
+entrance to the infernal regions was always represented pictorially
+as the mouth of a monstrous animal, where the demons appeared leaving
+and returning. Here they are seen bringing the sinful souls to their
+last destination, and it cannot be denied that they are doing the work
+right merrily and jovially. In our cut No. 41, from the manuscript in
+the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, which furnished a former
+subject, three demons, who appear to be the guardians of the entrance
+to the regions below--for it is upon the brow above the monstrous mouth
+that they are standing--present varieties of the diabolical form. The
+one in the middle is the most remarkable, for he has wings not only
+on his shoulders, but also on his knees and heels. All three have
+horns; in fact, the three special characteristics of mediæval demons
+were horns, hoofs--or, at least, the feet of beasts,--and tails, which
+sufficiently indicate the source from which the popular notions of
+these beings were derived. In the cathedral of Treves, there is a mural
+painting by William of Cologne, a painter of the fifteenth century,
+which represents the entrance to the shades, the monstrous mouth, with
+its keepers, in still more grotesque forms. Our cut No. 42 gives but a
+small portion of this picture, in which the porter of the regions of
+punishment is sitting astride the snout of the monstrous mouth, and
+is sounding with a trumpet what may be supposed to be the call for
+those who are condemned. Another minstrel of the same stamp, spurred,
+though not booted, sits astride the tube of the trumpet, playing on
+the bagpipes; and the sound which issues from the former instrument is
+represented by a host of smaller imps who are scattering themselves
+about.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 41. The Guardians of Hell Mouth._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 42. The Trumpeter of Evil._]
+
+It must not be supposed that, in subjects like these, the drollery of
+the scene was accidental; but, on the contrary, the mediæval artists
+and popular writers gave them this character purposely. The demons and
+the executioners--the latter of whom were called in Latin _tortores_,
+and in popular old English phraseology the "tormentours"--were the
+comic characters of the time, and the scenes in the old mysteries or
+religious plays in which they were introduced were the comic scenes,
+or farce, of the piece. The love of burlesque and caricature was,
+indeed, so deeply planted in the popular mind, that it was found
+necessary to introduce them even in pious works, in which such scenes
+as the slaughter of the innocents, where the "knights" and the women
+abused each other in vulgar language, the treatment of Christ at
+the time of His trial, some parts of the scene of the crucifixion,
+and the day of judgment, were essentially comic. The last of these
+subjects, especially, was a scene of mirth, because it often consisted
+throughout of a coarse satire on the vices of the age, especially on
+those which were most obnoxious to the populace, such as the pride and
+vanity of the higher ranks, and the extortions and frauds of usurers,
+bakers, taverners, and others. In the play of "Juditium," or the day
+of doom, in the "Towneley Mysteries," one of the earliest collections
+of mysteries in the English language, the whole conversation among
+the demons is exactly of that joking kind which we might expect from
+their countenances in the pictures. When one of them appears carrying
+a bag full of different offences, another, his companion, is so joyful
+at this circumstance, that he says it makes him laugh till he is out
+of breath, or, in other words, till he is ready to burst; and, while
+asking if anger be not among the sins he had collected, proposes to
+treat him with something to drink--
+
+    Primus dæmon. _Peasze, I pray the, be stille; I laghe that I kynke.
+  Is oghte ire in thi bille? and then salle thou drynke._
+                                        --Towneley Mysteries, p. 309.
+
+And in the continuation of the conversation, one telling of the events
+which had preceded the announcement of Doomsday says, rather jeeringly,
+and somewhat exultingly, "Souls came so thick now of late to hell, that
+our porter at hell gate is ever held so close at work, up early and
+down late, that he never rests"--
+
+          _Saules cam so thyk now late unto helle,
+                      As ever
+          Oure porter at helle gate
+          Is halden so strate,
+          Up erly and downe late,
+                      He rystys never._--Ib., p. 314.
+
+With such popular notions on the subject, we have no reason to be
+surprised that the artists of the middle ages frequently chose the
+figures of demons as objects on which to exercise their skill in
+burlesque and caricature, that they often introduced grotesque figures
+of their heads and bodies in the sculptured ornamentation of building,
+and that they presented them in ludicrous situations and attitudes in
+their pictures. They are often brought in as secondary actors in a
+picture in a very singular manner, of which an excellent example is
+furnished by the beautifully illuminated manuscript known as "Queen
+Mary's Psalter," which is copied in our cut No. 43. Nothing is more
+certain than that in this instance the intention of the artist was
+perfectly serious. Eve, under the influence of a rather singularly
+formed serpent, having the head of a beautiful woman and the body of
+a dragon, is plucking the apples and offering them to Adam, who is
+preparing to eat one, with evident hesitation and reluctance. But three
+demons, downright hobgoblins, appear as secondary actors in the scene,
+who exercise an influence upon the principals. One is patting Eve
+on the shoulder, with an air of approval and encouragement, while a
+second, with wings, is urging on Adam, and apparently laughing at his
+apprehensions; and a third, in a very ludicrous manner, is preventing
+him from drawing back from the trial.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 43. The Fall of Man._]
+
+In all the delineations of demons we have yet seen, the ludicrous is
+the spirit which chiefly predominates, and in no one instance have
+we had a figure which is really demoniacal. The devils are droll but
+not frightful; they provoke laughter, or at least excite a smile,
+but they create no horror. Indeed, they torment their victims so
+good-humouredly, that we hardly feel for them. There is, however, one
+well-known instance in which the mediæval artist has shown himself
+fully successful in representing the features of the spirit of evil. On
+the parapet of the external gallery of the cathedral church of Notre
+Dame in Paris, there is a figure in stone, of the ordinary stature of
+a man, representing the demon, apparently looking with satisfaction
+upon the inhabitants of the city as they were everywhere indulging in
+sin and wickedness. We give a sketch of this figure in our cut No. 44.
+The unmixed evil--horrible in its expression in this countenance--is
+marvellously portrayed. It is an absolute Mephistophiles, carrying in
+his features a strange mixture of hateful qualities--malice, pride,
+envy--in fact, all the deadly sins combined in one diabolical whole.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 44. The Spirit of Evil._]
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+  EMPLOYMENT OF ANIMALS IN MEDIÆVAL SATIRE.--POPULARITY OF FABLES;
+     ODO DE CIRINGTON.--REYNARD THE FOX.--BURNELLUS AND FAUVEL.--THE
+     CHARIVARI.--LE MONDE BESTORNÉ.--ENCAUSTIC TILES.--SHOEING THE
+     GOOSE, AND FEEDING PIGS WITH ROSES.--SATIRICAL SIGNS; THE MUSTARD
+     MAKER.
+
+
+The people of the middle ages appear to have been great admirers
+of animals, to have observed closely their various characters and
+peculiarities, and to have been fond of domesticating them. They
+soon began to employ their peculiarities as means of satirising and
+caricaturing mankind; and among the literature bequeathed to them by
+the Romans, they received no book more eagerly than the "Fables of
+Æsop," and the other collections of fables which were published under
+the empire. We find no traces of fables among the original literature
+of the German race; but the tribes who took possession of the Roman
+provinces no sooner became acquainted with the fables of the ancients,
+than they began to imitate them, and stories in which animals acted
+the part of men were multiplied immensely, and became a very important
+branch of mediæval fiction.
+
+Among the Teutonic peoples especially, these fables often assumed very
+grotesque forms, and the satire they convey is very amusing. One of the
+earliest of these collections of original fables was composed by an
+English ecclesiastic named Odo de Cirington, who lived in the time of
+Henry II. and Richard I. In Odo's fables, we find the animals figuring
+under the same popular names by which they were afterwards so well
+known, such as Reynard for the Fox, Isengrin for the wolf, Teburg for
+the cat, and the like. Thus the subject of one of them is "Isengrin
+made Monk" (_de Isengrino monacho_). "Once," we are told, "Isengrin
+desired to be a monk. By dint of fervent supplications, he obtained
+the consent of the chapter, and received the tonsure, the cowl, and
+the other insignia of monachism. At length they put him to school,
+and he was to learn the 'Paternoster,' but he always replied, 'lamb'
+(_agnus_) or 'ram' (_aries_). The monks taught him that he ought to
+look upon the crucifix and upon the sacrament, but he ever directed his
+eyes to the lambs and rams." The fable is droll enough, but the moral,
+or application is still more grotesque. "Such is the conduct of many
+of the monks, whose only cry is 'aries,' that is, good wine, and who
+have their eyes always fixed on fat flesh and their platter;" whence the
+saying in English--
+
+    _They thou the vulf hore_        _Though thou the hoary wolf_
+    _hod to preste,_                 _consecrate to a priest,_
+    _they thou him to skole sette_   _though thou put him to school_
+    _salmes to lerne,_               _to learn Psalms,_
+    _hevere bet hise geres_          _ever are his ears turned_
+    _to the grove grene_.            _to the green grove._
+
+These lines are in the alliterative verse of the Anglo-Saxons, and
+show that such fables had already found their place in the popular
+poetry of the English people. Another of these fables is entitled "Of
+the Beetle (_serabo_) and his Wife." "A beetle, flying through the
+land, passed among most beautiful blooming trees, through orchards
+and among roses and lilies, in the most lovely places, and at length
+threw himself upon a dunghill among the dung of horses, and found there
+his wife, who asked him whence he came. And the beetle said, 'I have
+flown all round the earth and through it; I have seen the flowers of
+almonds, and lilies, and roses, but I have seen no place so pleasant as
+this,' pointing to the dunghill." The application is equally droll with
+the former and equally uncomplimentary to the religious part of the
+community. Odo de Cirington tells us that, "Thus many of the clergy,
+monks, and laymen listen to the lives of the fathers, pass among the
+lilies of the virgins, among the roses of the martyrs, and among the
+violets of the confessors, yet nothing ever appears so pleasant and
+agreeable as a strumpet, or the tavern, or a singing party, though it
+is but a stinking dunghill and congregation of sinners."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 45. The Fox in the Pulpit._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 46. Ecclesiastical Sincerity._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 47. Reynard turned Monk._]
+
+Popular sculpture and painting were but the translation of popular
+literature, and nothing was more common to represent, in pictures
+and carvings, than individual men under the forms of the animals
+who displayed similar characters or similar propensities. Cunning,
+treachery, and intrigue were the prevailing vices of the middle ages,
+and they were those also of the fox, who hence became a favourite
+character in satire. The victory of craft over force always provoked
+mirth. The fabulists, or, we should perhaps rather say, the satirists,
+soon began to extend their canvas and enlarge their picture, and,
+instead of single examples of fraud or injustice, they introduced
+a variety of characters, not only foxes, but wolves, and sheep,
+and bears, with birds also, as the eagle, the cock, and the crow,
+and mixed them up together in long narratives, which thus formed
+general satires on the vices of contemporary society. In this manner
+originated the celebrated romance of "Reynard the Fox," which in
+various forms, from the twelfth century to the eighteenth, has enjoyed
+a popularity which was granted probably to no other book. The plot of
+this remarkable satire turns chiefly on the long struggle between the
+brute force of Isengrin the Wolf, possessed only with a small amount
+of intelligence, which is easily deceived--under which character is
+presented the powerful feudal baron--and the craftiness of Reynard
+the Fox, who represents the intelligent portion of society, which had
+to hold its ground by its wits, and these were continually abused to
+evil purposes. Reynard is swayed by a constant impulse to deceive
+and victimise everybody, whether friends or enemies, but especially
+his uncle Isengrin. It was somewhat the relationship between the
+ecclesiastical and baronial aristocracy. Reynard was educated in the
+schools, and intended for the clerical order; and at different times
+he is represented as acting under the disguise of a priest, of a monk,
+of a pilgrim, or even of a prelate of the church. Though frequently
+reduced to the greatest straits by the power of Isengrin, Reynard
+has generally the better of it in the end: he robs and defrauds
+Isengrin continually, outrages his wife, who is half in alliance
+with him, and draws him into all sorts of dangers and sufferings,
+for which the latter never succeeds in obtaining justice. The old
+sculptors and artists appear to have preferred exhibiting Reynard in
+his ecclesiastical disguises, and in these he appears often in the
+ornamentation of mediæval architectural sculpture, in wood-carvings,
+in the illuminations of manuscripts, and in other objects of art. The
+popular feeling against the clergy was strong in the middle ages, and
+no caricature was received with more favour than those which exposed
+the immorality or dishonesty of a monk or a priest. Our cut No. 45 is
+taken from a sculpture in the church of Christchurch, in Hampshire, for
+the drawing of which I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt.
+It represents Reynard in the pulpit preaching; behind, or rather
+perhaps beside him, a diminutive cock stands upon a stool--in modern
+times we should be inclined to say he was acting as clerk. Reynard's
+costume consists merely of the ecclesiastical hood or cowl. Such
+subjects are frequently found on the carved seats, or misereres, in the
+stalls of the old cathedrals and collegiate churches. The painted glass
+of the great window of the north cross-aisle of St. Martin's church in
+Leicester, which was destroyed in the last century, represented the
+fox, in the character of an ecclesiastic, preaching to a congregation
+of geese, and addressing them in the words--_Testis est mihi Deus,
+quam cupiam vos omnes visceribus meis_ (God is witness, how I desire
+you all in my bowels), a parody on the words of the New Testament.[25]
+Our cut No. 46 is taken from one of the misereres in the church of
+St. Mary, at Beverley, in Yorkshire. Two foxes are represented in the
+disguise of ecclesiastics, each furnished with a pastoral staff, and
+they appear to be receiving instructions from a prelate or personage
+of rank--perhaps they are undertaking a pilgrimage of penance. But
+their sincerity is rendered somewhat doubtful by the geese concealed
+in their hoods. In one of the incidents of the romance of Reynard,
+the hero enters a monastery and becomes a monk, in order to escape the
+wrath of King Noble, the lion. For some time he made an outward show of
+sanctity and self-privation, but unknown to his brethren he secretly
+helped himself freely to the good things of the monastery. One day he
+observed, with longing lips, a messenger who brought four fat capons as
+a present from a lay neighbour to the abbot. That night, when all the
+monks had retired to rest, Reynard obtained admission to the larder,
+regaled himself with one of the capons, and as soon as he had eaten it,
+trussed the three others on his back, escaped secretly from the abbey,
+and, throwing away his monastic garment, hurried home with his prey. We
+might almost imagine our cut No. 47, taken from one of the stalls of
+the church of Nantwich, in Cheshire, to have been intended to represent
+this incident, or, at least, a similar one. Our next cut, No. 48, is
+taken from a stall in the church of Boston, in Lincolnshire. A prelate,
+equally false, is seated in his chair, with a mitre on his head, and
+the pastoral staff in his right hand. His flock are represented by a
+cock and hens, the former of which he holds securely with his right
+hand, while he appears to be preaching to them.
+
+ [25] An engraving of this scene, modernised in character, is given in
+      Nichols's "Leicestershire," vol. i. plate 43.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 48. The Prelate and his Flock._]
+
+Another mediæval sculpture has furnished events for a rather curious
+history, at the same time that it is a good illustration of our
+subject. Odo de Cirington, the fabulist, tells us how, one day, the
+wolf died, and the lion called the animals together to celebrate his
+exequies. The hare carried the holy water, hedgehogs bore the candles,
+the goats rang the bells, the moles dug the grave, the foxes carried
+the corpse on the bier. Berengarius, the bear, celebrated mass, the ox
+read the gospel, and the ass the epistle. When the mass was concluded,
+and Isengrin buried, the animals made a splendid feast out of his
+goods, and wished for such another funeral. Our satirical ecclesiastic
+makes an application of this story which tells little to the credit
+of the monks of his time. "So it frequently happens," he says, "that
+when some rich man, an extortionist or a usurer, dies, the abbot or
+prior of a convent of beasts, _i.e._ of men living like beasts, causes
+them to assemble. For it commonly happens that in a great convent of
+black or white monks (Benedictines or Augustinians) there are none
+but beasts--lions by their pride, foxes by their craftiness, bears by
+their voracity, stinking goats by their incontinence, asses by their
+sluggishness, hedgehogs by their asperity, hares by their timidity,
+because they were cowardly where there was no fear, and oxen by their
+laborious cultivation of their land."[26]
+
+ [26] The Latin text of this and some others of the fables of Odo de
+      Cirington will be found in my "Selection of Latin Stories," pp.
+      50-52, 55-58, and 80.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 49. The Funeral of the Fox._]
+
+A scene closely resembling that here described by Odo, differing only
+in the distribution of the characters, was translated from some such
+written story into the pictorial language of the ancient sculptured
+ornamentation of Strasburg Cathedral, where it formed, apparently,
+two sides of the capital or entablature of a column near the chancel.
+The deceased in this picture appears to be a fox, which was probably
+the animal intended to be represented in the original, although, in
+the copy of it preserved, it looks more like a squirrel. The bier is
+carried by the goat and the boar, while a little dog underneath is
+taking liberties with the tail of the latter. Immediately before the
+bier, the hare carries the lighted taper, preceded by the wolf, who
+carries the cross, and the bear, who holds in one hand the holy-water
+vessel and in the other the aspersoir. This forms the first division
+of the subject, and is represented in our cut No. 49. In the next
+division (cut No. 50), the stag is represented celebrating mass, and
+the ass reads the Gospel from a book which the cat supports with its
+head.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 50. The Mass for the Fox._]
+
+This curious sculpture is said to have been of the thirteenth century.
+In the fifteenth century it attracted the attention of the reformers,
+who looked upon it as an ancient protest against the corruptions of
+the mass, and one of the more distinguished of them, John Fischart,
+had it copied and engraved on wood, and published it about the year
+1580, with some verses of his own, in which it was interpreted as a
+satire upon the papacy. This publication gave such dire offence to the
+ecclesiastical authorities of Strasburg, that the Lutheran bookseller
+who had ventured to publish it, was compelled to make a public apology
+in the church, and the wood-engraving and all the impressions were
+seized and burnt by the common hangman. A few years later, however, in
+1608, another engraving was made, and published in a large folio with
+Fischart's verses; and it is from the diminished copy of this second
+edition--given in Flögel's "Geschichte des Komisches Literatur"--that
+our cuts are taken. The original Sculpture was still more unfortunate.
+Its publication and explanation by Fischart was the cause of no little
+scandal among the Catholics, who tried to retort upon their opponents
+by asserting that the figures in this funeral celebration were intended
+to represent the ignorance of the Protestant preachers; and the
+sculpture in the church continued to be regarded by the ecclesiastical
+authorities with dissatisfaction until the year 1685, when, to take
+away all further ground of scandal, it was entirely defaced.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 51. The Fox Provided._]
+
+Reynard's mediæval celebrity dates certainly from a rather early
+period. Montflaucon has given an alphabet of ornamental initial
+letters, formed chiefly of figures of men and animals, from a
+manuscript which he ascribes to the ninth century, among which is the
+one copied in our cut No. 51, representing a fox walking upon his hind
+legs, and carrying two small cocks, suspended at the ends of a cross
+staff. It is hardly necessary to say that this group forms the letter
+T. Long before this, the Frankish historian Fredegarius, who wrote
+about the middle of the seventh century, introduces a fable in which
+the fox figures at the court of the lion. The same fable is repeated
+by a monkish writer of Bavaria, named Fromond, who flourished in the
+tenth century, and by another named Aimoinus, who lived about the year
+1,000. At length, in the twelfth century, Guibert de Nogent, who died
+about the year 1124, and who has left us his autobiography (_de Vita
+sua_), relates an anecdote in that work, in explanation of which he
+tells us that the wolf was then popularly designated by the name of
+Isengrin; and in the fables of Odo, as we have already seen, this name
+is commonly given to the wolf, Reynard to the fox, Teburg to the cat,
+and so on with the others. This only shows that in the fables of the
+twelfth century the various animals were known by these names, but it
+does not prove that what we know as the romance of Reynard existed.
+Jacob Grimm argued from the derivation and forms of these names, that
+the fables themselves, and the romance, originated with the Teutonic
+peoples, and were indigenous to them; but his reasons appear to me to
+be more specious than conclusive, and I certainly lean to the opinion
+of my friend Paulin Paris, that the romance of Reynard was native of
+France,[27] and that it was partly founded upon old Latin legends
+perhaps poems. Its character is altogether feudal, and it is strictly
+a picture of society, in France primarily, and secondly in England and
+the other nations of feudalism, in the twelfth century. The earliest
+form in which this romance is known is in the French poem--or rather
+poems, for it consists of several branches or continuations--and is
+supposed to date from about the middle of the twelfth century. It soon
+became so popular, that it appeared in different forms in all the
+languages of Western Europe, except in England, where there appears
+to have existed no edition of the romance of Reynard the Fox until
+Caxton printed his prose English version of the story. From that time
+it became, if possible, more popular in England than elsewhere, and
+that popularity had hardly diminished down to the commencement of the
+present century.
+
+ [27] See the dissertation by M. Paulin Paris, published in his nice
+      popular modern abridgment of the French romance, published in
+      1861, under the title "Les Aventures de Maître Renart et
+      d'Ysengrin son compère." On the debated question of the origin
+      of the Romance, see the learned and able work by Jonckbloet,
+      8vo., Groningue, 1863.
+
+The popularity of the story of Reynard caused it to be imitated in a
+variety of shapes, and this form of satire, in which animals acted
+the part of men, became altogether popular. In the latter part of the
+twelfth century, an Anglo-Latin poet, named Nigellus Wireker, composed
+a very severe satire in elegiac verse, under the title of _Speculum
+Stultorum_, the "Mirror of Fools." It is not a wise animal like the
+fox, but a simple animal, the ass, who, under the name of Brunellus,
+passes among the various ranks and classes of society, and notes their
+crimes and vices. A prose introduction to this poem informs us that its
+hero is the representative of the monks in general, who were always
+longing for some new acquisition which was inconsistent with their
+profession. In fact, Brunellus is absorbed with the notion that his
+tail was too short, and his great ambition is to get it lengthened.
+For this purpose he consults a physician, who, after representing to
+him in vain the folly of his pursuit, gives him a receipt to make
+his tail grow longer, and sends him to the celebrated medical school
+of Salerno to obtain the ingredients. After various adventures, in
+the course of which he loses a part of his tail instead of its being
+lengthened, Brunellus proceeds to the University of Paris to study and
+obtain knowledge; and we are treated with a most amusingly satirical
+account of the condition and manners of the scholars of that time.
+Soon convinced of his incapacity for learning, Brunellus abandons the
+university in despair, and he resolves to enter one of the monastic
+orders, the character of all which he passes in review. The greater
+part of the poem consists of a very bitter satire on the corruptions of
+the monkish orders and of the Church in general. While still hesitating
+which order to choose, Brunellus falls into the hands of his old
+master, from whom he had run away in order to seek his fortune in the
+world, and he is compelled to pass the rest of his days in the same
+humble and servile condition in which he had begun them.
+
+A more direct imitation of "Reynard the Fox" is found in the early
+French romance of "Fauvel," the hero of which is neither a fox nor
+an ass, but a horse. People of all ranks and classes repair to the
+court of Fauvel, the horse, and furnish abundant matter for satire
+on the moral, political, and religious hypocrisy which pervaded the
+whole frame of society. At length the hero resolves to marry, and,
+in a finely illuminated manuscript of this romance, preserved in the
+Imperial Library in Paris, this marriage furnishes the subject of a
+picture, which gives the only representation I have met with of one of
+the popular burlesque ceremonies which were so common in the middle
+ages.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 52. A Mediæval Charivari._]
+
+Among other such ceremonies, it was customary with the populace, on the
+occasion of a man's or woman's second marriage, or an ill-sorted match,
+or on the espousals of people who were obnoxious to their neighbours,
+to assemble outside the house, and greet them with discordant music.
+This custom is said to have been practised especially in France, and
+it was called a _charivari_. There is still a last remnant of it in
+our country in the music of marrow-bones and cleavers, with which the
+marriages of butchers are popularly celebrated; but the derivation
+of the French name appears not to be known. It occurs in old Latin
+documents, for it gave rise to such scandalous scenes of riot and
+licentiousness, that the Church did all it could, though in vain, to
+suppress it. The earliest mention of this custom, furnished in the
+_Glossarium_ of Ducange, is contained in the synodal statutes of the
+church of Avignon, passed in the year 1337, from which we learn that
+when such marriages occurred, people forced their way into the houses
+of the married couple, and carried away their goods, which they were
+obliged to pay a ransom for before they were returned, and the money
+thus raised was spent in getting up what is called in the statute
+relating to it a _Chalvaricum_. It appears from this statute, that
+the individuals who performed the _charivari_ accompanied the happy
+couple to the church, and returned with them to their residence,
+with coarse and indecent gestures and discordant music, and uttering
+scurrilous and indecent abuse, and that they ended with feasting.
+In the statutes of Meaux, in 1365, and in those of Hugh, bishop of
+Beziers, in 1368, the same practice is forbidden, under the name of
+_Charavallium_; and it is mentioned in a document of the year 1372,
+also quoted by Ducange, under that of _Carivarium_, as then existing at
+Nîmes. Again, in 1445, the Council of Tours made a decree, forbidding,
+under pain of excommunication, "the insolences, clamours, sounds, and
+other tumults practised at second and third nuptials, called by the
+vulgar a _Charivarium_, on account of the many and grave evils arising
+out of them."[28] It will be observed that these early allusions to
+the _charivari_ are found almost solely in documents coming from the
+Roman towns in the south of France, so that this practice was probably
+one of the many popular customs derived directly from the Romans.
+When Cotgrave's "Dictionary" was published (that is, in 1632) the
+practice of the _charivari_ appears to have become more general in its
+existence, as well as its application; for he describes it as "a public
+defamation, or traducing of; a foule noise made, blacke santus rung,
+to the shame and disgrace of another; hence an infamous (or infaming)
+ballad sung, by an armed troupe, under the window of an old dotard,
+married the day before unto a yong wanton, in mockerie of them both."
+And, again, a _charivaris de poelles_ is explained as "the carting of
+an infamous person, graced with the harmonie of tinging kettles and
+frying-pan musicke."[29] The word is now generally used in the sense
+of a great tumult of discordant music, produced often by a number of
+persons playing different tunes on different instruments at the same
+time.
+
+ [28] "Insultationes, clamores, sonos, et alios tumultus, in
+      secundis et tertiis quorundam nuptiis, quos charivarium vulgo
+      appellant, propter multa et gravia incommoda, prohibemus sub pœna
+      excommunitationis."--Ducange, v. _Charivarium_.
+
+ [29] Cotgrave's Dictionarie, v. _Charivaris_.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 53. Continuation of the Charivari._]
+
+As I have stated above, the manuscript of the romance of "Fauvel" is in
+the Imperial Library in Paris. A copy of this illumination is engraved
+in Jaime's "Musée de la Caricature," from which our cuts Nos. 52 and 53
+are taken. It is divided into three compartments, one above another,
+in the uppermost of which Fauvel is seen entering the nuptial chamber
+to his young wife, who is already in bed. The scene in the compartment
+below, which is copied in our cut No. 52, represents the street
+outside, and the mock revellers performing the _charivari_; and this is
+continued in the third, or lowest, compartment, which is represented
+in our cut No. 53. Down each side of the original illumination is a
+frame-work of windows, from which people, who have been disturbed by
+the noise, are looking out upon the tumult. It will be seen that all
+the performers wear masks, and that they are dressed in burlesque
+costume. In confirmation of the statement of the ecclesiastical synods
+as to the licentiousness of these exhibitions, we see one of the
+performers here disguised as a woman, who lifts up his dress to expose
+his person while dancing. The musical instruments are no less grotesque
+than the costumes, for they consist chiefly of kitchen utensils, such
+as frying-pans, mortars, saucepans, and the like.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 54. The Tables Turned._]
+
+There was another series of subjects in which animals were introduced
+as the instruments of satire. This satire consisted in reverting
+the position of man with regard to the animals over which he had
+been accustomed to tyrannise, so that he was subjected to the same
+treatment from the animals which, in his actual position, he uses
+towards them. This change of relative position was called in old French
+and Anglo-Norman, _le monde bestorné_, which was equivalent to the
+English phrase, "the world turned upside down." It forms the subject
+of rather old verses, I believe, both in French and English, and
+individual scenes from it are met with in pictorial representation at
+a rather early date. During the year 1862, in the course of accidental
+excavations on the site of the Friary, at Derby, a number of encaustic
+tiles, such as were used for the floors of the interiors of churches
+and large buildings, were found.[30] The ornamentation of these tiles,
+especially of the earlier ones, is, like all mediæval ornamentations,
+extremely varied, and even these tiles sometimes present subjects of
+a burlesque and satirical character, though they are more frequently
+adorned with the arms and badges of benefactors to the church or
+convent. The tiles found on the site of the priory at Derby are
+believed to be of the thirteenth century, and one pattern, a diminished
+copy of which is given in our cut No. 54, presents a subject taken
+from the _monde bestorné_. The hare, master of his old enemy, the
+dog, has become hunter himself, and seated upon the dog's back he
+rides vigorously to the chace, blowing his horn as he goes. The design
+is spiritedly executed, and its satirical intention is shown by the
+monstrous and mirthful face, with the tongue lolling out, figured on
+the outer corner of the tile. It will be seen that four of these tiles
+are intended to be joined together to make the complete piece. In an
+illumination in a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British
+Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E iv.), the hares are taking a still more severe
+vengeance on their old enemy. The dog has been caught, brought to trial
+for his numerous murders, and condemned, and they are represented here
+(cut No. 55) conducting him in the criminal's cart to the gallows. Our
+cut No. 56, the subject of which is furnished by one of the carved
+stalls in Sherborne Minster (it is here copied from the engraving
+in Carter's "Specimens of Ancient Sculpture"), represents another
+execution scene, similar in spirit to the former. The geese have seized
+their old enemy, Reynard, and are hanging him on a gallows, while two
+monks, who attend the execution, appear to be amused at the energetic
+manner in which the geese perform their task. Mr. Jewitt mentions two
+other subjects belonging to this series, one of them taken from an
+illuminated manuscript; they are, the mouse chasing the cat, and the
+horse driving the cart--the former human carter in this case taking the
+place of the horse between the shafts.
+
+ [30] Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt, in his excellent publication, the
+      _Reliquary_, for October, 1862, has given an interesting paper on
+      the encaustic tiles found on this occasion, and on the conventual
+      house to which they belonged.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 55. Justice in the Hands of the Persecuted._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 56. Reynard brought to Account at Last._]
+
+"The World turned upside down; or, the Folly of Man," has continued
+amongst us to be a popular chap-book and child's book till within a
+very few years, and I have now a copy before me printed in London
+about the year 1790. It consists of a series of rude woodcuts, with a
+few doggrel verses under each. One of these, entitled "The Ox turned
+Farmer," represents two men drawing the plough, driven by an ox. In the
+next, a rabbit is seen turning the spit on which a man is roasting,
+while a cock holds a ladle and bastes. In a third, we see a tournament,
+in which the horses are armed and ride upon the men. Another represents
+the ox killing the butcher. In others we have birds netting men and
+women; the ass, turned miller, employing the man-miller to carry his
+sacks; the horse turned groom, and currying the man; and the fishes
+angling for men and catching them.
+
+In a cleverly sculptured ornament in Beverley Minster, represented
+in our cut No. 57, the goose herself is represented in a grotesque
+situation, which might almost give her a place in "The World turned
+upside down," although it is a mere burlesque, without any apparent
+satirical aim. The goose has here taken the place of the horse at the
+blacksmith's, who is vigorously nailing the shoe on her webbed foot.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 57. Shoeing the Goose._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 58. Food for Swine._]
+
+Burlesque subjects of this description are not uncommon, especially
+among architectural sculpture and wood-carving, and, at a rather
+later period, on all ornamental objects. The field for such subjects
+was so extensive, that the artist had an almost unlimited choice,
+and therefore his subjects might be almost infinitely varied, though
+we usually find them running on particular classes. The old popular
+proverbs, for instance, furnished a fruitful source for drollery, and
+are at times delineated in an amusingly literal or practical manner.
+Pictorial proverbs and popular sayings are sometimes met with on the
+carved misereres. For example, in one of those at Rouen, in Normandy,
+represented in our cut No. 58, the carver has intended to represent
+the idea of the old saying, in allusion to misplaced bounty, of
+throwing pearls to swine, and has given it a much more picturesque and
+pictorially intelligible form, by introducing a rather dashing female
+feeding her swine with roses, or rather offering them roses for food,
+for the swine display no eagerness to feed upon them.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 59. The Industrious Sow._]
+
+We meet with such subjects as these scattered over all mediæval
+works of art, and at a somewhat later period they were transferred
+to other objects, such as the signs of houses. The custom of placing
+signs over the doors of shops and taverns, was well known to the
+ancients, as is abundantly manifested by their frequent occurrence
+in the ruins of Pompeii; but in the middle ages, the use of signs
+and badges was universal, and as--contrary to the apparent practice
+in Pompeii, where certain badges were appropriated to certain trades
+and professions--every individual was free to choose his own sign,
+the variety was unlimited. Many still had reference, no doubt, to the
+particular calling of those to whom they belonged, while others were of
+a religious character, and indicated the saint under whose protection
+the householder had placed himself. Some people took animals for their
+signs, others monstrous or burlesque figures; and, in fact, there were
+hardly any of the subjects of caricature or burlesque familiar to
+the mediæval sculptor and illuminator which did not from time to time
+appear on these popular signs. A few of the old signs still preserved,
+especially in the quaint old towns of France, Germany, and the
+Netherlands, show us how frequently they were made the instruments of
+popular satire. A sign not uncommon in France was _La Truie qui file_
+(the sow spinning). Our cut No. 59 represents this subject as treated
+on an old sign, a carving in bas-relief of the sixteenth century, on
+a house in the Rue du Marché-aux-Poirées, in Rouen. The sow appears
+here in the character of the industrious housewife, employing herself
+in spinning at the same time that she is attending to the wants of her
+children. There is a singularly satirical sign at Beauvais, on a house
+which was formerly occupied by an _épicier-moutardier_, or grocer who
+made mustard, in the Rue du Châtel. In front of this sign, which is
+represented in our cut No. 60, appears a large mustard-mill, on one
+side of which stands Folly with a staff in her hand, with which she
+is stirring the mustard, while an ape with a sort of sardonic grin,
+throws in a seasoning, which may be conjectured by his posture.[31] The
+trade-mark of the individual who adopted this strange device, is carved
+below.
+
+ [31] See an interesting little book on this subject by M. Ed. de
+      la Quérière, entitled "Recherches sur les Enseignes des Maisons
+      Particulières," 8vo., Rouen, 1852, from which both the above
+      examples are taken.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 60. Adulteration._]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+  THE MONKEY IN BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE.--TOURNAMENTS AND SINGLE
+     COMBATS.--MONSTROUS COMBINATIONS OF ANIMAL FORMS.--CARICATURES ON
+     COSTUME.--THE HAT.--THE HELMET.--LADIES' HEAD-DRESSES.--THE GOWN,
+     AND ITS LONG SLEEVES.
+
+
+The fox, the wolf, and their companions, were introduced as instruments
+of satire, on account of their peculiar characters; but there were
+other animals which were also favourites with the satirist, because
+they displayed an innate inclination to imitate; they formed, as it
+were, natural parodies upon mankind. I need hardly say that of these
+the principal and most remarkable was the monkey. This animal must
+have been known to our Anglo-Saxon forefathers from a remote period,
+for they had a word for it in their own language--_apa_, our _ape_.
+Monkey is a more modern name, and seems to be equivalent with maniken,
+or a little man. The earliest _Bestiaries_, or popular treatises on
+natural history, give anecdotes illustrative of the aptness of this
+animal for imitating the actions of men, and ascribe to it a degree of
+understanding which would almost raise it above the level of the brute
+creation. Philip de Thaun, an Anglo-Norman poet of the reign of Henry
+I., in his _Bestiary_, tells us that "the monkey, by imitation, as
+books say, counterfeits what it sees, and mocks people:"--
+
+      _Li singe par figure, si cum dit escripture,
+      Ceo que il vait contrefait, de gent escar hait._[32]
+
+He goes on to inform us, as a proof of the extraordinary instinct of
+this animal, that it has more affection for some of its cubs than for
+others, and that, when running away, it carried those which it liked
+before it, and those it disliked behind its back. The sketch from the
+illuminated manuscript of the Romance of the Comte d'Artois, of the
+fifteenth century, which forms our cut No. 61, represents the monkey,
+carrying, of course, its favourite child before it in its flight, and
+what is more, it is taking that flight mounted on a donkey. A monkey on
+horseback appears not to have been a novelty, as we shall see in the
+sequel.
+
+ [32] See my "Popular Treatises on Science written during the Middle
+      Ages," p. 107.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 61. A Monkey Mounted._]
+
+Alexander Neckam, a very celebrated English scholar of the latter part
+of the twelfth century, and one of the most interesting of the early
+mediæval writers on natural history, gives us many anecdotes, which
+show us how much attached our mediæval forefathers were to domesticated
+animals, and how common a practice it was to keep them in their houses.
+The baronial castle appears often to have presented the appearance
+of a menagerie of animals, among which some were of that strong and
+ferocious character that rendered it necessary to keep them in close
+confinement, while others, such as monkeys, roamed about the buildings
+at will. One of Neckam's stories is very curious in regard to our
+subject, for it shows that the people in those days exercised their
+tamed animals in practically caricaturing contemporary weaknesses and
+fashions. This writer remarks that "the nature of the ape is so ready
+at acting, by ridiculous gesticulations, the representations of things
+it has seen, and thus gratifying the vain curiosity of worldly men
+in public exhibitions, that it will even dare to imitate a military
+conflict. A jougleur (_histrio_) was in the habit of constantly taking
+two monkeys to the military exercises which are commonly called
+tournaments, that the labour of teaching might be diminished by
+frequent inspection. He afterwards taught two dogs to carry these apes,
+who sat on their backs, furnished with proper arms. Nor did they want
+spurs, with which they strenuously urged on the dogs. Having broken
+their lances, they drew out their swords, with which they spent many
+blows on each other's shields. Who at this sight could refrain from
+laughter?"[33]
+
+ [33] Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, lib. ii. c. 129.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 62. A Tournament._]
+
+Such contemporary caricatures of the mediæval tournament, which was
+in its greatest fashion during the period from the twelfth to the
+fourteenth century, appear to have been extremely popular, and are not
+unfrequently represented in the borders of illuminated manuscripts.
+The manuscript now so well known as "Queen Mary's Psalter" (MS. Reg.
+2 B vii.), and written and illuminated very early in the fourteenth
+century, contains not a few illustrations of this description. One of
+these, which forms our cut No. 62, represents a tournament not much
+unlike that described by Alexander Neckam, except that the monkeys
+are here riding upon other monkeys, and not upon dogs. In fact, all
+the individuals here engaged are monkeys, and the parody is completed
+by the introduction of the trumpeter on one side, and of minstrelsy,
+represented by a monkey playing on the tabor, on the other; or,
+perhaps, the two monkeys are simply playing on the pipe and tabor,
+which were looked upon as the lowest description of minstrelsy, and are
+therefore the more aptly introduced into the scene.
+
+The same manuscript has furnished us with the cut No. 63. Here the
+combat takes place between a monkey and a stag, the latter having
+the claws of a griffin. They are mounted, too, on rather nondescript
+animals--one having the head and body of a lion, with the forefeet
+of an eagle; the other having a head somewhat like that of a lion,
+on a lion's body, with the hind parts of a bear. This subject may,
+perhaps, be intended as a burlesque on the mediæval romances, filled
+with combats between the Christians and the Saracens; for the ape--who,
+in the moralisations which accompany the _Bestiaries_, is said to
+represent the devil--is here armed with what are evidently intended for
+the sabre and shield of a Saracen, while the flag carries the shield
+and lance of a Christian knight.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 63. A Feat of Arms._]
+
+The love of the mediæval artists for monstrous figures of animals,
+and for mixtures of animals and men, has been alluded to in a former
+chapter. The combatants in the accompanying cut (No. 64), taken from
+the same manuscript, present a sort of combination of the rider and
+the animal, and they again seem to be intended for a Saracen and a
+Christian. The figure to the right, which is composed of the body of
+a satyr, with the feet of a goose and the wings of a dragon, is armed
+with a similar Saracenic sabre; while that to the left, which is on
+the whole less monstrous, wields a Norman sword. Both have human faces
+below the navel as well as above, which was a favourite idea in the
+grotesque of the middle ages. Our mediæval forefathers appear to
+have had a decided taste for monstrosities of every description, and
+especially for mixtures of different kinds of animals, and of animals
+and men. There is no doubt, to judge by the anecdotes recorded by such
+writers as Giraldus Cambrensis, that a belief in the existence of such
+unnatural creatures was widely entertained. In his account of Ireland,
+this writer tells us of animals which were half ox and half man, half
+stag and half cow, and half dog and half monkey.[34] It is certain that
+there was a general belief in such animals, and nobody could be more
+credulous than Giraldus himself.
+
+ [34] See Girald. Cambr., Topog. Hiberniæ, dist. ii. cc. 21, 22; and the
+      Itinerary of Wales, lib. ii. c. 11.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 64. A Terrible Combat._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 65. Fashionable Dress._]
+
+The design to caricature, which is tolerably evident in the subjects
+just given, is still more apparent in other grotesques that adorn
+the borders of the mediæval manuscripts, as well as in some of the
+mediæval carvings and sculpture. Thus, in our cut No. 65, taken from
+one of the borders in the Romance of the Comte d'Artois, a manuscript
+of the fifteenth century, we cannot fail to recognise an attempt at
+turning to ridicule the contemporary fashions in dress. The hat is
+only an exaggerated form of one which appears to have been commonly
+used in France in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and which
+appears frequently in illuminated manuscripts executed in Burgundy;
+and the boot also belongs to the same period. The latter reappeared at
+different times, until at length it became developed into the modern
+top-boots. In cut No. 66, from the same manuscript, where it forms the
+letter T, we have the same form of hat, still more exaggerated, and
+combined at the same time with grotesque faces.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 66. Heads and Hats._]
+
+Caricatures on costume are by no means uncommon among the artistic
+remains of the middle ages, and are not confined to illuminated
+manuscripts. The fashionable dresses of those days went into far more
+ridiculous excesses of shape than anything we see in our times--at
+least, so far as we can believe the drawings in the manuscripts;
+but these, however seriously intended, were constantly degenerating
+into caricature, from circumstances which are easily explained, and
+which have, in fact, been explained already in their influence on
+other parts of our subject. The mediæval artists in general were not
+very good delineators of form, and their outlines are much inferior
+to their finish. Conscious of this, though perhaps unknowingly,
+they sought to remedy the defect in a spirit which has always been
+adopted in the early stages of art-progress--they aimed at making
+themselves understood by giving a special prominence to the peculiar
+characteristics of the objects they wished to represent. These were
+the points which naturally attracted people's first attention, and
+the resemblance was felt most by people in general when these points
+were put forward in excessive prominence in the picture. The dresses,
+perhaps, hardly existed in the exact forms in which we see them in
+the illuminations, or at least those were only exceptions to the
+generally more moderate forms; and hence, in using these pictorial
+records as materials for the history of costume, we ought to make a
+certain allowance for exaggeration--we ought, indeed, to treat them
+almost as caricatures. In fact, much of what we now call caricature,
+was then characteristic of serious art, and of what was considered its
+high development. Many of the attempts which have been made of late
+years to introduce ancient costume on the stage, would probably be
+regarded by the people who lived in the age which they were intended to
+represent, as a mere design to turn them into ridicule. Nevertheless,
+the fashions in dress were, especially from the twelfth century to the
+sixteenth, carried to a great degree of extravagance, and were not only
+the objects of satire and caricature, but drew forth the indignant
+declamations of the Church, and furnished a continuous theme to the
+preachers. The contemporary chronicles abound with bitter reflections
+on the extravagance in costume, which was considered as one of the
+outward signs of the great corruption of particular periods; and they
+give us not unfrequent examples of the coarse manner in which the
+clergy discussed them in their sermons. The readers of Chaucer will
+remember the manner in which this subject is treated in the "Parson's
+Tale." In this respect the satirists of the Church went hand in hand
+with the pictorial caricaturists of the illuminated manuscripts,
+and of the sculptures with which we sometimes meet in contemporary
+architectural ornamentation. In the latter, this class of caricature is
+perhaps less frequent, but it is sometimes very expressive. The very
+curious _misereres_ in the church of Ludlow, in Shropshire, present the
+caricature reproduced in our cut No. 67. It represents an ugly, and, to
+judge by the expression of the countenance, an ill-tempered old woman,
+wearing the fashionable head-dress of the earlier half of the fifteenth
+century, which seems to have been carried to its greatest extravagance
+in the beginning of the reign of Henry VI. It is the style of coiffure
+known especially as the horned head-dress, and the very name carries
+with it a sort of relationship to an individual who was notoriously
+horned--the spirit of evil. This dashing dame of the olden time appears
+to have struck terror into two unfortunates who have fallen within
+her influence, one of whom, as though he took her for a new Gorgon,
+is attempting to cover himself with his buckler, while the other,
+apprehending danger of another kind, is prepared to defend himself with
+his sword. The details of the head-dress in this figure are interesting
+for the history of costume.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 67. A Fashionable Beauty._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 68. A Man of War._]
+
+Our next cut, No. 68, is taken from a manuscript in private possession,
+which is now rather well known among antiquaries by the name of the
+"Luttrell Psalter," and which belongs to the fourteenth century. It
+seems to involve a satire on the aristocratic order of society--on the
+knight who was distinguished by his helmet, his shield, and his armour.
+The individual here represented presents a type which is anything
+but aristocratic. While he holds a helmet in his hand to show the
+meaning of the satire, his own helmet, which he wears on his head, is
+simply a bellows. He may be a knight of the kitchen, or perhaps a mere
+_quistron_, or kitchen lad.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 69. A Lady's Head-dress._]
+
+We have just seen a caricature of one of the ladies' head-dresses of
+the earlier half of the fifteenth century, and our cut No. 69, from
+an illuminated manuscript in the British Museum of the latter half of
+the same century (MS. Harl., No. 4379), furnishes us with a caricature
+of a head-dress of a different character, which came into fashion in
+the reign of our Edward IV. The horned head-dress of the previous
+generation had been entirely laid aside, and the ladies adopted in its
+place a sort of steeple-shaped head-dress, or rather of the form of a
+spire, made by rolling a piece of linen into the form of a long cone.
+Over this lofty cap was thrown a piece of fine lawn or muslin, which
+descended almost to the ground, and formed, as it were, two wings. A
+short transparent veil was thrown over the face, and reached not quite
+to the chin, resembling rather closely the veils in use among our
+ladies of the present day (1864). The whole head-dress, indeed, has
+been preserved by the Norman peasantry; for it may be observed that,
+during the feudal ages, the fashions in France and England were always
+identical. These steeple head-dresses greatly provoked the indignation
+of the clergy, and zealous preachers attacked them roughly in their
+sermons. A French monk, named Thomas Conecte, distinguished himself
+especially in this crusade, and inveighed against the head-dress with
+such effect, that we are assured that many of the women threw down
+their head-dresses in the middle of the sermon, and made a bonfire
+of them at its conclusion. The zeal of the preacher soon extended
+itself to the populace, and, for a while, when ladies appeared in this
+head-dress in public, they were exposed to be pelted by the rabble.
+Under such a double persecution it disappeared for a moment, but when
+the preacher was no longer present, it returned again, and, to use the
+words of the old writer who has preserved this anecdote, "the women
+who, like snails in a fright, had drawn in their horns, shot them out
+again as soon as the danger was over." The caricaturist would hardly
+overlook so extravagant a fashion, and accordingly the manuscript in
+the British Museum, just mentioned, furnishes us with the subject of
+our cut No. 69. In those times, when the passions were subjected to no
+restraint, the fine ladies indulged in such luxury and licentiousness,
+that the caricaturist has chosen as their fit representative a sow, who
+wears the objectionable head-dress in full fashion. The original forms
+one of the illustrations of a copy of the historian Froissart, and was,
+therefore, executed in France, or, more probably, in Burgundy.
+
+The sermons and satires against extravagance in costume began at
+an early period. The Anglo-Norman ladies, in the earlier part of
+the twelfth century, first brought in vogue in our island this
+extravagance in fashion, which quickly fell under the lash of satirist
+and caricaturist. It was first exhibited in the robes rather than
+in the head-dress. These Anglo-Norman ladies are understood to have
+first introduced stays, in order to give an artificial appearance of
+slenderness to their waists; but the greatest extravagance appeared in
+the forms of their sleeves. The robe, or gown, instead of being loose,
+as among the Anglo-Saxons, was laced close round the body, and the
+sleeves, which fitted the arm tightly till they reached the elbows,
+or sometimes nearly to the wrist, then suddenly became larger, and
+hung down to an extravagant length, often trailing on the ground, and
+sometimes shortened by means of a knot. The gown, also, was itself
+worn very long. The clergy preached against these extravagances in
+fashion, and at times, it is said, with effect; and they fell under
+the vigorous lash of the satirist. In a class of satires which became
+extremely popular in the twelfth century, and which produced in the
+thirteenth the immortal poem of Dante--the visions of purgatory and of
+hell--these contemporary extravagances in fashion are held up to public
+detestation, and are made the subject of severe punishment. They were
+looked upon as among the outward forms of pride. It arose, no doubt,
+from this taste--from the darker shade which spread over men's minds in
+the twelfth century--that demons, instead of animals, were introduced
+to personify the evil-doers of the time. Such is the figure (cut No.
+70) which we take from a very interesting manuscript in the British
+Museum (MS. Cotton. Nero, C iv.). The demon is here dressed in the
+fashionable gown with its long sleeves, of which one appears to have
+been usually much longer than the other. Both the gown and sleeve are
+shortened by means of knots, while the former is brought close round
+the waist by tight lacing. It is a picture of the use of stays made at
+the time of their first introduction.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 70. Sin in Satins._]
+
+This superfluity of length in the different parts of the dress was a
+subject of complaint and satire at various and very distant periods,
+and contemporary illuminations of a perfectly serious character show
+that these complaints were not without foundation.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+  PRESERVATION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE MIMUS AFTER THE FALL OF
+     THE EMPIRE.--THE MINSTREL AND JOGELOUR.--HISTORY OF POPULAR
+     STORIES.--THE FABLIAUX.--ACCOUNT OF THEM.--THE CONTES DEVOTS.
+
+
+I have already remarked that, upon the fall of the Roman empire, the
+popular institutions of the Romans were more generally preserved to
+the middle ages than those of a higher and more refined character.
+This is understood without difficulty, when we consider that the lower
+class of the population--in the towns, what we might perhaps call the
+lower and middle classes--continued to exist much the same as before,
+while the barbarian conquerors came in and took the place of the ruling
+classes. The drama, which had never much hold upon the love of the
+Roman populace, was lost, and the theatres and the amphitheatres, which
+had been supported only by the wealth of the imperial court and of
+the ruling class, were abandoned and fell into ruin; but the _mimus_,
+who furnished mirth to the people, continued to exist, and probably
+underwent no immediate change in his character. It will be well to
+state again the chief characteristics of the ancient _mimus_, before we
+proceed to describe his mediæval representative.
+
+The grand aim of the _mimus_ was to make people laugh, and he employed
+generally every means he knew of for effecting this purpose, by
+language, by gestures or motions of the body, or by dress. Thus he
+carried, strapped over his loins, a wooden sword, which was called
+_gladius histricus_ and _clunaculum_, and wore sometimes a garment
+made of a great number of small pieces of cloth of different colours,
+which was hence called _centunculus_, or the hundred-patched dress.[35]
+These two characteristics have been preserved in the modern harlequin.
+Other peculiarities of costume may conveniently be left undescribed;
+the female mimæ sometimes exhibited themselves unrestricted by dress.
+They danced and sung; repeated jokes and told merry stories; recited
+or acted farces and scandalous anecdotes; performed what we now call
+mimicry, a word derived from the name of mimus; and they put themselves
+in strange postures, and made frightful faces. They sometimes acted
+the part of a fool or zany (_morio_), or of a madman. They added to
+these performances that of the conjurer or juggler (_præstigiator_),
+and played tricks of sleight of hand. The mimi performed in the streets
+and public places, or in the theatres, and especially at festivals, and
+they were often employed at private parties, to entertain the guests at
+a supper.
+
+ [35] "Uti me consuesse tragœdi syrmate, histrionis crotalone ad
+      trieterica orgia, aut mimi centunculo."--Apuleius, Apolog.
+
+We trace the existence of this class of performers during the earlier
+period of the middle ages by the expressions of hostility towards
+them used from time to time by the ecclesiastical writers, and the
+denunciations of synods and councils, which have been quoted in a
+former chapter.[36] Nevertheless, it is evident from many allusions
+to them, that they found their way into the monastic houses, and were
+in great favour not only among the monks, but among the nuns also;
+that they were introduced into the religious festivals; and that they
+were tolerated even in the churches. It is probable that they long
+continued to be known in Italy and the countries near the centre
+of Roman influence, and where the Latin language was continued, by
+their old name of _mimus_. The writers of the mediæval vocabularies
+appear all to have been much better acquainted with the meaning of
+this word than of most of the Latin words of the same class, and they
+evidently had a class of performers existing in their own times to whom
+they considered that the name applied. The Anglo-Saxon vocabularies
+interpret the Latin _mimus_ by _glig-mon_, a gleeman. In Anglo-Saxon,
+_glig_ or _gliu_ meant mirth and game of every description, and as the
+Anglo-Saxon teachers who compiled the vocabularies give, as synonyms
+of _mimus_, the words _scurra_, _jocista_, and _pantomimus_, it is
+evident that all these were included in the character of the gleeman,
+and that the latter was quite identical with his Roman type. It was
+the Roman _mimus_ introduced into Saxon England. We have no traces of
+the existence of such a class of performers among the Teutonic race
+before they became acquainted with the civilisation of imperial Rome.
+We know from drawings in contemporary illuminated manuscripts that the
+performances of the gleeman did include music, singing, and dancing,
+and also the tricks of mountebanks and jugglers, such as throwing up
+and catching knives and balls, and performing with tamed bears, &c.[37]
+
+ [36] See before, p. 41 of the present volume.
+
+ [37] See examples of these illuminations in my "History of Domestic
+      Manners and Sentiments," pp. 34, 35, 37, 65.
+
+But even among the peoples who preserved the Latin language, the word
+_mimus_ was gradually exchanged for others employed to signify the
+same thing. The word _jocus_ had been used in the signification of a
+jest, playfulness, _jocari_ signified to jest, and _joculator_ was a
+word for a jester; but, in the debasement of the language, _jocus_
+was taken in the signification of everything which created mirth. It
+became, in the course of time the French word _jeu_, and the Italian
+_gioco_, or _giuoco_. People introduced a form of the verb, _jocare_,
+which became the French _juer_, to play or perform. _Joculator_ was
+then used in the sense of _mimus_. In French the word became _jogléor_,
+or _jougléor_, and in its later form _jougleur_. I may remark that, in
+mediæval manuscripts, it is almost impossible to distinguish between
+the _u_ and the _n_, and that modern writers have misread this last
+word as _jongleur_, and thus introduced into the language a word which
+never existed, and which ought to be abandoned. In old English, as we
+see in Chaucer, the usual form was _jogelere_. The mediæval joculator,
+or jougleur, embraced all the attributes of the Roman _mimus_,[38] and
+perhaps more. In the first place he was very often a poet himself, and
+composed the pieces which it was one of his duties to sing or recite.
+These were chiefly songs, or stories, the latter usually told in verse,
+and so many of them are preserved in manuscripts that they form a very
+numerous and important class of mediæval literature. The songs were
+commonly satirical and abusive, and they were made use of for purposes
+of general or personal vituperation. Out of them, indeed, grew the
+political songs of a later period. There were female jougleurs, and
+both sexes danced, and, to create mirth among those who encouraged
+them, they practised a variety of performances, such as mimicking
+people, making wry and ugly faces, distorting their bodies into strange
+postures, often exposing their persons in a very unbecoming manner, and
+performing many vulgar and indecent acts, which it is not necessary to
+describe more particularly. They carried about with them for exhibition
+tame bears, monkeys, and other animals, taught to perform the actions
+of men. As early as the thirteenth century, we find them including
+among their other accomplishments that of dancing upon the tight-rope.
+Finally, the jougleurs performed tricks of sleight of hand, and were
+often conjurers and magicians. As, in modern times, the jougleurs of
+the middle ages gradually passed away, sleight of hand appears to have
+become their principal accomplishment, and the name only was left in
+the modern word _juggler_. The jougleurs of the middle ages, like
+the mimi of antiquity, wandered about from place to place, and often
+from country to country, sometimes singly and at others in companies,
+exhibited their performances in the roads and streets, repaired to all
+great festivals, and were employed especially in the baronial hall,
+where, by their songs, stories, and other performances, they created
+mirth after dinner.
+
+[38] People in the middle ages were so fully conscious of the identity
+of the mediæval jougleur with the Roman mimus, that the Latin writers
+often use mimus to signify a jougleur, and the one is interpreted by
+the others in the vocabularies. Thus, in Latin-English vocabularies of
+the fifteenth century, we have--
+
+              _Hic joculator_, }
+                               } _Anglice_ jogulour.
+              _Hic mimus_,     }
+
+This class of society had become known by another name, the origin of
+which is not so easily explained. The primary meaning of the Latin word
+_minister_ was a servant, one who ministers to another, either in his
+wants or in his pleasures and amusements. It was applied particularly
+to the cup-bearer. In low Latinity, a diminutive of this word was
+formed, _minestellus_, or _ministrellus_, a petty servant, or minister.
+When we first meet with this word, which is not at a very early date,
+it is used as perfectly synonymous with _joculator_, and, as the
+word is certainly of Latin derivation, it is clear that it was from
+it the middle ages derived the French word _menestrel_ (the modern
+_ménétrier_), and the English _minstrel_. The mimi or jougleurs were
+perhaps considered as the petty ministers to the amusements of their
+lord, or of him who for the time employed them. Until the close of the
+middle ages, the minstrel and the jougleur were absolutely identical.
+Possibly the former may have been considered the more courtly of the
+two names. But in England, as the middle ages disappeared, and lost
+their influence on society sooner than in France, the word minstrel
+remained attached only to the musical part of the functions of the old
+mimus, while, as just observed, the juggler took the sleight of hand
+and the mountebank tricks. In modern French, except where employed
+technically by the antiquary, the word _ménétrier_ means a fiddler.
+
+The jougleurs, or minstrels, formed a very numerous and important,
+though a low and despised, class of mediæval society. The dulness of
+every-day life in a feudal castle or mansion required something more
+than ordinary excitement in the way of amusement, and the old family
+bard, who continually repeated to the Teutonic chief the praises of
+himself and his ancestors, was soon felt to be a wearisome companion.
+The mediæval knights and their ladies wanted to laugh, and to make
+them laugh sufficiently it required that the jokes, or tales, or comic
+performances, should be broad, coarse, and racy, with a good spicing of
+violence and of the wonderful. Hence the jougleur was always welcome
+to the feudal mansion, and he seldom went away dissatisfied. But the
+subject of the present chapter is rather the literature of the jougleur
+than his personal history, and, having traced his origin to the Roman
+mimus, we will now proceed to one class of his performances.
+
+It has been stated that the mimus and the jougleurs told stories.
+Of those of the former, unfortunately, none are preserved, except,
+perhaps, in a few anecdotes scattered in the pages of such writers as
+Apuleius and Lucian, and we are obliged to guess at their character,
+but of the stories of the jougleurs a considerable number has been
+preserved. It becomes an interesting question how far these stories
+have been derived from the mimi, handed down traditionally from mimus
+to jougleur, how far they are native in our race, or how far they were
+derived at a later date from other sources. And in considering this
+question, we must not forget that the mediæval jougleurs were not the
+only representatives of the mimi, for among the Arabs of the East also
+there had originated from them, modified under different circumstances,
+a very important class of minstrels and story-tellers, and with these
+the jougleurs of the west were brought into communication at the
+commencement of the crusades. There can be no doubt that a very large
+number of the stories of the jougleurs were borrowed from the East, for
+the evidence is furnished by the stories themselves; and there can be
+little doubt also that the jougleurs improved themselves, and underwent
+some modification, by their intercourse with Eastern performers of the
+same class.
+
+On the other hand, we have traces of the existence of these popular
+stories before the jougleurs can have had communication with the East.
+Thus, as already mentioned, we find, composed in Germany, apparently
+in the tenth century, in rhythmical Latin, the well-known story of the
+wife of a merchant who bore a child during the long absence of her
+husband, and who excused herself by stating that her pregnancy had been
+the result of swallowing a flake of snow in a snow-storm. This, and
+another of the same kind, were evidently intended to be sung. Another
+poem in popular Latin verse, which Grimm and Schmeller, who edited
+it,[39] believe may be of the eleventh century, relates a very amusing
+story of an adventurer named Unibos, who, continually caught in his own
+snares, finishes by getting the better of all his enemies, and becoming
+rich, by mere ingenious cunning and good fortune. This story is not
+met with among those of the jougleurs, as far as they are yet known,
+but, curiously enough, Lover found it existing orally among the Irish
+peasantry, and inserted the Irish story among his "Legends of Ireland."
+It is a curious illustration of the pertinacity with which the popular
+stories descend along with peoples through generations from the
+remotest ages of antiquity. The same story is found in an oriental form
+among the tales of the Tartars published in French by Guenlette.
+
+ [39] In a volume entitled "Lateinische Gedichte des x. und xi. Jh."
+      8vo. Göttingen, 1838.
+
+The people of the middle ages, who took their word _fable_ from the
+Latin _fabula_, which they appear to have understood as a mere term for
+any short narration, included under it the stories told by the mimi and
+jougleurs; but, in the fondness of the middle ages for diminutives, by
+which they intended to express familiarity and attachment, applied to
+them more particularly the Latin _fabella_, which in the old French
+became _fablel_, or, more usually, _fabliau_. The fabliaux of the
+jougleurs form a most important class of the comic literature of the
+middle ages. They must have been wonderfully numerous, for a very large
+quantity of them still remain, and these are only the small portion of
+what once existed, which have escaped perishing like the others by the
+accident of being written in manuscripts which have had the fortune to
+survive; while manuscripts containing others have no doubt perished,
+and it is probable that many were only preserved orally, and never
+written down at all.[40] The recital of these fabliaux appears to have
+been the favourite employment of the jougleurs, and they became so
+popular that the mediæval preachers turned them into short stories in
+Latin prose, and made use of them as illustrations in their sermons.
+Many collections of these short Latin stories are found in manuscripts
+which had served as note-books to the preachers,[41] and out of them
+was originally compiled that celebrated mediæval book called the "Gesta
+Romanorum."
+
+ [40] Many of the Fabliaux have been printed, but the two principal
+      collections, and to which I shall chiefly refer in the text, are
+      those of Barbazan, re-edited and much enlarged by Méon, 4 vols.
+      8vo., 1808, and of Méon, 2 vols. 8vo., 1823.
+
+ [41] A collection of these short Latin stories was edited by the author
+      of the present work, in a volume printed for the Percy Society in
+      1842.
+
+It is to be regretted that the subjects and language of a large portion
+of these fabliaux are such as to make it impossible to present them
+before modern readers, for they furnish singularly interesting and
+minute pictures of mediæval life in all classes of society. Domestic
+scenes are among those most frequent, and they represent the interior
+of the mediæval household in no favourable point of view. The majority
+of these tell loose stories of husbands deceived by their fair spouses,
+or of tricks played upon unsuspecting damsels. In some instances the
+treatment of the husband is perhaps what may be called of a less
+objectionable character, as in the fabliau of La Vilain Mire (the
+clown doctor), printed in Barbazan (iii. 1), which was the origin of
+Molière's well-known comedy of "Le Médecin malgré lui." A rich peasant
+married the daughter of a poor knight; it was of course a marriage of
+ambition on his part, and of interest on hers--one of those ill-sorted
+matches which, according to feudal sentiments, could never be happy,
+and in which the wife was considered as privileged to treat her husband
+with all possible contempt. In this instance the lady hit upon an
+ingenious mode of punishing her husband for his want of submission to
+her ill-treatment. Messengers from the king passed that way, seeking
+a skilful doctor to cure the king's daughter of a dangerous malady.
+The lady secretly informed these messengers that her husband was a
+physician of extraordinary talent, but of an eccentric temper, for he
+would never acknowledge or exercise his art until first subjected to
+a severe beating. The husband is seized, bound, and carried by force
+to the king's court, where, of course, he denies all knowledge of the
+healing art, but a severe beating obliges him to compliance, and he is
+successful by a combination of impudence and chance. This is only the
+beginning of the poor man's miseries. Instead of being allowed to go
+home, his fame has become so great that he is retained at court for
+the public good, and, with a rapid succession of patients, fearful
+of the results of his conscious ignorance, he refuses them all, and
+is subjected in every case to the same ill-treatment to force his
+compliance. The examples in which the husband, on the other hand,
+outwits the wife are few. A fabliau by a poet who gives himself the
+name of Cortebarbe, printed also by Barbazan (iii. 398), relates how
+three blind beggars were deceived by a clerc, or scholar, of Paris, who
+met them on the road near Compiègne. The clerk pretended to give the
+three beggars a bezant, which was then a good sum of money, and they
+hastened joyfully to the next tavern, where they ordered a plentiful
+supper, and feasted to their hearts' content. But, in fact, the clerk
+had not given them a bezant at all, although, as he said he did so,
+and they could only judge by their hearing, they imagined that they
+had the coin, and each thought that it was in the keeping of one of
+his companions. Thus, when the time of paying came, and the money
+was not forthcoming, in the common belief that one of the three had
+received the bezant and intended to keep it and cheat the others, they
+quarrelled violently, and from abuse soon came to blows. The landlord,
+drawn to the spot by the uproar, and informed of the state of the case,
+accused the three blind men of a conspiracy to cheat him, and demanded
+payment with great threats. The clerk of Paris, who had followed them
+to the inn, and taken his lodging there in order to witness the result,
+delivered the blind men by an equally ingenious trick which he plays
+upon the landlord and the priest of the parish.
+
+Some of these stories have for their subject tricks played among
+thieves. In one printed by Méon (i. 124), we have the story of a rich
+but simple villan, or countryman, named Brifaut, who is robbed at
+market by a cunning sharper, and severely corrected by his wife for
+his carelessness. Robbery, both by force and by sleight of hand and
+craft, prevailed to an extraordinary degree during the middle ages. The
+plot of the fabliau of Barat and Haimet, by Jean de Boves (Barbazan,
+iv. 233), turns upon a trial of skill among three robbers to determine
+who shall commit the cleverest act of thievery, and the result is, at
+least, an extremely amusing story. It may be mentioned as an example
+of the numerous stories which the jougleurs certainly obtained from
+the East, that the well-known story of the Hunchback in the "Arabian
+Nights" appears among them in two or three different forms.
+
+The social vices of the middle ages, their general licentiousness,
+the prevalence of injustice and extortion, are very fully exposed to
+view in these compositions, in which no class of society is spared.
+The villan, or peasant, is always treated very contemptuously; he
+formed the class from which the jougleur received least benefit. But
+the aristocracy, the great barons, the lords of the soil, come in for
+their full share of satire, and they no doubt enjoyed the ridiculous
+pictures of their own order. I will not venture to introduce the reader
+to female life in the baronial castle, as it appears in many of these
+stories, and as it is no doubt truly painted, although, of course,
+in many instances, much exaggerated. We have already seen how in the
+story of Reynard, the character of mediæval society was represented
+by the long struggle between brute force represented by the wolf, the
+emblem of the aristocratic class, and the low astuteness of the fox,
+or the unaristocratic class. The success of the craft of the human fox
+over the force of his lordly antagonist is often told in the fabliaux
+in ludicrous colours. In that of Trubert, printed by Méon (i. 192),
+the "duke" of a country, with his wife and family, become repeatedly
+the dupes of the gross deceptions of a poor but impudent peasant.
+These satires upon the aristocracy were no doubt greatly enjoyed by
+the good _bourgeoisie_, who, in their turn, furnished abundance of
+stories, of the drollest description, to provoke the mirth of the lords
+of the soil, between whom and themselves there was a kind of natural
+antipathy. Nor are the clergy spared. The priest is usually described
+as living with a concubine--his order forbade marrying--and both are
+considered as fair game to the community; while the monk figures more
+frequently as the hero of gallant adventures. Both priest and monk are
+usually distinguished by their selfishness and love of indulgence. In
+the fabliau Du Bouchier d'Abbeville, in Barbazan (iv. 1), a butcher, on
+his way home from the fair, seeks a night's lodging at the house of an
+inhospitable priest, who refuses it. But when the former returns, and
+offers, in exchange for his hospitality, one of his fat sheep which he
+has purchased at the fair, and not only to kill it for their supper,
+but to give all the meat they do not eat to his host, he is willingly
+received into the house, and they make an excellent supper. By the
+promise of the skin of the sheep, the guest succeeds in seducing both
+the concubine and the maid-servant, and it is only after his departure
+the following morning, in the middle of a domestic uproar caused by
+the conflicting claims of the priest, the concubine, and the maid, to
+the possession of the skin, that it is discovered that the butcher had
+stolen the sheep from the priest's own flock.
+
+The fabliaux, as remarked before, form the most important class of the
+extensive mass of the popular literature of the middle ages, and the
+writers, confident in their strong hold upon public favour, sometimes
+turn round and burlesque the literature of other classes, especially
+the long heavy monotony of style of the great romances of chivalry and
+the extravagant adventures they contained, as though conscious that
+they were gradually undermining the popularity of the romance writers.
+One of these poems, entitled "De Audigier," and printed in Barbazan
+(iv. 217), is a parody on the romance writers and on their style, not
+at all wanting in spirit or wit, but the satire is coarse and vulgar.
+Another printed in Barbazan (iv. 287), under the title "De Berengier,"
+is a satire upon a sort of knight-errantry which had found its way
+into mediæval chivalry. Berengier was a knight of Lombardy, much given
+to boasting, who had a beautiful lady for his wife. He used to leave
+her alone in his castle, under pretext of sallying forth in search
+of chivalrous adventures, and, after a while, having well hacked his
+sword and shield, he returned to vaunt the desperate exploits he had
+performed. But the lady was shrewd as well as handsome, and, having
+some suspicions of his truthfulness as well as of his courage, she
+determined to make trial of both. One morning, when her husband rode
+forth as usual, she hastily disguised herself in a suit of armour,
+mounted a good steed, and hurrying round by a different way, met the
+boastful knight in the middle of a wood, where he no sooner saw that he
+had to encounter a real assailant, than he displayed the most abject
+cowardice, and his opponent exacted from him an ignominious condition
+as the price of his escape. On his return home at night, boasting as
+usual of his success, he found his lady taking her revenge upon him in
+a still less respectful manner, but he was silenced by her ridicule.
+
+The _trouvères_, or poets, who wrote the fabliaux--I need hardly
+remark that _trouvère_ is the same word as _trobador_, but in the
+northern dialect of the French language--appear to have flourished
+chiefly from the close of the twelfth century to the earlier part of
+the fourteenth. They all composed in French, which was a language then
+common to England and France, but some of their compositions bear
+internal evidence of having been composed in England, and others are
+found in contemporary manuscripts written in this island. The scene of
+a fabliau, printed by Méon (i. 113), is laid at Colchester; and that
+of La Male Honte, printed in Barbazan (iii. 204), is laid in Kent. The
+latter, however, was written by a trouvère named Hugues de Cambrai.
+No objection appears to have been entertained to the recital of these
+licentious stories before the ladies of the castle or of the domestic
+circle, and their general popularity was so great, that the more pious
+clergy seem to have thought necessary to find something to take their
+place in the post-prandial society of the monastery, and especially
+of the nunnery; and religious stories were written in the same form
+and metre as the fabliaux. Some of these have been published under the
+title of "Contes Devots," and, from their general dulness, it may be
+doubted if they answered their purpose of furnishing amusement so well
+as the others.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  CARICATURES OF DOMESTIC LIFE.--STATE OF DOMESTIC LIFE IN THE MIDDLE
+     AGES.--EXAMPLES OF DOMESTIC CARICATURE FROM THE CARVINGS OF THE
+     MISERERES.--KITCHEN SCENES.--DOMESTIC BRAWLS.--THE FIGHT FOR
+     THE BREECHES.--THE JUDICIAL DUEL BETWEEN MAN AND WIFE AMONG
+     THE GERMANS.--ALLUSIONS TO WITCHCRAFT.--SATIRES ON THE TRADES;
+     THE BAKER, THE MILLER, THE WINE-PEDLAR AND TAVERN-KEEPER, THE
+     ALE-WIFE, ETC.
+
+
+The influence of the jougleurs over people's minds generally, with
+their stories and satirical pieces, their grimaces, their postures,
+and their wonderful performances, was very considerable, and may be
+easily traced in mediæval manners and sentiments. This influence would
+naturally be exerted upon inventive art, and when a painter had to
+adorn the margin of a book, or the sculptor to decorate the ornamental
+parts of a building, we might expect the ideas which would first
+present themselves to him to be those suggested by the jougleur's
+performance, for the same taste had to be indulged in the one as in the
+other. The same wit or satire would pervade them both.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 71. A Mediæval Kitchen Scene._]
+
+Among the most popular subjects of satire during the middle ages, were
+domestic scenes. Domestic life at that period appears to have been in
+its general character coarse, turbulent, and, I should say, anything
+but happy. In all its points of view, it presented abundant subjects
+for jest and burlesque. There is little room for doubt that the Romish
+Church, as it existed in the middle ages, was extremely hostile to
+domestic happiness among the middle and lower classes, and that the
+interference of the priest in the family was only a source of domestic
+trouble. The satirical writings of the period, the popular tales,
+the discourses of those who sought reform, even the pictures in the
+manuscripts and the sculptures on the walls invariably represent the
+female portion of the family as entirely under the influence of the
+priests, and that influence as exercised for the worst of purposes.
+They encouraged faithlessness as well as disobedience in wives, and
+undermined the virtue of daughters, and were consequently regarded with
+anything but kindly feeling by the male portion of the population. The
+priest, the wife, and the husband, form the usual leading characters
+in a mediæval farce. Subjects of this kind are not very unfrequent in
+the illuminations of manuscripts, and more especially in the sculptures
+of buildings, and those chiefly ecclesiastical, in which monks or
+priests are introduced in very equivocal situations. This part of the
+subject, however, is one into which we shall not here venture, as we
+find the mediæval caricaturists drawing plenty of materials from the
+less vicious shades of contemporary life; and, in fact, some of their
+most amusing pictures are taken from the droll, rather than from the
+vicious, scenes of the interior of the household. Such scenes are
+very frequent on the misereres of the old cathedrals and collegiate
+churches. Thus, in the stalls at Worcester Cathedral, there is a droll
+figure of a man seated before a fire in a kitchen well stored with
+flitches of bacon, he himself occupied in attending to the boiling pot,
+while he warms his feet, for which purpose he has taken off his shoes.
+In a similar carving in Hereford Cathedral, a man, also in the kitchen,
+is seen attempting to take liberties with the cook maid, who throws a
+platter at his head. A copy of this curious subject is given in cut
+No. 71, and the cut No. 72 is taken from a similar miserere in Minster
+Church, in the Isle of Thanet. It represents an old lady seated,
+occupied industriously in spinning, and accompanied by her cats.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 72. An Old Lady and her Friends._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 73. The Lady and her Cat._]
+
+We might easily add other examples of similar subjects from the same
+sources, such as the scene in our cut No. 73, taken from one of the
+stalls of Winchester Cathedral, which seems to be intended to represent
+a witch riding away upon her cat, an enormous animal, whose jovial
+look is only outdone by that of its mistress. The latter has carried
+her distaff with her, and is diligently employed in spinning. A stall
+in Sherborne Minster, given in our cut No. 74, represents a scene in a
+school, in which an unfortunate scholar is experiencing punishment of
+a rather severe description, to the great alarm of his companions, on
+whom his disgrace is evidently acting as a warning. The flogging scene
+at school appears to have been rather a favourite subject among the
+early caricaturists, for the scourge was looked upon in the middle ages
+as the grand stimulant to scholarship. In those good old times, when a
+man recalled to memory his schoolboy days, he did not say, "When I was
+at school," but, "When I was under the rod."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 74. Scholastic Discipline._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 75. A Point in Dispute._]
+
+An extensive field for the study of this interesting part of our
+subject will be found in the architectural gallery in the Kensington
+Museum, which contains a large number of calls from stalls and other
+sculptures, chiefly selected from the French cathedrals. One of these,
+engraved in our cut No. 75, represents a couple of females, seated
+before the kitchen fire. The date of this sculpture is stated to be
+1382. To judge by their looks and attitude, there is a disagreement
+between them, and the object in dispute seems to be a piece of meat,
+which one has taken out of the pot and placed on a dish. This lady
+wields her ladle as though she were prepared to use it as a weapon,
+while her opponent is armed with the bellows. The ale-pot was not
+unfrequently the subject of pictures of a turbulent character, and
+among the grotesque and monstrous figures in the margins of the noble
+manuscript of the fourteenth century, known as the "Luttrell Psalter,"
+one represents two personages not only quarrelling over their pots,
+which they appear to have emptied, but actually fighting with them. One
+of them has literally broken his pot over his companion's head. The
+scene is copied in our cut No. 76.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 76. Want of Harmony over the Pot._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 77. Domestic Strife._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 78. A Struggle for the Mastery._]
+
+It must be stated, however, that the more common subjects of these
+homely scenes are domestic quarrels, and that the man, or his wife,
+enjoying their fireside, or similar bits of domestic comfort, only
+make their appearance at rare intervals. Domestic quarrels and combats
+are much more frequent. We have already seen, in the cut No. 75,
+two dames of the kitchen evidently beginning to quarrel over their
+cookery. A stall in the church of Stratford-upon-Avon gives us the
+group represented in our cut No. 77. The battle has here become
+desperate, but whether the male combatant be an oppressed husband or
+an impertinent intruder, is not clear. The quarrel would seem to have
+arisen during the process of cooking, as the female, who has seized
+her opponent by the beard, has evidently snatched up the ladle as
+the readiest weapon at hand. The anger appears to be mainly on her
+side, and the rather tame countenance of her antagonist contrasts
+strangely with her inflamed features. Our next cut, No. 78, is taken
+from the sculpture of a column in Ely Cathedral, here copied from an
+engraving in Carter's "Specimens of Ancient Sculpture." A man and
+wife, apparently, are struggling for the possession of a staff, which
+is perhaps intended to be the emblem of mastery. As is generally
+represented to be the case in these scenes of domestic strife, the
+woman shows more energy and more strength than her opponent, and she
+is evidently overcoming him. The mastery of the wife over the husband
+seems to have been a universally acknowledged state of things. A stall
+in Sherborne Minster, in Dorset, which has furnished the subject of our
+cut No. 79, might almost be taken as the sequel of the last cut. The
+lady has possessed herself of the staff, has overthrown her husband,
+and is even striking him on the head with it when he is down. In our
+next cut, No. 80, which is taken from one of the casts of stalls in
+the French cathedrals exhibited in the Kensington Museum, it is not
+quite clear which of the two is the offender, but, perhaps, in this
+case, the archer, as his profession is indicated by his bow and arrows,
+has made a gallant assault, which, although she does not look much
+displeased at it, the offended dame certainly resists with spirit.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 79. The Wife in the Ascendant._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 80. Violence Resisted._]
+
+One idea connected with this picture of domestic antagonism appears
+to have been very popular from a rather early period. There is a
+proverbial phrase to signify that the wife is master in the household,
+by which it is intimated that "she wears the breeches." The phrase
+is, it must be confessed, an odd one, and is only half understood by
+modern explanations; but in mediæval story we learn how "she" first
+put in her claim to wear this particular article of dress, how it was
+first disputed and contested, how she was at times defeated, but how,
+as a general rule, the claim was enforced. There was a French poet of
+the thirteenth century, Hugues Piaucelles, two of whose _fabliaux_, or
+metrical tales, entitled the "Fabliau d'Estourmi," and the "Fabliau de
+Sire Hains et de Dame Anieuse," are preserved in manuscript, and have
+been printed in the collection of Barbazan. The second of these relates
+some of the adventures of a mediæval couple, whose household was not
+the best regulated in the world. The name of the heroine of this
+story, Anieuse, is simply an old form of the French word _ennuyeuse_,
+and certainly dame Anieuse was sufficiently "ennuyeuse" to her lord
+and husband. "Sire Hains," her husband, was, it appears, a maker of
+"cottes" and mantles, and we should judge also, by the point on which
+the quarrel turned, that he was partial to a good dinner. Dame Anieuse
+was of that disagreeable temper, that whenever Sire Hains told her of
+some particularly nice thing which he wished her to buy for his meal,
+she bought instead something which she knew was disagreeable to him.
+If he ordered boiled meat, she invariably roasted it, and further
+contrived that it should be so covered with cinders and ashes that
+he could not eat it. This would show that people in the middle ages
+(except, perhaps, professional cooks) were very unapt at roasting meat.
+This state of things had gone on for some time, when one day Sire Hains
+gave orders to his wife to buy him fish for his dinner. The disobedient
+wife, instead of buying fish, provided nothing for his meal but a dish
+of spinage, telling him falsely that all the fish stank. This leads to
+a violent quarrel, in which, after some fierce wrangling, especially
+on the part of the lady, Sire Hains proposes to decide their difference
+in a novel manner. "Early in the morning," he said, "I will take off
+my breeches and lay them down in the middle of the court, and the one
+who can win them shall be acknowledged to be master or mistress of the
+house."
+
+      _Le matinet, sans contredire,
+      Voudrai mes braies deschaucier,
+      Et enmi nostre cort couchier;
+      Et qui conquerre les porra,
+      Par bone reson mousterra
+      Qu'il ert sire ou dame du nostre._
+                                 Barbazan, Fabliaux, tome iii. p. 383.
+
+Dame Anieuse accepted the challenge with eagerness, and each prepared
+for the struggle. After due preparation, two neighbours, friend Symon
+and Dame Aupais, having been called in as witnesses, and the object
+of dispute, the breeches, having been placed on the pavement of the
+court, the battle began, with some slight parody on the formalities
+of the judicial combat. The first blow was given by the dame, who was
+so eager for the fray that she struck her husband before he had put
+himself on his guard; and the war of tongues, in which at least Dame
+Anieuse had the best of it, went on at the same time as the other
+battle. Sire Hains ventured a slight expostulation on her eagerness
+for the fray, in answer to which she only threw in his teeth a fierce
+defiance to do his worst. Provoked at this, Sire Hains struck at her,
+and hit her over the eyebrows, so effectively, that the skin was
+discoloured; and, over-confident in the effect of this first blow, he
+began rather too soon to exult over his wife's defeat. But Dame Anieuse
+was less disconcerted than he expected, and recovering quickly from
+the effect of the blow, she turned upon him and struck him on the same
+part of his face with such force, that she nearly knocked him over the
+sheepfold. Dame Anieuse, in her turn, now sneered over him, and while
+he was recovering from his confusion, her eyes fell upon the object of
+contention, and she rushed to it, and laid her hands upon it to carry
+it away. This movement roused Sire Hains, who instantly seized another
+part of the article of his dress of which he was thus in danger of
+being deprived, and began a struggle for possession, in which the said
+article underwent considerable dilapidation, and fragments of it were
+scattered over the court. In the midst of this struggle the actual
+fight recommenced, by the husband giving his wife so heavy a blow on
+the teeth that her mouth was filled with blood. The effect was such
+that Sire Hains already reckoned on the victory, and proclaimed himself
+lord of the breeches.
+
+          _Hains fiert sa fame enmi les denz
+          Tel cop, que la bouche dedenz
+          Li a toute emplie de sancz.
+          "Tien ore," dist Sire Hains, "anc,
+          Je cuit que je t'ai bien atainte,
+          Or t'ai-je de deux colors tainte--
+          J'aurai les braies toutes voies."_
+
+But the immediate effect on Dame Anieuse was only to render her more
+desperate. She quitted her hold on the disputed garment, and fell upon
+her husband with such a shower of blows that he hardly knew which way
+to turn. She was thus, however, unconsciously exhausting herself, and
+Sire Hains soon recovered. The battle now became fiercer than ever,
+and the lady seemed to be gaining the upper hand, when Sire Hains gave
+her a skilful blow in the ribs, which nearly broke one of them, and
+considerably checked her ardour. Friend Symon here interposed, with
+the praiseworthy aim of restoring peace before further harm might be
+done, but in vain, for the lady was only rendered more obstinate by
+her mishap; and he agreed that it was useless to interfere until one
+had got a more decided advantage over the other. The fight therefore
+went on, the two combatants having now seized each other by the hair
+of the head, a mode of combat in which the advantages were rather on
+the side of the male. At this moment, one of the judges, Dame Aupais,
+sympathising too much with Dame Anieuse, ventured some words of
+encouragement, which drew upon her a severe rebuke from her colleague,
+Symon, who intimated that if she interfered again there might be two
+pairs of combatants instead of one. Meanwhile Dame Anieuse was becoming
+exhausted, and was evidently getting the worst of the contest, until at
+length, staggering from a vigorous push, she fell back into a large
+basket which lay behind her. Sire Hains stood over her exultingly,
+and Symon, as umpire, pronounced him victorious. He thereupon took
+possession of the disputed article of raiment, and again invested
+himself with it, while the lady accepted faithfully the conditions
+imposed upon her, and we are assured by the poet that she was a good
+and obedient wife during the rest of her life. In this story, which
+affords a curious picture of mediæval life, we learn the origin of the
+proverb relating to the possession and wearing of the breeches. Hugues
+Piaucelles concludes his _fabliau_ by recommending every man who has a
+disobedient wife to treat her in the same manner; and mediæval husbands
+appear to have followed his advice, without fear of laws against the
+ill-treatment of women.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 81. The Fight for the Breeches._]
+
+A subject like this was well fitted for the burlesques on the stalls,
+and accordingly we find on one of those in the cathedral at Rouen, the
+group given in our cut No. 81, which seems to represent the part of the
+story in which both combatants seize hold of the disputed garment, and
+struggle for possession of it. The husband here grasps a knife in his
+hand, with which he seems to be threatening to cut it to pieces rather
+than give it up. The _fabliau_ gives the victory to the husband, but
+the wife was generally considered as in a majority of cases carrying
+off the prize. In an extremely rare engraving by the Flemish artist
+Van Mecken, dated in 1480, of which I give a copy in our cut No. 82.
+the lady, while putting on the breeches, of which she has just become
+possessed, shows an inclination to lord it rather tyrannically over her
+other half, whom she has condemned to perform the domestic drudgery of
+the mansion.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 82. The Breeches Won._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 83. A Legal Combat._]
+
+In Germany, where there was still more roughness in mediæval life, what
+was told in England and France as a good story of domestic doings,
+was actually carried into practice under the authority of the laws.
+The judicial duel was there adopted by the legal authorities as a
+mode of settling the differences between husband and wife. Curious
+particulars on this subject are given in an interesting paper entitled
+"Some observations on Judicial Duels as practised in Germany,"
+published in the twenty-ninth volume of the Archæologia of the Society
+of Antiquaries (p. 348). These observations are chiefly taken from
+a volume of directions, accompanied with drawings, for the various
+modes of attack and defence, compiled by Paulus Kall, a celebrated
+teacher of defence at the court of Bavaria about the year 1400. Among
+these drawings we have one representing the mode of combat between
+husband and wife. The only weapon allowed the female, but that a very
+formidable one, was, according to these directions, a heavy stone
+wrapped up in an elongation of her chemise, while her opponent had only
+a short staff, and he was placed up to the waist in a pit formed in
+the ground. The following is a literal translation of the directions
+given in the manuscript, and our cut No. 83 is a copy of the drawing
+which illustrates it:--"The woman must be so prepared, that a sleeve
+of her chemise extend a small ell beyond her hand, like a little sack;
+there indeed is put a stone weighing three pounds; and she has nothing
+else but her chemise, and that is bound together between the legs with
+a lace. Then the man makes himself ready in the pit over against his
+wife. He is buried therein up to the girdle, and one hand is bound at
+the elbow to the side." At this time the practice of such combats in
+Germany seems to have been long known, for it is stated that in the
+year 1200 a man and his wife fought under the sanction of the civic
+authorities at Bâle, in Switzerland. In a picture of a combat between
+man and wife, from a manuscript resembling that of Paulus Kall, but
+executed nearly a century later, the man is placed in a tub instead
+of a pit, with his left arm tied to his side as before, and his right
+holding a short heavy staff; while the woman is dressed, and not
+stripped to the chemise, as in the former case. The man appears to be
+holding the stick in such a manner that the sling in which the stone
+was contained would twist round it, and the woman would thus be at
+the mercy of her opponent. In an ancient manuscript on the science of
+defence in the library at Gotha, the man in the tub is represented as
+the conqueror of his wife, having thus dragged her head-foremost into
+the tub, where she appears with her legs kicking up in the air.
+
+This was the orthodox mode of combat between man and wife, but it was
+sometimes practised under more sanguinary forms. In one picture given
+from these old books on the science of defence by the writer of the
+paper on the subject in the Archæologia, the two combatants, naked
+down to the waist, are represented fighting with sharp knives, and
+inflicting upon each other's bodies frightful gashes.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 84. The Witch and the Demon._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 85. The Witch and her Victim._]
+
+A series of stall carvings at Corbeil, near Paris, of which more will
+be said a little farther on in this chapter, has furnished the curious
+group represented in our cut No. 84, which is one of the rather rare
+pictorial allusions to the subject of witchcraft. It represents a
+woman who must, by her occupation, be a witch, for she has so far got
+the mastery of the demon that she is sawing off his head with a very
+uncomfortable looking instrument. Another story of witchcraft is told
+in the sculpture of a stone panel at the entrance of the cathedral of
+Lyons, which is represented in our cut No. 85. One power, supposed to
+be possessed by witches, was that of transforming people to animals at
+will. William of Malmesbury, in his Chronicle, tells a story of two
+witches in the neighbourhood of Rome, who used to allure travellers
+into their cottage, and there transform them into horses, pigs, or
+other animals, which they sold, and feasted themselves with the money.
+One day a young man, who lived by the profession of a jougleur, sought
+a night's lodging at their cottage, and was received, but they turned
+him into an ass, and, as he retained his understanding and his power of
+acting, they gained much money by exhibiting him. At length a rich man
+of the neighbourhood, who wanted him for his private amusement, offered
+the two women a large sum for him, which they accepted, but they warned
+the new possessor of the ass that he should carefully restrain him
+from going into the water, as that would deprive him of his power of
+performing. The man who had purchased the ass acted upon this advice,
+and carefully kept him from water, but one day, through the negligence
+of his keeper, the ass escaped from his stable, and, rushing to a pond
+at no great distance, threw himself into it. Water--and running water
+especially--was believed to destroy the power of witchcraft or magic;
+and no sooner was the ass immersed in the water, than he recovered his
+original form of a young man. He told his story, which soon reached the
+ears of the pope, and the two women were seized, and confessed their
+crimes. The carving from Lyons Cathedral appears to represent some such
+scene of sorcery. The naked woman, evidently a witch, is, perhaps,
+seated on a man whom she has transformed into a goat, and she seems to
+be whirling the cat over him in such a manner that it may tear his face
+with its claws.
+
+There was still another class of subjects for satire and caricature
+which belongs to this part of our subject--I mean that of the trader
+and manufacturer. We must not suppose that fraudulent trading, that
+deceptive and imperfect workmanship, that adulteration of everything
+that could be adulterated, are peculiar to modern times. On the
+contrary, there was no period in the world's history in which dishonest
+dealing was carried on to such an extraordinary extent, in which there
+was so much deception used in manufactures, or in which adulteration
+was practised on so shameless a scale, as during the middle ages. These
+vices, or, as we may, perhaps, more properly describe them, these
+crimes, are often mentioned in the mediæval writers, but they were
+not easily represented pictorially, and therefore we rarely meet with
+direct allusions to them, either in sculpture, on stone or wood, or
+in the paintings of illuminated manuscripts. Representations of the
+trades themselves are not so rare, and are sometimes droll and almost
+burlesque. A curious series of such representations of arts and trades
+was carved on the _misereres_ of the church of St. Spire, at Corbeil,
+near Paris, which only exist now in Millin's engravings, but they seem
+to have been works of the fifteenth century. Among them the first
+place is given to the various occupations necessary for the production
+of bread, that article so important to the support of life. Thus we
+see, in these carvings at Corbeil, the labours of the reaper, cutting
+the wheat and forming it into sheaves, the miller carrying it away to
+be ground into meal, and the baker thrusting it into the oven, and
+drawing it out in the shape of loaves. Our cut No. 86, taken from one
+of these sculptures, represents the baker either putting in or taking
+out the bread with his peel; by the earnest manner in which he looks at
+it, we may suppose that it is the latter, and that he is ascertaining
+if it be sufficiently baked. We have an earlier representation of a
+mediæval oven in our cut No. 87, taken from the celebrated illuminated
+manuscript of the "Romance of Alexandre," in the Bodleian Library at
+Oxford, which appears to belong to an early period of the fourteenth
+century. Here the baker is evidently going to take a loaf out of the
+oven, for his companion holds a dish for the purpose of receiving it.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 86. A Baker of the Fifteenth Century._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 87. A Mediæval Baker._]
+
+In nothing was fraud and adulteration practised to so great an
+extent as in the important article of bread, and the two occupations
+especially employed in making it were objects of very great dislike and
+of scornful satire. The miller was proverbially a thief. Every reader
+of Chaucer will remember his character so admirably drawn in that of
+the miller of Trumpington, who, though he was as proud and gay "as eny
+pecok," was nevertheless eminently dishonest.
+
+  _A theef he was for soth of corn and mele,
+  And that a sleigh_ (sly), _and usyng_ (practised) _for to stele_.
+                                                  Chaucer's Reeves Tale.
+
+This practice included a large college then existing in Cambridge,
+but now forgotten, the Soler Hall, which suffered greatly by his
+depredations.
+
+          _And on a day it happed in a stounde,
+          Syk lay the mauncyple on a maledye,
+          Men wenden wisly that he schulde dye;
+          For which this meller stal bothe mele and corn
+          A thousend part more than byforn.
+          For ther biforn he stal but curteysly;
+          But now he is a theef outrageously.
+          For which the wardeyn chidde and made fare,
+          But therof sette the meller not a tare;
+          He crakked boost, and swor it was nat so._
+
+Two of the scholars of this college resolved to go with the corn to the
+mill, and by their watchfulness prevent his depredations. Those who are
+acquainted with the story know how the scholars succeeded, or rather
+how they failed; how the miller stole half a bushel of their flour and
+caused his wife to make a cake of it; and how the victims had their
+revenge and recovered the cake.
+
+As already stated, the baker had in these good old times no better
+character than the miller, if not worse. There was an old saying, that
+if three persons of three obnoxious professions were put together in a
+sack and shaken up, the first who came out would certainly be a rogue,
+and one of these was a baker. Moreover, the opinion concerning the
+baker was so strong that, as in the phrase taken from the old legends
+of the witches, who in their festivals sat thirteen at a table, this
+number was popularly called a devil's dozen, and was believed to be
+unlucky--so, when the devil's name was abandoned, perhaps for the
+sake of euphony, the name substituted for it was that of the baker,
+and the number thirteen was called "a baker's dozen." The makers of
+nearly all sorts of provisions for sale were, in the middle ages,
+tainted with the same vice, and there was nothing from which society in
+general, especially in the towns where few made bread for themselves,
+suffered so much. This evil is alluded to more than once in that
+curious educational treatise, the "Dictionarius" of John de Garlande,
+printed in my "Volume of Vocabularies." This writer, who wrote in the
+earlier half of the thirteenth century, insinuates that the makers
+of pies (_pastillarii_), an article of food which was greatly in
+repute during the middle ages, often made use of bad eggs. The cooks,
+he says further, sold, especially in Paris to the scholars of the
+university, cooked meats, sausages, and such things, which were not
+fit to eat; while the butchers furnished the meat of animals which had
+died of disease. Even the spices and drugs sold by the apothecaries,
+or _épiciers_, were not, he says, to be trusted. John de Garlande
+had evidently an inclination to satire, and he gives way to it not
+unfrequently in the little book of which I am speaking. He says that
+the glovers of Paris cheated the scholars of the university, by selling
+them gloves made of bad materials; that the women who gained their
+living by winding thread (_devacuatrices_, in the Latin of the time),
+not only emptied the scholars' purses, but wasted their bodies also (it
+is intended as a pun upon the Latin word); and the hucksters sold them
+unripe fruit for ripe. The drapers, he says, cheated people not only
+by selling bad materials, but by measuring them with false measures;
+while the hawkers, who went about from house to house, robbed as well
+as cheated.
+
+M. Jubinal has published in his curious volume entitled "Jongleurs et
+Trouvères," a rather jocular poem on the bakers, written in French
+of, perhaps, the thirteenth century, in which their art is lauded as
+much better and more useful than that of the goldsmith's. The millers'
+depredations on the corn sent to be ground at the mill, are laid to the
+charge of the rats, which attack it by night, and the hens, which find
+their way to it by day; and he explains the diminution the bakings
+experienced in the hands of the baker as arising out of the charity of
+the latter towards the poor and needy, to whom they gave the meal and
+paste before it had even been put into the oven. The celebrated English
+poet, John Lydgate, in a short poem preserved in a manuscript in the
+Harleian Library in the British Museum (MS. Harl. No. 2,255, fol. 157,
+v^o), describes the pillory, which he calls their Bastile, as the
+proper heritage of the miller and the baker:--
+
+      _Put out his hed, lyst nat for to dare,
+        But lyk a man upon that tour to abyde,
+      For cast of eggys wil not oonys spare,
+        Tyl he be quallyd body, bak, and syde.
+        His heed endooryd, and of verray pryde
+      Put out his armys, shewith abrood his face;
+        The fenestrallys be made for hym so wyde,
+      Claymyth to been a capteyn of that place._
+
+      _The bastyle longith of verray dewe ryght
+        To fals bakerys, it is trewe herytage
+      Severalle to them, this knoweth every wyght,
+        Be kynde assygned for ther sittyng stage;
+        Wheer they may freely shewe out ther visage,
+      Whan they tak oonys their possessioun,
+        Owthir in youthe or in myddyl age;
+      Men doon hem wrong yif they take hym down._
+
+      _Let mellerys and bakerys gadre hem a gilde,
+        And alle of assent make a fraternité,
+      Undir the pillory a letil chapelle bylde,
+        The place amorteyse, and purchase lyberté,
+        For alle thos that of ther noumbre be;
+      What evir it coost afftir that they wende,
+        They may clayme, be just auctorité,
+      Upon that bastile to make an ende._
+
+The wine-dealer and the publican formed another class in mediæval
+society who lived by fraud and dishonesty, and were the objects of
+satire. The latter gave both bad wine and bad measure, and he often
+also acted as a pawnbroker, and when people had drunk more than they
+could pay for, he would take their clothes as pledges for their money.
+The tavern, in the middle ages, was the resort of very miscellaneous
+company; gamblers and loose women were always on the watch there to
+lead more honest people into ruin, and the tavern-keeper profited
+largely by their gains; and the more vulgar minstrel and "jogelour"
+found employment there; for the middle classes of society, and even
+their betters, frequented the tavern much more generally than at the
+present day. In the carved stalls of the church of Corbeil, the liquor
+merchant is represented by the figure of a man wheeling a hogshead
+in a barrow, as shown in our cut No. 88. The graveness and air of
+importance with which he regards it would lead us to suppose that the
+barrel contains wine; and the cup and jug on the shelf above show that
+it was to be sold retail. The wine-sellers called out their wines
+from their doors, and boasted of their qualities, in order to tempt
+people in; and John de Garlande assures us that when they entered,
+they were served with wine which was not worth drinking. "The criers
+of wine," he says, "proclaim with extended throat the diluted wine
+they have in their taverns, offering it at four pennies, at six, at
+eight, and at twelve, fresh poured out from the gallon cask into the
+cup, to tempt people." ("Volume of Vocabularies," p. 126.) The ale-wife
+was an especial subject of jest and satire, and is not unfrequently
+represented on the pictorial monuments of our forefathers. Our cut No.
+89 is taken from one of the misereres in the church of Wellingborough,
+in Northamptonshire; the ale-wife is pouring her liquor from her jug
+into a cup to serve a rustic, who appears to be waiting for it with
+impatience.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 88. The Wine Dealer._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 89. The Ale-Wife._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 90. The Ale-Drawer._]
+
+The figure of the ale-drawer, No. 90, is taken from one of the
+misereres in the parish church of Ludlow, in Shropshire. The size
+of his jug is somewhat disproportionate to that of the barrel from
+which he obtains the ale. The same misereres of Ludlow Church furnish
+the next scene, cut No. 91, which represents the end of the wicked
+ale-wife. The day of judgment is supposed to have arrived, and she has
+received her sentence. A demon, seated on one side, is reading a list
+of the crimes she has committed, which the magnitude of the parchment
+shows to be a rather copious one. Another demon (whose head has been
+broken off in the original) carries on his back, in a very irreverent
+manner, the unfortunate lady, in order to throw her into hell-mouth, on
+the other side of the picture. She is naked with the exception of the
+fashionable head-gear, which formed one of her vanities in the world,
+and she carries with her the false measure with which she cheated her
+customers. A demon bagpiper welcomes her on her arrival. The scene is
+full of wit and humour.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 91. The Ale-Wife's End._]
+
+The rustic classes, and instances of their rusticity, are not
+unfrequently met with in these interesting carvings. The stalls of
+Corbeil present several agricultural scenes. Our cut No. 92 is taken
+from those of Gloucester cathedral, of an earlier date, and represents
+the three shepherds, astonished at the appearance of the star which
+announced the birth of the Saviour of mankind. Like the three kings,
+the shepherds to whom this revelation was made were always in the
+middle ages represented as three in number. In our drawing from the
+miserere in Gloucester cathedral, the costume of the shepherds is
+remarkably well depicted, even to the details, with the various
+implements appertaining to their profession, most of which are
+suspended to their girdles. They are drawn with much spirit, and even
+the dog is well represented as an especially active partaker in the
+scene.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 92. The Shepherds of the East._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 93. The Carpenter._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 94. The Shoemaker._]
+
+Of the two other examples we select from the misereres of Corbeil, the
+first represents the carpenter, or, as he was commonly called by our
+Anglo-Saxon and mediæval forefathers, the _wright_, which signifies
+simply the "maker." The application of this higher and more general
+term--for the Almighty himself is called, in the Anglo-Saxon poetry,
+_ealra gescefta wyrhta_, the Maker, or Creator, of all things--shows
+how important an art that of the carpenter was considered in the
+middle ages. Everything made of wood came within his province. In the
+Anglo-Saxon "Colloquy" of archbishop Alfric, where some of the more
+useful artisans are introduced disputing about the relative value of
+their several crafts, the "wright" says, "Who of you can do without
+my craft, since I make houses and all sorts of vessels (_vasa_), and
+ships for you all?" ("Volume of Vocabularies," p. 11.) And John de
+Garlande, in the thirteenth century, describes the carpenter as making,
+among other things, tubs, and barrels, and wine-cades. The workmanship
+of those times was exercised, before all other materials, on wood
+and metals, and the wright, or worker in the former material, was
+distinguished by this circumstance from the smith, or worker in metal.
+The carpenter is still called a wright in Scotland. Our last cut (No.
+94), taken also from one of the misereres at Corbeil, represents the
+shoemaker, or as he was then usually called, the cordwainer, because
+the leather which he chiefly used came from Cordova in Spain, and was
+thence called _cordewan_, or _cordewaine_. Our shoemaker is engaged
+in cutting a skin of leather with an instrument of a rather singular
+form. Shoes, and perhaps forms for making shoes, are suspended on pegs
+against the wall.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+  GROTESQUE FACES AND FIGURES.--PREVALENCE OF THE TASTE FOR UGLY
+     AND GROTESQUE FACES.--SOME OF THE POPULAR FORMS DERIVED
+     FROM ANTIQUITY; THE TONGUE LOLLING OUT, AND THE DISTORTED
+     MOUTH.--HORRIBLE SUBJECTS: THE MAN AND THE SERPENTS.--ALLEGORICAL
+     FIGURES: GLUTTONY AND LUXURY.--OTHER REPRESENTATIONS OF
+     CLERICAL GLUTTONY AND DRUNKENNESS.--GROTESQUE FIGURES OF
+     INDIVIDUALS, AND GROTESQUE GROUPS.--ORNAMENTS OF THE BORDERS OF
+     BOOKS.--UNINTENTIONAL CARICATURE; THE MOTE AND THE BEAM.
+
+
+The grimaces and strange postures of the jougleurs seem to have had
+great attractions for those who witnessed them. To unrefined and
+uneducated minds no object conveys so perfect a notion of mirth as an
+ugly and distorted face. Hence it is that among the common peasantry
+at a country fair few exhibitions are more satisfactory than that of
+grinning through a horse-collar. This sentiment is largely exemplified
+in the sculpture especially of the middle ages, a long period,
+during which the general character of society presented that want
+of refinement which we now observe chiefly in its least cultivated
+classes. Among the most common decorations of our ancient churches and
+other mediæval buildings, are grotesque and monstrous heads and faces.
+Antiquity, which lent us the types of many of these monstrosities,
+saw in her Typhons and Gorgons a signification beyond the surface of
+the picture, and her grotesque masks had a general meaning, and were
+in a manner typical of the whole field of comic literature. The mask
+was less an individual grotesque to be laughed at for itself, than
+a personification of comedy. In the middle ages, on the contrary,
+although in some cases certain forms were often regarded as typical
+of certain ideas, in general the design extended no farther than the
+forms which the artist had given to it; the grotesque features, like
+the grinning through the horse-collar, gave satisfaction by their mere
+ugliness. Even the applications, when such figures were intended to
+have one, were coarsely satirical, without any intellectuality, and,
+where they had a meaning beyond the plain text of the sculpture or
+drawing, it was not far-fetched, but plain and easily understood. When
+the Anglo-Saxon drew the face of a bloated and disfigured monk, he no
+doubt intended thereby to proclaim the popular notion of the general
+character of monastic life, but this was a design which nobody could
+misunderstand, an interpretation which everybody was prepared to give
+to it. We have already seen various examples of this description of
+satire, scattered here and there among the immense mass of grotesque
+sculpture which has no such meaning. A great proportion, indeed, of
+these grotesque sculptures appears to present mere variations of a
+certain number of distinct types which had been handed down from a
+remote period, some of them borrowed, perhaps involuntarily, from
+antiquity. Hence we naturally look for the earlier and more curious
+examples of this class of art to Italy and the south of France, where
+the transition from classical to mediæval was more gradual, and the
+continued influence of classical forms is more easily traced. The
+early Christian masons appear to have caricatured under the form of
+such grotesques the personages of the heathen mythology, and to this
+practice we perhaps owe some of the types of the mediæval monsters.
+We have seen in a former chapter a grotesque from the church of Monte
+Majour, near Nismes, the original type of which had evidently been some
+burlesque figure of Saturn eating one of his children. The classical
+mask doubtless furnished the type for those figures, so common in
+mediæval sculpture, of faces with disproportionately large mouths; just
+as another favourite class of grotesque faces, those with distended
+mouths and tongues lolling out, were taken originally from the Typhons
+and Gorgons of the ancients. Many other popular types of faces rendered
+artificially ugly are mere exaggerations of the distortions produced on
+the features by different operations, such, for instance, as that of
+blowing a horn.
+
+The practice of blowing the horn, is, indeed, peculiarly calculated
+to exhibit the features of the face to disadvantage, and was not
+overlooked by the designers of the mediæval decorative sculpture. One
+of the large collection of casts of sculptures from French cathedrals
+exhibited in the museum at South Kensington, has furnished the two
+subjects given in our cut No. 95. The first is represented as blowing
+a horn, but he is producing the greatest possible distortion in his
+features, and especially in his mouth, by drawing the horn forcibly
+on one side with his left hand, while he pulls his beard in the other
+direction with the right hand. The force with which he is supposed to
+be blowing is perhaps represented by the form given to his eyes. The
+face of the lower figure is in at least comparative repose. The design
+of representing general distortion in the first is further shown by the
+ridiculously unnatural position of the arms. Such distortion of the
+members was not unfrequently introduced to heighten the effect of the
+grimace in the face; and, as in these examples, it was not uncommon to
+introduce as a further element of grotesque, the bodies, or parts of
+the bodies, of animals, or even of demons.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 95. Grotesque Monsters._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 96. Diabolical Mirth._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 97. Making Faces._]
+
+Another cast in the Kensington Museum is the subject of our cut No.
+96, which presents the same idea of stretching the mouth. The subject
+is here exhibited by another rather mirthful looking individual, but
+whether the exhibitor is intended to be a goblin or demon, or whether
+he is merely furnished with the wings and claws of a bat, seems rather
+uncertain. The bat was looked upon as an unpropitious if not an unholy
+animal; like the owl, it was the companion of the witches, and of the
+spirits of darkness. The group in our cut No. 97 is taken from one of
+the carved stalls in the church of Stratford-upon-Avon, and represents
+a trio of grimacers. The first of these three grotesque faces is
+lolling out the tongue to an extravagant length; the second is simply
+grinning; while the third has taken a sausage between his teeth to
+render his grimace still more ridiculous. The number and variety of
+such grotesque faces, which we find scattered over the architectural
+decoration of our old ecclesiastical buildings, are so great that I
+will not attempt to give any more particular classification of them.
+All this church decoration was calculated especially to produce its
+effect upon the middle and lower classes, and mediæval art was, perhaps
+more than anything else, suited to mediæval society, for it belonged to
+the mass and not to the individual. The man who could enjoy a match at
+grinning through horse-collars, must have been charmed by the grotesque
+works of the mediæval stone sculptor and wood carver; and we may add
+that these display, though often rather rude, a very high degree of
+skill in art, a great power of producing striking imagery.
+
+These mediæval artists loved also to produce horrible objects as well
+as laughable ones, though even in their horrors they were continually
+running into the grotesque. Among the adjuncts to these sculptured
+figures, we sometimes meet with instruments of pain, and very talented
+attempts to exhibit this on the features of the victims. The creed of
+the middle ages gave great scope for the indulgence of this taste in
+the infinitely varied terrors of purgatory and hell; and, not to speak
+of the more crude descriptions that are so common in mediæval popular
+literature, the account to which these descriptions might be turned by
+the poet as well as the artist are well known to the reader of Dante.
+Coils of serpents and dragons, which were the most usual instruments
+in the tortures of the infernal regions, were always favourite objects
+in mediæval ornamentation, whether sculptured or drawn, in the details
+of architectural decoration, or in the initial letters and margins
+of books. They are often combined in forming grotesque tracery with
+the bodies of animals or of human beings, and their movements are
+generally hostile to the latter. We have already seen, in previous
+chapters, examples of this use of serpents and dragons, dating from the
+earliest periods of mediæval art; and it is perhaps the most common
+style of ornamentation in the buildings and illuminated manuscripts
+in our island from the earlier Saxon times to the thirteenth century.
+This ornamentation is sometimes strikingly bold and effective. In the
+cathedral of Wells there is a series of ornamental bosses, formed by
+faces writhing under the attacks of numerous dragons, who are seizing
+upon the lips, eyes, and cheeks of their victims. One of these bosses,
+which are of the thirteenth century, is represented in our cut No. 98.
+A large, coarsely featured face is the victim of two dragons, one of
+which attacks his mouth, while the other has seized him by the eye. The
+expression of the face is strikingly horrible.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 98. Horror._]
+
+The higher mind of the middle ages loved to see inner meanings through
+outward forms; or, at least, it was a fashion which manifested itself
+most strongly in the latter half of the twelfth century, to adapt these
+outward forms to inward meanings by comparisons and moralisations;
+and under the effect of this feeling certain figures were at times
+adopted, with a view to some other purpose than mere ornament, though
+this was probably an innovation upon mediæval art. The tongue lolling
+out, taken originally, as we have seen, from the imagery of classic
+times, was accepted rather early in the middle ages as the emblem or
+symbol of luxury; and, when we find it among the sculptured ornaments
+of the architecture especially of some of the larger and more important
+churches, it implied probably an allusion to that vice--at least the
+face presented to us was intended to be that of a voluptuary. Among
+the remarkable series of sculptures which crown the battlements of
+the cloisters of Magdalen College, Oxford, executed a very few years
+after the middle of the fifteenth century, amid many figures of a very
+miscellaneous character, there are several which were thus, no doubt,
+intended to be representatives of vices, if not of virtues. I give two
+examples of these curious sculptures.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 99. Gluttony._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 100. Luxury._]
+
+The first, No. 99, is generally considered to represent gluttony, and
+it is a remarkable circumstance that, in a building the character of
+which was partly ecclesiastical, and which was erected at the expense
+and under the directions of a great prelate, Bishop Wainflete, the
+vice of gluttony, with which the ecclesiastical order was especially
+reproached, should be represented in ecclesiastical costume. It is an
+additional proof that the detail of the work of the building was left
+entirely to the builders. The coarse, bloated features of the face,
+and the "villainous" low forehead, are characteristically executed;
+and the lolling tongue may perhaps be intended to intimate that, in
+the lives of the clergy, luxury went hand in hand with its kindred
+vice. The second of our examples, No. 100, appears by its different
+characteristics (some of which we have been unable to introduce in our
+woodcut) to be intended to represent luxury itself. Sometimes qualities
+of the individual man, or even the class of society, are represented in
+a manner far less disguised by allegorical clothing, and therefore much
+more plainly to the understanding of the vulgar. Thus in an illuminated
+manuscript of the fourteenth century, in the British Museum (MS.
+Arundel, No. 91), gluttony is represented by a monk devouring a pie
+alone and in secret, except that a little cloven-footed imp holds up
+the dish, and seems to enjoy the prospect of monastic indulgence. This
+picture is copied in our cut No. 101. Another manuscript of the same
+date (MS. Sloane, No. 2435) contains a scene, copied in our cut No.
+102, representing drunkenness under the form of another monk, who has
+obtained the keys and found his way into the cellar of his monastery,
+and is there indulging his love for good ale in similar secrecy. It
+is to be remarked that here, again, the vices are laid to the charge
+of the clergy. Our cut No. 103, from a bas-relief in Ely Cathedral,
+given in Carter's "Specimens of Ancient Sculpture," represents a man
+drinking from a horn, and evidently enjoying his employment, but his
+costume is not sufficiently characteristic to betray his quality.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 101. Monkish Gluttony._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 102. The Monastic Cellarer._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 103. Drunkenness._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 104. A Strange Monster._]
+
+The subject of grotesque faces and heads naturally leads us to
+that of monstrous and grotesque bodies and groups of bodies, which
+has already been partly treated in a former chapter, where we have
+noticed the great love shown in the middle ages for monstrous animated
+figures, not only monsters of one nature, but, and that especially,
+of figures formed by joining together the parts of different, and
+entirely dissimilar, animals, of similar mixtures between animals and
+men. This, as stated above, was often effected by joining the body
+of some nondescript animal to a human head and face; so that, by the
+disproportionate size of the latter, the body, as a secondary part
+of the picture, became only an adjunct to set off still further the
+grotesque character of the human face. More importance was sometimes
+given to the body combined with fantastic forms, which baffle any
+attempt at giving an intelligible description. The accompanying cut,
+No. 104, represents a winged monster of this kind; it is taken from
+one of the casts from French churches exhibited in the Kensington
+Museum.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 105. Rolling Topsy Turvy._]
+
+Sometimes the mediæval artist, without giving any unusual form to
+his human figures, placed them in strange postures, or joined them
+in singular combinations. These latter are commonly of a playful
+character, or sometimes they represent droll feats of skill, or
+puzzles, or other subjects, all of which have been published
+pictorially and for the amusement of children down to very recent
+times. There were a few of these groups which are of rather frequent
+occurrence, and they were evidently favourite types. One of these is
+given in the annexed cut, No. 105. It is taken from one of the carved
+misereres of the stalls in Ely cathedral, as given in Carter, and
+represents two men who appear to be rolling over each other. The upper
+figure exhibits animal's ears on his cap, which seem to proclaim him
+a member of the fraternity of fools: the ears of the lower figure
+are concealed from view. This group is not a rare one, especially on
+similar monuments in France, where the architectural antiquaries have a
+technical name for it; and this shows us how even the particular forms
+of art in the middle ages were not confined to any particular country,
+but more or less, and with exceptions, they pervaded all those which
+acknowledged the ecclesiastical supremacy of the church of Rome;
+whatever peculiarity of style it took in particular countries, the same
+forms were spread through all western Europe. Our next cut, No. 106,
+gives another of these curious groups, consisting, in fact, of two
+individuals, one of which is evidently an ecclesiastic. It will be seen
+that, as we follow this round, we obtain, by means of the two heads,
+four different figures in so many totally different positions. This
+group is taken from one of the very curious seats in the cathedral of
+Rouen in Normandy, which were engraved and published in an interesting
+volume by the late Monsieur E. H. Langlois.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 106. A Continuous Group._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 107. Border Ornament._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 108. A Triumphal Procession._]
+
+Among the most interesting of the mediæval burlesque drawings are
+those which are found in such abundance in the borders of the pages of
+illuminated manuscripts. During the earlier periods of the mediæval
+miniatures, the favourite objects for these borders were monstrous
+animals, especially dragons, which could easily be twined into
+grotesque combinations. In course of time, the subjects thus introduced
+became more numerous, and in the fifteenth century they were very
+varied. Strange animals still continued to be favourites, but they
+were more light and elegant in their forms, and were more gracefully
+designed. Our cut No. 107, taken from the beautifully-illuminated
+manuscript of the romance of the "Comte d'Artois," of the fifteenth
+century, which has furnished us previously with several cuts, will
+illustrate my meaning. The graceful lightness of the tracery of the
+foliage shown in this design is found in none of the earlier works
+of art of this class. This, of course, is chiefly to be ascribed to
+the great advance which had been made in the art of design since the
+thirteenth century. But, though so greatly improved in the style of
+art, the same class of subjects continued to be introduced in this
+border ornamentation long after the art of printing, and that of
+engraving, which accompanied it, had been introduced. The revolution
+in the ornamentation of the borders of the pages of books was effected
+by the artists of the sixteenth century, at which time people had
+become better acquainted with, and had learnt to appreciate, ancient
+art and Roman antiquities, and they drew their inspiration from a
+correct knowledge of what the middle ages had copied blindly, but had
+not understood. Among the subjects of burlesque which the monuments
+of Roman art presented to them, the stumpy figures of the pigmies
+appear to have gained special favour, and they are employed in a manner
+which reminds us of the pictures found in Pompeii. Jost Amman, the
+well-known artist, who exercised his profession at Nüremberg in the
+latter half of the sixteenth century, engraved a set of illustrations
+to Ovid's Metamorphoses, which were printed at Lyons in 1574, and each
+cut and page of which is enclosed in a border of very fanciful and
+neatly-executed burlesque. The pigmies are introduced in these borders
+very freely, and are grouped with great spirit. I select as an example,
+cut No. 108, a scene which represents a triumphal procession--some
+pigmy Alexander returning from his conquests. The hero is seated on
+a throne carried by an elephant, and before him a bird, perhaps a
+vanquished crane, proclaims loudly his praise. Before them a pigmy
+attendant marches proudly, carrying in one hand the olive branch of
+peace, and leading in the other a ponderous but captive ostrich, as a
+trophy of his master's victories. Before him again a pigmy warrior,
+heavily armed with battle-axe and falchion, is mounting the steps
+of a stage, on which a nondescript animal, partaking somewhat of
+the character of a sow, but perhaps intended as a burlesque on the
+strange animals which, in mediæval romance, Alexander was said to have
+encountered in Egypt, blows a horn, to celebrate or announce the return
+of the conqueror. A snail, also advancing slowly up the stage, implies,
+perhaps, a sneer at the whole scene.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 109. The Mote and the Beam._]
+
+Nevertheless, these old German, Flemish, and Dutch artists were still
+much influenced by the mediæval spirit, which they displayed in their
+coarse and clumsy imagination, in their neglect of everything like
+congruity in their treatment of the subject with regard to time and
+place, and their _naïve_ exaggerations and blunders. Extreme examples
+of these characteristics are spoken of, in which the Israelites
+crossing the Red Sea are armed with muskets, and all the other
+accoutrements of modern soldiers, and in which Abraham is preparing
+to sacrifice his son Isaac by shooting him with a matchlock. In
+delineating scriptural subjects, an attempt is generally made to
+clothe the figures in an imaginary ancient oriental costume, but the
+landscapes are filled with the modern castles and mansion houses,
+churches, and monasteries of western Europe. These half-mediæval
+artists, too, like their more ancient predecessors, often fall into
+unintentional caricature by the exaggeration or simplicity with which
+they treat their subjects. There was one subject which the artists of
+this period of regeneration of art seemed to have agreed to treat in
+a very unimaginative manner. In the beautiful Sermon on the Mount,
+our Saviour, in condemning hasty judgments of other people's actions,
+says (Matt. vii. 3-5), "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy
+brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
+Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of
+thine eye, and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite,
+first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see
+clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." Whatever be
+the exact nature of the beam which the man was expected to overlook
+in his "own eye," it certainly was not a large beam of timber. Yet
+such was the conception of it by artists of the sixteenth century.
+One of them, named Solomon Bernard, designed a series of woodcuts
+illustrating the New Testament, which were published at Lyons in 1553;
+and the manner in which he treated the subject will be seen in our
+cut No. 109, taken from one of the illustrations to that book. The
+individual seated is the man who has a mote in his eye, which the
+other, approaching him, points out; and he retorts by pointing to the
+"beam," which is certainly such a massive object as could not easily
+have been overlooked. About thirteen years before this, an artist of
+Augsburg, named Daniel Hopfer, had published a large copper-plate
+engraving of this same subject, a reduced copy of which is given in the
+cut No. 110. The individual who sees the mote in his brother's eye, is
+evidently treating it in the character of a physician or surgeon. It
+is only necessary to add that the beam in his own eye is of still more
+extraordinary dimensions than the former, and that, though it seems
+to escape the notice both of himself and his patient, it is evident
+that the group in the distance contemplate it with astonishment. The
+building accompanying this scene appears to be a church, with paintings
+of saints in the windows.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 110. The Mote and the Beam--Another Treatment._]
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+  SATIRICAL LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.--JOHN DE HAUTEVILLE AND ALAN
+     DE LILLE.--GOLIAS AND THE GOLIARDS.--THE GOLIARDIC POETRY.--TASTE
+     FOR PARODY.--PARODIES ON RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS.--POLITICAL
+     CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.--THE JEWS OF NORWICH.--CARICATURE
+     REPRESENTATIONS OF COUNTRIES.--LOCAL SATIRE.--POLITICAL SONGS AND
+     POEMS.
+
+
+In a previous chapter I have spoken of a class of satirical literature
+which was entirely popular in its character. Not that on this account
+it was original among the peoples who composed mediæval society, for
+the intellectual development of the middle ages came almost all from
+Rome through one medium or other, although we know so little of the
+details of the popular literature of the Romans that we cannot always
+trace it. The mediæval literature of western Europe was mostly modelled
+upon that of France, which was received, like its language, from Rome.
+But when the great university system became established, towards the
+end of the eleventh century, the scholars of western Europe became
+more directly acquainted with the models of literature which antiquity
+had left them; and during the twelfth century these found imitators
+so skilful that some of them almost deceive us into accepting them
+for classical writers themselves. Among the first of these models to
+attract the attention of mediæval scholars, were the Roman satirists,
+and the study of them produced, during the twelfth century, a number of
+satirical writers in Latin prose and verse, who are remarkable not only
+for their boldness and poignancy, but for the elegance of their style.
+I may mention among those of English birth, John of Salisbury, Walter
+Mapes, and Giraldus Cambrensis, who all wrote in prose, and Nigellus
+Wireker, already mentioned in a former chapter, and John de Hauteville,
+who wrote in verse. The first of these, in his "Polycraticus," Walter
+Mapes, in his book "De Nugis Curialium," and Giraldus, in his "Speculum
+Ecclesiæ," and several other of his writings, lay the lash on the
+corruptions and vices of their contemporaries with no tender hand.
+The two most remarkable English satirists of the twelfth century were
+John de Hauteville and Nigellus Wireker. The former wrote, in the year
+1184, a poem in nine books of Latin hexameters, entitled, after the
+name of its hero, "Architrenius," or the Arch-mourner. Architrenius
+is represented as a youth, arrived at years of maturity, who sorrows
+over the spectacle of human vices and weaknesses, until he resolves to
+go on a pilgrimage to Dame Nature, in order to expostulate with her
+for having made him feeble to resist the temptations of the world,
+and to entreat her assistance. On his way, he arrives successively at
+the court of Venus and at the abode of Gluttony, which give him the
+occasion to dwell at considerable length on the license and luxury
+which prevailed among his contemporaries. He next reaches Paris, and
+visits the famous mediæval university, and his satire on the manners of
+the students and the fruitlessness of their studies, forms a remarkable
+and interesting picture of the age. The pilgrim next arrives at the
+Mount of Ambition, tempting by its beauty and by the stately palace
+with which it was crowned, and here we are presented with a satire on
+the manners and corruptions of the court. Near to this was the Hill of
+Presumption, which was inhabited by ecclesiastics of all classes, great
+scholastic doctors and professors, monks, and the like. It is a satire
+on the manners of the clergy. As Architrenius turns from this painful
+spectacle, he encounters a gigantic and hideous monster named Cupidity,
+is led into a series of reflections upon the greediness and avarice
+of the prelates, from which he is roused by the uproar caused by a
+fierce combat between the prodigals and the misers. He is subsequently
+carried to the island of far-distant Thule, which he finds to be the
+resting-place of the philosophers of ancient Greece, and he listens
+to their declamations against the vices of mankind. After this visit,
+Architrenius reaches the end of his pilgrimage. He finds Nature in the
+form of a beautiful woman, dwelling with a host of attendants in the
+midst of a flowery plain, and meats with a courteous reception, but she
+begins by giving him a long lecture on natural philosophy. After this
+is concluded, Dame Nature listens to his complaints, and, to console
+him, gives him a handsome woman, named Moderation, for a wife, and
+dismisses him with a chapter of good counsels on the duties of married
+life. The general moral intended to be inculcated appears to be that
+the retirement of domestic happiness is to be preferred to the vain and
+heartless turmoils of active life in all its phases. It will be seen
+that the kind of allegory which subsequently produced the "Pilgrim's
+Progress," had already made its appearance in mediæval literature.
+
+Another of the celebrated satirists of the scholastic ages was
+named Alanus de Insulis, or Alan of Lille, because he is understood
+to have been born at Lille in Flanders. He occupied the chair of
+theology for many years in the university of Paris with great
+distinction, and his learning was so extensive that he gained the
+name of _doctor universalis_, the universal doctor. In one of his
+books, which is an imitation of that favourite book in the middle
+ages "Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiæ," Dame Nature, in the
+place of Philosophy--not, as in John de Hauteville, as the referee,
+but as the complainant--is introduced bitterly lamenting over the
+deep depravity of the thirteenth century, especially displayed in
+the prevalence of vices of a revolting character. This work, which,
+like Boethius, consists of alternate chapters in verse and prose, is
+entitled "De Planctu Naturæ," the lamentation of nature. I will not,
+however, go on here to give a list of the graver satirical writers, but
+we will proceed to another class of satirists which sprang up among
+the mediæval scholars, more remarkable and more peculiar in their
+character--I mean peculiar to the middle ages.
+
+The satires of the time show us that the students in the universities
+in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who enjoyed a great amount
+of independence from authority, were generally wild and riotous, and,
+among the vast number of youths who then devoted themselves to a
+scholastic life, we can have no doubt that the habit of dissipation
+became permanent. Among these wild students there existed, probably,
+far more wit and satirical talent than among their steadier and more
+laborious brethren, and this wit, and the manner in which it was
+displayed, made its possessors welcome guests at the luxurious tables
+of the higher and richer clergy, at which Latin seems to have been
+the language in ordinary use. In all probability it was from this
+circumstance (in allusion to the Latin word _gula_, as intimating their
+love of the table) that these merry scholars, who displayed in Latin
+some of the accomplishments which the jougleurs professed in the vulgar
+tongue, took or received the name of _goliards_ (in the Latin of that
+time, _goliardi_, or _goliardenses_).[42] The name at least appears
+to have been adopted towards the end of the twelfth century. In the
+year 1229, during the minority of Louis IX., and while the government
+of France was in the hands of the queen-mother, troubles arose in the
+university of Paris through the intrigues of the papal legate, and the
+turbulence of the scholars led to their dispersion and to the temporary
+closing of the schools; and the contemporary historian, Matthew Paris,
+tells us how "some of the servants of the departing scholars, or those
+whom we used to call goliardenses," composed an indecent epigram on
+the rumoured familiarities between the legate and the queen. But this
+is not the first mention of the goliards, for a statute of the council
+of Treves, in 1227, forbade "all priests to permit truants, or other
+wandering scholars, or goliards, to sing verses or _Sanctus_ and
+_Angelus Dei_ in the service of the mass."[43] This probably refers to
+parodies on the religious service, such as those of which I shall soon
+have to speak. From this time the goliards are frequently mentioned. In
+ecclesiastical statutes published in the year 1289, it is ordered that
+the clerks or clergy (_clerici_, that is, men who had their education
+in the university) "should not be jougleurs, goliards, or buffoons;"[44]
+and the same statute proclaims a heavy penalty against those _clerici_
+"who persist in the practice of goliardy or stage performance during a
+year,"[45] which shows that they exercised more of the functions of the
+jougleur than the mere singing of songs.
+
+ [42] In the mediæval Latin, the word _goliardia_ was introduced to
+      express the profession of the goliard, and the verb
+      _goliardizare_, to signify the practice of it.
+
+ [43] "Item, præcipimus ut omnes sacerdotes non permittant trutannos et
+      alios vagos scholares, aut goliardos, cantare versus super
+     _Sanctus_ et _Angelus Dei_ in missis," etc.--Concil. Trevir.,
+     an. 1227, ap. Marten. et Durand. Ampliss. Coll., vii. col. 117.
+
+ [44] "Item, præcipimus quod clerici non sint joculatores, goliardi, seu
+      bufones."--Stat. Synod. Caduacensis, Ruthenensis, et Tutelensis
+      Eccles. ap. Martene, Thes. Anecd., iv. col. 727.
+
+ [45] "Clerici ... si in goliardia vel histrionatu per annum
+      fuerint."--Ib. col. 729. In one of the editions of this statute it
+      is added, "after they have been warned three times."
+
+These vagabond clerks made for themselves an imaginary chieftain,
+or president of their order, to whom they gave the name of Golias,
+probably as a pun on the name of the giant who combated against David,
+and, to show further their defiance of the existing church government,
+they made him a bishop--_Golias episcopus_. Bishop Golias was the
+burlesque representative of the clerical order, the general satirist,
+the reformer of eclesiastical and all other corruptions. If he was not
+a doctor of divinity, he was a master of arts, for he is spoken of as
+_Magister Golias_. But above all he was the father of the Goliards,
+the "ribald clerks," as they are called, who all belonged to his
+household,[46] and they are spoken of as his children.
+
+          _Summa salus omnium, filius Mariæ,
+          Pascat, potat, vestiat pueros Golyæ!_[47]
+
+"May the Saviour of all, the Son of Mary, give food, drink, and clothes
+to the children of Golias!" Still the name was clothed in so much
+mystery, that Giraldus Cambrensis, who flourished towards the latter
+end of the twelfth century, believed Golias to be a real personage,
+and his contemporary. It may be added that Golias not only boasts of
+the dignity of bishop, but he appears sometimes under the title of
+_archipoeta_, the archpoet or poet-in-chief.
+
+ [46] "Clerici ribaldi, maxime qui vulgo dicuntur _de famila
+      Goliæ_."--Concil. Sen. ap. Concil., tom. ix. p. 578.
+
+ [47] See my "Poems of Walter Mapes," p. 70.
+
+Cæsarius of Heisterbach, who completed his book of the miracles of his
+time in the year 1222, tells us a curious anecdote of the character
+of the wandering clerk. In the year before he wrote, he tells us, "It
+happened at Bonn, in the diocese of Cologne, that a certain wandering
+clerk, named Nicholas, of the class they call archpoet, was grievously
+ill, and when he supposed that he was dying, he obtained from our
+abbot, through his own pleading, and the intercession of the canons
+of the same church, admission into the order. What more? He put on
+the tunic, as it appeared to us, with much contrition, but, when the
+danger was past, he took it off immediately, and, throwing it down with
+derision, took to flight." We learn best the character of the goliards
+from their own poetry, a considerable quantity of which is preserved.
+They wandered about from mansion to mansion, probably from monastery
+to monastery, just like the jougleurs, but they seem to have been
+especially welcome at the tables of the prelates of the church, and,
+like the jougleurs, besides being well feasted, they received gifts of
+clothing and other articles. In few instances only were they otherwise
+than welcome, as described in the rhyming epigram printed in my "Latin
+Poems attributed to Walter Mapes." "I come uninvited," says the goliard
+to the bishop, "ready for dinner; such is my fate, never to dine
+invited." The bishop replies, "I care not for vagabonds, who wander
+among the fields, and cottages, and villages; such guests are not for
+my table. I do not invite you, for I avoid such as you; yet without my
+will you may eat the bread you ask. Wash, wipe, sit, dine, drink, wipe,
+and depart."
+
+                          Goliardus.
+        _Non invitatus venio prandere paratus;
+        Sic sum fatatus, nunquam prandere vocatus._
+
+                          Episcopus.
+        _Non ego curo vagos, qui rura, mapalia, pagos
+        Perlustrant, tales non vult mea mensa sodales.
+        Te non invito, tibi consimiles ego vito;
+        Me tamen invito potieris pane petito.
+        Ablue, terge, sede, prande, bibe, terge, recede._
+
+In another similar epigram, the goliard complains of the bishop who
+had given him as his reward nothing but an old worn-out mantle. Most
+of the writers of the goliardic poetry complain of their poverty, and
+some of them admit that this poverty arose from the tavern and the love
+of gambling. One of them alleges as his claim to the liberality of
+his host, that, as he was a scholar, he had not learnt to labour, that
+his parents were knights, but he had no taste for fighting, and that,
+in a word, he preferred poetry to any occupation. Another speaks still
+more to the point, and complains that he is in danger of being obliged
+to sell his clothes. "If this garment of vair which I wear," he says,
+"be sold for money, it will be a great disgrace to me; I would rather
+suffer a long fast. A bishop, who is the most generous of all generous
+men, gave me this cloak, and will have for it heaven, a greater reward
+than St. Martin has, who only gave half of his cloak. It is needful
+now that the poet's want be relieved by your liberality [addressing
+his hearers]; let noble men give noble gifts--gold, and robes, and the
+like."
+
+          _Si vendatur propter denarium
+          Indumentum quod porto varium,
+          Grande mihi fiet opprobrium;
+          Malo diu pati jejunium.
+          Largissimus largorum omnium
+          Prœsul dedit mihi hoc pallium,
+          Majus habens in cælis præmium
+          Quam Martinus, qui dedit medium.
+          Nunc est opus ut vestra copia
+          Sublevetur vatis inopia;
+          Dent nobiles dona nobilia,--
+          Aurum, vestes, et his similia._
+
+There has been some difference of opinion as to the country to which
+this poetry more especially belongs. Giraldus Cambrensis, writing at
+the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century,
+evidently thought that Golias was an Englishman; and at a later date
+the goliardic poetry was almost all ascribed to Giraldus's contemporary
+and friend, the celebrated humourist, Walter Mapes. This was, no doubt,
+an error. Jacob Grimm seemed inclined to claim them for Germany; but
+Grimm, on this occasion, certainly took a narrow view of the question.
+We shall probably be more correct in saying that they belonged in
+common to all the countries over which university learning extended;
+that in whatever country a particular poem of this class was composed,
+it became the property of the whole body of these scholastic jougleurs,
+and that it was thus carried from one land to another, receiving
+sometimes alterations or additions to adapt it to each. Several of
+these poems are found in manuscripts written in different countries
+with such alterations and additions, as, for instance, that in the
+well-known "Confession," in the English copies of which we have, near
+the conclusion, the line--
+
+               _Præsul Coventrensium, parce confitenti;_
+
+an appeal to the bishop of Coventry, which is changed, in a copy in a
+German manuscript, to
+
+                 _Electe Coloniæ, parce pœnitenti,_
+
+
+"O elect of Cologne, spare me penitent." From a comparison of what
+remains of this poetry in manuscripts written in different countries,
+it appears probable that the names Golias and goliard originated in the
+university of Paris, but were more especially popular in England, while
+the term _archipoeta_ was more commonly used in Germany.
+
+In 1841 I collected all the goliardic poetry which I could then find in
+English manuscripts, and edited it, under the name of Walter Mapes, as
+one of the publications of the Camden Society.[48] At a rather later
+date I gave a chapter of additional matter of the same description
+in my "Anecdota Literaria."[49] All the poems I have printed in
+these two volumes are found in manuscripts written in England, and
+some of them are certainly the compositions of English writers. They
+are distinguished by remarkable facility and ease in versification
+and rhyme, and by great pungency of satire. The latter is directed
+especially against the clerical order, and none are spared, from the
+pope at the summit of the scale down to the lowest of the clergy. In
+the "Apocalypsis Goliæ," or Golias's Revelations, which appears to
+have been the most popular of all these poems,[50] the poet describes
+himself as carried up in a vision to heaven, where the vices and
+disorders of the various classes of the popish clergy are successively
+revealed to him. The pope is a devouring lion; in his eagerness for
+pounds, he pawns books; at the sight of a mark of money, he treats Mark
+the Evangelist with disdain; while he sails aloft, money alone is his
+anchoring-place. The original lines will serve as a specimen of the
+style of these curious compositions, and of the love of punning which
+was so characteristic of the literature of that age:--
+
+          _Est leo pontifex summus, qui devorat,
+          Qui libras sitiens, libros impignorat;
+          Marcam respiciet, Marcum dedecorat;
+          In summis navigans, in nummis anchorat._
+
+ [48] The Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes, collected and
+      edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., 4to., London, 1841.
+
+ [49] "Anecdota Literaria; a Collection of Short Poems in English,
+      Latin, and French, illustrative of the Literature and History of
+      England in the Thirteenth Century." Edited by Thomas Wright, Esq.
+      8vo., London, 1844.
+
+ [50] In my edition I have collated no less than sixteen copies which
+      occur among the MSS. in the British Museum, and in the libraries
+      at Oxford and Cambridge, and there are, no doubt, many more.
+
+The bishop is in haste to intrude himself into other people's pastures,
+and fills himself with other people's goods. The ravenous archdeacon
+is compared to an eagle, because he has sharp eyes to see his prey
+afar off, and is swift to seize upon it. The dean is represented by an
+animal with a man's face, full of silent guile, who covers fraud with
+the form of justice, and by the show of simplicity would make others
+believe him to be pious. In this spirit the faults of the clergy, of
+all degrees, are minutely criticised through between four and five
+hundred lines; and it must not be forgotten that it was the English
+clergy whose character was thus exposed.
+
+          _Tu scribes etiam, forma sed alia,
+          Septem ecclesiis quæ sunt in Anglia._
+
+Others of these pieces are termed Sermons, and are addressed, some to
+the bishops and dignitaries of the church, others to the pope, others
+to the monastic orders, and others to the clergy in general. The court
+of Rome, we are told, was infamous for its greediness; there all right
+and justice were put up for sale, and no favour could be had without
+money. In this court money occupies everybody's thoughts; its cross--i.
+e. the mark on the reverse of the coin--its roundness, and its
+whiteness, all please the Romans; where money speaks law is silent.
+
+          _Nummis in hac curia non est qui non vacet;
+          Crux placet, rotunditas, et albedo placet,
+          Et cum totum placeat, et Romanis placet,
+          Ubi nummus loquitur, et lex omnis tacet._
+
+Perhaps one of the most curious of these poems is the "Confession of
+Golias," in which the poet is made to satirise himself, and he thus
+gives us a curious picture of the goliard's life. He complains that
+he is made of light material, which is moved by every wind; that he
+wanders about irregularly, like the ship on the sea or the bird in the
+air, seeking worthless companions like himself. He is a slave to the
+charms of the fair sex. He is a martyr to gambling, which often turns
+him out naked to the cold, but he is warmed inwardly by the inspiration
+of his mind, and he writes better poetry than ever. Lechery and
+gambling are two of his vices, and the third is drinking. "The tavern,"
+he says, "I never despised, nor shall I ever despise it, until I see
+the holy angels coming to sing the eternal requiem over my corpse. It
+is my design to die in the tavern; let wine be placed to my mouth when
+I am expiring, that when the choirs of angels come, they may say, 'Be
+God propitious to this drinker!' The lamp of the soul is lighted with
+cups; the heart steeped in nectar flies up to heaven; and the wine in
+the tavern has for me a better flavour than that which the bishop's
+butler mixes with water.... Nature gives to every one his peculiar
+gift: I never could write fasting; a boy could beat me in composition
+when I am hungry; I hate thirst and fasting as much as death."
+
+          _Tertio capitulo memoro tabernam:
+          Illam nullo tempore sprevi, neque spernam,
+          Donec sanctos angelos venientes cernam,
+          Cantantes pro mortuo requiem æternam._
+
+          _Meum est propositum in taberna mori;
+          Vindum sit appositum morientis ori,
+          Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori,
+          'Deus sit propitius huic potatori!'_
+
+          _Poculis accenditur animi lucerna;
+          Cor imbutum nectare volat ad superna:
+          Mihi sapit dulcius vinum in taberna,
+          Quam quod aqua miscuit præsulis pincerna._
+
+          _Unicuique proprium dat natura munus:
+          Ego nunquam potui scribere jejunus;
+          Me jejunum vincere posset puer unus;
+          Sitim et jejunium odi tanquam funus._[51]
+
+Another of the more popular of these goliardic poems was the advice of
+Golias against marriage, a gross satire upon the female sex. Contrary
+to what we might perhaps expect from their being written in Latin, many
+of these metrical satires are directed against the vices of the laity,
+as well as against those of the clergy.
+
+ [51] Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, p. 73. The stanzas here quoted,
+      with some others, were afterwards made up into a drinking song,
+      which was rather popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+
+In 1844 the celebrated German scholar, Jacob Grimm, published in the
+"Transactions of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin" a selection of
+goliardic verses from manuscripts in Germany, which had evidently been
+written by Germans, and some of them containing allusions to German
+affairs in the thirteenth century.[52] They present the same form of
+verse and the same style of satire as those found in England, but the
+name of Golias is exchanged for _archipoeta_, the archpoet. Some of
+the stanzas of the "Confession of Golias" are found in a poem in which
+the archpoet addresses a petition to the archchancellor for assistance
+in his distress, and confesses his partiality for wine. A copy of the
+Confession itself is also found in this German collection, under the
+title of the "Poet's Confession."
+
+ [52] "Gedichte des Mittelalters auf König Friedrich I. den Staufar, und
+      aus seiner so wie der nächstfolgenden Zeit," 4to. Separate copies
+      of this work were printed off and distributed among mediæval
+      scholars.
+
+The Royal Library at Munich contains a very important manuscript of
+this goliardic Latin poetry, written in the thirteenth century. It
+belonged originally to one of the great Benedictine abbeys in Bavaria,
+where it appears to have been very carefully preserved, but still
+with an apparent consciousness that it was not exactly a book for a
+religious brotherhood, which led the monks to omit it in the catalogue
+of their library, no doubt as a book the possession of which was not
+to be proclaimed publicly. When written, it was evidently intended
+to be a careful selection of the poetry of this class then current.
+One part of it consists of poetry of a more serious character, such
+as hymns, moral poems, and especially satirical pieces. In this class
+there are more than one piece which are also found in the manuscripts
+written in England. A very large portion of the collection consists
+of love songs, which, although evidently treasured by the Benedictine
+monks, are sometimes licentious in character. A third class consists
+of drinking and gambling songs (_potatoria et lusoria_). The general
+character of this poetry is more playful, more ingenious and intricate
+in its metrical structure, in fact, more lyric than that of the poetry
+we have been describing; yet it came, in all probability, from the same
+class of poets--the clerical jougleurs. The touches of sentiment, the
+descriptions of female beauty, the admiration of nature, are sometimes
+expressed with remarkable grace. Thus, the green wood sweetly enlivened
+by the joyous voices of its feathered inhabitants, the shade of its
+branches, the thorns covered with flowers, which, says the poet, are
+emblematical of love, which pricks like a thorn and then soothes like a
+flower, are tastefully described in the following lines:--
+
+              _Cantu nemus avium
+              Lascivia canentium
+              Suave delinitur,
+              Fronde redimitur,
+              Vernant spinæ floribus
+              Micantibus,
+              Venerem signantibus
+              Quia spina pungit, flos blanditur._
+
+And the following scrap of the description of a beautiful damsel shows
+no small command of language and versification--
+
+              _Allicit dulcibus
+              Verbis et osculis,
+              Labellulis
+              Castigate tumentibus,
+              Roseo nectareus
+              Odor infusus ori;
+              Pariter eburneus
+              Sedat ordo dentium
+              Par niveo candori._
+
+The whole contents of this manuscript were printed in 1847, in an
+octavo volume, issued by the Literary Society at Stuttgard.[53] I had
+already printed some examples of such amatory Latin lyric poetry in
+1838, in a volume of "Early Mysteries and Latin Poems;"[54] but this
+poetry does not belong properly to the subject of the present volume,
+and I pass on from it.
+
+ [53] "Carmina Burana. Lateinische und Deutsche Lieder und Gedichte
+      einer Handschrift des XIII. Jahrhunderts aus Benedictbeurn auf
+      der K. Bibliothek zu München." 8vo. Stuttgart, 1847.
+
+ [54] "Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems of the Twelfth and
+      Thirteenth Centuries," edited by Thomas Wright, Esq. 8vo. London,
+      1838.
+
+The goliards did not always write in verse, for we have some of
+their prose compositions, and these appear especially in the form
+of parodies. We trace a great love for parody in the middle ages,
+which spared not even things the most sacred, and the examples
+brought forward in the celebrated trial of William Hone, were mild in
+comparison to some which are found scattered here and there in mediæval
+manuscripts. In my Poems, attributed to Walter Mapes,[55] I have
+printed a satire in prose entitled "_Magister Golyas de quodam abbate_"
+(i.e., Master Golias's account of a certain abbot), which has somewhat
+the character of a parody upon a saint's legend. The voluptuous life of
+the superior of a monastic house is here described in a tone of banter
+which nothing could excel. Several parodies, more direct in their
+character, are printed in the two volumes of the "Reliquæ Antiquæ."[56]
+One of these (vol. ii. p. 208) is a complete parody on the service of
+the mass, which is entitled in the original, "_Missa de Potatoribus_,"
+the Mass of the Drunkard. In this extraordinary composition, even the
+pater-noster is parodied. A portion of this, with great variations, is
+found in the German collection of the Carmina Burana, under the title
+of _Officium Lusorum_, the Office of the Gamblers. In the "Reliquæ
+Antiquæ" (ii. 58) we have a parody on the Gospel of St. Luke, beginning
+with the words, _Initium fallacis Evangelii secundum Lupum_, this last
+word being, of course, a sort of pun upon Lucam. Its subject also is
+Bacchus, and the scene having been laid in a tavern in Oxford, we have
+no difficulty in ascribing it to some scholar of that university in the
+thirteenth century. Among the Carmina Burana we find a similar parody
+on the Gospel of St. Mark, which has evidently belonged to one of these
+burlesques on the church service; and as it is less profane than the
+others, and at the same time pictures the mediæval hatred towards the
+church of Rome, I will give a translation of it as an example of this
+singular class of compositions. It is hardly necessary to remind the
+reader that a mark was a coin of the value of thirteen shillings and
+fourpence:--
+
+     "The beginning of the holy gospel according to Marks of silver.
+     At that time the pope said to the Romans: 'When the son of man
+     shall come to the seat of our majesty, first say, Friend, for what
+     hast thou come? But if he should persevere in knocking without
+     giving you anything, cast him out into utter darkness.' And it
+     came to pass, that a certain poor clerk came to the court of the
+     lord the pope, and cried out, saying, 'Have pity on me at least,
+     you doorkeepers of the pope, for the hand of poverty has touched
+     me. For I am needy and poor, and therefore I seek your assistance
+     in my calamity and misery.' But they hearing this were highly
+     indignant, and said to him: 'Friend, thy poverty be with thee in
+     perdition; get thee backward, Satan, for thou dost not savour of
+     those things which have the savour of money. Verily, verily, I say
+     unto thee, Thou shalt not enter into the joy of thy lord, until
+     thou shalt have given thy last farthing.'
+
+     "Then the poor man went away, and sold his cloak and his gown,
+     and all that he had, and gave it to the cardinals, and to the
+     doorkeepers, and to the chamberlains. But they said, 'And what is
+     this among so many?' And they cast him out of the gates, and going
+     out he wept bitterly, and was without consolation. After him there
+     came to the court a certain clerk who was rich, and gross, and
+     fat, and large, and who in a tumult had committed manslaughter. He
+     gave first to the doorkeeper, secondly to the chamberlain, third
+     to the cardinals. But they judged among themselves, that they
+     were to receive more. Then the lord the pope, hearing that the
+     cardinals and officials had received many gifts from the clerk,
+     became sick unto death. But the rich man sent him an electuary of
+     gold and silver, and he was immediately made whole. Then the lord
+     the pope called before him the cardinals and officials, and said
+     to them: 'Brethren, see that no one deceive you with empty words.
+     For I give you an example, that, as I take, so take ye also.'"
+
+ [55] Introduction, p. xl.
+
+ [56] "Reliquiæ Antiquæ. Scraps from Ancient Manuscripts, illustrating
+      chiefly Early English Literature and the English Language." Edited
+      by Thomas Wright, Esq., and J. O. Halliwell, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo.
+      Vol. i., London, 1841; vol. ii., 1843.
+
+This mediæval love of parody was not unfrequently displayed in a
+more popular form, and in the language of the people. In the _Reliquæ
+Antiquæ_ (i. 82) we have a very singular parody in English on the
+sermons of the Catholic priesthood, a good part of which is so written
+as to present no consecutive sense, which circumstance itself implies
+a sneer at the preachers. Thus our burlesque preacher, in the middle
+of his discourse, proceeds to narrate as follows (I modernise the
+English):--
+
+     "Sirs, what time that God and St. Peter came to Rome, Peter asked
+     Adam a full great doubtful question, and said, 'Adam, Adam, why
+     ate thou the apple unpared?' 'Forsooth,' quod he, 'for I had no
+     wardens (pears) fried.' And Peter saw the fire, and dread him, and
+     stepped into a plum-tree that hanged full of ripe red cherries.
+     And there he saw all the parrots in the sea. There he saw steeds
+     and stockfish pricking 'swose' (?) in the water. There he saw hens
+     and herrings that hunted after harts in hedges. There he saw eels
+     roasting larks. There he saw haddocks were done on the pillory for
+     wrong roasting of May butter; and there he saw how bakers baked
+     butter to grease with old monks' boots. There he saw how the fox
+     preached," &c.
+
+The same volume contains some rather clever parodies on the old English
+alliterative romances, composed in a similar style of consecutive
+nonsense. It is a class of parody which we trace to a rather early
+period, which the French term a _coq-à-l'âne_, and which became
+fashionable in England in the seventeenth century in the form of
+songs entitled "Tom-a-Bedlams." M. Jubinal has printed two such poems
+in French, perhaps of the thirteenth century,[57] and others are
+found scattered through the old manuscripts. There is generally so
+much coarseness in them that it is not easy to select a portion for
+translation, and in fact their point consists in going on through the
+length of a poem of this kind without imparting a single clear idea.
+Thus, in the second of those published by Jubinal, we are told how,
+"The shadow of an egg carried the new year upon the bottom of a pot;
+two old new combs made a ball to run the trot; when it came to paying
+the scot, I, who never move myself, cried out, without saying a word,
+'Take the feather of an ox, and clothe a wise fool with it.'"--
+
+        _Li ombres d'un oef
+        Portoit l'an reneuf
+        Sur la fonz d'un pot;
+        Deus viez pinges neuf
+        Firent un estuef
+        Pour courre le trot;
+        Quant vint au paier l'escot,
+        Je, qui onques ne me muef,
+        M'escriai, si ne dis mot:--
+        'Prenés la plume d'un buef,
+        S'en vestez un sage sot.'_--Jubinal, Nouv. Rec., ii. 217.
+
+ [57] "Achille Jubinal, Jongleurs et Trouvères." 8vo., Paris, 1835, p.
+      34; and "Nouveau Recueil de Contes, Dits, Fabliaux," &c. 8vo.,
+      Paris, 1842. Vol. ii. p. 208. In the first instance M. Jubinal has
+      given to this little poem the title _Resveries_, in the second,
+      _Fatrasies_.
+
+The spirit of the goliards continued to exist long after the name
+had been forgotten; and the mass of bitter satire which they had
+left behind them against the whole papal system, and against the
+corruptions of the papal church of the middle ages, were a perfect
+godsend to the reformers of the sixteenth century, who could point
+to them triumphantly as irresistible evidence in their favour. Such
+scholars as Flacius Illyricus, eagerly examined the manuscripts
+which contained this goliardic poetry, and printed it, chiefly as
+good and effective weapons in the great religious strife which was
+then convulsing European society. To us, besides their interest as
+literary compositions, they have also a historical value, for they
+introduce us to a more intimate acquaintance with the character of the
+great mental struggle for emancipation from mediæval darkness which
+extended especially through the thirteenth century, and which was only
+overcome for a while to begin more strongly and more successfully at
+a later period. They display to us the gross ignorance, as well as
+the corruption of manners, of the great mass of the mediæval clergy.
+Nothing can be more amusing than the satire which some of these pieces
+throw on the character of monkish Latin. I printed in the "Reliquæ
+Antiquæ," under the title of "The Abbot of Gloucester's Feast," a
+complaint supposed to issue from the mouth of one of the common herd
+of the monks, against the selfishness of their superiors, in which all
+the rules of Latin grammar are entirely set at defiance. The abbot and
+prior of Gloucester, with their whole convent, are invited to a feast,
+and on their arrival, "the abbot," says the complainant, "goes to sit
+at the top, and the prior next to him, but I stood always in the back
+place among the low people."
+
+              _Abbas ire sede sursum,
+              Et prioris juxta ipsum;
+              Ego semper stavi dorsum
+                            inter rascalilia._
+
+The wine was served liberally to the prior and the abbot, but "nothing
+was give to us poor folks--everything was for the rich."
+
+              _Vinum venit sanguinatis
+              Ad prioris et abbatis;
+              Nihil nobis paupertatis,
+                            sed ad dives omnia._
+
+When some dissatisfaction was displayed by the poor monks, which the
+great men treated with contempt, "said the prior to the abbot, 'They
+have wine enough; will you give all our drink to the poor? What does
+their poverty regard us? they have little, and that is enough, since
+they came uninvited to our feast.'"
+
+              _Prior dixit ad abbatis,
+              'Ipsi habent vinum satis;
+              Vultis dare paupertatis
+                            noster potus omnia?
+              Quid nos spectat paupertatis?
+              Postquam venit non vocatis
+                            ad noster convivia.'_
+
+Thus through several pages this amusing poem goes on to describe the
+gluttony and drunkenness of the abbot and prior, and the ill-treatment
+of their inferiors. This composition belongs to the close of the
+thirteenth century. A song very similar to it in character, but much
+shorter, is found in a manuscript of the middle of the fifteenth
+century, and printed with the other contents of this manuscript in a
+little volume issued by the Percy Society.[58] The writer complains
+that the abbot and prior drunk good and high-flavoured wine, while
+nothing but inferior stuff was usually given to the convent; "But,"
+he says, "it is better to go drink good wine at the tavern, where the
+wines are of the best quality, and money is the butler."
+
+              _Bonum vinum cum sapore
+              Bibit abbas cum priore;
+              Sed conventus de pejore
+                          semper solet bibere.
+              Bonum vinum in taberna,
+              Ubi vina sunt valarna_ (for Falerna),
+              _Ubi nummus est pincerna,
+                          Ibi prodest bibere._
+
+ [58] "Songs and Carols, now first printed from a Manuscript of the
+      Fifteenth Century." Edited by Thomas Wright, Esq. 8vo., London,
+      1847, p. 2.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 111. Caricature upon the Jews at Norwich._]
+
+Partly out of the earnest, though playful, satire described in this
+chapter, arose political satire, and at a later period political
+caricature. I have before remarked that the period we call the middle
+ages was not that of political or personal caricature, because it
+wanted that means of circulating quickly and largely which is necessary
+for it. Yet, no doubt, men who could draw, did, in the middle ages,
+sometimes amuse themselves in sketching caricatures, which, in general,
+have perished, because nobody cared to preserve them; but the fact of
+the existence of such works is proved by a very curious example, which
+has been preserved, and which is copied in our cut No. 111. It is a
+caricature on the Jews of Norwich, which some one of the clerks of the
+king's courts in the thirteenth century has drawn with a pen, on one
+of the official rolls of the Pell office, where it has been preserved.
+Norwich, as it is well known, was one of the principal seats of the
+Jews in England at this early period, and Isaac of Norwich, the crowned
+Jew with three faces, who towers over the other figures, was no doubt
+some personage of great importance among them. Dagon, as a two-headed
+demon, occupies a tower, which a party of demon knights is attacking.
+Beneath the figure of Isaac there is a lady, whose name appears to be
+Avezarden, who has some relation or other with a male figure named
+Nolle-Mokke, in which another demon, named Colbif, is interfering. As
+this latter name is written in capital letters, we may perhaps conclude
+that he is the most important personage in the scene; but, without any
+knowledge of the circumstances to which it relates, it would be in vain
+to attempt to explain this curious and rather elaborate caricature.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 112. An Irishman._]
+
+Similar attempts at caricature, though less direct and elaborate, are
+found in others of our national records. One of these, pointed out to
+me by an excellent and respected friend, the Rev. Lambert B. Larking,
+is peculiarly interesting, as well as amusing. It belongs to the
+Treasury of the Exchequer, and consists of two volumes of vellum called
+Liber A and Liber B, forming a register of treaties, marriages, and
+similar documents of the reign of Edward I., which have been very fully
+used by Rymer. The clerk who was employed in writing it, seems to have
+been, like many of these official clerks, somewhat of a wag, and he
+has amused himself by drawing in the margin figures of the inhabitants
+of the provinces of Edward's crown to which the documents referred.
+Some of these are evidently designed for caricature. Thus, the figure
+given in our cut No. 112 was intended to represent an Irishman. One
+trait, at least, in this caricature is well known from the description
+given by Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks with a sort of horror of the
+formidable axes which the Irish were accustomed to carry about with
+them. In treating of the manner in which Ireland ought to be governed
+when it had been entirely reduced to subjection, he recommends that,
+"in the meantime, they ought not to be allowed in time of peace, on
+any pretence or in any place, to use that detestable instrument of
+destruction, which, by an ancient but accursed custom, they constantly
+carry in their hands instead of a staff." In a chapter of his
+"Topography of Ireland," Giraldus treats of this "ancient and wicked
+custom" of always carrying in their hand an axe, instead of a staff,
+to the danger of all persons who had any relations with them. Another
+Irishman, from a drawing in the same manuscript, given in our cut No.
+113, carries his axe in the same threatening attitude. The costume of
+these figures answers with sufficient accuracy to the description given
+by Giraldus Cambrensis. The drawings exhibit more exactly than that
+writer's description the "small close-fitting hoods, hanging a cubit's
+length (half-a-yard) below the shoulders," which, he tells us, they
+were accustomed to wear. This small hood, with the flat cap attached to
+it, is shown better perhaps in the second figure than in the first. The
+"breeches and hose of one piece, or hose and breeches joined together,"
+are also exhibited here very distinctly, and appear to be tied over
+the heel, but the feet are clearly naked, and evidently the use of the
+"brogues" was not yet general among the Irish of the thirteenth century.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 113. Another Irishman._]
+
+If the Welshman of this period was somewhat more scantily clothed
+than the Irishman, he had the advantage of him, to judge by this
+manuscript, in wearing at least one shoe. Our cut No. 114, taken from
+it, represents a Welshman armed with bow and arrow, whose clothing
+consists apparently only of a plain tunic and a light mantle. This
+is quite in accordance with the description by Giraldus Cambrensis,
+who tells us that in all seasons their dress was the same, and that,
+however severe the weather, "they defended themselves from the cold
+only by a thin cloak and tunic." Giraldus says nothing of the practice
+of the Welsh in wearing but one shoe, yet it is evident that at the
+time of this record that was their practice, for in another figure of
+a Welshman, given in our cut No. 115, we see the same peculiarity,
+and in both cases the shoe is worn on the left foot. Giraldus merely
+says that the Welshmen in general, when engaged in warfare, "either
+walked bare-footed, or made use of high shoes, roughly made of untanned
+leather." He describes them as armed sometimes with bows and arrows,
+and sometimes with long spears; and accordingly our first example of
+a Welshman from this manuscript is using the bow, while the second
+carries the spear, which he apparently rests on the single shoe of
+his left foot, while he brandishes a sword in his left hand. Both our
+Welshmen present a singularly grotesque appearance.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 114. A Welsh Archer._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 115. A Welshman with his Spear._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 116. A Gascon at his Vine._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 117. The Wine Manufacturer._]
+
+The Gascon is represented with more peaceful attributes. Gascony was
+the country of vineyards, from whence we drew our great supply of
+wines, a very important article of consumption in the middle ages.
+When the official clerk who wrote this manuscript came to documents
+relating to Gascony, his thoughts wandered naturally enough to its
+rich vineyards and the wine they supplied so plentifully, and to
+which, according to old reports, clerks seldom showed any dislike, and
+accordingly, in the sketch, which we copy in our cut No. 116, we have
+a Gascon occupied diligently in pruning his vine-tree. He, at least,
+wears two shoes, though his clothing is of the lightest description. He
+is perhaps the _vinitor_ of the mediæval documents on this subject, a
+serf attached to the vineyard. Our second sketch, cut No. 117, presents
+a more enlarged scene, and introduces us to the whole process of making
+wine. First we see a man better clothed, with shoes (or boots) of much
+superior make, and a hat on his head, carrying away the grapes from
+the vineyard to the place where another man, with no clothing at all,
+is treading out the juice in a large vat. This is still in some of the
+wine countries the common method of extracting the juice from the
+grape. Further to the left is the large cask in which the juice is put
+when turned into wine.
+
+Satires on the people of particular localities were not uncommon
+during the middle ages, because local rivalries and consequent local
+feuds prevailed everywhere. The records of such feuds were naturally
+of a temporary character, and perished when the feuds and rivalries
+themselves ceased to exist, but a few curious satires of this kind have
+been preserved. A monk of Peterborough, who lived late in the twelfth
+or early in the thirteenth century, and for some reason or other
+nourished an unfriendly feeling to the people of Norfolk, gave vent
+to his hostility in a short Latin poem in what we may call goliardic
+verse. He begins by abusing the county itself, which, he says, was as
+bad and unfruitful as its inhabitants were vile; and he suggests that
+the evil one, when he fled from the anger of the Almighty, had passed
+through it and left his pollution upon it. Among other anecdotes of
+the simplicity and folly of the people of this county, which closely
+resemble the stories of the wise men of Gotham of a later date, he
+informs us that one day the peasantry of one district were so grieved
+by the oppressions of their feudal lord, that they subscribed together
+and bought their freedom, which he secured to them by formal deed,
+ratified with a ponderous seal. They adjourned to the tavern, and
+celebrated their deliverance by feasting and drinking until night came
+on, and then, for want of a candle, they agreed to burn the wax of the
+seal. Next day their former lord, informed of what had taken place,
+brought them before a court, where the deed was judged to be void for
+want of the seal, and they lost all their money, were reduced to their
+old position of slavery, and treated worse than ever. Other stories,
+still more ridiculous, are told of these old Norfolkians, but few of
+them are worth repeating. Another monk, apparently, who calls himself
+John de St. Omer, took up the cudgels for the people of Norfolk,
+and replied to the Peterborough satirist in similar language.[59] I
+have printed in another collection,[60] a satirical poem against
+the people of a place called Stockton (perhaps Stockton-on-Tees in
+Durham), by the monk of a monastic house, of which they were serfs.
+It appeared that they had risen against the tyranny of their lord,
+but had been unsuccessful in defending their cause in a court of law,
+and the ecclesiastical satirist exults over their defeat in a very
+uncharitable tone. There will be found in the "Reliquæ Antiquæ,"[61]
+a very curious satire in Latin prose directed against the inhabitants
+of Rochester, although it is in truth aimed against Englishmen in
+general, and is entitled in the manuscript, which is of the fourteenth
+century, "Proprietates Anglicorum" (the Peculiarities of Englishmen).
+In the first place, we are told, that the people of Rochester had
+tails, and the question is discussed, very scholastically, what
+species of animals these Rocestrians were. We are then told that the
+cause of their deformity arose from the insolent manner in which
+they treated St. Augustine, when he came to preach the Gospel to the
+heathen English. After visiting many parts of England, the saint came
+to Rochester, where the people, instead of listening to him, hooted
+at him through the streets, and, in derision, attached tails of pigs
+and calves to his vestments, and so turned him out of the city. The
+vengeance of Heaven came upon them, and all who inhabited the city and
+the country round it, and their descendants after them, were condemned
+to bear tails exactly like those of pigs. This story of the tails
+was not an invention of the author of the satire, but was a popular
+legend connected with the history of St. Augustine's preaching, though
+the scene of the legend was laid in Dorsetshire. The writer of this
+singular composition goes on to describe the people of Rochester as
+seducers of other people, as men without gratitude, and as traitors.
+He proceeds to show that Rochester being situated in England, its
+vices had tainted the whole nation, and he illustrates the baseness of
+the English character by a number of anecdotes of worse than doubtful
+authenticity. It is, in fact, a satire on the English composed in
+France, and leads us into the domains of political satire.
+
+ [59] Both these poems are printed in my "Early Mysteries, and other
+      Latin Poems of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries." 8vo.,
+      London, 1838.
+
+ [60] "Anecdota Literaria," p. 49.
+
+ [61] "Reliquæ Antiquæ," vol. ii. p. 230.
+
+Political satire in the middle ages appeared chiefly in the form of
+poetry and song, and it was especially in England that it flourished,
+a sure sign that there was in our country a more advanced feeling of
+popular independence, and greater freedom of speech, than in France or
+Germany.[62] M. Leroux de Lincy, who undertook to make a collection
+of this poetry for France, found so little during the mediæval period
+that came under the character of political, that he was obliged to
+substitute the word "historical" in the title of his book.[63] Where
+feudalism was supreme, indeed, the songs which arose out of private
+or public strife, which then were almost inseparable from society,
+contained no political sentiment, but consisted chiefly of personal
+attacks on the opponents of those who employed them. Such are the four
+short songs written in the time of the revolt of the French during
+the minority of St. Louis, which commenced in 1226; they are all of a
+political character which M. Leroux de Lincy has been able to collect
+previous to the year 1270, and they consist merely of personal taunts
+against the courtiers by the dissatisfied barons who were out of power.
+We trace a similar feeling in some of the popular records of our
+baronial wars of the reign of Henry III., especially in a song, in the
+baronial language (Anglo-Norman), preserved in a small roll of vellum,
+which appears to have belonged to the minstrel who chanted it in the
+halls of the partisans of Simon de Montfort. The fragment which remains
+consists of stanzas in praise of the leaders of the popular party, and
+in reproach of their opponents. Thus of Roger de Clifford, one of earl
+Simon's friends, we are told that "the good Roger de Clifford behaved
+like a noble baron, and exercised great justice; he suffered none,
+either small or great, or secretly or openly, to do any wrong."
+
+              _Et de Cliffort ly bon Roger
+              Se contint cum noble ber,
+                    Si fu de grant justice;
+              Ne suffri pas petit ne grant,
+              Ne arère ne par devant,
+                    Fere nul mesprise._
+
+On the other hand, one of Montfort's opponents, the bishop of Hereford,
+is treated rather contemptuously. We are told that he "learnt well that
+the earl was strong when he took the matter in hand; before that he
+(the bishop) was very fierce, and thought to eat up all the English;
+but now he is reduced to straits."
+
+              _Ly eveske de Herefort
+              Sout bien que ly quens fu fort,
+                    Kant il prist l'affère;
+              Devant ce esteit mult fer,
+              Les Englais quida touz manger,
+                    Mès ore ne set que fere._
+
+This bishop was Peter de Aigueblanche, one of the foreign favourites,
+who had been intruded into the see of Hereford, to the exclusion of
+a better man, and had been an oppressor of those who were under his
+rule. The barons seized him, threw him into prison, and plundered his
+possessions, and at the time this song was written, he was suffering
+under the imprisonment which appears to have shortened his life.
+
+ [62] I have published from the original manuscripts the mass of the
+      political poetry composed in England during the middle ages in my
+      three volumes--"The Political Songs of England, from the Reign
+      of John to that of Edward II." 4to., London, 1839 (issued by
+      the Camden Society); and "Political Poems and Songs relating to
+      English History, composed during the Period from the Accession of
+      Edward III. to that of Richard III." 8vo., vol i., London, 1859;
+      vol. ii., 1861 (published by the Treasury, under the direction of
+      the Master of the Rolls.)
+
+ [63] "Receuil de Chants Historiques Français depuis le xii^e. jusqu'au
+      xviii^e. Siècle, par Leroux de Lincy.... Première Série, xii^e.,
+      xiii^e., xiv^e, et xv^e., Siècles." 8vo., Paris, 1841.
+
+The universities and the clerical body in general were deeply involved
+in these political movements of the thirteenth century; and our
+earliest political songs now known are composed in Latin, and in that
+form and style of verse which seems to have been peculiar to the
+goliards, and which I venture to call goliardic. Such is a song against
+the three bishops who supported king John in his quarrel with the
+pope about the presentation to the see of Canterbury, printed in my
+Political Songs. Such, too, is the song of the Welsh, and one or two
+others, in the same volume. And such, above all, is that remarkable
+Latin poem in which a partisan of the barons, immediately after the
+victory at Lewes, set forth the political tenets of his party, and gave
+the principles of English liberty nearly the same broad basis on which
+they stand at the present. It is an evidence of the extent to which
+these principles were now acknowledged, that in this great baronial
+struggle our political songs began to be written in the English
+language, an acknowledgment that they concerned the whole English
+public.
+
+We trace little of this class of literature during the reign of Edward
+I.; but, when the popular feelings became turbulent again under the
+reign of his son and successor, political songs became more abundant,
+and their satire was directed more even than formerly against measures
+and principles, and was less an instrument of mere personal abuse. One
+satirical poem of this period, which I had printed from an imperfect
+copy in a manuscript at Edinburgh, but of which a more complete copy
+was subsequently found in a manuscript in the library of St. Peter's
+College, Cambridge,[64] is extremely curious as being the earliest
+satire of this kind written in English that we possess. It appears to
+have been written in the year 1320. The writer of this poem begins by
+telling us that his object is to explain the cause of the war, ruin,
+and manslaughter which then prevailed throughout the land, and why
+the poor were suffering from hunger and want, the cattle perished in
+the field, and the corn was dear. These he ascribes to the increasing
+wickedness of all orders of society. To begin with the church, Rome
+was the head of all corruptions, at the papal court false-hood and
+treachery only reigned, and the door of the pope's palace was shut
+against truth. During the twelfth and following centuries these
+complaints, in terms more or less forcible, against the corruptions of
+Rome, are continually repeated, and show that the evil must have been
+one under which everybody felt oppressed. The old charge of Romish
+simony is repeated in this poem in very strong terms. "The clerk's
+voice shall be little heard at the court of Rome, were he ever so good,
+unless he bring silver with him; though he were the holiest man that
+ever was born, unless he bring gold or silver, all his time and anxiety
+are lost. Alas! why love they so much that which is perishable?"
+
+    _Voys of clerk shall lytyl be heard at the court of Rome,
+    Were he never so gode a clerk, without silver and he come;
+    Though he were the holyst man that ever yet was ibore,
+    But he bryng gold or sylver, al hys while is forlore
+                              And his thowght.
+    Allas! whi love thei that so much that schal turne to nowght?_
+
+ [64] "A Poem on the Times of Edward III., from a MS. preserved in the
+      Library of St. Peter's College, Cambridge." Edited by the Rev.
+      C. Hardwick. 8vo. London, 1849. (One of the publications of the
+      Percy Society.)
+
+When, on the contrary, a wicked man presented himself at the pope's
+court, he had only to carry plenty of money thither, and all went well
+with him. According to our satirist, the bishops were "fools," and the
+other dignitaries and officials of the church were influenced chiefly
+by the love of money and self-indulgence. The parson began humbly, when
+he first obtained his benefice, but no sooner had he gathered money
+together, than he took "a wenche" to live with him as his wife, and
+rode a hunting with hawks and hounds like a gentleman. The priests were
+men with no learning, who preached by rote what they neither understood
+nor appreciated. "Truely," he says, "it fares by our unlearned priests
+as by a jay in a cage, who curses himself: he speaks good English, but
+he knows not what it means. No more does an unlearned priest know his
+gospel that he reads daily. An unlearned priest, then, is no better
+than a jay."
+
+        _Certes at so hyt fareth by a prest that is lewed,
+        As by a jay in a cage that hymself hath beshrewed:
+        Gode Englysh he speketh, but he not never what.
+        No more wot a lewed prest hys gospel wat he rat
+                            By day.
+        Than is a lewed prest no better than a jay._
+
+Abbots and priors were remarkable chiefly for their pride and luxury,
+and the monks naturally followed their examples. Thus was religion
+debased everywhere. The character of the physician is treated with
+equal severity, and his various tricks to obtain money are amusingly
+described. In this manner the songster presents to view the failings of
+the various orders of lay society also, the selfishness and oppressive
+bearing of the knights and aristocracy, and their extravagance in
+dress and living, the neglect of justice, the ill-management of the
+wars, the weight of taxation, and all the other evils which then
+afflicted the state. This poem marks a period in our social history,
+and led the way to that larger work of the same character, which
+came about thirty years later, the well-known "Visions of Piers
+Ploughman,"[65] one of the most remarkable satires, as well as one of
+the most remarkable poems, in the English language.
+
+We will do no more than glance at the further progress of political
+satire which had now taken a permanent footing in English literature.
+We see less of it during the reign of Edward III., the greater part of
+which was occupied with foreign wars and triumphs, but there appeared
+towards the close of his reign, a very remarkable satire, which I have
+printed in my "Political Poems and Songs." It is written in Latin, and
+consists of a pretended prophecy in verse by an inspired monk named
+John of Bridlington, with a mock commentary in prose--in fact, a parody
+on the commentaries in which the scholastics of that age displayed
+their learning, but in this case the commentary contains a bold though
+to us rather obscure criticism on the whole policy of Edward's reign.
+The reign of Richard II. was convulsed by the great struggle for
+religious reform, by the insurrections of the lower orders, and by
+the ambition and feuds of the nobles, and produced a vast quantity of
+political and religious satire, both in prose and verse, but especially
+the latter. We must not overlook our great poet Chaucer, as one of the
+powerful satirists of this period. Political song next makes itself
+heard loudly in the wars of the Roses. It was the last struggle of
+feudalism in England, and the character of the song had fallen back
+to its earlier characteristics, in which all patriotic feelings were
+abandoned to make place for personal hatred.
+
+ [65] "The Vision and the Creed of Piers Ploughman;" with Notes and a
+      Glossary by Thomas Wright. 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1842. Second and
+      revised edition, 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1856.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+  MINSTRELSY A SUBJECT OF BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE.--CHARACTER
+     OF THE MINSTRELS.--THEIR JOKES UPON THEMSELVES AND UPON ONE
+     ANOTHER.--VARIOUS MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS REPRESENTED IN THE
+     SCULPTURES OF THE MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS.--SIR MATTHEW GOURNAY AND THE
+     KING OF PORTUGAL.--DISCREDIT OF THE TABOR AND BAGPIPES.--MERMAIDS.
+
+
+One of the principal classes of the satirists of the middle ages, the
+minstrels, or jougleurs, were far from being unamenable to satire
+themselves. They belonged generally to a low class of the population,
+one that was hardly acknowledged by the law, which merely administered
+to the pleasures and amusements of others, and, though sometimes
+liberally rewarded, they were objects rather of contempt than of
+respect. Of course there were minstrels belonging to a class more
+respectable than the others, but these were comparatively few; and the
+ordinary minstrel seems to have been simply an unprincipled vagabond,
+who hardly possessed any settled resting-place, who wandered about from
+place to place, and was not too nice as to the means by which he gained
+his living--perhaps fairly represented by the street minstrel, or
+mountebank, of the present day. One of his talents was that of mocking
+and ridiculing others, and it is not to be wondered at, therefore, if
+he sometimes became an object of mockery and ridicule himself. One of
+the well-known minstrels of the thirteenth century, Rutebeuf, was, like
+many of his fellows, a poet also, and he has left several short pieces
+of verse descriptive of himself and of his own mode of life. In one
+of these he complains of his poverty, and tells us that the world had
+in his time--the reign of St. Louis--become so degenerate, that few
+people gave anything to the unfortunate minstrel. According to his own
+account, he was without food, and in a fair way towards starvation,
+exposed to the cold without sufficient clothing, and with nothing but
+straw for his bed.
+
+        _Je touz de froit, de fain baaille,
+        Dont je suis mors et maubailliz,
+        Je suis sanz coutes et sans liz;
+        N'a si povre jusqu'à Senliz.
+        Sire, si ne sai quel part aille;
+        Mes costeiz connoit le pailliz,
+        Et liz de paille n'est pas liz,
+        Et en mon lit n'a fors la paille._
+                          --Œuvres de Rutebeuf, vol. i. p. 3.
+
+In another poem, Rutebeuf laments that he has rendered his condition
+still more miserable by marrying, when he had not wherewith to keep
+a wife and family. In a third, he complains that in the midst of his
+poverty, his wife has brought him a child to increase his domestic
+expenses, while his horse, on which he was accustomed to travel to
+places where he might exercise his profession, had broken its leg, and
+his nurse was dunning him for money. In addition to all these causes of
+grief, he had lost the use of one of his eyes.
+
+              _Or a d'enfant géu ma fame;
+              Mon cheval a brisié la jame
+                    A une lice;
+              Or veut de l'argent ma norrice,
+              Qui m'en destraint et me pélice,
+                  For l'enfant pestre._
+
+Throughout his complaint, although he laments over the decline of
+liberality among his contemporaries, he nevertheless turns his poverty
+into a joke. In several other pieces of verse he speaks in the same
+way, half joking and half lamenting over his condition, and he does not
+conceal that the love of gambling was one of the causes of it. "The
+dice," he says, "have stripped me entirely of my robe; the dice watch
+and spy me; it is these which kill me; they assault and ruin me, to my
+grief."
+
+              _Li dé que li détier ont fet,
+              M'ont de ma robe tout desfet;
+                    Li dé m'ocient.
+              Li dé m'aguetent et espient;
+              Li dé m'assaillent et dessient,
+                    Ce poise moi._--Ib., vol. i. p. 27.
+
+And elsewhere he intimates that what the minstrels sometimes gained
+from the lavish generosity of their hearers, soon passed away at the
+tavern in dice and drinking.
+
+One of Rutebeuf's contemporaries in the same profession, Colin Muset,
+indulges in similar complaints, and speaks bitterly of the want of
+generosity displayed by the great barons of his time. In addressing one
+of them who had treated him ungenerously, he says, "Sir Count, I have
+fiddled before you in your hostel, and you neither gave me a gift, nor
+paid me my wages. It is discreditable behaviour. By the duty I owe to
+St. Mary, I cannot continue in your service at this rate. My purse is
+ill furnished, and my wallet is empty."
+
+              _Sire quens, j'ai vielé
+              Devant vos en vostre ostel;
+              Si ne m'avez riens donné,
+              Ne mes gages acquitez,
+                  C'est vilanie.
+              Foi que doi sainte Marie,
+              Ensi ne vos sieurré-je mie.
+              M'aumosnière est mal garnie,
+              Et ma male mal farsie._
+
+He proceeds to state that when he went home to his wife (for Colin
+Muset also was a married minstrel), he was ill received if his purse
+and wallet were empty; but it was very different when they were full.
+His wife then sprang forward and threw her arms round his neck; she
+took his wallet from his horse with alacrity, while his lad conducted
+the animal cheerfully to the stable, and his maiden killed a couple of
+capons, and prepared them with piquant sauce. His daughter brought a
+comb for his hair. "Then," he exclaims, "I am master in my own house."
+
+              _Ma fame va destroser
+              Ma male sans demorer;
+              Mon garçon va abuvrer
+              Men cheval et conreer;
+              Ma pucele va tuer
+                  Deux chapons por deporter
+              A la sause aillie.
+              Ma fille m'aporte un pigne
+              En sa main par cortoisie.
+              Lors sui de mon ostel sire._
+
+When the minstrels could thus joke upon themselves, we need not be
+surprised if they satirised one another. In a poem of the thirteenth
+century, entitled "Les deux Troveors Ribauz," two minstrels are
+introduced on the stage abusing and insulting one another, and while
+indulging in mutual accusations of ignorance in their art, they display
+their ignorance at the same time by misquoting the titles of the poems
+which they profess to be able to recite. One of them boasts of the
+variety of instruments on which he could perform:--
+
+              _Je suis jugleres de viele,
+              Si sai de muse et frestele,
+              Et de harpes et de chifonie,
+              De la gigue, de l'armonie,
+              De l'salteire, et en la rote
+              Sai-ge bien chanter une note._
+
+It appears, however, that among all these instruments, the viol, or
+fiddle, was the one most generally in use.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 118. A Charming Fiddler._]
+
+The mediæval monuments of art abound with burlesques and satires on the
+minstrels, whose instruments of music are placed in the hands sometimes
+of monsters, and at others in those of animals of a not very refined
+character. Our cut No. 118 is taken from a manuscript in the British
+Museum (MS. Cotton, Domitian A. ii.), and represents a female minstrel
+playing on the fiddle; she has the upper part of a lady, and the lower
+parts of a mare, a combination which appears to have been rather
+familiar to the imagination of the mediæval artists. In our cut No.
+119, which is taken from a copy made by Carter of one of the misereres
+in Ely Cathedral, it is not quite clear whether the performer on the
+fiddle be a monster or merely a cripple; but perhaps the latter was
+intended. The instrument, too, assumes a rather singular form. Our cut
+No. 120, also taken from Carter, was furnished by a sculpture in the
+church of St. John, at Cirencester, and represents a man performing on
+an instrument rather closely resembling the modern hurdy-gurdy, which
+is evidently played by turning a handle, and the music is produced by
+striking wires or strings inside. The face is evidently intended to be
+that of a jovial companion.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 119. A Crippled Minstrel._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 120. The Hurdy-Gurdy._]
+
+Gluttony was an especial characteristic of that class of society to
+which the minstrel belonged, and perhaps this was the idea intended to
+be conveyed in the next picture, No. 121, taken from one of the stalls
+in Winchester Cathedral, in which a pig is performing on the fiddle,
+and appears to be accompanied by a juvenile of the same species of
+animal. One of the same stalls, copied in our cut No. 122, represents
+a sow performing on another sort of musical instrument, which is not
+at all uncommon in mediæval delineations. It is the double pipe or
+flute, which was evidently borrowed from the ancients. Minstrelsy was
+the usual accompaniment of the mediæval meal, and perhaps this picture
+is intended to be a burlesque on that circumstance, as the mother is
+playing to her brood while they are feeding. They all seem to listen
+quietly, except one, who is evidently much more affected by the music
+than his companions. The same instrument is placed in the hands of a
+rather jolly-looking female in one of the sculptures of St. John's
+Church in Cirencester, copied in our cut No. 123.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 121. A Swinish Minstrel._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 122. A Musical Mother._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 123. The Double Flute._]
+
+Although this instrument is rather frequently represented in mediæval
+works of art, we have no account of or allusion to it in mediæval
+writers; and perhaps it was not held in very high estimation, and was
+used only by a low class of performers. As in many other things, the
+employment of particular musical instruments was guided, no doubt, by
+fashion, new ones coming in as old ones went out. Such was the case
+with the instrument which is named in one of the above extracts, and
+in some other mediæval writers, a _chiffonie_, and which has been
+supposed to be the dulcimer, that had fallen into discredit in the
+fourteenth century. This instrument is introduced in a story which is
+found in Cuvelier's metrical history of the celebrated warrior Bertrand
+du Gueselin. In the course of the war for the expulsion of Pedro the
+Cruel from the throne of Castile, an English knight, Sir Matthew
+Gournay, was sent as a special ambassador to the court of Portugal. The
+Portuguese monarch had in his service two minstrels whose performances
+he vaunted greatly, and on whom he let great store, and he insisted
+on their performing in the presence of the new ambassador. It turned
+out that they played on the instrument just mentioned, and Sir Matthew
+Gournay could not refrain from laughing at the performance. When the
+king pressed him to give his opinion, he said, with more regard for
+truth than politeness, "in France and Normandy, the instruments your
+minstrels play upon are regarded with contempt, and are only in use
+among beggars and blind people, so that they are popularly called
+beggar's instruments." The king, we are told, took great offence at the
+bluntness of his English guest.
+
+The fiddle itself appears at this time to have been gradually sinking
+in credit, and the poets complained that a degraded taste for more
+vulgar musical instruments was introducing itself. Among these we
+may mention especially the pipe and tabor. The French antiquary,
+M. Jubinal, in a very valuable collection of early popular poetry,
+published under the title of "Jongleurs et Trouvères," has printed
+a curious poem of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, intended as
+a protest against the use of the tabor and the bagpipes, which he
+characterises as properly the musical instruments of the peasantry. Yet
+people then, he says, were becoming so besotted on such instruments,
+that they introduced them in places where better minstrelsy would be
+more suitable. The writer thinks that the introduction of so vulgar an
+instrument as the tabor into grand festivals could be looked upon in
+no other light than as one of the signs which might be expected to be
+the precursors of the coming of Antichrist. "If such people are to come
+to grand festivals as carry a bushel [_i.e._ a tabor made in the form
+of a bushel measure, on the end of which they beat], and make such a
+terrible noise, it would seem that Antichrist must now be being born;
+people ought to break the head of each of them with a staff."
+
+          _Déussent itiels genz venir à bele feste
+          Qui portent un boissel, qui mainent tel tempeste,
+          Il samble que Antecrist doie maintenant nestre;
+          L'en duroit d'un baston chascun brisier la teste._
+
+This satirist adds, as a proof of the contempt in which the Virgin Mary
+held such instruments, that she never loved a tabor, or consented to
+hear one, and that no tabor was introduced among the minstrelsy at her
+espousals. "The gentle mother of God," he says, "loved the sound of the
+fiddle," and he goes on to prove her partiality for that instrument by
+citing some of her miracles.
+
+          _Onques le mère Dieu, qui est virge honorée,
+          Et est avoec les angles hautement coronée,
+          N'ama onques tabour, ne point ne li agrée,
+          N'onques tabour n'i ot quant el fu espousée.
+          La douce mère Dieu ama son de viele._
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 124. The Tabor, or Drum._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 125. Bruin turned Piper._]
+
+The artist who carved the curious stalls in Henry VII.'s Chapel at
+Westminster, seems to have entered fully into the spirit displayed by
+this satirist, for in one of them, represented in our cut No. 124, he
+has introduced a masked demon playing on the tabor, with an expression
+apparently of derision. This tabor presents much the form of a bushel
+measure, or rather, perhaps, of a modern drum. It may be remarked that
+the drum is, in fact, the same instrument as the tabor, or, at least,
+is derived from it, and they were called by the same names, _tabor_
+or _tambour_. The English name _drum_, which has equivalents in the
+later forms of the Teutonic dialects, perhaps means simply something
+which makes a noise, and is not, as far as I know, met with before the
+sixteenth century. Another carving of the same series of stalls at
+Westminster, copied in our cut No. 125, represents a tame bear playing
+on the bagpipes. This is perhaps intended to be at the same time a
+satire on the instrument itself, and upon the strange exhibitions of
+animals domesticated and taught various singular performances, which
+were then so popular.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 126. Royal Minstrelsy._]
+
+In our cut No. 126 we come to the fiddle again, which long sustained
+its place in the highest rank of musical instruments. It is taken
+from one of the sculptures on the porch of the principal entrance to
+the Cathedral of Lyons in France, and represents a mermaid with her
+child, listening to the music of the fiddle. She wears a crown, and
+is intended, no doubt, to be one of the queens of the sea, and the
+introduction of the fiddle under such circumstances can leave no doubt
+how highly it was esteemed.
+
+The mermaid is a creature of the imagination, which appears to have
+been at all times a favourite object of poetry and legend. It holds
+an important place in the mediæval bestiaries, or popular treatises
+on natural history, and it has only been expelled from the domains of
+science at a comparatively recent date. It still retains its place in
+popular legends of our sea-coasts, and more especially in the remoter
+parts of our islands. The stories of the merrow, or Irish fairy, hold a
+prominent place among my late friend Crofton Croker's "Fairy Legends of
+the South of Ireland." The mermaid is also introduced not unfrequently
+in mediæval sculpture and carving. Our cut No. 127, representing a
+mermaid and a merman, is copied from one of the stalls of Winchester
+Cathedral. The usual attributes of the mermaid are a looking-glass and
+comb, by the aid of which she is dressing her hair; but here she holds
+the comb alone. Her companion, the male, holds a fish, which he appears
+to have just caught, in his hand.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 127. Mermaids._]
+
+While, after the fifteenth century the profession of the minstrel
+became entirely degraded, and he was looked upon more than ever as a
+rogue and vagabond, the fiddle accompanied him, and it long remained,
+as it still remains in Ireland, the favourite instrument of the
+peasantry. The blind fiddler, even at the present day, is not unknown
+in our rural districts. It has always been in England the favourite
+instrument of minstrelsy.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII.
+
+  THE COURT FOOL.--THE NORMANS AND THEIR GABS.--EARLY HISTORY OF COURT
+     FOOLS.--THEIR COSTUME.--CARVINGS IN THE CORNISH CHURCHES.--THE
+     BURLESQUE SOCIETIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.--THE FEASTS OF ASSES, AND
+     OF FOOLS.--THEIR LICENCE.--THE LEADEN MONEY OF THE FOOLS.--THE
+     BISHOP'S BLESSING.
+
+
+From the employment of minstrels attached to the family, probably arose
+another and well-known character of later times, the court fool, who
+took the place of satirist in the great households. I do not consider
+what we understand by the court fool to be a character of any great
+antiquity.
+
+It is somewhat doubtful whether what we call a jest, was really
+appreciated in the middle ages. Puns seem to have been considered
+as elegant figures of speech in literary composition, and we rarely
+meet with anything like a quick and clever repartee. In the earlier
+ages, when a party of warriors would be merry, their mirth appears
+to have consisted usually in ridiculous boasts, or in rude remarks,
+or in sneers at enemies or opponents. These jests were termed by the
+French and Normans _gabs_ (_gabæ_, in mediæval Latin), a word supposed
+to have been derived from the classical Latin word _cavilla_, a mock
+or taunt; and a short poem in Anglo-Norman has been preserved which
+furnishes a curious illustration of the meaning attached to it in the
+twelfth century. This poem relates how Charlemagne, piqued by the
+taunts of his empress on the superiority of Hugh the Great, emperor
+of Constantinople, went to Constantinople, accompanied by his _douze
+pairs_ and a thousand knights, to verify the truth of his wife's story.
+They proceeded first to Jerusalem, where, when Charlemagne and his
+twelve peers entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they looked so
+handsome and majestic, that they were taken at first for Christ and
+his twelve apostles, but the mystery was soon cleared up, and they were
+treated by the patriarch with great hospitality during four months.
+They then continued their progress till they reached Constantinople,
+where they were equally well received by the emperor Hugo. At night
+the emperor placed his guests in a chamber furnished with thirteen
+splendid beds, one in the middle of the room, and the other twelve
+distributed around it, and illuminated by a large carbuncle, which gave
+a light as bright as that of day. When Hugh left them in their quarters
+for the night, he lent them wine and whatever was necessary to make
+them comfortable; and, when alone, they proceeded to amuse themselves
+with _gabs_, or jokes, each being expected to say his joke in his
+turn. Charlemagne took the lead, and boasted that if the emperor Hugh
+would place before him his strongest "bachelor," in full armour, and
+mounted on his good steed, he would, with one blow of his sword, cut
+him through from the head downwards, and through the saddle and horse,
+and that the sword should, after all this, sink into the ground to the
+handle. Charlemagne then called upon Roland for his _gab_, who boasted
+that his breath was so strong, that if the emperor Hugh would lend him
+his horn, he would take it out into the fields and blow it with such
+force, that the wind and noise of it would shake down the whole city of
+Constantinople. Oliver, whose turn came next, boasted of exploits of
+another description if he were left alone with the beautiful princess,
+Hugh's daughter. The rest of the peers indulged in similar boasts, and
+when the _gabs_ had gone round, they went to sleep. Now the emperor of
+Constantinople had very cunningly, and rather treacherously, made a
+hole through the wall, by which all that passed inside could be seen
+and heard, and he had placed a spy on the outside, who gave a full
+account of the conversation of the distinguished guests to his imperial
+master. Next morning Hugh called his guests before him, told them what
+he had heard by his spy, and declared that each of them should perform
+his boast, or, if he failed, be put to death. Charlemagne expostulated,
+and represented that it was the custom in France when people retired
+for the night to amuse themselves in that manner. "Such is the custom
+in France," he said, "at Paris, and at Chartres, when the French are
+in bed they amuse themselves and make jokes, and say things both of
+wisdom and of folly."
+
+        _Si est tel custume en France, à Paris e à Cartres,
+        Quand Franceis sunt culchiez, que se giuunt e gabent,
+        E si dient ambure e saver e folage._
+
+But Charlemagne expostulated in vain, and they were only saved from the
+consequence of their imprudence by the intervention of so many miracles
+from above.[66]
+
+ [66] "Charlemagne, an Anglo-Norman Poem of the Twelfth Century, now
+      first published, by Francisque Michel," 12mo., 8vo., London, 1836.
+
+In such trials of skill as this, an individual must continually have
+arisen who excelled in some at least of the qualities needful for
+raising mirth and making him a good companion, by showing himself more
+brilliant in wit, or more biting in sarcasms, or more impudent in his
+jokes, and he would thus become the favourite mirth-maker of the court,
+the boon companion of the chieftain and his followers in their hours of
+relaxation. We find such an individual not unusually introduced in the
+early romances and in the mythology of nations, and he sometimes unites
+the character of court orator with the other. Such a personage was the
+Sir Kay of the cycle of the romances of king Arthur. I have remarked
+in a former chapter that Hunferth, in the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf,
+is described as holding a somewhat similar position at the court of
+king Hrothgar. To go farther back in the mythology of our forefathers,
+the Loki of Scandinavian fable appears sometimes to have performed a
+similar character in the assembly of his fellow deities; and we know
+that, among the Greeks, Homer on one occasion introduces Vulcan acting
+the part of joker (γελωτοποιὸς) to the gods of Olympus. But all these
+have no relationship whatever to the court-fool of modern times.
+
+The German writer Flögel, in his "History of Court Fools,"[67] has
+thrown this subject into much confusion by introducing a great mass
+of irrelevant matter; and those who have since compiled from Flögel,
+have made the confusion still greater. Much of this confusion has
+arisen from the misunderstanding and confounding of names and terms.
+The mimus, the joculator, the ministrel, or whatever name this class
+of society went by, was not in any respects identical with what we
+understand by a court fool, nor does any such character as the latter
+appear in the feudal household before the fourteenth century, as
+far as we are acquainted with the social manners and customs of the
+olden time. The vast extent of the early French _romans de geste_, or
+Carlovingian romances, which are filled with pictures of courts both of
+princes and barons, in which the court fool must have been introduced
+had he been known at the time they were composed, that is, in the
+twelfth and thirteenth centuries, contains, I believe, no trace of such
+personage; and the same may be said of the numerous other romances,
+fabliaux, and in fact all the literature of that period, one so rich in
+works illustrative of contemporary manners in their most minute detail.
+From these facts I conclude that the single brief charter published
+by M. Rigollot from a manuscript in the Imperial Library in Paris,
+is either misunderstood or it presents a very exceptional case. By
+this charter, John, king of England, grants to his _follus_, William
+Picol, or Piculph (as he is called at the close of the document), an
+estate in Normandy named in the document Fons Ossanæ (Menil-Ozenne in
+Mortain), with all its appurtenances, "to have and to hold, to him and
+to his heirs, by doing there-for to us once a year the service of one
+_follus_, as long as he lives; and after his death his heirs shall
+hold it of us, by the service of one pair of gilt spurs to be rendered
+annually to us."[68] The service (_servitium_) here enjoined means the
+annual payment of the obligation of the feudal tenure, and therefore
+if _follus_ is to be taken as signifying "a fool," it only means that
+Picol was to perform that character on one occasion in the course of
+the year. In this case, he may have been some fool whom king John had
+taken into his special favour; but it certainly is no proof that the
+practice of keeping court fools then existed. It is not improbable
+that this practice was first introduced in Germany, for Flögel speaks,
+though rather doubtfully, of one who was kept at the court of the
+emperor Rudolph I. (of Hapsburg), whose reign lasted from 1273 to 1292.
+It is more certain, however, that the kings of France possessed court
+fools before the middle of the fourteenth century, and from this time
+anecdotes relating to them begin to be common. One of the earliest
+and most curious of these anecdotes, if it be true, relates to the
+celebrated victory of Sluys gained over the French fleet by our king
+Edward III. in the year 1340. It is said that no one dared to announce
+this disaster to the French king, Philippe VI., until a court fool
+undertook the task. Entering the king's chamber, he continued muttering
+to himself, but loud enough to be heard, "Those cowardly English! the
+chicken-hearted Britons!" "How so, cousin?" the king inquired. "Why,"
+replied the fool, "because they have not courage enough to jump into
+the sea, like your French soldiers, who went over headlong from their
+ships, leaving those to the enemy who showed no inclination to follow
+them." Philippe thus became aware of the full extent of his calamity.
+The institution of the court fool was carried to its greatest degree of
+perfection during the fifteenth century; it only expired in the age of
+Louis XIV.
+
+ [67] "Geschichte der Hofnarren, von Karl Friedrich Flögel," 8vo.
+      Liegnitz und Leipzig, 1789.
+
+ [68] The words of this charter, as given by Rigollot, are:--"Joannes,
+      D G., etc. Sciatis nos dedisse et præsenti charta confirmasse
+      Willelmo Picol, follo nostro, Fontem Ossanæ, cum omnibus
+      pertinenciis suis, habendum et tenendum sibi et hæredibus suis,
+      faciendo inde nobis annuatim servitium unius folli quoad vixerit;
+      et post ejus decessum hæredes sui eam tenebunt, et per servitium
+      unius paris calcarium deauratorum nobis annuatim reddendo.
+      Quare volumus et firmiter præcipimus quod prædictius Piculphus
+      et hæredes sui habeant et teneant in perpetuum, bene et in
+      pace, libere et quiete, prædictam terram."--Rigollot, Monnaies
+      inconnues des Evêques des Innocens, etc., 8vo., Paris, 1837.
+
+It was apparently with the court fool that the costume was introduced
+which has ever since been considered as the characteristic mark of
+folly. Some parts of this costume, at least, appear to have been
+borrowed from an earlier date. The _gelotopœi_ of the Greeks, and
+the _mimi_ and _moriones_ of the Romans, shaved their heads; but the
+court fools perhaps adopted this fashion as a satire upon the clergy
+and monks. Some writers professed to doubt whether the fools borrowed
+from the monks, or the monks from the fools; and Cornelius Agrippa,
+in his treatise on the Vanity of Sciences, remarks that the monks had
+their heads "all shaven like fools" (_raso toto capite ut fatui_).
+The cowl, also, was perhaps adopted in derision of the monks, but
+it was distinguished by the addition of a pair of asses' ears, or by
+a cock's head and comb, which formed its termination above, or by
+both. The court fool was also furnished with a staff or club, which
+became eventually his bauble. The bells were another necessary article
+in the equipment of a court fool, perhaps also intended as a satire
+on the custom of wearing small bells in the dress, which prevailed
+largely during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially among
+people who were fond of childish ostentation. The fool wore also a
+party-coloured, or motley, garment, probably with the same aim--that of
+satirising one of the ridiculous fashions of the fourteenth century.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 127a. Court Fools._]
+
+It is in the fifteenth century that we first meet with the fool in
+full costume in the illuminations or manuscripts, and towards the end
+of the century this costume appears continually in engravings. It is
+also met with at this time among the sculptures of buildings and the
+carvings of wood-work. The two very interesting examples given in our
+cut No. 127a are taken from carvings of the fifteenth century, in the
+church of St. Levan, in Cornwall, near the Land's End. They represent
+the court fool in two varieties of costume; in the first, the fool's
+cowl, or cap, ends in the cock's head; in the other, it is fitted with
+asses' ears. There are variations also in other parts of the dress;
+for the second only has bells to his sleeves, and the first carries
+a singularly formed staff, which may perhaps be intended for a strap
+or belt, with a buckle at the end; while the other has a ladle in
+his hand. As one possesses a beard, and presents marks of age in his
+countenance, while the other is beardless and youthful, we may consider
+the pair as an old fool and a young fool.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 128. A Fool and a Grimace-maker._]
+
+The Cornish churches are rather celebrated for their early carved
+wood-work, chiefly of the fifteenth century, of which two examples
+are given in our cut, No. 128, taken from bench pannels in the church
+of St. Mullion, on the Cornish coast, a little to the north of the
+Lizard Point. The first has bells hanging to the sleeves, and is no
+doubt intended to represent folly in some form; the other appears to be
+intended for the head of a woman making grimaces.[69]
+
+ [69] For the drawings of these interesting carvings from the Cornish
+      churches, I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. J. T. Blight, the
+      author of an extremely pleasing and useful guide to the beauties
+      of a well-known district of Cornwall, entitled "A Week at the
+      Land's End."
+
+The fool had long been a character among the people before he became a
+court fool, for Folly--or, as she was then called, "Mother Folly"--was
+one of the favourite objects of popular worship in the middle ages,
+and, where that worship sprang up spontaneously among the people,
+it grew with more energy, and presented more hearty joyousness and
+bolder satire than under the patronage of the great. Our forefathers
+in those times were accustomed to form themselves into associations or
+societies of a mirthful character, parodies of those of a more serious
+description, especially ecclesiastical, and elected as their officers
+mock popes, cardinals, archbishops and bishops, kings, &c. They held
+periodical festivals, riotous and licentious carnivals, which were
+admitted into the churches, and even taken under the especial patronage
+of the clergy, under such titles as "the feast of fools," "the feast of
+the ass," "the feast of the innocents," and the like. There was hardly
+a Continental town of any account which had not its "company of fools,"
+with its mock ordinances and mock ceremonies. In our own island we
+had our abbots of misrule and of unreason. At their public festivals
+satirical songs were sung and satirical masks and dresses were worn;
+and in many of them, especially at a later date, brief satirical dramas
+were acted. These satires assumed much of the functions of modern
+caricature; the caricature of the pictorial representations, which were
+mostly permanent monuments and destined for future generations, was
+naturally general in its character, but in the representations of which
+I am speaking, which were temporary, and designed to excite the mirth
+of the moment, it became personal, and, often, even political, and it
+was constantly directed against the ecclesiastical order. The scandal
+of the day furnished it with abundant materials. A fragment of one of
+their songs of an early date, sung at one of these "feasts" at Rouen,
+has been preserved, and contains the following lines, written in Latin
+and French:--
+
+              _De asino bono nostro,
+              Meliori et optimo,
+                      Debemus_ faire fête.
+              En revenant _de Gravinaria_,
+              Un gros chardon _reperit in via_,
+                      Il lui coupa la tête.
+
+              _Vir monachus in mense Julio
+              Egressus est e monasterio_,
+                      C'est dom de la Bucaille;
+              _Egressus est sine licentia_,
+              Pour aller voir dona Venissia,
+                      Et faire la ripaille.
+
+                   TRANSLATION.
+
+              _For our good ass,
+              The better and the best,
+                      We ought to rejoice.
+              In returning from Gravinière,
+              A great thistle he found in the way,
+                      He cut off its head._
+
+              _A monk in the month of July
+              Went out of his monastery,
+                      It is dom de la Bucaille;
+              He went out without license,
+              To pay a visit to the dame de Venisse,
+                      And make jovial cheer._
+
+It appears that De la Bucaille was the prior of the abbey of St.
+Taurin, at Rouen, and that the dame de Venisse was prioress of St.
+Saviour, and these lines, no doubt, commemorate some great scandal of
+the day relating to the private relations between these two individuals.
+
+These mock religious ceremonies are supposed to have been derived from
+the Roman Saturnalia; they were evidently of great antiquity in the
+mediæval church, and were most prevalent in France and Italy. Under the
+name of "the feast of the sub-deacons" they are forbidden by the acts
+of the council of Toledo, in 633; at a later period, the French punned
+on the word _sous-diacres_, and called them _Saouls-diacres_ (Drunken
+Deacons), words which had nearly the same sound. The "feast of the
+ass" is said to be traced back in France as far as the ninth century.
+It was celebrated in most of the great towns in that country, such as
+Rouen, Sens, Douai, &c., and the service for the occasion is actually
+preserved in some of the old church books. From this it appears that
+the ass was led in procession to a place in the middle of the church,
+which had been decked out to receive it, and that the procession was
+led by two clerks, who sung a Latin song in praise of the animal. This
+song commences by telling us how "the ass came from the east, handsome
+and very strong, and most fit for carrying burthens":--
+
+                    _Orientis partibus
+                    Adventavit asinus,
+                    Pulcher et fortissimus,
+                    Sarcinis aptissimus._
+
+The refrain or burthen of the song is in French, and exhorts the animal
+to join in the uproar--"Eh! sir ass, chant now, fair mouth, bray, you
+shall have hay enough, and oats in abundance:"--
+
+                    _Hez, sire asnes, car chantez,
+                    Belle bouche, rechignez,
+                    Vous aurez du foin assez,
+                    Et de l'avoine à plantez._
+
+In this tone the chant continues through nine similar stanzas,
+describing the mode of life and food of the ass. When the procession
+reached the altar, the priest began a service in prose. Beleth, one
+of the celebrated doctors of the university of Paris, who flourished
+in 1182, speaks of the "feast of fools" as in existence in his time;
+and the acts of the council of Paris, held in 1212, forbid the
+presence of archbishops and bishops, and more especially of monks and
+nuns, at the feasts of fools, "in which a staff was carried."[70] We
+know the proceedings of this latter festival rather minutely from
+the accounts given in the ecclesiastical censures. It was in the
+cathedral churches that they elected the archbishop or bishop of
+fools, whose election was confirmed, and he was consecrated, with a
+multitude of buffooneries. He then entered upon his pontifical duties
+wearing the mitre and carrying the crosier before the people, on whom
+he bestowed his solemn benediction. In the exempt churches, or those
+which depended immediately upon the Holy See, they elected a pope of
+fools (_unum papam fatuorum_), who wore similarly the ensigns of the
+papacy. These dignitaries were assisted by an equally burlesque and
+licentious clergy, who uttered and performed a mixture of follies and
+impieties during the church service of the day, which they attended in
+disguises and masquerade dresses. Some wore masks, or had their faces
+painted, and others were dressed in women's clothing, or in ridiculous
+costumes. On entering the choir, they danced and sang licentious songs.
+The deacons and sub-deacons ate black puddings and sausages on the
+altar while the priest was celebrating; others played at cards or dice
+under his eyes; and others threw bits of old leather into the censer
+in order to raise a disagreeable smell. After the mass was ended, the
+people broke out into all sorts of riotous behaviour in the church,
+leaping, dancing, and exhibiting themselves in indecent postures, and
+some went as far as to strip themselves naked, and in this condition
+they were drawn through the streets with tubs full of ordure and filth,
+which they threw about at the mob. Every now and then they halted,
+when they exhibited immodest postures and actions, accompanied with
+songs and speeches of the same character. Many of the laity took part
+in the procession, dressed as monks and nuns. These disorders seem to
+have been carried to their greatest degree of extravagance during the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[71]
+
+ [70] "A festis follorum ubi baculus accipitur omnino abstineatur....
+      Idem fortius monachis et monialibus prohibemus."
+
+ [71] On the subject of all these burlesques and popular feasts and
+      ceremonies, the reader may consult Flögel's "Geschichte des
+      Grotesk-Komischen," of which a new and enlarged edition has
+      recently been given by Dr. Friedrich W. Ebeling, 8vo., Leipzig,
+      1862. Much interesting information on the subject was collected
+      by Du Tilliot, in his "Memoires pour servir à l'Histoire de la
+      Fête des Fous," 8vo., Lausanne, 1751. See also Rigollot, in the
+      work quoted above, and a popular article on the same subject will
+      be found in my "Archæological Album."
+
+Towards the fifteenth century, lay societies, having apparently
+no connection with the clergy or the church, but of just the same
+burlesque character, arose in France. One of the earliest of these was
+formed by the clerks of the Bazoche, or lawyers' clerks of the Palais
+de Justice in Paris, whose president was a sort of king of misrule. The
+other principal society of this kind in Paris took the rather mirthful
+name of _Enfans sans Souci_ (Careless Boys); it consisted of young men
+of education, who gave to their president or chieftain the title of
+_Prince des Sots_ (the Prince of Fools). Both these societies composed
+and performed farces, and other small dramatic pieces. These farces
+were satires on contemporary society, and appear to have been often
+very personal.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 129. Money of the Archbishop of the Innocents._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 130. Money of the Pope of Fools._]
+
+Almost the only monuments of the older of these societies consist of
+coins, or tokens, struck in lead, and sometimes commemorating the
+names of their mock dignitaries. A considerable number of these have
+been found in France, and an account of them, with engravings, was
+published by Dr. Rigollot some years ago.[72] Our cut No. 129 will
+serve as an example. It represents a leaden token of the Archbishop of
+the Innocents of the parish of St. Firmin, at Amiens, and is curious
+as bearing a date. On one side the archbishop of the Innocents is
+represented in the act of giving his blessing to his flock, surrounded
+by the inscription, MONETA · ARCHIEPI · SCTI · FIRMINI. On the other
+side we have the name of the individual who that year held the office
+of archbishop, NICOLAVS · GAVDRAM · ARCHIEPVS · 1520, surrounding a
+group consisting of two men, one of whom is dressed as a fool, holding
+between them a bird, which has somewhat the appearance of a magpie.
+Our cut No. 130 is still more curious; it is a token of the _pope_ of
+fools. On one side appears the pope with his tiara and double cross,
+and a fool in full costume, who approaches his bauble to the pontifical
+cross. It is certainly a bitter caricature on the papacy, whether that
+were the intention or not. Two persons behind, dressed apparently in
+scholastic costume, seem to be merely spectators. The inscription is,
+MONETA · NOVA · ADRIANI · STVLTORV [M]· PAPE (the last E being in the
+field of the piece), "new money of Adrian, the pope of fools." The
+inscription on the other side of the token is one frequently repeated
+on these leaden medals, STVLTORV [M] · INFINITVS · EST · NVMERVS, "the
+number of fools is infinite." In the field we see Mother Folly holding
+up her bauble, and before her a grotesque figure in a cardinal's hat,
+apparently kneeling to her. It is rather surprising that we find so
+few allusions to these burlesque societies in the various classes
+of pictorial records from which the subject of these chapters has
+been illustrated; but we have evidence that they were not altogether
+overlooked. Until the latter end of the last century, the misereres of
+the church of St. Spire, at Corbeil, near Paris, were remarkable for
+the singular carvings with which they were decorated, and which have
+since been destroyed, but fortunately they were engraved by Millin.
+One of them, copied in our cut No. 131, evidently represents the bishop
+of fools conferring his blessing; the fool's bauble occupies the place
+of the pastoral staff.
+
+ [72] "Monnaies inconnues des Evêques des Innocens, des Fous," &c.,
+      Paris, 1837.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 131. The Bishop of Fools._]
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  THE DANCE OF DEATH.--THE PAINTINGS IN THE CHURCH OF LA CHAISE
+     DIEU.--THE REIGN OF FOLLY.--SEBASTIAN BRANDT; THE "SHIP
+     OF FOOLS."--DISTURBERS OF CHURCH SERVICE.--TROUBLESOME
+     BEGGARS.--GEILER'S SERMONS.--BADIUS, AND HIS SHIP OF FOOLISH
+     WOMEN.--THE PLEASURES OF SMELL.--ERASMUS; THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY."
+
+
+There is still one cycle of satire which almost belongs to the middle
+ages, though it only became developed at their close, and became most
+popular after they were past. There existed, at least as early as the
+beginning of the thirteenth century, a legendary story of an interview
+between three living and three dead men, which is usually told in
+French verse, and appears under the title of "Des trois vifs et des
+trois morts." According to some versions of the legend, it was St.
+Macarius, the Egyptian recluse, who thus introduced the living to the
+dead. The verses are sometimes accompanied with figures, and these have
+been found both sculptured and painted on ecclesiastical buildings. At
+a later period, apparently early in the fifteenth century, some one
+extended this idea to all ranks of society, and pictured a skeleton,
+the emblem of death, or even more than one, in communication with an
+individual of each class; and this extended scene, from the manner
+of the grouping--in which the dead appeared to be wildly dancing off
+with the living--became known as the "Dance of Death." As the earlier
+legend of the three dead and the three living was, however, still
+often introduced at the beginning of it, the whole group was most
+generally known--especially during the fifteenth century--as the "Danse
+Macabre," or Dance of Macabre, this name being considered as a mere
+corruption of Macarius. The temper of the age--in which death in every
+form was constantly before the eyes of all, and in which people sought
+to regard life as a mere transitory moment of enjoyment--gave to this
+grim idea of the fellowship of death and life great popularity, and it
+was not only painted on the walls of churches, but it was suspended
+in tapestry around people's chambers. Sometimes they even attempted
+to represent it in masquerade, and we are told that in the month of
+October, 1424, the "Danse Macabre" was publicly danced by living
+people in the cemetery of the Innocents, in Paris--a fit place for so
+lugubrious a performance--in the presence of the Duke of Bedford and
+the Duke of Burgundy, who came to Paris after the battle of Verneuil.
+During the rest of the century we find not unfrequently allusions
+to the "Danse Macabre." The English poet Lydgate wrote a series of
+stanzas to accompany the figures, and it was the subject of some of
+the earliest engravings on wood. In the posture and accompaniments
+of the figures representing the different classes of society, and in
+the greater or less reluctance with which the living accept their not
+very attractive partners, satire is usually implied, and it is in
+some cases accompanied with drollery. The figure representing death
+has almost always a grimly mirthful countenance, and appears to be
+dancing with good will. The most remarkable early representation of
+the "Danse Macabre" now preserved, is that painted on the wall of the
+church of La Chaise Dieu, in Auvergne, a beautiful fac-simile of which
+was published a few years ago by the well-known antiquary M. Jubinal.
+This remarkable picture begins with the figures of Adam and Eve, who
+are introducing death into the world in the form of a serpent with a
+death's head. The dance is opened by an ecclesiastic preaching from
+a pulpit, towards whom death is leading first in the dance the pope,
+for each individual takes his precedence strictly according to his
+class--alternately an ecclesiastic and a layman. Thus next after the
+pope comes the emperor, and the cardinal is followed by the king. The
+baron is followed by the bishop, and the grim partner of the latter
+appears to pay more intention to the layman than to his own priest, so
+that two dead men appear to have the former in charge. The group thus
+represented by the nobleman and the two deaths, is copied in our cut
+No. 132, and will serve as an example of the style and grouping of this
+remarkable painting. After a few other figures, perhaps less striking,
+we come to the merchant, who receives the advances of his partner with
+a thoughtful air; while immediately after him another death is trying
+to make himself more acceptable to the bashful nun by throwing a cloak
+over his nakedness. In another place two deaths armed with bows and
+arrows are scattering their shafts rather dangerously. Soon follow
+some of the more gay and youthful members of society. Our cut No. 133
+represents the musician, who appears also to attract the attentions
+of two of the persecutors. In his dismay he is treading under foot
+his own viol. The dance closes with the lower orders of society, and
+is concluded by a group which is not so easily understood. Before the
+end of the fifteenth century, there had appeared in Paris several
+editions of a series of bold engravings on wood, in a small folio
+size, representing the same dance, though somewhat differently treated.
+France, indeed, appears to have been the native country of the "Danse
+Macabre." But in the century following the beautiful set of drawings by
+the great artist Hans Holbein, first published at Lyons in 1538, gave
+to the Dance of Death a still greater and wider celebrity. From this
+time the subjects of this dance were commonly introduced in initial
+letters, and in the engraved borders of pages, especially in books of a
+religious character.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 132. The Knight in the Dance of Death._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 133. The Musician in Death's Hands._]
+
+Death may truly be said to have shared with Folly that melancholy
+period--the fifteenth century. As society then presented itself to
+the eye, people might easily suppose that the world was running mad,
+and folly, in one shape or other, seemed to be the principle which
+ruled most men's actions. The jocular societies, described in my last
+chapter, which multiplied in France during the fifteenth century,
+initiated a sort of mock worship of Folly. That sort of inauguration
+of death which was performed in the "Danse Macabre," was of French
+growth, but the grand crusade against folly appears to have originated
+in Germany. Sebastian Brandt was a native of Strasburg, born in 1458.
+He studied in that city and in Bâle, became a celebrated professor in
+both those places, and died at the former in 1520. The "Ship of Fools,"
+which has immortalised the name of Sebastian Brandt, is believed to
+have been first published in the year 1494. The original German text
+went through numerous editions within a few years; a Latin translation
+was equally popular, and it was afterwards edited and enlarged by
+Jodocus Badius Ascensius. A French text was no less successful; an
+English translation was printed by Richard Pynson in 1509; a Dutch
+version appeared in 1519. During the sixteenth century, Brandt's "Ship
+of Fools" was the most popular of books. It consists of a series of
+bold woodcuts, which form its characteristic feature, and of metrical
+explanations, written by Brandt, and annexed to each cut. Taking his
+text from the words of the preacher, "Stultorum numerus est infinitus,"
+Brandt exposes to the eye, in all its shades and forms, the folly
+of his contemporaries, and bares to view its roots and causes. The
+cuts are especially interesting as striking pictures of contemporary
+manners. The "Ship of Fools" is the great ship of the world, into which
+the various descriptions of fatuity are pouring from all quarters
+in boat-loads. The first folly is that of men who collected great
+quantities of books, not for their utility, but for their rarity, or
+beauty of execution, or rich bindings, so that we see that bibliomania
+had already taken its place among human vanities. The second class
+of fools were interested and partial judges, who sold justice for
+money, and are represented under the emblem of two fools throwing a
+boar into a caldron, according to the old Latin proverb, _Agere aprum
+in lebetem_. Then come the various follies of misers, fops, dotards,
+men who are foolishly indulgent to their children, mischief-makers,
+and despisers of good advice; of nobles and men in power; of the
+profane and the improvident; of foolish lovers; of extravagant
+eaters and drinkers, &c., &c. Foolish talking, hypocrisy, frivolous
+pursuits, ecclesiastical corruptions, impudicity, and a great number
+of other vices as well as follies, are duly passed in review, and are
+represented in various forms of satirical caricature, and sometimes
+in simpler unadorned pictures. Thus the foolish valuers of things are
+represented by a fool holding a balance, one scale of which contains
+the sun, moon, and stars, to represent heaven and heavenly things, and
+the other a castle and fields, to represent earthly things, the latter
+scale overweighing the other; and the procrastinator is pictured by
+another fool, with a parrot perched on his head, and a magpie on each
+hand, all repeating _cras, cras, cras_ (to-morrow). Our cut No. 134
+represents a group of disturbers of church service. It was a common
+practice in former days to take to church hawks (which were constantly
+carried about as the outward ensign of the gentleman) and dogs. The
+fool has here thrown back his fool's-cap to exhibit more fully the
+fashionable "gent" of the day; he carries his hawk on his hand, and
+wears not only a fashionable pair of shoes, but very fashionable clogs
+also. These gentlemen _à la mode, turgentes genere et natalibus altis_,
+we are told, were the persons who disturbed the church service by
+the creaking of their shoes and clogs, the noise made by their birds,
+the barking and quarrelling of their dogs, by their own whisperings,
+and especially with immodest women, whom they met in church as in a
+convenient place of assignation. All these forms of the offence are
+expressed in the picture. Our second example cut No. 135, which forms
+the fifty-ninth title or subject in the "Ship of Fools," represents
+a party of the beggars with which, either lay or ecclesiastical, the
+country was then overrun. In the explanation, these wicked beggars are
+described as indulging in idleness, in eating, drinking, rioting, and
+sleep, while they levy contributions on the charitable feelings of the
+honest and industrious, and, under cover of begging, commit robbery
+wherever they find the opportunity. The beggar, who appears to be only
+a deceptive cripple, leads his donkey laden with children, whom he is
+bringing up in the same profession, while his wife lingers behind to
+indulge in her bibulous propensities. These cuts will give a tolerable
+notion of the general character of the whole, which amount in number to
+a hundred and twelve, and therefore present a great variety of subjects
+relative to almost every class and profession of life.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 134. Disturbers of Church Service._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 135. Mendicants on their Travels._]
+
+We may remark, however, that after Folly had thus run through all the
+stages of society, until it had reached the lowest of all, the ranks
+of mendicity, the gods themselves became alarmed, the more so as this
+great movement was directed especially against Minerva, the goddess
+of wisdom, and they held a conclave to provide against it. The result
+is not told, but the course of Folly goes on as vigorously as ever.
+Ignorant fools who set up for physicians, fools who cannot understand
+jokes, unwise mathematicians, astrologers, of the latter of which the
+moraliser says, in his Latin verse--
+
+          _Siqua voles sortis prænoscere damna futuræ,
+            Et vitare malum, sol tibi signa dabit.
+          Sed tibi, stulte, tui cur non dedit ille furoris
+            Signa? aut, si dederit, cur tanta mala subis?
+          Nondum grammaticæ callis primordia, et audes
+            Vim cœli radio supposuisse tuo._
+
+The next cut is a very curious one, and appears to represent a
+dissecting-house of this early period. Among other chapters which
+afford interesting pictures of that time, and indeed of all times, we
+may instance those of litigious fools, who are always going to law,
+and who confound blind justice, or rather try to unbind her eyes;
+of filthy-tongued fools, who glorify the race of swine; of ignorant
+scholars; of gamblers; of bad and thievish cooks; of low men who seek
+to be high, and of high who are despisers of poverty; of men who
+forget that they will die; of irreligious men and blasphemers; of
+the ridiculous indulgence of parents to children, and the ungrateful
+return which was made to them for it; and of women's pride. Another
+title describes the ruin of Christianity: the pope, emperor, king,
+cardinals, &c., are receiving willingly from a suppliant fool the cap
+of Folly, while two other fools are looking derisively upon them from
+an adjoining wall. It need hardly be said that this was published on
+the eve of the Reformation.
+
+In the midst of the popularity which greeted the appearance of the
+work of Sebastian Brandt, it attracted the special attention of a
+celebrated preacher of the time named Johann Geiler. Geiler was born
+at Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, in 1445, but having lost his father
+when only three years of age, he was educated by his grandfather, who
+lived at Keysersberg, in Alsace, and hence he was commonly called
+Geiler of Keysersberg. He studied in Freiburg and Bâle, obtained a
+great reputation for learning, was esteemed a profound theologian, and
+was finally settled in Strasburg, where he continued to shine as a
+preacher until his death in 1510. He was a bold man, too, in the cause
+of truth, and declaimed with earnest zeal against the corruptions of
+the church, and especially against the monkish orders, for he compared
+the black monks to the devil, the white monks to his dam, and the
+others he said were their chickens. On another occasion he said that
+the qualities of a good monk were an almighty belly, an ass's back,
+and a raven's mouth. He told his congregation from the pulpit that a
+great reformation was at hand, that he did not expect to live to see
+it himself, but that many of those who heard him would live to see
+it. As may be supposed, the monks hated him, and spoke of him with
+contempt. They said, that in his sermons he took his texts, not from
+the Scriptures, but from the "Ship of Fools" of Sebastian Brandt; and,
+in fact, during the year 1498, Geiler preached at Strasburg a series of
+sermons on the follies of his time, which were evidently founded upon
+Brandt's book, for the various follies were taken in the same order.
+They were originally compiled in German, but one of Geiler's scholars,
+Jacob Other, translated them into Latin, and published them, in 1501,
+under the title of "Navicula sive Speculum Fatuorum præstantissimi
+sacrarum literarum doctoris Johannis Geiler." Within a few years this
+work went through several editions both in Latin and in German, some
+of them illustrated by woodcuts. The style of preaching is quaint and
+curious, full of satirical wit, which is often coarse, according to the
+manner of the time, sometimes very indelicate. Each sermon is headed
+by the motto, "Stultorum infinitus est numerus." Geiler takes for his
+theme in each sermon one of the titles of Brandt's "Ship of Fools," and
+he separates them into subdivisions, or branches, which he calls the
+bells (_nolas_) from the fool's-cap.
+
+The other scholar who did most to spread the knowledge of Brandt's
+work, was Jodocus Badius, who assumed the additional name of Ascensius
+because he was born at Assen, near Brussels, in 1462. He was a very
+distinguished scholar, but is best known for having established a
+celebrated printing establishment in Paris, where he died in 1535. I
+have already stated that Badius edited the Latin translation of the
+"Ship of Fools" of Sebastian Brandt, with additional explanations of
+his own, but he was one of the first of Brandt's imitators. He seems to
+have thought that Brandt's book was not complete--that the weaker sex
+had not received its fair share of importance; and apparently in 1498,
+while Geiler was turning the "Stultifera Navis" into sermons, Badius
+compiled a sort of supplement to it (_additamentum_), to which he gave
+the title of "Stultiferæ naviculæ, seu Scaphæ, Fatuarum Mulierum," the
+Boats of Foolish Women. As far as can be traced, the first edition
+appears to have been printed in 1502. The first cut represents the
+ship carrying Eve alone of the female race, whose folly involved the
+whole world. The book is divided into five chapters, according to the
+number of the five senses, each sense represented by a boat carrying
+its particular class of foolish women to the great ship of foolish
+women, which lies off at anchor. The text consists of a dissertation
+on the use and abuse of the particular sense which forms the substance
+of the chapter, and it ends with Latin verses, which are given as the
+boatman's _celeusma_, or boat song. The first of these boats is the
+_scapha stultæ visionis ad stultiferam navem perveniens_--the boat of
+foolish seeing proceeding to the ship of fools. A party of gay ladies
+are taking possession of the boat, carrying with them their combs,
+looking-glasses, and all other implements necessary for making them
+fair to be looked upon. The second boat is the _scapha auditionis
+fatuæ_, the boat of foolish hearing, in which the ladies are playing
+upon musical instruments. The third is the _scapha olfactionis stultæ_,
+the boat of foolish smell, and the pictorial illustration to it is
+partly copied in our cut No. 136. In the original some of the ladies
+are gathering sweet-smelling flowers before they enter the boat, while
+on board a pedlar is vending his perfume. One _folle femme_, with her
+fool's cap on her head, is buying a pomander, or, as we should perhaps
+now say, a scent-ball, from the itinerant dealer. Figures of pomanders
+are extremely rare, and this is an interesting example; in fact, it
+is only recently that our Shakspearian critics really understood the
+meaning of the word. A pomander was a small globular vessel, perforated
+with holes, and filled with strong perfumes, as it is represented in
+our woodcut. The fourth of these boats is that of foolish tasting,
+_scapha gustationis fatuæ_, and the ladies have their well-furnished
+table on board the boat, and are largely indulging in eating and
+drinking. In the last of these boats, the _scapha contactionis fatuæ_,
+or boat of foolish feeling, the women have men on board, and are
+proceeding to great liberties with them; one of the gentle damsels,
+too, is picking the pocket of her male companion in a very unlady-like
+manner.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 136. The Boat of Pleasant Odours._]
+
+Two ideas combined in this peculiar field of satiric literature, that
+of the ship and that of the fools, now became popular, and gave rise
+to a host of imitators. There appeared ships of health, ships of
+penitence, ships of all sorts of things, on the one hand; and on the
+other, folly was a favourite theme of satire from many quarters. One of
+the most remarkable of the personages involved in this latter warfare,
+was the great scholar Desiderius Erasmus, of Rotterdam, who was born in
+that city in 1467. Like most of these satirists, Erasmus was strongly
+imbued with the spirit of the Reformation, and he was the acquaintance
+and friend of those to whom the Reformation owed a great part of its
+success. In 1497, when the "Ship of Fools" of Sebastian Brandt was in
+the first full flush of its popularity, Erasmus came to England, and
+was so well received, that from that time forward his literary life
+seemed more identified with our island than with any other country. His
+name is still a sort of household word in our universities, especially
+in that of Cambridge. He made here the friendly acquaintance of the
+great Sir Thomas More, himself a lover of mirth, and one of those whose
+names are celebrated for having kept a court fool. In the earlier years
+of the sixteenth century, Erasmus visited Italy, and passed two or
+three years there. He returned thence to England, as appears, early
+in the year 1508. It is not easy to decide whether his experience of
+society in Italy had convinced him more than ever that folly was the
+presiding genius of mankind, or what other feeling influenced him,
+but one of the first results of his voyage was the Μωρίας Ἐγκώμιον
+(_Moriæ Encomium_), or "Praise of Folly." Erasmus dedicated this
+little jocular treatise to Sir Thomas More as a sort of pun upon his
+name, although he protests that there was a great contrast between
+the two characters. Erasmus takes much the same view of folly as
+Brandt, Geiler, Badius, and the others, and under this name he writes
+a bold satire on the whole frame of contemporary society. The satire
+is placed in the mouth of Folly herself (the Mère Folie of the jocular
+clubs), who delivers from her pulpit a declamation in which she sets
+forth her qualities and praises. She boasts of the greatness of her
+origin, claims as her kindred the sophists, rhetoricians, and many of
+the pretentious scholars and wise men, and describes her birth and
+education. She claims divine affinity, and boasts of her influence over
+the world, and of the beneficent manner in which it was exercised.
+All the world, she pretends, was ruled under her auspices, and it was
+only in her presence that mankind was really happy. Hence the happiest
+ages of man are infancy, before wisdom has come to interfere, and old
+age, when it has passed away. Therefore, she says, if men would remain
+faithful to her, and avoid wisdom altogether, they would pass a life
+of perpetual youth. In this long discourse of the influence of folly,
+written by a man of the known sentiments of Erasmus, it would be
+strange if the Romish church, with its monks and ignorant priesthood,
+its saints, and relics, and miracles, did not find a place. Erasmus
+intimates that the superstitious follies had become permanent, because
+they were profitable. There are some, he tells us, who cherished the
+foolish yet pleasant persuasion, that if they fixed their eyes devoutly
+on a figure of St. Christopher, carved in wood or painted on the wall,
+they would be safe from death on that day; with many other examples
+of equal credulity. Then there are your pardons, your measures of
+purgatory, which may be bought off at so much the hour, or the day,
+or the month, and a multitude of other absurdities. Ecclesiastics,
+scholars, mathematicians, philosophers, all come in for their share of
+the refined satire of this book, which, like the "Ship of Fools," has
+gone through innumerable editions, and has been translated into many
+languages.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 137. Superstition._]
+
+In an early French translation, the text of this work of Erasmus
+is embellished with some of the woodcuts belonging to Brandt's
+"Ship of Fools," which, it need hardly be remarked, are altogether
+inappropriate, but the "Praise of Folly" was detained to receive
+illustrations from a more distinguished pencil. A copy of the book came
+into the hands of Hans Holbein--it may possibly have been presented to
+him by the author--and Holbein took so much interest in it, that he
+amused himself with drawing illustrative sketches with a pen in the
+margins. This book afterwards passed into the library of the University
+of Bâle, where it was found in the latter part of the seventeenth
+century, and these drawings have since been engraved and added to most
+of the subsequent editions. Many of these sketches are very slight, and
+some have not a very close connection with the text of Erasmus, but
+they are all characteristic, and show the spirit--the spirit of the
+age--in which Holbein read his author. I give two examples of them,
+taken almost haphazard, for it would require a longer analysis of the
+book than can be given here to make many of them understood. The first
+of these, our cut No. 137, represents the foolish warrior, who has a
+sword long enough to trust to it for defence, bowing with trembling
+superstition before a painting of St. Christopher crossing the water
+with the infant Christ on his shoulder, as a more certain security for
+his safety during that day. The other, our cut No. 138, represents
+the preacher, Lady Folly, descending from her pulpit, after she has
+concluded her sermon.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 138. Preacher Folly ending her Sermon._]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  POPULAR LITERATURE AND ITS HEROES; BROTHER RUSH, TYLL EULENSPIEGEL,
+     THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM.--STORIES AND JEST-BOOKS.--SKELTON, SCOGIN,
+     TARLTON, PEELE.
+
+
+The people in the middle ages, as well as its superiors, had its
+comic literature and legend. Legend was the literature especially of
+the peasant, and in it the spirit of burlesque and satire manifested
+itself in many ways. Simplicity, combined with vulgar cunning, and the
+circumstances arising out of the exercise of these qualities, presented
+the greatest stimulants to popular mirth. They produced their popular
+heroes, who, at first, were much more than half legendary, such as
+the familiar spirit, Robin Goodfellow, whose pranks were a source of
+continual amusement rather than of terror to the simple minds which
+listened to those who told them. These stories excited with still
+greater interest as their spiritual heroes became incarnate, and the
+auditors were persuaded that the perpetrators of so many artful acts of
+cunning and of so many mischievous practical jokes, were but ordinary
+men like themselves. It was but a sign or symbol of the change from
+the mythic age to that of practical life. One of the earliest of these
+stories of mythic comedy transformed into, or at least presented under
+the guise of, humanity, is that of Brother Ruth. Although the earliest
+version of this story with which we are acquainted dates only from the
+beginning of the sixteenth century,[73] there is no reason for doubt
+that the story itself was in existence at a much more remote period.
+
+ [73] This earliest known version is in German verse, and was printed
+      in 1515. An English version, in prose, was printed in 1620, and
+      is reprinted in Thoms's "Collection of Early Prose Romances."
+
+Rush was, in truth, a spirit of darkness, whose mission it was
+to wander on the earth tempting and impelling people to do evil.
+Perceiving that the internal condition of a certain abbey was well
+suited to his purpose, he presented himself at its gates in the
+disguise of a youth who wanted employment, and was received as an
+assistant in the kitchen, but he pleased the monks best by the skill
+with which he furnished them all with fair companions. At length he
+quarrelled with the cook, and threw him into the boiling caldron, and
+the monks, assuming that his death was accidental, appointed Rush to be
+cook in his place. After a service of seven years in the kitchen--which
+appears to have been considered a fair apprenticeship for the new
+honour which was to be conferred upon him--the abbot and convent
+rewarded him by making him a monk. He now followed still more earnestly
+his design for the ruin of his brethren, both soul and body, and began
+by raising a quarrel about a woman, which led, through his contrivance,
+to a fight, in which the monks all suffered grievous bodily injuries,
+and in which Brother Rush was especially active. He went on in this
+way until at last his true character was accidentally discovered. A
+neighbouring farmer, overtaken by night, took shelter in a hollow tree.
+It happened to be the night appointed by Lucifer to meet his agents
+on earth, and hear from them the report of their several proceedings,
+and he had selected this very oak as the place of rendezvous. There
+Brother Rush appeared, and the farmer, in his hiding-place, heard his
+confession from his own lips, and told it to the abbot, who, being as
+it would appear a magician, conjured him into the form of a horse, and
+banished him. Rush hurried away to England, where he laid aside his
+equine form, and entered the body of the king's daughter, who suffered
+great torments from his possession. At length some of the great doctors
+from Paris came and obliged the spirit to confess that nobody but the
+abbot of the distant monastery had any power over him. The abbot came,
+called him out of the maiden, and conjured him more forcibly than ever
+into the form of a horse.
+
+Such is, in mere outline, the story of Brother Rush, which was
+gradually enlarged by the addition of new incidents. But the people
+wanted a hero who presented more of the character of reality, who,
+in fact, might be recognised as one of themselves; and such heroes
+appear to have existed at all times. They usually represented a
+class in society, and especially that class which consisted of idle
+sharpers, who lived by their wits, and which was more numerous and more
+familiarly known in the middle ages than at the present day. Folly
+and cunning combined presented a never-failing subject of mirth. This
+class of adventurers first came into print in Germany, and it is there
+that we find its first popular hero, to whom they gave the name of
+Eulenspiegel, which means literally "the owl's mirror," and has been
+since used in German in the sense of a merry fool. Tyll Eulenspiegel,
+and his story, are supposed to have belonged to the fourteenth century,
+though we first know them in the printed book of the commencement of
+the sixteenth, which is believed to have come from the pen of the
+well-known popular writer, Thomas Murner, of whom I shall have to speak
+more at length in another chapter. The popularity of this work was very
+great, and it was quickly translated into French, English, Latin, and
+almost every other language of Western Europe. In the English version
+the name also was translated, and appears under the form of Owleglass,
+or, as it often occurs with the superfluous aspirate, Howleglass.[74]
+According to the story, Tyll Eulenspiegel was the son of a peasant, and
+was born at a village called Kneitlingen, in the land of Brunswick.
+The story of his birth may be given in the words of the early English
+version, as a specimen of its quaint and antiquated language:--
+
+     "Yn the lande of Sassen, in the vyllage of Ruelnige, there
+     dwelleth a man that was named Nicholas Howleglas, that had a wife
+     named Wypeke, that lay a childbed in the same wyllage, and that
+     chylde was borne to christening; and named Tyell Howleglass. And
+     than the chyld was brought into a taverne, where the father was
+     wyth his gosseppes and made good chere. Whan the mydwife had wel
+     dronke, she toke the childe to bere it home, and in the wai was a
+     litle bridg over a muddy water. And as the mydwife would have gone
+     over the lytle brydge, she fel into the mudde with the chylde,
+     for she had a lytel dronk to much wyne, for had not helpe come
+     quickly, the had both be drowned in the mudde. And whan she came
+     home with the childe, the made a kettle of warm water to be made
+     redi, and therin they washed the child clen of the mudde. And
+     thus was Howleglas thre tymes in one dai cristened, once at the
+     churche, once in the mudde, and once in the warm water."
+
+ [74] The title of this English translation is, "Here beginneht a merye
+      Jest of a man that was called Howleglas, and of many marveylous
+      thinges and jestes that he dyd in his lyfe, in Eastlande, and in
+      many other places." It was printed by Coplande, supposed about
+      1520. An edition of Eulenspiegel in English, by Mr. Kenneth
+      Mackenzie, has recently been published by Messrs. Trübner & Co.,
+      of Paternoster Row.
+
+It will be seen that the English translator was not very correct in his
+geography or in his names. The child, having thus escaped destruction,
+grew rapidly, and displayed an extraordinary love of mischief, with
+various other evil propensities, as well as a cunning beyond his age,
+in escaping the risks to which these exposed him. At a very early age,
+he displayed a remarkable talent for setting the other children by the
+ears, and this was his favourite amusement during life. His mother,
+who was now a widow, contemplating the extraordinary cunning of her
+child, which, as she thought, must necessarily ensure his advancement
+in the world, resolved that he should no longer remain idle, and put
+him apprentice to a baker; but his wicked and restless disposition
+defeated all the good intentions of his parent, and Eulenspiegel was
+obliged to leave his master in consequence of his mal-practices. One
+day his mother took him to a church-dedication, and the child drank
+so much at the feast on that occasion, that he crept into an empty
+beehive and fell asleep, while his mother, thinking he had gone home,
+returned without him. In the night-time two thieves came into the
+garden to steal the bees, and they agreed to take first the hive which
+was heaviest. This, as may be supposed, proved to be the hive in
+which Eulenspiegel was hidden, and they fixed it on a pole which they
+carried on their shoulders, one before and one behind, the hive hanging
+between them. Eulenspiegel, awakened by the movement, soon discovered
+the position in which he was placed, and hit upon a plan for escaping.
+Gently lifting the lid of the hive, he put out his arm and plucked the
+hair of the man before, who turned about and accused his companion of
+insulting him. The other asserted that he had not touched him, and the
+first, only half satisfied, continued to bear his share of the burthen,
+but he had not advanced many steps when a still sharper pull at his
+hair excited his great anger, and from wrathful words the two thieves
+proceeded to blows. While they were fighting, Eulenspiegel crept out of
+the hive and ran away.
+
+After leaving the baker, Eulenspiegel became a wanderer in the world,
+gaining his living by his trickery and deception, and engaging himself
+in all sorts of strange and ludicrous adventures. He ended everywhere
+by creating discord and strife. He became at different times a
+blacksmith, a shoemaker, a tailor, a cook, a drawer of teeth, and
+assumed a variety of other characters, but remained in each situation
+only long enough to make it too hot for him, and to be obliged to
+secure his retreat. He intruded himself into all classes of society,
+and invariably came to similar results. Many of his adventures, indeed,
+are so droll that we can easily understand the great popularity
+they once enjoyed. But they are not merely amusing--they present a
+continuous satire upon contemporary society, upon a social condition in
+which every pretender, every reckless impostor, every private plunderer
+or public depredator, saw the world exposed to him in its folly and
+credulity as an easy prey.
+
+The middle ages possessed another class of these popular satirical
+histories, which were attached to places rather than to persons. There
+were few countries which did not possess a town or a district, the
+inhabitants of which were celebrated for stupidity, or for roguery,
+or for some other ridiculous or contemptible quality. We have seen,
+in a former chapter, the people of Norfolk enjoying this peculiarity,
+and, at a later period, the inhabitants of Pevensey in Sussex, and
+more especially those of Gotham in Nottinghamshire, were similarly
+distinguished. The inhabitants of many places in Germany bore this
+character, but their grand representatives among the Germans were the
+Schildburgers, a name which appears to belong entirely to the domain
+of fable. Schildburg, we are told, was a town "in Misnopotamia, beyond
+Utopia, in the kingdom of Calecut." The Schildburgers were originally
+so renowned for their wisdom, that they were continually invited into
+foreign countries to give their advice, until at length not a man was
+left at home, and their wives were obliged to assume the charge of the
+duties of their husbands. This became at length so onerous, that the
+wives held a council, and resolved on despatching a solemn message
+in writing to call the men home. This had the desired effect; all the
+Schildburgers returned to their own town, and were so joyfully received
+by their wives that they resolved upon leaving it no more. They
+accordingly held a council, and it was decided that, having experienced
+the great inconvenience of a reputation of wisdom, they would avoid
+it in future by assuming the character of fools. One of the first
+evil results of their long neglect of home affairs was the want of a
+council-hall, and this want they now resolved to supply without delay.
+They accordingly went to the hills and woods, cut down the timber,
+dragged it with great labour to the town, and in due time completed
+the erection of a handsome and substantial building. But, when they
+entered their new council-hall, what was their consternation to find
+themselves in perfect darkness! In fact, they had forgotten to make
+any windows. Another council was held, and one who had been among the
+wisest in the days of their wisdom, gave his opinion very oracularly;
+the result of which was that they should experiment on every possible
+expedient for introducing light into the hall, and that they should
+first try that which seemed most likely to succeed. They had observed
+that the light of day was caused by sunshine, and the plan proposed was
+to meet at mid-day when the sun was brightest, and fill sacks, hampers,
+jugs, and vessels of all kinds, with sunshine and daylight, which they
+proposed afterwards to empty into the unfortunate council-hall. Next
+day, as the clock struck one, you might see a crowd of Schildburgers
+before the council-house door, busily employed, some holding the sacks
+open, and others throwing the light into them with shovels and any
+other appropriate implements which came to hand. While they were thus
+labouring, a stranger came into the town of Schildburg, and, hearing
+what they were about, told them they were labouring to no purpose,
+and offered to show them how to get the daylight into the hall. It is
+unnecessary to say more than that this new plan was to make an opening
+in the roof, and that the Schildburgers witnessed the effect with
+astonishment, and were loud in their gratitude to their new comer.
+
+The Schildburgers met with further difficulties before they completed
+their council-hall. They sowed a field with salt, and when the
+salt-plant grew up next year, after a meeting of the council, at
+which it was stiffly disputed whether it ought to be reaped, or mowed,
+or gathered in in some other manner, it was finally discovered that
+the crop consisted of nothing but nettles. After many accidents of
+this kind, the Schildburgers are noticed by the emperor, and obtain a
+charter of incorporation and freedom, but they profit little by it. In
+trying some experiments to catch mice, they set fire to their houses,
+and the whole town is burnt to the ground, upon which, in their sorrow,
+they abandon it altogether, and become, like the Jews of old, scattered
+over the world, carrying their own folly into every country they visit.
+
+The earliest known edition of the history of the Schildburgers was
+printed in 1597,[75] but the story itself is no doubt older. It will
+be seen at once that it involves a satire upon the municipal towns of
+the middle ages. A similar series of adventures, only a little more
+clerical, bore the title of "Der Pfarrherrn vom Kalenberg," or the
+Parson of Kalenberg, and was first, as far as we know, published in the
+latter half of the sixteenth century. The first known edition, printed
+in 1582, is in prose. Von der Hagen, who reprinted a subsequent edition
+in verse, in a volume already quoted, seems to think that in its first
+form the story belongs to the fourteenth century.
+
+ [75] It was reprinted by Von der Hagen, in a little volume entitled
+      "Narrenbuch; herausgegeben durch Friedrich Heinrich von der
+      Hagen." 12mo., Halle, 1811.
+
+The Schildburgers of Germany were represented in England by the wise
+men of Gotham. Gotham is a village and parish about seven miles to
+the south-west of Nottingham, and, curiously enough, a story is told
+according to which the folly of the men of Gotham, like that of the
+Schildburgers, was at first assumed. It is pretended that one day
+king John, on his way to Nottingham, intended to pass through the
+village of Gotham, and that the Gothamites, under the influence of
+some vague notion that his presence would be injurious to them, raised
+difficulties in his way which prevented his visit. The men of Gotham
+were now apprehensive of the king's vengeance, and they resolved
+to try and evade it by assuming the character of simpletons. When
+the king's officers came to Gotham to inquire into the conduct of
+the inhabitants, they found them engaged in the most extraordinary
+pursuits, some of them seeking to drown an eel in a pond of water,
+others making a hedge round a tree to confine a cuckoo which had
+settled in it, and others employing themselves in similar futile
+pursuits. The commissioners reported the people of Gotham to be no
+better than fools, and by this stratagem they escaped any further
+persecution, but the character they assumed remained attached to them.
+
+This explanation is, of course, very late and very apocryphal; but
+there can be little doubt that the character of the wise men of Gotham
+is one of considerable antiquity. The story is believed to have been
+drawn up in its present form by Andrew Borde, an English writer of the
+reign of Henry VIII. It was reprinted a great number of times under
+the form of those popular books called chap-books, because they were
+hawked about the country by itinerant booksellers or chap-men. The
+acts of the Gothamites displayed a greater degree of simplicity even
+than those of the Schildburgers, but they are less connected. Here
+is one anecdote told in the unadorned language of the chap-books, in
+explanation of which it is only necessary to state that the men of
+Gotham admired greatly the note of the cuckoo. "On a time the men of
+Gotham fain would have pinn'd in the cuckow, that she might sing all
+the year; and, in the midst of the town, they had a hedge made round in
+compass, and got a cuckow and put her into it, and said, 'Sing here,
+and you shall lack neither meat nor drink all the year.' The cuckow,
+when she perceived herself encompassed with the hedge, flew away. 'A
+vengeance on her,' said these wise men, 'we did not make our hedge high
+enough.'" On another occasion, having caught a large eel which offended
+them by its voracity, they assembled in council to deliberate on an
+appropriate punishment, which ended in a resolution that it should be
+drowned, and the criminal was ceremoniously thrown into a great pond.
+One day twelve men of Gotham went a-fishing, and on their way home they
+suddenly discovered that they had lost one of their number, and each
+counted in his turn, and could find only eleven. In fact, each forgot
+to count himself. In the midst of their distress--for they believed
+their companion to be drowned--a stranger approached, and learnt the
+cause of their sorrow. Finding they were not to be convinced of their
+mistake by mere argument, he offered, on certain conditions, to find
+the lost Gothamite, and he proceeded as follows. He took one by one
+each of the twelve Gothamites, struck him a hard blow on the shoulder,
+which made him scream, and at each cry counted one, two, three, &c.
+When it came to twelve, they were all satisfied that the lost Gothamite
+had returned, and paid the man for the service he had rendered them.
+
+As a chap-book, this history of the men of Gotham became so popular,
+that it gave rise to a host of other books of similar character, which
+were compiled at a later period under such titles--formerly well
+known to children--as, "The Merry Frolicks, or the Comical Cheats of
+Swalpo;" "The Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan,
+commonly called the King's Fool;" "Simple Simon's Misfortunes;" and the
+like. Nor must it be forgotten that the history of Eulenspiegel was
+the prototype of a class of popular histories of larger dimensions,
+represented in our own literature by "The English Rogue," the work of
+Richard Head and Francis Kirkman, in the reign of Charles II., and
+various other "rogues" belonging to different countries, which appeared
+about that time, or not long afterwards. The earliest of these books
+was "The Spanish Rogue, or Life of Guzman de Alfarache," written in
+Spanish by Mateo Aleman in the latter part of the sixteenth century.
+Curiously enough, some Englishman, not knowing apparently that the
+history of Eulenspiegel had appeared in English under the name of
+Owlglass, took it into his head to introduce him among the family of
+rogues which had thus come into fashion, and, in 1720, published as
+"Made English from the High Dutch," what he called "The German Rogue,
+or the Life and Merry Adventures, Cheats, Stratagems, and Contrivances
+of Tiel Eulespiegle."
+
+The fifteenth century was the period during which mediæval forms
+generally were changing into forms adapted to another state of society,
+and in which much of the popular literature which has been in vogue
+during modern times took its rise. In the fourteenth century, the
+fabliaux of the jougleurs were already taking what we may perhaps term
+a more literary form, and were reduced into prose narratives. This
+took place especially in Italy, where these prose tales were called
+_novelle_, implying some novelty in their character, a word which was
+transferred into the French language under the form of _nouvelles_,
+and was the origin of our modern English _novel_, applied to a work of
+fiction. The Italian novelists adopted the Eastern plan of stringing
+these stories together on the slight framework of one general plot,
+in which are introduced causes for telling them and persons who tell
+them. Thus the Decameron of Boccaccio holds towards the fabliaux
+exactly the same position as that of the "Arabian Nights" to the older
+Arabian tales. The Italian novelists became numerous and celebrated
+throughout Europe, from the time of Boccaccio to that of Straparola,
+at the commencement of the sixteenth century, and later. The taste for
+this class of literature appears to have been introduced into France at
+the court of Burgundy, where, under duke Philippe le Bon, a well-known
+courtier and man of letters named Antoine de La Sale, who had, during
+a sojourn in Italy, become acquainted with one of the most celebrated
+of the earlier Italian collections, the "Cento Novello," or the Hundred
+Novels, compiled a collection in French in imitation of them, under the
+title of "Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," or the Hundred new Novels,
+one of the purest examples of the French language in the fifteenth
+century.[76] The later French story-books, such as the Heptameron of
+the queen of Navarre, and others, belong chiefly to the sixteenth
+century. These collections of stories can hardly be said to have ever
+taken root in this island as a part of English literature.
+
+ [76] I am obliged to pass over this part of the subject very rapidly.
+      For the history of that remarkable book, the "Cent Nouvelles
+      Nouvelles," I would refer the reader to the preface to my own
+      edition, "Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, publiées d'après le
+      seul manuscrit connu, avec Introduction et Notes, par M. Thomas
+      Wright." 2 vols, 12mo., Paris, 1858.
+
+But there arose partly out of these stories a class of books which
+became greatly multiplied, and were, during a long period, extremely
+popular. With the household fool, or jester, instead of the old
+jougleur, the stories had been shorn of their detail, and sank into
+the shape of mere witty anecdotes, and at the same time a taste arose
+for what we now class under the general term of jests, clever sayings,
+what the French call _bons mots_, and what the English of the sixteenth
+century termed "quick answers." The word _jest_ itself arose from the
+circumstance that the things designated by it arose out of the older
+stories, for it is a mere corruption of gestes, the Latin _gesta_, in
+the sense of narratives of acts or deeds, or tales. The Latin writers,
+who first began to collect them into books, included them under the
+general name of _facetiæ_. The earlier of these collections of facetiæ
+were written in Latin, and of the origin of the first with which we
+are acquainted, that by the celebrated scholar Poggio of Florence,
+a curious anecdote is told. Some wits of the court of pope Martin
+V., elected to the papacy in 1417, among whom were the pope's two
+secretaries, Poggio and Antonio Lusco, Cincio of Rome, and Ruzello of
+Bologna, appropriated to themselves a private corner in the Vatican,
+where they assembled to chat freely among themselves. They called
+it their _buggiale_, a word which signifies in Italian, a place of
+recreation, where they tell stories, make jests, and amuse themselves
+with discussing satirically the doings and characters of everybody.
+This was the way in which Poggio and his friends entertained themselves
+in their buggiale, and we are assured that in their talk they neither
+spared the church nor the pope himself or his government. The facetiæ
+of Poggio, in fact, which are said to be a selection of the good things
+said in these meetings, show neither reverence for the church of Rome
+nor respect for decency, but they are mostly stories which had been
+told over and over again, long before Poggio came into the world. It
+was perhaps this satire upon the church and upon the ecclesiastics
+which gave much of their popularity to these facetiæ at a time when
+a universal agitation of men's minds on religious affairs prevailed,
+which was the great harbinger of the Reformation; and the next Latin
+books of facetiæ came from men such as Henry Bebelius, who were zealous
+reformers themselves.
+
+Many of the jests in these Latin collections are put into the mouths of
+jesters, or domestic fools, _fatui_, or _moriones_, as they are called
+in the Latin; and in England, where these jest-books in the vernacular
+tongue became more popular perhaps than in any other country, many
+of them were published under the names of celebrated jesters, as the
+"Merie Tales of Skelton," "The Jests of Scogin," "Tarlton's Jests," and
+"The Jests of George Peele."
+
+John Skelton, poet-laureat of his time, appears to have been known in
+the courts of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. quite as much in the character
+of a jester as in that of a poet. Poet-laureat was then a title or
+degree given in the university of Oxford. His "Merye Tales" are all
+personal of himself, and we should be inclined to say that his jests
+and his poetry are equally bad. The former picture him as holding a
+place somewhere between Eulenspiegel and the ordinary court-fool. We
+may give as a sample of the best of them the tale No. 1.--
+
+     "_How Skelton came home late to Oxford from Abington._
+
+     "Skelton was an Englysheman borne as Skogyn was, and hee was
+     educated and broughte up in Oxfoorde, and there was he made a
+     poete lauriat. And on a tyme he had ben at Abbington to make mery,
+     wher that he had eate salte meates, and hee did com late home to
+     Oxforde, and he did lye in an ine named the Tabere, whyche is now
+     the Angell, and hee dyd drynke, and went to bed. About midnight
+     he was so thyrstie or drye that he was constrained to call to
+     the tapster for drynke, and the tapster harde him not. Then hee
+     cryed to hys oste and hys ostes, and to the ostler, for drinke,
+     and no man would here hym. Alacke, sayd Skelton, I shall peryshe
+     for lacke of drynke! What reamedye? At the last he dyd crie out
+     and sayd, Fyer, fyer, fyer! When Skelton hard every man bustle
+     hymselfe upward, and some of them were naked, and some were halfe
+     asleepe and amased, and Skelton dyd crye, Fier, fier! styll, that
+     everye man knewe not whether to resorte. Skelton did go to bed,
+     and the oste and ostis, and the tapster, with the ostler, dyd
+     runne to Skeltons chamber with candles lyghted in theyr handes,
+     saying, Where, where, where is the fyer? Here, here, here, said
+     Skelton, and poynted hys fynger to hys mouth, saying, Fetch me
+     some drynke to quenche the fyer and the heate and the drinesse in
+     my mouthe. And so they dyd."
+
+Another of these "Merye Tales" of Skelton contains a satire upon
+the practice which prevailed in the sixteenth and early part of the
+seventeenth centuries of obtaining letters-patent of monopoly from the
+crown, and also on the bibulous propensities of Welshmen--
+
+     "_How the Welshman dyd desyre Skelton to ayde hym in hys sute to
+     the kynge for a patent to sell drynke._
+
+     "Skelton, when he was in London, went to the kynges courte,
+     where there did come to hym a Welshman, saying, Syr, it is so,
+     that manye dooth come upp of my country to the kynges court, and
+     some doth get of the kyng by patent a castell, and some a parke,
+     and some a forest, and some one fee and some another, and they
+     dooe lyve lyke honest men; and I shoulde lyve as honestly as
+     the best, if I myght have a patyne for good dryncke, wherefore
+     I dooe praye yow to write a fewe woords for mee in a lytle byll
+     to geve the same to the kynges handes, and I wil geve you well
+     for your laboure. I am contented, sayde Skelton. Syt downe then,
+     sayde the Welshman, and write. What shall I wryte? sayde Skelton.
+     The Welshman sayde wryte _dryncke_. Nowe, sayde the Welshman,
+     write _more dryncke_. What now? sayde Skelton. Wryte nowe, _a
+     great deale of dryncke_. Nowe, sayd the Welshman, putte to all
+     thys dryncke _a littell crome of breade_, and _a great deale of
+     drynke_ to it, and reade once agayne. Skelton dyd reade, _Dryncke,
+     more dryncke, and a great deale of dryncke, and a lytle crome of
+     breade, and a great deale of dryncke to it_. Than the Welshman
+     sayde, Put oute _the litle crome of breade_, and sette in, _all
+     dryncke and no breade_. And if I myght have thys sygned of the
+     kynge, sayde the Welshman, I care for no more, as longe as I dooe
+     lyve. Well then, sayde Skelton, when you have thys signed of the
+     kyng, then wyll I labour for a patent to have bread, that you wyth
+     your drynke and I with the bread may fare well, and seeke our
+     livinge with bagge and staffe."
+
+These two tales are rather favourable specimens of the collection
+published under the name of Skelton, which, as far as we know, was
+first printed about the middle of the sixteenth century. The collection
+of the jests of Scogan, or, as he was popularly called, Scogin, which
+is said to have been compiled by Andrew Borde, was probably given to
+the world a few years before, but no copies of the earlier editions are
+now known to exist. Scogan, the hero of these jests, is described as
+occupying at the court of Henry VII. a position not much different from
+that of an ordinary court-fool. Good old Holinshed the chronicler says
+of him, perhaps a little too gently, that he was "a learned gentleman
+and student for a time in Oxford, of a pleasant wit, and bent to merrie
+devices, in respect whereof he was called into the court, where, giving
+himselfe to his naturall inclination of mirth and pleasant pastime,
+he plaied manie sporting parts, although not in such uncivil manner
+as hath beene of him reported." This allusion refers most probably to
+the jests, which represent him as leading a life of low and coarse
+buffoonery, in the course of which he displayed a considerable
+share of the dishonest and mischievous qualities of the less real
+Eulenspiegel. He is even represented as personally insulting the king
+and queen, and as being consequently banished over the Channel, to
+show no more respect to the majesty of the king of France. Scogin's
+jests, like Skelton's, consist in a great measure of those practical
+jokes which appear in all former ages to have been the delight of the
+Teutonic race. Many of them are directed against the ignorance and
+worldliness of the clergy. Scogin is described as being at one time
+himself a teacher in the university, and on one occasion, we are told,
+a husbandman sent his son to school to him that he might be made a
+priest. The whole story, which runs through several chapters, is an
+excellent caricature on the way in which men vulgarly ignorant were
+intruded into the priesthood before the Reformation. At length, after
+much blundering, the scholar came to be ordained, and his examination
+is reported as follows:--
+
+     "_How the scholler said Tom Miller of Oseney was Jacob's father._
+
+     "After this, the said scholler did come to the next orders, and
+     brought a present to the ordinary from Scogin, but the scholler's
+     father paid for all. Then said the ordinary to the scholler, I
+     must needes oppose you, and for master Scogin's sake, I will
+     oppose you in a light matter. Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob.
+     Who was Jacob's father? The scholler stood still, and could not
+     tell. Well, said the ordinary, I cannot admit you to be priest
+     untill the next orders, and then bring me an answer. The scholler
+     went home with a heavy heart, bearing a letter to master Scogin,
+     how his scholler could not answer to this question: Isaac had
+     two sons, Esau and Jacob; who was Jacob's father? Scogin said to
+     his scholler, Thou foole and asse-head! Dost thou not know Tom
+     Miller of Oseney? Yes, said the scholler! Then, said Scogin, thou
+     knowest he had two sonnes, Tom and Jacke; who is Jacke's father?
+     The scholler said, Tom Miller. Why, said Scogin, thou mightest
+     have said that Isaac was Jacob's father. Then said Scogin, Thou
+     shalt arise betime in the morning, and carry a letter to the
+     ordinary, and I trust he will admit thee before the orders shall
+     be given. The scholler rose up betime in the morning, and carried
+     the letter to the ordinary. The ordinary said, For Master Scogin's
+     sake I will oppose you no farther than I did yesterday. Isaac had
+     two sons, Esau and Jacob; who was Jacob's father? Marry, said the
+     scholler, I can tell you now that was Tom Miller of Oseney. Goe,
+     foole, goe, said the ordinary, and let thy master send thee no
+     more to me for orders, for it is impossible to make a foole a wise
+     man."
+
+Scogin's scholar was, however, made a priest, and some of the stories
+which follow describe the ludicrous manner in which he exercised the
+priesthood. Two other stories illustrate Scogin's supposed position at
+court:--
+
+     "_How Scogin told those that mocked him that he had a wall-eye._
+
+     "Scogin went up and down in the king's hall, and his hosen hung
+     downe, and his coat stood awry, and his hat stood a boonjour, so
+     every man did mocke Scogin. Some said he was a proper man, and did
+     wear his rayment cleanly; some said the foole could not put on his
+     owne rayment; some said one thing, and some said another. At last
+     Scogin said, Masters, you have praised me wel, but you did not
+     espy one thing in me. What is that, Tom? said the men. Marry, said
+     Scogin, I have a wall-eye. What meanest thou by that? said the
+     men. Marry, said Scogin, I have spyed a sort of knaves that doe
+     mocke me, and are worse fooles themselves."
+
+     "_How Scogin drew his sonne up and downe the court._
+
+     "After this Scogin went from the court, and put off his foole's
+     garments, and came to the court like an honest man, and brought
+     his son to the court with him, and within the court he drew his
+     sonne up and downe by the heeles. The boy cried out, and Scogin
+     drew the boy in every corner. At last every body had pity on the
+     boy, and said, Sir, what doe you meane, to draw the boy about the
+     court? Masters, said Scogin, he is my sonne, and I doe it for this
+     cause. Every man doth say, that man or child which is drawne up in
+     the court shall be the better as long as hee lives; and therefore
+     I will every day once draw him up and downe the court, after that
+     hee may come to preferment in the end."
+
+The appreciation of a good joke cannot at this time have been very
+great or very general, for Scogin's jests were wonderfully popular
+during at least a century, from the first half of the sixteenth
+century. They passed through many editions, and are frequently
+alluded to by the writers of the Elizabethan age. The next individual
+whose name appears at the head of a collection of his jests, was the
+well-known wit, Richard Tarlton, who may be fairly considered as court
+fool to Queen Elizabeth. His jests belong to the same class as those
+of Skelton and Scogin, and if possible, they present a still greater
+amount of dulness. Tarlton's jests were soon followed by the "merrie
+conceited jests" of George Peele, the dramatist, who is described in
+the title as "gentleman, sometimes student in Oxford;" and it is added
+that in these jests "is shewed the course of his life, how he lived;
+a man very well knowne in the city of London and elsewhere." In fact,
+Peele's jests are chiefly curious for the striking picture they give
+us of the wilder shades of town life under the reigns of Elizabeth and
+James I.
+
+During the period which witnessed the publication in England of these
+books, many other jest-books appeared, for they had already become
+an important class of English popular literature. Most of them were
+published anonymously, and indeed they are mere compilations from the
+older collections in Latin and French. All that was at all good, even
+in the jests of Skelton, Scogin, Tarlton, and Peele, had been repeated
+over and over again by the story-tellers and jesters of former ages.
+Two of the earlier English collections have gained a greater celebrity
+than the rest, chiefly through adventitious circumstances. One of
+these, entitled "A Hundred Merry Tales," has gained distinction among
+Shakespearian critics as the one especially alluded to by the great
+poet in "Much Ado about Nothing," (Act ii., Sc. 1), where Beatrice
+complains that somebody had said "that I had my good wit out of the
+Hundred Merry Tales." The other collection alluded to was entitled
+"Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant
+to be readde," and was printed in 1567. Its modern fame appears to
+have arisen chiefly from the circumstance that, until the accidental
+discovery of the unique and imperfect copy of the "Hundred Merry
+Tales," it was supposed to be the book alluded to by Shakespeare.
+Both these collections are mere compilations from the "Cent Nouvelles
+Nouvelles," "Poggio," "Straparola," and other foreign works.[77] The
+words put into the mouth of Beatrice are correctly descriptive of the
+use made of these jest-books. It had become fashionable to learn out
+of them jests and stories, in order to introduce them into polite
+conversation, and especially at table; and this practice continued
+to prevail until a very recent period. The number of such jest-books
+published during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries,
+was quite extraordinary. Many of these were given anonymously; but many
+also were put forth under names which possessed temporary celebrity,
+such as Hobson the carrier, Killigrew the jester, the friend of Charles
+II., Ben Jonson, Garrick, and a multitude of others. It is, perhaps,
+unnecessary to remind the reader that the great modern representative
+of this class of literature is the illustrious Joe Miller.
+
+ [77] A neat and useful edition of these two jest-books, with the
+      other most curious books of the same class, published during the
+      Elizabethan period, has recently been published in two volumes,
+      by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV.
+
+  THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION.--THOMAS MURNER; HIS GENERAL
+     SATIRES.--FRUITFULNESS OF FOLLY.--HANS SACHS.--THE TRAP FOR
+     FOOLS.--ATTACKS ON LUTHER.--THE POPE AS ANTICHRIST.--THE POPE-ASS
+     AND THE MONK-CALF.--OTHER CARICATURES AGAINST THE POPE.--THE GOOD
+     AND BAD SHEPHERDS.
+
+
+The reign of Folly did not pass away with the fifteenth century--on the
+whole the sixteenth century can hardly be said to have been more sane
+than its predecessor, but it was agitated by a long and fierce struggle
+to disengage European society from the trammels of the middle ages. We
+have entered upon what is technically termed the _renaissance_, and
+are approaching the great religious reformation. The period during
+which the art of printing began first to spread generally over Western
+Europe, was peculiarly favourable to the production of satirical
+books and pamphlets, and a considerable number of clever and spirited
+satirists and comic writers appeared towards the end of the fifteenth
+century, especially in Germany, where circumstances of a political
+character had at an early period given to the intellectual agitation
+a more permanent strength than it could easily or quickly gain in the
+great monarchies. Among the more remarkable of these satirists was
+Thomas Murner, who was born at Strasburg, in 1475. The circumstances
+even of his childhood are singular, for he was born a cripple, or
+became one in his earliest infancy, though he was subsequently healed,
+and it was so universally believed that this malady was the effect
+of witchcraft, that he himself wrote afterwards a treatise upon this
+subject under the title of "De Phitonico Contractu." The school in
+which he was taught may at least have encouraged his satirical spirit,
+for his master was Jacob Locher, the same who translated into Latin
+verse the "Ship of Fools" of Sebastian Brandt. At the end of the
+century Murner had become a master of arts in the University of Paris,
+and had entered the Franciscan order. His reputation as a German
+popular poet was so great, that the emperor Maximilian[ ]I., who
+died in 1519, conferred upon him the crown of poetry, or, in other
+words, made him poet-laureat. He took the degree of doctor in theology
+in 1509. Still Murner was known best as the popular writer, and he
+published several satirical poems, which were remarkable for the bold
+woodcuts that illustrated them, for engraving on wood flourished at
+this period. He exposed the corruptions of all classes of society,
+and, before the Reformation broke out, he did not even spare the
+corruptions of the ecclesiastical state, but soon declared himself a
+fierce opponent of the Reformers. When the Lutheran revolt against the
+Papacy became strong, our king, Henry VIII., who took a decided part
+against Luther, invited Murner to England, and on his return to his
+own country, the satiric Franciscan became more bitter against the
+Reformation than ever. He advocated the cause of the English monarch in
+a pamphlet, now very rare, in which he discussed the question whether
+Henry VIII. or Luther was the liar--"Antwort dem Murner uff seine
+frag, ob der künig von Engllant ein Lügner sey oder Martinus Luther."
+Murner appears to have divided the people of his age into rogues and
+fools, or perhaps he considered the two titles as identical. His
+"Narrenbeschwerung," or Conspiracy of Fools, in which Brandt's idea
+was followed up, is supposed to have been published as early as 1506,
+but the first printed edition with a date, appeared in 1512. It became
+so popular, that it went through several editions during subsequent
+years; and that which I have before me was printed at Strasburg in
+1518. It is, like Brandt's "Ship of Fools," a general satire against
+society, in which the clergy are not spared, for the writer had not yet
+come in face of Luther's Reformation. The cuts are superior to those
+of Brandt's book, and some of them are remarkable for their design and
+execution. In one of the earliest of them, copied in the cut No. 139,
+Folly is introduced in the garb of a husbandman, scattering his feed
+over the earth, the result of which is a very quick and flourishing
+crop, the fool's heads rising above ground, almost instantaneously,
+like so many turnips. In a subsequent engraving, represented in our
+cut No. 140, Folly holds out, as an object of emulation, the fool's
+cap, and people of all classes, the pope himself, and the emperor, and
+all the great dignitaries of this world, press forward eagerly to seize
+upon it.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 139. Sowing a Fruitful Crop._]
+
+The same year (1512) witnessed the appearance of another poetical,
+or at least metrical, satire by Murner, entitled "Schelmenzunft," or
+the Confraternity of Rogues, similarly illustrated with very spirited
+engravings on wood. It is another demonstration of the prevailing
+dominion of folly under its worst forms, and the satire is equally
+general with the preceding. Murner's satire appears to have been felt
+not only generally, but personally; and we are told that he was often
+threatened with assassination, and he raised up a number of literary
+opponents, who treated him with no little rudeness; in fact, he had
+got on the wrong side of politics, or at all events on the unpopular
+side, and men who had more talents and greater weight appeared as his
+opponents--men like Ulrich von Utten, and Luther himself.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 140. An Acceptable Offering._]
+
+Among the satirists who espoused the cause to which Murner was
+opposed, we must not overlook a man who represented in its strongest
+features, though in a rather debased form, the old spontaneous poetry
+of the middle ages. His name was Hans Sachs, at least that was the
+name under which he was known, for his real name is said to have
+been Loutrdorffer. His spirit was entirely that of the old wandering
+minstrel, and it was so powerful in him, that, having been apprenticed
+to the craft of a weaver, he was no sooner freed from his indentures,
+than he took to a vagabond life, and wandered from town to town,
+gaining his living by singing the verses he composed upon every
+occasion which presented itself. In 1519, he married and settled in
+Nüremberg, and his compositions were then given to the public through
+the press. The number of these was quite extraordinary--songs, ballads,
+satires, and dramatic pieces, rude in style, in accordance with the
+taste of the time, but full of cleverness. Many of them were printed
+on broadsides, and illustrated with large engravings on wood. Hans
+Sachs joined in the crusade against the empire of Folly, and one of
+his broadsides is illustrated with a graceful design, the greater part
+of which is copied in our cut No. 141. A party of ladies have set a
+bird-trap to catch the fools of the age, who are waiting to be caught.
+One fool is taken in the trap, while another is already secured and
+pinioned, and others are rushing into the snare. A number of people of
+the world, high in their dignities and stations, are looking on at this
+remarkable scene.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 141. Bird-Traps._]
+
+The evil influence of the female sex was at this time proverbial, and,
+in fact, it was an age of extreme licentiousness. Another poet-laureat
+of the time, Henricus Bebelius, born in the latter half of the
+fifteenth century, and rather well known in the literature of his time,
+published, in 1515, a satirical poem in Latin, under the title of
+"Triumphus Veneris," which was a sort of exposition of the generally
+licentious character of the age in which he lived. It is distributed
+into six books, in the third of which the poet attacks the whole
+ecclesiastical state, not sparing the pope himself, and we are thereby
+perfectly well initiated into the weaknesses of the clergy. Bebelius
+had been preceded by another writer on this part of the subject, and we
+might say by many, for the incontinence of monks and nuns, and indeed
+of all the clergy, had long been a subject of satire. But the writer to
+whom I especially allude was named Paulus Olearius, his name in German
+being Oelschlägel. He published, about the year 1500, a satirical
+tract, under the title of "De Fide Concubinarum in Sacerdotes." It
+was a bitter attack on the licentiousness of the clergy, and was
+rendered more effective by the engravings which accompanied it. We
+give one of these as a curious picture of contemporary manners; the
+individual who comes within the range of the lady's attractions, though
+he may be a scholar, has none of the characteristics of a priest. She
+presents a nosegay, which we may suppose to represent the influence of
+perfume upon the senses; but the love of the ladies for pet animals
+is especially typified in the monkey, attached by a chain. A donkey
+appears to show by his heels his contempt for the lover.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 142. Courtship._]
+
+From an early period, the Roman church had been accustomed to
+treat contemptuously, as well as cruelly, all who dissented from
+its doctrines, or objected to its government, and this feeling was
+continued down to the age of the Reformation, in spite of the tone
+of liberalism which was beginning to shine forth in the writings
+of some of its greatest ornaments. Some research among the dusty,
+because little used, records of national archives and libraries would
+no doubt bring to light more than one singular caricature upon the
+"heretics" of the middle ages, and my attention has been called to one
+which is possessed of peculiar interest. There is, among the imperial
+archives of France, in Paris, among records relating to the country of
+the Albigeois in the thirteenth century, a copy of the bull of pope
+Innocent IV. giving directions for the proceedings against dissenters
+from Romanism, on the back of which the scribe, as a mark of his
+contempt for these arch-heretics of the south, has drawn a caricature
+of a woman bound to a stake over the fire which is to burn her as an
+open opponent of the church of Rome. The choice of a woman for the
+victim was perhaps intended to show that the proselytism of heresy was
+especially successful among the weaker sex, or that it was considered
+as having some relation to witchcraft. It is, by a long period, the
+earliest known pictorial representation of the punishment of burning
+inflicted on a heretic.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 143. Burning a Heretic._]
+
+The shafts of satire were early employed against Luther and his new
+principles, and men like Murner, already mentioned, Emser, Cochlæus,
+and others, signalised themselves by their zeal in the papal cause.
+As already stated, Murner distinguished himself as the literary ally
+of our king Henry VIII. The taste for satirical writings had then
+become so general, that Murner complains in one of his satires that
+the printers would print nothing but abusive or satirical works, and
+neglected his more serious writings.
+
+          _Da sindt die trucker schuld daran,
+          Die trucken als die Gauchereien,
+          Und lassen mein ernstliche bücher leihen._
+
+Some of Murner's writings against Luther, most of which are now very
+rare, are extremely violent, and they are generally illustrated with
+satirical woodcuts. One of these books, printed without name of place
+or date, is entitled, "Of the great Lutheran Fool, how Doctor Murner
+has exorcised him" (_Von dem grossen Lutherisschen Narren, wie in
+Doctor Murner beschworen hat_). In the woodcuts to this book Murner
+himself is introduced, as is usually the case in these satirical
+engravings, under the character of a Franciscan friar, with the head of
+a cat, while Luther appears as a fat and jolly monk, wearing a fool's
+cap, and figuring in various ridiculous circumstances. In one of the
+first woodcuts, the cat Franciscan is drawing a rope so tight round the
+great Lutheran fool's neck, that he compels him to disgorge a multitude
+of smaller fools. In another the great Lutheran fool has his purse, or
+pouch, full of little fools suspended at his girdle. This latter figure
+is copied in the cut No. 144, as an example of the form under which the
+great reformer appears in these satirical representations.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 144. Folly in Monastic Habit._]
+
+In a few other caricatures of this period which have been preserved,
+the apostle of the Reformation is attacked still more savagely. The
+one here given (Fig. 145), taken from a contemporary engraving on
+wood, presents a rather fantastic figure of the demon playing on the
+bagpipes. The instrument is formed of Luther's head, the pipe through
+which the devil blows entering his ear, and that through which the
+music is produced forming an elongation of the reformer's nose. It was
+a broad intimation that Luther was a mere tool of the evil one, created
+for the purpose of bringing mischief into the world.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 145. The Music of the Demon._]
+
+The reformers, however, were more than a match for their opponents in
+this sort of warfare. Luther himself was full of comic and satiric
+humour, and a mass of the talent of that age was ranged on his side,
+both literary and artistic. After the reformer's marriage, the papal
+party quoted the old legend, that Antichrist was to be born of the
+union of a monk and a nun, and it was intimated that if Luther himself
+could not be directly identified with Antichrist, he had, at least, a
+fair chance of becoming his parent. But the reformers had resolved, on
+what appeared to be much more conclusive evidence, that Antichrist was
+only emblematical of the papacy, that under this form he had been long
+dominant on earth, and that the end of his reign was then approaching.
+A remarkable pamphlet, designed to place this idea pictorially before
+the public, was produced from the pencil of Luther's friend, the
+celebrated painter, Lucas Cranach, and appeared in the year 1521 under
+the title of "The Passionale of Christ and Antichrist" (_Passional
+Christi und Antichristi_). It is a small quarto, each page of which is
+nearly filled by a woodcut, having a few lines of explanation in German
+below. The cut to the left represents some incident in the life of
+Christ, while that facing it to the right gives a contrasting fact in
+the history of papal tyranny. Thus the first cut on the left represents
+Jesus in His humility, refusing earthly dignities and power, while on
+the adjoining page we see the pope, with his cardinals and bishops,
+supported by his hosts of warriors, his cannon, and his fortifications,
+in his temporal dominion over secular princes. When we open again we
+see on one side Christ crowned with thorns by the insulting soldiery,
+and on the other the pope, enthroned in all his worldly glory, exacting
+the worship of his courtiers. On another we have Christ washing the
+feet of His disciples, and in contrast the pope compelling the emperor
+to kiss his toe. And so on, through a number of curious illustrations,
+until at last we come to Christ's ascension into heaven, in contrast
+with which a troop of demons, of the most varied and singular forms,
+have seized upon the papal Antichrist, and are casting him down into
+the flames of hell, where some of his own monks wait to receive him.
+This last picture is drawn with so much spirit, that I have copied it
+in the cut No. 146.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 146. The Descent of the Pope._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 147. The Pope-ass._]
+
+The monstrous figures of animals which had amused the sculptors and
+miniaturists of an earlier period came in time to be looked upon
+as realities, and were not only regarded with wonder as physical
+deformities, but were objects of superstition, for they were believed
+to be sent into the world as warnings of great revolutions and
+calamities. During the age preceding the Reformation, the reports
+of the births or discoveries of such monsters were very common, and
+engravings of them were no doubt profitable articles of merchandise
+among the early book-hawkers. Two of these were very celebrated in
+the time of the Reformation, the Pope-ass and the Monk-calf, and were
+published and republished with an explanation under the names of
+Luther and Melancthon, which made them emblematical of the Papacy and
+of the abuses of the Romish church, and, of course, prognostications
+of their approaching exposure and fall. It was pretended that the
+Pope-ass was found dead in the river Tiber, at Rome, in the year
+1496. It is represented in our cut No. 147, taken from an engraving
+preserved in a very curious volume of broadside Lutheran caricatures,
+in the library of the British Museum, all belonging to the year 1545,
+though this design had been published many years before. The head of
+an ass, we are told, represented the pope himself, with his false and
+carnal doctrines. The right hand resembled the foot of an elephant,
+signifying the spiritual power of the pope, which was heavy, and
+stamped down and crushed people's consciences. The left hand was that
+of a man, signifying the worldly power of the pope, which grasped at
+universal empire over kings and princes. The right foot was that of
+an ox, signifying the spiritual ministers of the papacy, the doctors
+of the church, the preachers, confessors, and scholastic theologians,
+and especially the monks and nuns, those who aided and supported
+the pope in oppressing people's bodies and souls. The left foot was
+that of a griffin, an animal which, when it once seizes its prey,
+never lets it escape, and signified the canonists, the monsters of
+the pope's temporal power, who grasped people's temporal goods, and
+never returned them. The breast and belly of this monster were those
+of a woman, and signified the papal body, the cardinals, bishops,
+priests, monks, &c., who spent their lives in eating, drinking, and
+incontinence; and this part of the body was naked, because the popish
+clergy were not ashamed to expose their vices to the public. The legs,
+arms, and neck, on the contrary, were clothed with fishes' scales;
+these signified the temporal princes and lords, who were mostly in
+alliance with the papacy. The old man's head behind the monster, meant
+that the papacy had become old, and was approaching its end; and
+the head of a dragon, vomiting flames, which served for a tail, was
+significative of the great threats, the venomous horrible bulls and
+blasphemous writings, which the pontiff and his ministers, enraged at
+seeing their end approach, were launching into the world against all
+who opposed them. These explanations were supported by apt quotations
+from the Scriptures, and were so effective, and became so popular, that
+the picture was published in various shapes, and was seen adorning the
+walls of the humblest cottages. I believe it is still to be met with in
+a similar position in some parts of Germany. It was considered at the
+time to be a masterly piece of satire. The picture of the Monk-calf,
+which is represented in our cut No. 148, was published at the same
+time, and usually accompanies it. This monster is said to have been
+born at Freyburg, in Misnia, and is simply a rather coarse emblem of
+the monachal character.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 148. The Monk-Calf._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 149. The Head of the Papacy._]
+
+The volume of caricatures just mentioned contains several satires on
+the pope, which are all very severe, and many of them clever. One has
+a movable leaf, which covers the upper part of the picture; when it is
+down, we have a representation of the pope in his ceremonial robes,
+and over it the inscription ALEX · VI · PONT · MAX. Pope Alexander VI.
+was the infamous Roderic Borgia, a man stained with all the crimes
+and vices which strike most horror into men's minds. When the leaf is
+raised, another figure joins itself with the lower part of the former,
+and represents a papal demon, crowned, the cross being transformed into
+an instrument of infernal punishment. This figure is represented in our
+cut No. 149. Above it are inscribed the words EGO · SVM · PAPA, "I am
+the Pope." Attached to it is a page of explanation in German, in which
+the legend of that pope's death is given, a legend that his wicked
+life appeared sufficient to sanction. It was said that, distrusting
+the success of his intrigues to secure the papacy for himself, he
+applied himself to the study of the black art, and sold himself to
+the Evil One. He then asked the tempter if it were his destiny to be
+pope, and received an answer in the affirmative. He next inquired how
+long he should hold the papacy, but Satan returned an equivocal and
+deceptive answer, for Borgia understood that he was to be pope fifteen
+years, whereas he died at the end of eleven. It is well known that
+Pope Alexander VI. died suddenly and unexpectedly through accidentally
+drinking the poisoned wine he had prepared with his own hand for the
+murder of another man.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 150. The Pope's Nurse._]
+
+An Italian theatine wrote a poem against the Reformation, in which
+he made Luther the offspring of Megæra, one of the furies, who is
+represented as having been sent from hell into Germany to be delivered
+of him. This sarcasm was thrown back upon the pope with much greater
+effect by the Lutheran caricaturists. One of the plates in the
+above-mentioned volume represents the "birth and origin of the pope"
+(_ortus et origo papæ_), making the pope identical with Antichrist.
+In different groups, in this rather elaborate design, the child is
+represented as attended by the three furies, Megæra acting as his
+wet-nurse, Alecto as nursery-maid, and Tisiphone in another capacity,
+&c. The name of Martin Luther is added to this caricature also.
+
+          _Hie wird geborn der Widerchrist.
+          Megera sein Seugamme ist;
+          Alecto sein Keindermeidlin,
+          Tisiphone die gengelt in._--M. Luth., D. 1545.
+
+One of the groups in this plate, representing the fury Megæra, a
+becoming foster-mother, suckling the pope-infant, is given in our cut,
+No. 150.
+
+In another of these caricatures the pope is represented trampling on
+the emperor, to show the manner in which he usurped and tyrannised
+over the temporal power. Another illustrates "the kingdom of Satan and
+the Pope" (_regnum Satanæ et Papæ_), and the latter is represented
+as presiding over hell-mouth in all his state. One, given in our cut
+No. 151, represents the pope under the form of an ass playing on the
+bagpipes, and is entitled _Papa doctor theologiæ et magister fidei_.
+Four lines of German verse beneath the engraving state how "the pope
+can alone expound Scripture and purge error, just as the ass alone can
+pipe and touch the notes correctly."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 151. The Pope giving the Tune._]
+
+          _Der Bapst kan allein auslegen
+          Die Schrifft, und irthum ausfegen;
+          Wie der esel allein pfeiffen
+          Kan, und die noten recht greiffen._--1545.
+
+This was the last year of Luther's active labours. At the commencement
+of the year following he died at Eissleben, whither he had gone to
+attend the council of princes. These caricatures may perhaps be
+considered as so many proclamations of satisfaction and exultation in
+the final triumph of the great reformer.
+
+Books, pamphlets, and prints of this kind were multiplied to an
+extraordinary degree during the age of the Reformation, but the
+majority of them were in the interest of the new movement. Luther's
+opponent, Eckius, complained of the infinite number of people who
+gained their living by wandering over all parts of Germany, and
+selling Lutheran books.[78] Among those who administered largely to
+this circulation of polemic books was the poet of farces, comedies, and
+ballads, Hans Sachs, already mentioned. Hans Sachs had in one poem,
+published in 1535, celebrated Luther under the title of "the Wittemberg
+Nightingale:"--
+
+          _Die Wittembergisch' Nachtigall,
+          Die man jetzt höret überall_;
+
+and described the effects of his song over all the other animals; and
+he published, also in verse, what he called a Monument, or Lament, on
+his death ("Ein Denkmal oder Klagred' ob der Leiche Doktors Martin
+Luther"). Among the numerous broadsides published by Hans Sachs, one
+contains the very clever caricature of which we give a copy in our cut
+No. 152. It is entitled "Der gut Hirt und böss Hirt," the good shepherd
+and bad shepherd, and has for its text the opening verses of the tenth
+chapter of the gospel of St. John. The good and bad shepherds are,
+as may be supposed, Christ and the pope. The church is here pictured
+as a not very stately building; the entrance, especially, is a plain
+structure of timber. Jesus said to the Pharisees, "He that entereth not
+by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the
+same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is
+the shepherd of the flock." In the engraving, the pope, as the hireling
+shepherd, sits on the roof of the stateliest part of the building,
+pointing out to the Christian flock the wrong way, and blessing the
+climbers. Under him two men of worldly distinction are making their
+way into the church through a window; and on a roof below a friar is
+pointing to the people the way up. At another window a monk holds
+out his arms to invite people up; and one in spectacles, no doubt
+emblematical of the doctors of the church, is looking out from an
+opening over the entrance door to watch the proceedings of the Good
+Shepherd. To the right, on the papal side of the church, the lords
+and great men are bringing the people under their influence, till
+they are stopped by the cardinals and bishops, who prevent them from
+going forward to the door and point out very energetically the way
+up the roof. At the door stands, the Saviour, as the good shepherd,
+who has knocked, and the porter has opened it with his key. Christ's
+true teachers, the evangelists, show the way to the solitary man of
+worth who comes by this road, and who listens with calm attention to
+the gospel teachers, while he opens his purse to bestow his charity
+on the poor man by the road side. In the original engraving, in the
+distance on the left, the Good Shepherd is seen followed by his flock,
+who are obedient to his voice; on the right, the bad shepherd, who has
+ostentatiously drawn up his sheep round the image of the cross, is
+abandoning them, and taking to flight on the approach of the wolf. "He
+that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the
+porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own
+sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own
+sheep he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his
+voice.... But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own
+the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and
+fleeth; and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep." (John x.
+2-4, 12.)
+
+ [78] "Infinitus jam erat numerus qui victum ex Lutheranis libris
+      quæritantes, in speciem bibliopolarum longe lateque per Germaniæ
+      provincias vagabantur."--Eck., p. 58.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 152. The Two Shepherds._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 153. Murner and Luther's Daughter._]
+
+The triumph of Luther is the subject of a rather large and elaborate
+caricature, which is an engraving of great rarity, but a copy of it is
+given in Jaime's "Musée de Caricature." Leo X. is represented seated
+on his throne upon the edge of the abyss, into which his cardinals are
+trying to prevent his falling; but their efforts are rendered vain by
+the appearance of Luther on the other side supported by his principal
+adherents, and wielding the Bible as his weapon, and the pope is
+overthrown, in spite of the support he receives from a vast host of
+popish clergy, doctors, &c.
+
+The popish writers against Luther charged him with vices for which
+there was probably no foundation, and invented the most scandalous
+stories against him. They accused him, among other things, of
+drunkenness and licentiousness. and there may, perhaps, be some
+allusion to the latter charge in our cut No. 153, which is taken from
+one of the comic illustrations to Murner's book, "Von dem grossen
+Lutherischen Narren," which was published in 1522; but, at all events,
+it will serve as a specimen of these illustrations, and of Murner's
+fancy of representing himself with the head of a cat. In 1525, Luther
+married a nun who had turned Protestant and quitted her convent,
+named Catherine de Bora, and this became the signal to his opponents
+for indulging in abusive songs, and satires, and caricatures, most
+of them too coarse and indelicate to be described in these pages.
+In many of the caricatures made on this occasion, which are usually
+woodcut illustrations to books written against the reformer, Luther is
+represented dancing with Catherine de Bora, or sitting at table with a
+glass in his hand. An engraving of this kind, which forms one of the
+illustrations to a work by Dr. Konrad Wimpina, one of the reformer's
+violent opponents, represents Luther's marriage. It is divided into
+three compartments; to the left, Luther, whom the Catholics always
+represented in the character of a monk, gives the marriage ring to
+Catherine de Bora, and above them, in a sort of aureole, is inscribed
+the word _Vovete_; on the right appears the nuptial bed, with the
+curtains drawn, and the inscription _Reddite_; and in the middle the
+monk and nun are dancing joyously together, and over their heads we
+read the words--
+
+                        Discedat ab aris
+              Cui tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus.
+
+While Luther was heroically fighting the great fight of reform in
+Germany, the foundation of religious reform was laid in France by
+John Calvin, a man equally sincere and zealous in the cause, but of
+a totally different temper, and he espoused doctrines and forms of
+church government which a Lutheran would not admit. Literary satire
+was used with great effect by the French Calvinists against their
+popish opponents, but they have left us few caricatures or burlesque
+engravings of any kind; at least, very few belonging to the earlier
+period of their history. Jaime, in his "Musée de Caricature," has given
+a copy of a very rare plate, representing the pope struggling with
+Luther and Calvin, as his two assailants. Both are tearing the pope's
+hair, but it is Calvin who is here armed with the Bible, with which
+he is striking at Luther, who is pulling him by the beard. The pope
+has his hands upon their heads. This scene takes place in the choir of
+a church, but I give here (cut No. 154) only the group of the three
+combatants, intended to represent how the two great opponents to papal
+corruptions were hostile at the same time to each other.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 154. Luther and Calvin._]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  ORIGIN OF MEDIÆVAL FARCE AND MODERN COMEDY.--HROTSVITHA.--MEDIÆVAL
+     NOTIONS OF TERENCE.--THE EARLY RELIGIOUS PLAYS.--MYSTERIES AND
+     MIRACLE PLAYS.--THE FARCES.--THE DRAMA IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+There is still another branch of literature which, however it may have
+been modified, has descended to us from the middle ages. It has been
+remarked more than once in the course of this book, that the theatre
+of the Romans perished in the transition from the empire to the middle
+ages; but something in the shape of theatrical performances appears
+to be inseparable from society even in its most barbarous state, and
+we soon trace among the peoples who had settled upon the ruins of the
+empire of Rome an approach towards a drama. It is worthy of remark,
+too, that the mediæval drama originated exactly in the same way as that
+of ancient Greece, that is, from religious ceremonies.
+
+Such was the ignorance of the ancient stage in the middle ages,
+that the meaning of the word _comœdia_ was not understood. The
+Anglo-Saxon glossaries interpret the word by _racu_, a narrative,
+especially an epic recital, and this was the sense in which it was
+generally taken until late in the fourteenth or the fifteenth century.
+It is the sense in which it is used in the title of Dante's great poem,
+the "Divina Commedia." When the mediæval scholars became acquainted in
+manuscripts with the comedies of Terence, they considered them only as
+fine examples of a particular sort of literary composition, as metrical
+narratives in dialogue, and in this feeling they began to imitate them.
+One of the first of these mediæval imitators was a lady. There lived
+in the tenth century a maiden of Saxony, named Hrotsvitha--a rather
+unfortunate name for one of her sex, for it means simply "a loud noise
+of voices," or, as she explains it herself, in her Latin, _clamor
+validus_. Hrotsvitha, as was common enough among the ladies of those
+days, had received a very learned education, and her Latin is very
+respectable. About the middle of the tenth century, she became a nun
+in the very aristocratic Benedictine abbey of Gandesheim, in Saxony,
+the abbesses of which were all princesses, and which had been founded
+only a century before. She wrote in Latin verse a short history of
+that religious house, but she is best known by seven pieces, which are
+called comedies (_comœdiæ_), and which consist simply of legends of
+saints, told dialogue-wise, some in verse and some in prose. As may
+be supposed, there is not much of real comedy in these compositions,
+although one of them, the Dulcitius, is treated in a style which
+approaches that of farce. It is the story of the martyrdom of the three
+virgin saints--Agape, Chione, and Irene--who excite the lust of the
+persecutor Dulcitius; and it may be remarked, that in this "comedy,"
+and in that of Callimachus and one or two of the others, the lady
+Hrotsvitha displays a knowledge of love-making and of the language of
+love, which was hardly to be expected from a holy nun.[79]
+
+ [79] Several editions of the writings of Hrotsvitha, texts and
+      translations, have been published of late years both in Germany
+      and in France, of which I may point out the following as most
+      useful and complete--"Théatre de Hrotsvitha, Religieuse Allemande
+      du x^e siècle....par Charles Magnin," 8vo., Paris, 1845;
+      "Hrotsvithæ Gandeshemensis, virginis et monialis Germanicæ, gente
+      Saxonica ortæ, Comœdias sex, ad fidem codicis Emmeranensis
+      typis expressas edidit.... J. Benedixen," 16mo., Lubecæ, 1857;
+      "Die Werke der Hrotsvitha: Herausgegeben von Dr. K. A. Barack,"
+      8vo., Nürnberg, 1858.
+
+Hrotsvitha, in her preface, complains that, in spite of the general
+love for the reading of the Scriptures, and contempt for everything
+derived from ancient paganism, people still too often read the
+"fictions" of Terence, and thus, seduced by the beauties of his style,
+soiled their minds with the knowledge of the criminal acts which are
+described in his writings. A rather early manuscript has preserved a
+very curious fragment illustrative of the manner in which the comedies
+of the Romans were regarded by one class of people in the middle ages,
+and it has also a further meaning. Its form is that of a dialogue in
+Latin verse between Terence and a personage called in the original
+_delusor_, which was no doubt intended to express a performer of some
+kind, and may be probably considered as synonymous with _jougleur_. It
+is a contention between the new jouglerie of the middle ages and the
+old jouglerie of the schools, somewhat in the same style as the fabliau
+of "Les deux Troveors Ribauz," described in a former chapter.[80] We
+are to suppose that the name of Terence has been in some way or other
+brought forward in laudatory terms, upon which the jougleur steps
+forward from among the spectators and expresses himself towards the
+Roman writer very contemptuously. Terence then makes his appearance to
+speak in his own defence, and the two go on abusing one another in no
+very measured language. Terence asks his assailant who he is? to which
+the other replies, "If you ask who I am, I reply, I am better than
+thee. Thou art old and broken with years; I am a tyro, full of vigour,
+and in the force of youth. You are but a barren trunk, while I am a
+good and fertile tree. If you hold your tongue, old fellow, it will be
+much better for you."
+
+        _Si rogitas quis sum, respondeo: te melior sum.
+        Tu vetus atque senex; ego tyro, valens, adulescens.
+        Tu sterilis truncus; ego fertilis arbor, opimus.
+        Si taceas, o vetule, lucrum tibi quæris enorme._
+
+     Terence replies:--"What sense have you left? Are you, think you,
+     better than me? Let me see you, young as you are, compose what
+     I, however old and broken, will compose. If you be a good tree,
+     show us some proofs of your fertility. Although I may be a barren
+     trunk, I produce abundance of better fruit than thine."
+
+        _Quis tibi sensus inest? numquid melior me es?
+        Nunc vetus atque senex quæ fecero fac adolescens.
+        Si bonus arbor ades, qua fertilitate redundas?
+        Cum sim truncus iners, fructu meliore redundo._
+
+And so the dispute continues, but unfortunately the latter part has
+been lost with a leaf or two of the manuscript. I will only add that I
+think the age of this curious piece has been overrated.[81]
+
+ [80] See p. 191 of the present volume.
+
+ [81] This singular composition was published with notes by M. de
+      Montaiglon, in a Parisian journal entitled, "L'Amateur de
+      Livres," in 1849, under the title of "Fragment d'un Dialogue
+      Latin du ix^e siècle entre Terence et un Bouffon." A few separate
+      copies were printed, of which I possess one.
+
+Hrotsvitha is the earliest example we have of mediæval writers in this
+particular class of literature. We find no other until the twelfth
+century, when two writers flourished named Vital of Blois (_Vitalis
+Blesensis_) and Matthew of Vendôme (_Matthæus Vindocinensis_), the
+authors of several of the mediæval poems distinguished by the title of
+_comœdiæ_, which give us a clearer and more distinct idea of what
+was meant by the word. They are written in Latin Elegiac verse, a form
+of composition which was very popular among the mediæval scholars, and
+consist of stories told in dialogue. Hence Professor Osann, of Giessen,
+who edited two of those of Vital of Blois, gives them the title of
+eclogues (_eclogæ_). The name comedy is, however, given to them in
+manuscripts, and it may perhaps admit of the following explanation.
+These pieces seem to have been first mere abridgments of the plots of
+the Roman comedies, especially those of Plautus, and the authors appear
+to have taken the Latin title of the original as applied to the plot,
+in the sense of a narrative, and not to its dramatic form. Of the two
+"comedies" by Vital of Blois, one is entitled "Geta," and is taken from
+the "Amphytrio" of Plautus, and the other, which in the manuscripts
+bears the title of "Querulus," represents the "Aulularia" of the
+same writer. Independent of the form of composition, the scholastic
+writer has given a strangely mediæval turn to the incidents of the
+classic story of Jupiter and Alcmena. Another similar "comedy," that
+of Babio, which I first printed from the manuscripts, is still more
+mediæval in character. Its plot, perhaps taken from a fabliau, for the
+mediæval writers rarely invented stories, is as follows, although it
+must be confessed that it comes out rather obscurely in the dialogue
+itself. Babio, the hero of the piece, is a priest, who, as was still
+common at that time (the twelfth century), has a wife, or, as the
+strict religionists would then say, a concubine, named Pecula. She has
+a daughter named Viola, with whom Babio is in love, and he pursues
+his design upon her, of course unknown to his wife. Babio has also a
+man-servant named Fodius, who is engaged in a secret intrigue with
+his mistress, Pecula, and also seeks to seduce her daughter, Viola.
+To crown the whole, the lord of the manor, a knight named Croceus, is
+also in love with Viola, though with more honourable designs. Here is
+surely intrigue enough and a sufficient absence of morality to satisfy
+a modern French novelist of the first water. At the opening of the
+piece, amid some by-play between the four individuals who form the
+household of Babio, it is suddenly announced that Croceus is on his
+way to visit him, and a feast is hastily prepared for his reception.
+It ends in the knight carrying away Viola by force. Babio, after a
+little vain bluster, consoles himself for the loss of the damsel with
+reflections on the virtue of his wife, Pecula, and the faithfulness of
+his man, Fodius, when, at this moment, Fame carries to his ear reports
+which excite his suspicions against them. He adopts a stratagem very
+frequently introduced in the mediæval stories, surprises the two lovers
+under circumstances which leave no room for doubting their guilt, and
+then forgives them, enters a monastery, and leaves them to themselves.
+In form, these "comedies" are little more than scholastic exercises;
+but, at a later period, we shall see the same stories adopted as the
+subjects of farces.[82]
+
+ [82] To judge by the number of copies found in manuscripts,
+      especially of the "Geta," these dramatic poems must have enjoyed
+      considerable popularity. The "Geta" and the "Querulus" were
+      published in a volume entitled, "Vitalis Blesensis Amphitryon et
+      Aulularia Eclogæ. Edidit Fridericus Osannus, Professor Gisensis,"
+      8vo., Darmstadt, 1836. The "Geta" and the "Babio" are included
+      in my "Early Mysteries, and other Latin Poems of the Twelfth and
+      Thirteenth Centuries."
+
+Already, however, by the side of these dramatic poems, a real
+drama--the drama of the middle ages--was gradually developing
+itself. As stated before, it arose, like the drama of the Greeks,
+out of the religious ceremonies. We know nothing of the existence of
+anything approaching to dramatic forms which may have existed among
+the religious rites of the peoples of the Teutonic race before
+their conversion to Christianity, but the Christian clergy felt the
+necessity of keeping up festive religious ceremonies in some form or
+other, and also of impressing upon people's imagination and memory by
+means of rude scenical representations some of the broader facts of
+scriptural and ecclesiastical history. These performances at first
+consisted probably in mere dumb show, or at the most the performers
+may have chanted the scriptural account of the transaction they were
+representing. In this manner the choral boys, or the younger clergy,
+would, on some special Saint's day, perform some striking act in
+the life of the saint commemorated, or, on particular festivals of
+the church, those incidents of gospel history to which the festival
+especially related. By degrees, a rather more imposing character was
+given to these performances by the addition of a continuous dialogue,
+which, however, was written in Latin verse, and was no doubt chanted.
+This incipient drama in Latin, as far as we know it, belongs to the
+twelfth century, and is represented by a tolerably large number of
+examples still preserved in mediæval manuscripts. Some of the earliest
+of these have for their author a pupil of the celebrated Abelard, named
+Hilarius, who lived in the first half of the twelfth century, and is
+understood to have been by birth an Englishman. Hilarius appears before
+us as a playful Latin poet, and among a number of short pieces, which
+may be almost called lyric, he has left us three of these religious
+plays. The subject of the first of these is the raising of Lazarus
+from the dead, the chief peculiarity of which consists of the songs of
+lamentation placed in the mouths of the two sisters of Lazarus, Mary
+and Martha. The second represents one of the miracles attributed to St.
+Nicholas; and the third, the history of Daniel. The latter is longer
+and more elaborate than the others, and at its conclusion, the stage
+direction tells us that, if it were performed at matins, Darius, king
+of the Medes and Persians, was to chant _Te Deum Laudamus_, but if it
+were at vespers, the great king was to chant _Magnificat anima mea
+Dominum_.[83]
+
+ [83] "Hilarii Versus et Ludi," 8vo., Paris, 1835. Edited by M.
+      Champollion Figeac.
+
+That this mediæval drama was not derived from that of the Roman is
+evident from the circumstance that entirely new terms were applied
+to it. The western people in the middle ages had no words exactly
+equivalent with the Latin _comœdia_, _tragœdia_, _theatrum_, &c.;
+and even the Latinists, to designate the dramatic pieces performed
+at the church festivals, employed the word _ludus_, a play. The
+French called them by a word having exactly the same meaning, _jeu_
+(from _jocus_). Similarly in English they were termed _plays_. The
+Anglo-Saxon glossaries present as the representative of the Latin
+_theatrum_, the compounded words _plege-stow_, or _pleg-stow_, a
+play-place, and _pleg-hus_, a play-house. It is curious that we
+Englishmen have preferred to the present time the Anglo-Saxon words
+in _play_, _player_, and _play-house_. Another Anglo-Saxon word with
+exactly the same signification, _lac_, or _gelac_, play, appears to
+have been more in use in the dialect of the Northumbrians, and a
+Yorkshireman still calls a play a _lake_, and a player a _laker_. So
+also the Germans called a dramatic performance a _spil_, _i.e._ a play,
+the modern _spiel_, and a theatre, a _spil-hus_. One of the pieces of
+Hilarius is thus entitled "Ludus super iconia sancti Nicolai," and the
+French _jeu_ and the English _play_ are constantly used in the same
+sense. But besides this general term, words gradually came into use to
+characterise different sorts of plays. The church plays consisted of
+two descriptions of subjects, they either represented the miraculous
+acts of certain saints, which had a plain meaning, or some incident
+taken from the Holy Scriptures, which was supposed to have a hidden
+mysterious signification as well as an apparent one, and hence the
+one class of subject was usually spoken of simply as _miraculum_, a
+miracle, and the other as _mysterium_, a mystery. _Mysteries_ and
+_miracle-plays_ are still the names usually given to the old religious
+plays by writers on the history of the stage.
+
+We have a proof that the Latin religious plays, and the festivities
+in which they were employed, had become greatly developed in the
+twelfth century, in the notice taken of them in the ecclesiastical
+councils of that period, for they were disapproved by the stricter
+church disciplinarians. So early as the papacy of Gregory VIII., the
+pope urged the clergy to "extirpate" from their churches theatrical
+plays, and other festive practices which were not quite in harmony
+with the sacred character of these buildings.[84] Such performances are
+forbidden by a council held at Treves in 1227.[85] We learn from the
+annals of the abbey of Corbei, published by Leibnitz, that the younger
+monks at Heresburg performed on one occasion a "sacred comedy" (_sacram
+comœdiam_) of the selling into captivity and the exaltation of
+Joseph, which was disapproved by the other heads of the order.[86] Such
+performances are included in a proclamation of the bishop of Worms, in
+1316, against the various abuses which had crept into the festivities
+observed in his diocese at Easter and St. John's tide.[87] Similar
+prohibitions of the acting of such plays in churches are met with at
+subsequent periods.
+
+ [84] "Interdum ludi fiunt in ecclesiis theatrales," &c.--_Decret
+      Gregorii_, lib. iii. tit. i.
+
+ [85] "Item non permittant sacerdotes ludos theatrales fieri in
+      ecclesia et alios ludos inhonestos."
+
+ [86] "Juniores fratres in Heresburg sacram habuere comœdiam de
+      Josepho vendito et exalto, quod vero reliqui ordinis nostri
+      prælati male interpretati sunt."--_Leibn., Script. Brunsv._ tom.
+      ii. p. 311.
+
+ [87] The acts of this synod of Worms are printed in Harzheim, tom. iv.
+      p. 258.
+
+While these performances were thus falling under the censure of the
+church authorities, they were taken up by the laity, and under their
+management both the plays and the machinery for acting them underwent
+considerable extension. The municipal guilds contained in their
+constitution a considerable amount of religious spirit. They were
+great benefactors of the churches in cities and municipal towns, and
+had usually some parts of the sacred edifice appropriated to them,
+and they may, perhaps, have taken a part in these performances, while
+they were still confined to the church. These guilds, and subsequently
+the municipal corporations, took them entirely into their own hands.
+Certain annual religious festivals, and especially the feast of _Corpus
+Christi_, were still the occasions on which the plays were acted, but
+they were taken entirely from the churches, and the performances took
+place in the open streets. Each guild had its particular play, and
+they acted on movable stages, which were dragged along the streets in
+the procession of the guild. These stages appear to have been rather
+complicated. They were divided into three floors, that in the middle,
+which was the principal stage, representing this world, while the upper
+division represented heaven, and that at the bottom hell. The mediæval
+writers in Latin called this machinery a _pegma_, from the Greek word
+πῆγμα, a scaffold; and they also applied to it, for a reason which
+is not is easily seen, unless the one word arose out of a corruption
+of the other, that of _pagina_, and from a further corruption of these
+came into the French and English languages the word _pageant_, which
+originally signified one of these movable stages, though it has since
+received secondary meanings which have a much wider application. Each
+guild in a town had its pageant and its own actors, who performed
+in masks and costumes, and each had one of a series of plays, which
+were performed at places where they halted in the procession. The
+subjects of these plays were taken from Scripture, and they usually
+formed a regular series of the principal histories of the Old and New
+Testaments. For this reason they were generally termed _mysteries_, a
+title already explained; and among the few series of these plays still
+preserved, we have the "Coventry Mysteries," which were performed by
+the guilds of that town, the "Chester Mysteries," belonging to the
+guilds in the city of Chester, and the "Towneley Mysteries," so called
+from the name of the possessor of the manuscript, but which probably
+belonged to the guilds of Wakefield in Yorkshire.
+
+During these changes in the method of performance, the plays themselves
+had also been considerably modified. The simple Latin phrases, even
+when in rhyme, which formed the dialogue of the earlier _ludi_--as in
+the four miracles of St. Nicholas, and the six Latin mysteries taken
+from the New Testament, printed in my volume of "Early Mysteries and
+other Latin Poems"--must have been very uninteresting to the mass of
+the spectators, and an attempt was made to enliven them by introducing
+among the Latin phrases popular proverbs, or even sometimes a song
+in the vulgar tongue. Thus in the play of "Lazarus" by Hilarius, the
+Latin of the lamentations of his two sisters is intermixed with French
+verses. Such is the case also with the play of "St. Nicholas" by
+the same writer, as well as with the curious mystery of the Foolish
+Virgins, printed in my "Early Mysteries" just alluded to, in which
+latter the Latin is intermingled with Provençal verse. A much greater
+advance was made when these performances were transferred to the
+guilds. The Latin was then discarded altogether, and the whole play
+was written in French, or English, or German, as the case might be,
+the plot was made more elaborate, and the dialogue greatly extended.
+But now that the whole institution had become secularised, the want
+of something to amuse people--to make them laugh, as people liked to
+laugh in the middle ages--was felt more than ever, and this want was
+supplied by the introduction of droll and ludicrous scenes, which are
+often very slightly, if at all, connected with the subject of the play.
+In one of the earliest of the French plays, that of "St. Nicholas," by
+Jean Bodel, the characters who form the burlesque scene are a party
+of gamblers in a tavern. In others, robbers, or peasants, or beggars
+form the comic scene, or vulgar women, or any personages who could be
+introduced acting vulgarly and using coarse language, for these were
+great incitements to mirth among the populace.
+
+In the English plays now remaining, these scenes are, on the whole,
+less frequent, and they are usually more closely connected with
+the general subject. The earliest English collection that has been
+published is that known as the "Towneley Mysteries," the manuscript of
+which belongs to the fifteenth century, and the plays themselves may
+have been composed in the latter part of the fourteenth. It contains
+thirty-two plays, beginning with the Creation, and ending with the
+Ascension and the Day of Judgment, with two supplementary plays, the
+"Raising of Lazarus" and the "Hanging of Judas." The play of "Cain and
+Abel" is throughout a vulgar drollery, in which Cain, who exhibits
+the character of a blustering ruffian, is accompanied by a _garcio_,
+or lad, who is the very type of a vulgar and insolent horse-boy, and
+the conversation of these two worthies reminds us a little of that
+between the clown and his master in the open-air performances of the
+old wandering mountebanks. Even the death of Abel by the hand of his
+brother is performed in a manner calculated to provoke great laughter.
+In the old mirthful spirit, to hear two persons load each other with
+vulgar abuse, was as good as seeing them grin through a horse-collar,
+if not better. Hence the droll scene in the play of "Noah" is a
+domestic quarrel between Noah and his wife, who was proverbially a
+shrew, and here gives a tolerable example of abusive language, as it
+might then come from a woman's tongue. The quarrel arises out of her
+obstinate refusal to go into the ark. In the New Testament series the
+play of "The Shepherds" was one of those most susceptible of this sort
+of embellishment. There are two plays of the Shepherds in the "Towneley
+Mysteries," the first of which is amusing enough, as it represents,
+in clever burlesque, the acts and conversation of a party of mediæval
+shepherds guarding their flocks at night; but the second play of the
+Shepherds is a much more remarkable example of a comic drama. The
+shepherds are introduced at the opening of the piece conversing very
+satirically on the corruptions of the time, and complaining how the
+people were impoverished by over-taxation, to support the pride and
+vanity of the aristocracy. After a good deal of very amusing talk, the
+shepherds, who, as usual, are three in number, agree to sing a song,
+and it is this song, it appears, which brings to them a fourth, named
+Mak, who proves to be a sheep-stealer; and, in fact, no sooner have
+the shepherds resigned themselves to sleep for the night, than Mak
+chooses one of the best sheep in their flocks, and carries it home
+to his hut. Knowing that he will be suspected of the theft, and that
+he will soon be pursued, he is anxious to conceal the plunder, and
+is only helped out of his difficulty by his wife, who suggests that
+the carcase shall be laid at the bottom of her cradle, and that she
+shall lie upon it and groan, pretending to be in labour. Meanwhile the
+shepherds awake, discover the loss of a sheep, and perceiving that Mak
+has disappeared also, they naturally suspect him to be the depredator,
+and pursue him. They find everything very cunningly prepared in the
+cottage to deceive them, but, after a large amount of roundabout
+inquiry and research, and much drollery, they discover that the boy of
+which Mak's wife pretends to have been just delivered, is nothing else
+but the sheep which had been stolen from their flocks. The wife still
+asserts that it is her child, and Mak sets up as his defence that the
+baby had been "forspoken," or enchanted, by an elf at midnight, and
+that it had thus been changed into the appearance of a sheep; but the
+shepherds refuse to be satisfied with this explanation. The whole of
+this little comedy is carried out with great skill, and with infinite
+drollery. The shepherds, while still wrangling with Mak and his wife,
+are seized with drowsiness, and lie down to sleep; but they are aroused
+by the voice of the angel, who proclaims the birth of the Saviour. The
+next play in which the drollery is introduced, is that of "Herod and
+the Slaughter of the Innocents." Herod's bluster and bombast, and the
+vulgar abuse which passes between the Hebrew mothers and the soldiers
+who are murdering their children, are wonderfully laughable. The plays
+which represented the arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus, are all
+full of drollery, for the grotesque character which had been given to
+the demons in the earlier middle ages, appears to have been transferred
+to the executioners, or, as they were called, the "tormentors," and
+the language and manner in which they executed their duties, must have
+kept the audience in a continual roar of laughter. In the play of
+"Doomsday," the fiends retained their old character, and the manner
+in which they joke over the distress of the sinful souls, and the
+details they give of their sinfulness, are equally mirth-provoking. The
+"Coventry Mysteries" are also printed from a manuscript of the middle
+of the fifteenth century, and are, perhaps, as old as the "Towneley
+Mysteries." They consist of forty-two plays, but they contain, on the
+whole, fewer droll scenes than those of the Towneley collection. But
+a very remarkable example is furnished in the play of the "Trial of
+Joseph and Mary," which is a very grotesque picture of the proceedings
+in a mediæval consistory court. The sompnour, a character so well
+known by Chaucer's picture of him, opens the piece by reading from his
+book a long list of offenders against chastity. At its conclusion,
+two "detractors" make their appearance, who repeat various scandalous
+stories against the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph, which are
+overheard by some of the high officers of the court, and Mary and
+Joseph are formally accused and placed upon their trial. The trial
+itself is a scene of low ribaldry, which can only have afforded
+amusement to a very vulgar audience. There is a certain amount of the
+same kind of indelicate drollery in the play of "The Woman taken in
+Adultery," in this collection. The "Chester Mysteries" are still more
+sparing of such scenes, but they are printed from manuscripts written
+after the Reformation, which had, perhaps, gone through the process
+of expurgation, in which such excrescences had been lopped off.
+However, in the play of "Noah's Flood," we have the old quarrel between
+Noah and his wife, which is carried so far that the latter actually
+beats her husband in the presence of the audience. There is a little
+drollery in the play of "The Shepherds," a considerable amount of what
+may be called "Billingsgate" language in the play of the "Slaughter
+of the Innocents," but less than the usual amount of insolence in the
+tormentors and demons.[88] It is probable, however, that these droll
+scenes were not always considered an integral part of the play in which
+they were introduced, but that they were kept as separate subjects, to
+be introduced at will, and not always in the same play, and therefore
+that they were not copied with the play in the manuscripts.
+
+ [88] The editions of the three principal collections of English
+      mysteries are--1. "The Towneley Mysteries," 8vo., London,
+      1836, published by the Surtees Society; 2. "Ludus Coventriæ: a
+      Collection of Mysteries, formerly represented at Coventry on the
+      Feast of Corpus Christi," edited by James Orchard Halliwell,
+      Esq., 8vo., London, 1841, published by the Shakespeare Society;
+      3. "The Chester Plays: a Collection of Mysteries founded upon
+      Scriptural Subjects, and formerly represented by the Trades of
+      Chester at Whitsuntide," edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., 2 vols.
+      8vo., London, 1843 and 1847, published by the Shakespeare Society.
+
+In the Coventry play of "Noah's Flood," when Noah has received the
+directions from an angel for the building of the ark, he leaves the
+stage to proceed to this important work. On his departure, Lamech comes
+forward, blind and led by a youth, who directs his hand to shoot at a
+beast concealed in a bush. Lamech shoots, and kills Cain, upon which,
+in his anger, he beats the youth to death, and laments the misfortune
+into which the latter has led him. This was the legendary explanation
+of the passage in the fourth chapter of Genesis: "And Lamech said ...
+I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt; if Cain
+shall be avenged seven-fold, truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold." It
+is evident that this is a piece of scriptural story which has nothing
+to do with Noah's flood, and accordingly, in the Coventry play, we
+are told in the stage directions, that it was introduced in the place
+of the "interlude,"[89] as if there were a place in the machinery of
+the pageant where the episode, which was not an integral part of the
+subject, was performed, and that this part of the performance was
+called an interlude, or play introduced in the interval of the action
+of the main subject. The word _interlude_ remained long in our language
+as applied to such short and simple dramatic pieces as we may suppose
+to have formed the drolleries of the mysteries. But they had another
+name in France which has had a greater and more lulling celebrity.
+In one of the early French miracle-plays, that of "St. Fiacre," an
+interlude of this kind is introduced, containing five personages--a
+brigand or robber, a peasant, a sergeant, and the wives of the two
+latter. The brigand, meeting the peasant on the highway, asks the way
+to St. Omer, and receives a clownish answer, which is followed by one
+equally rude on a second question. The brigand, in revenge, steals
+the peasant's capon, but the sergeant comes up at this moment and,
+attempting to arrest the thief, receives a blow from the latter which
+is supposed to break his right arm. The brigand thus escapes, and the
+peasant and the sergeant quit the scene, which is immediately occupied
+by their wives. The sergeant's wife is informed by the other of the
+injury sustained by her husband, and she exults over it because it will
+deprive him of the power of beating her. They then proceed to a tavern,
+call for wine, and make merry, the conversation turning upon the faults
+of their respective husbands, who are not spared. In the midst of
+their enjoyments, the two husbands return, and show, by beating their
+wives, that they are not very greatly disabled. In the manuscript of
+the miracle-play of "St. Fiacre," in which this amusing episode is
+introduced, a marginal stage direction is expressed in the following
+words, "_cy est interposé une farsse_" (here a farce is introduced).
+This is one of the earliest instances of the application of the term
+_farce_ to these short dramatic facetiæ. Different opinions have been
+expressed as to the origin of the word, but it seems most probable
+that it is derived from an old French verb, _farcer_, to jest, to make
+merry, whence the modern word _farceur_ for a joker, and that it thus
+means merely a drollery or merriment.
+
+ [89] "Hic transit Noe cum familia sua pro navi, quo exeunte, _locum
+      interludii subintret_ statim Lameth, conductus ab adolescente, et
+      dicens," &c.
+
+I have just suggested as a reason for the absence of these interludes,
+or farces, in the mysteries as they are found in the manuscripts,
+that they were probably not looked upon as parts of the mysteries
+themselves, but as separate pieces which might be used at pleasure.
+When we reach a certain period in their history, we find that not only
+was this the case, but that these farces were performed separately and
+altogether independently of the religious plays. It is in France that
+we find information which enables us to trace the gradual revolution
+in the mediæval drama. A society was formed towards the close of the
+fourteenth century under the title of _Confrères de la Passion_, who,
+in 1398, established a regular theatre at St. Maur-des-Fossés, and
+subsequently obtained from Charles VI. a privilege to transport their
+theatre into Paris, and to perform in it mysteries and miracle-plays.
+They now rented of the monks of Hermières a hall in the hospital of the
+Trinity, outside of the Porte St. Denis, performing there regularly
+on Sundays and saints' days, and probably making a good thing of it,
+for, during a long period, they enjoyed great popularity. Gradually,
+however, this popularity was so much diminished, that the _confrères_
+were obliged to have recourse to expedients for reviving it. Meanwhile
+other similar societies had arisen into importance. The clerks of
+the Bazoche, or lawyers' clerks of the Palais de Justice, had thus
+associated together, it is said, as early as the beginning of the
+fourteenth century, and they distinguished themselves by composing
+and performing farces, for which they appear to have obtained a
+privilege. Towards the close of the fourteenth century, there arose
+in Paris another society, which took the name of _Enfans sans souci_,
+or Careless Boys, who elected a president or chief with the title
+of _Prince des Sots_, or King of the Fools, and who composed a sort
+of dramatic satires which they called _Sotties_. Jealousies soon
+arose between these two societies, either because the sotties were
+made sometimes to resemble too closely the farces, or because each
+trespassed too often on the territories of the other. Their differences
+were finally arranged by a compromise, whereby the Bazochians yielded
+to their rivals the privilege of performing farces, and received in
+return the permission to perform sotties. The Bazochians, too, had
+invented a new class of dramatic pieces which they called _Moralities_,
+and in which allegorical personages were introduced. Thus three
+dramatic societies continued to exist in France through the fifteenth
+century, and until the middle of the sixteenth.
+
+These various pieces, under the titles of farces, sotties, moralities,
+or whatever other names might be given to them, had become exceedingly
+popular at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and a very
+considerable number of them were printed, and many of them are still
+preserved, but they are books of great rarity, and often unique.[90]
+Of these the farces form the most numerous class. They consist simply
+of the tales of the older jougleurs or story-tellers represented in a
+dramatic form, but they often display great skill in conducting the
+plot, and a considerable amount of wit. The story of the sheep-stealer
+in the Towneley play of "The Shepherds," is a veritable farce. As
+in the fabliaux, the most common subjects of these farces are love
+intrigues, carried on in a manner which speaks little for the morality
+of the age in which they were written. Family quarrels frequently
+form the subject of a farce, and the weaknesses and vices of women.
+The priests, as usual, are not spared, but are introduced as the
+seducers of wives and daughters. In one the wives have found a means of
+re-modelling their husbands and making them young again, which they put
+in practice with various ludicrous circumstances. Tricks of servants
+are also common subjects for these farces. One is the story of a boy
+who does not know his own father, and some of the subjects are of a
+still more trivial character, as that of the boy who steals a tart from
+the pastrycook's shop. Two hungry boys, prowling about the streets,
+come to the shop door just as the pastrycook is giving directions for
+sending an eel-pie after him. By an ingenious deception the boys gain
+possession of the pie and eat it, and they are both caught and severely
+chastised. This is the whole plot of the farce. A dull schoolboy
+examined by his master in the presence of his parents, and the mirth
+produced by his blunders and their ignorance, formed also a favourite
+subject among these farces. One or two examples are preserved, and,
+from a companion of them, we might be led to suspect that Shakespeare
+took the idea of the opening scene in the fourth act of the "Merry
+Wives of Windsor" from one of these old farces.
+
+ [90] The most remarkable collection of these early farces, sotties,
+      and moralities yet known, was found accidentally in 1845, and
+      is now in the British Museum. These were all edited in Paris
+      as the first three volumes of a work in ten, entitled "Ancien
+      Théatre François, ou Collection des Ouvrages dramatiques les plus
+      remarquable depuis les Mystères jusqu'à Corneille, publié ... par
+      M. Viollet le Duc," 12mo., Paris, 1854. It is right to state that
+      these three volumes were edited, not by M. Viollet le Duc, but
+      by a scholar better known for his learning in the older French
+      literature, M. Anatole de Montaiglon.
+
+The sotties and moralities were more imaginative and extravagant
+than the farces, and were filled with allegorical personages. The
+characters introduced in the former have generally some relation to
+the kingdom of folly. Thus, in one of the sotties, the king of fools
+(_le roy des sotz_) is represented as holding his court, and consulting
+with his courtiers, whose names are Triboulet, Mitouflet, Sottinet,
+Coquibus, and Guippelin. Their conversation, as may be supposed, is
+of a satirical character. Another is entitled "The Sottie of the
+Deceivers," or cheats. Sottie--another name for mother Folly--opens
+the piece with a proclamation or address to fools of all descriptions,
+summoning them to her presence. Two, named Teste-Verte and Fine-Mine,
+obey the call, and they are questioned as to their own condition, and
+their proceedings, but their conversation is interrupted by the sudden
+intrusion of another personage named Everyone (_Chascun_), who, on
+examination, is found to be as perfect a fool as any of them. They
+accordingly fraternise, and join in a song. Finally, another character,
+The Time (_le Temps_), joins them, and they agree to submit to his
+directions. Accordingly he instructs them in the arts of flattery
+and deceiving, and the other similar means by which men of that time
+sought to thrive. Another is the Sottie of Foolish Ostentation (_de
+folle bobance_). This lady similarly opens the scene with an address
+to all the fools who hold allegiance to her, and three of these make
+their appearance. The first fool is the gentleman, the second the
+merchant, the fourth the peasant, and their conversation is a satire
+on contemporary society. The personification of abstract principles is
+far bolder. The three characters who compose one of these moralities
+are Everything (_tout_), Nothing (_rien_), and Everyone (_chascun_).
+How the personification of Nothing was to be represented, we are not
+told. The title of another of these moralities will be enough to give
+the reader a notion of their general title; it is, "A New Morality of
+the Children of Now-a-Days (_Maintenant_), who are the Scholars of
+Once-good (_Jabien_), who shows them how to play at Cards and at Dice,
+and to entertain Luxury, whereby one comes to Shame (_Honte_), and
+from Shame to Despair (_Desespoir_), and from Despair to the gibbet of
+Perdition, and then turns himself to Good-doing." The characters in
+this play are Now-a-Days, Once-good, Luxury, Shame, Despair, Perdition,
+and Good-doing.
+
+The three dramatic societies which produced all these farces, sotties,
+and moralities, continued to flourish in France until the middle of
+the sixteenth century, at which period a great revolution in dramatic
+literature took place in that country. The performance of the Mysteries
+had been forbidden by authority, and the Bazochians themselves were
+suppressed. The petty drama represented by the farces and sotties
+went rapidly out of fashion, in the great change through which the
+mind of society was at this time passing, and in which the taste for
+classical literature overcame all others. The old drama in France had
+disappeared, and a new one, formed entirely upon an imitation of the
+classical drama, was beginning to take its place. This incipient drama
+was represented in the sixteenth century by Etienne Jodel, by Jacques
+Grevin, by Rémy Belleau, and especially by Pierre de Larivey, the most
+prolific, and perhaps the most talented, of the earlier French regular
+dramatic authors.
+
+These French dramatic essays, the farces, the sotties, and the
+moralities, were imitated, and sometimes translated, in English, and
+many of them were printed; for the further our researches are carried
+into the early history of printing, the more we are astonished at the
+extreme activity of the press, even in its infancy, in multiplying
+literature of a popular character. In England, as in France, the
+farces had been, at a rather early period, detached from the mysteries
+and miracle-plays, but the word _interludes_ had been adopted here
+as the general title for them, and continued in use even after the
+establishment of the regular drama. Perhaps this name owed its
+popularity to the circumstance that it seemed more appropriate to its
+object, when it became so fashionable in England to act these plays at
+intervals in the great festivals and entertainments given at court, or
+in the households of the great nobles. At all events, there can be
+no doubt that this fashion had a great influence on the fate of the
+English stage. The custom of performing plays in the universities,
+great schools, and inns of court, had also the effect of producing a
+number of very clever dramatic writers; for when this literature was
+so warmly patronised by princes and nobles, people of the highest
+qualifications sought to excel in it. Hence we find from books of
+household expenses and similar records of the period, that there was,
+during the sixteenth century, an immense number of such plays compiled
+in England which were never printed, and of which, therefore, very few
+are preserved.
+
+The earliest known plays of this description in the English language
+belong to the class which were called in France moralities. They are
+three in number, and are preserved in a manuscript in the possession
+of Mr. Hudson Gurney, which I have not seen, but which is said to be
+of the reign of our king Henry VI. Several words and allusions in them
+seem to me to show that they were translated, or adapted, from the
+French. They contain exactly the same kind of allegorical personages.
+The allegory itself is a simple one, and easily understood. In the
+first, which is entitled the "Castle of Perseverance," the hero is
+_Humanum Genus_ (Mankynd), for the names of the parts are all given in
+Latin. On the birth of this personage, a good and a bad angel offer
+themselves as his protectors and guides, and he chooses the latter, who
+introduces him to _Mundus_ (the World), and to his friends, _Stultitia_
+(Folly), and _Voluptas_ (Pleasure). These and some other personages
+bring him under the influence of the seven deadly sins, and _Humanum
+Genus_ takes for his bedfellow a lady named _Luxuria_. At length
+_Confessio_ and _Pœnitentia_ succeed in reclaiming _Humanum Genus_,
+and they conduct him for security to the Castle of Perseverance, where
+the seven cardinal virtues attend upon him. He is besieged in this
+castle by the seven deadly sins, who are led to the attack by Belial,
+but are defeated. _Humanum Genus_ has now become aged, and is exposed
+to the attacks of another assailant. This is _Avaritia_, who enters
+the Castle stealthily by undermining the wall, and artfully persuades
+_Humanum Genus_ to leave it. He thus comes again under the influence
+of _Mundus_, until _Mors_ (Death) arrives, and the bad angel carries
+off the victim to the domains of Satan. This, however, is not the end
+of the piece. God appears, seated on His throne, and Mercy, Peace,
+Justice, and Truth appear before Him, the two former pleading for,
+and the latter against, _Humanum Genus_, who, after some discussion,
+is saved. This allegorical picture of human life was, in one form or
+other, a favourite subject of the moralisers. I may quote as examples
+the interludes of "Lusty Juventus," reprinted in Hawkins's "Origin
+of the English Drama," and the "Disobedient Child," and "Trial of
+Treasure," reprinted by the Percy Society.
+
+The second of the moralities ascribed to the reign of Henry VI., has
+for its principal characters Mind, Will, and Understanding. These are
+assailed by Lucifer, who succeeds in alluring them to vice, and they
+change their modest raiment for the dress of gay gallants. Various
+other characters are introduced in a similar strain of allegory, until
+they are reclaimed by Wisdom. Mankind is again the principal personage
+of the third of these moralities, and some of the other characters in
+the play, such as Nought, New-guise, and Now-a-days, remind us of the
+similar allegorical personages in the French moralities described above.
+
+These interludes bring us into acquaintance with a new comic character.
+The great part which folly acted in the social destinies of mankind,
+had become an acknowledged fact; and as the court and almost every
+great household had its professed fool, so it seems to have been
+considered that a play also was incomplete without a fool. But,
+as the character of the fool was usually given to one of the most
+objectionable characters in it, so, for this reason apparently, the
+fool in a play was called the _Vice_. Thus, in "Lusty Juventus," the
+character of Hypocrisy is called the Vice; in the play of "All for
+Money," it is Sin; in that of "Tom Tyler and his Wife," it is Desire;
+in the "Trial of Treasure" it is Inclination; and in some instances the
+Vice appears to be the demon himself. The Vice seems always to have
+been dressed in the usual costume of a court fool, and he perhaps had
+other duties besides his mere part in the plot, such as making jests of
+his own, and using other means for provoking the mirth of the audience
+in the intervals of the action.
+
+A few of our early English interludes were, in the strict sense of the
+word, farces. Such is the "mery play" of "John the Husband, Tyb the
+Wife, and Sir John the Priest," written by John Heywood, the plot of
+which presents the same simplicity as those of the farces which were so
+popular in France. John has a shrew for his wife, and has good causes
+for suspecting an undue intimacy between her and the priest; but they
+find means to blind his eyes, which is the more easily done, because
+he is a great coward, except when he is alone. Tyb, the wife, makes a
+pie, and proposes that the priest shall be invited to assist in eating
+it. The husband is obliged, very unwillingly, to be the bearer of the
+invitation, and is not a little surprised when the priest refuses it.
+He gives as his reason, that he was unwilling to intrude himself into
+company where he knew he was disliked, and persuaded John that he had
+fallen under the wife's displeasure, because, in private interviews
+with her, he had laboured to induce her to bridle her temper, and treat
+her husband with more gentleness. John, delighted at the discovery
+of the priest's honesty, insists on his going home with him to feast
+upon the pie. There the guilty couple contrive to put the husband to a
+disagreeable penance, while they eat the pie, and treat him otherwise
+very ignominiously, in consequence of which the married couple fight.
+The priest interferes, and the fight thus becomes general, and is only
+ended by the departure of Tyb and the priest, leaving the husband alone.
+
+The popularity of the moralities in England is, perhaps, to be
+explained by peculiarities in the condition of society, and the
+greater pre-occupation of men's minds in our country at that time
+with the religious and social revolution which was then in progress.
+The Reformers soon saw the use which might be made of the stage, and
+compiled and caused to be acted interludes in which the old doctrines
+and ceremonies were turned to ridicule, and the new ones were held up
+in a favourable light. We have excellent examples of the success with
+which this plan was carried out in the plays of the celebrated John
+Bale. His play of "Kyng Johan," an edition of which was published by
+the Camden Society, is not only a remarkable work of a very remarkable
+man, but it may be considered as the first rude model of the English
+historical drama. The stage became now a political instrument in
+England, almost as it had been in ancient Greece, and it thus became
+frequently the object of particular as well as general persecution.
+In 1543, the vicar of Yoxford, in Suffolk, drew upon himself the
+violent hostility of the other clergy in that county by composing and
+causing to be performed plays against the pope's counsellors. Six years
+afterwards, in 1549, a royal proclamation prohibited for a time the
+performance of interludes throughout the kingdom, on the ground that
+they contained "matter tendyng to sedicion and contempnyng of sundery
+good orders and lawes, whereupon are growen daily, and are likely
+to growe, muche disquiet, division, tumultes, and uproares in this
+realme." From this time forward we begin to meet with laws for the
+regulation of stage performances, and proceedings in cases of supposed
+infractions of them, and it became customary to obtain the approval of
+a play by the privy council before it was allowed to be acted. Thus
+gradually arose the office of a dramatic censor.
+
+With Bale and with John Heywood, the English plays began to approach
+the form of a regular drama, and the two now rather celebrated pieces,
+"Ralph Roister Doister," and "Gammer Gurton's Needle," which belong
+to the middle of the sixteenth century, may be considered as comedies
+rather than as interludes. The former, written by a well-known scholar
+of that time, Nicholas Udall, master of Eton, is a satirical picture
+of some phases of London life, and relates the ridiculous adventures
+of a weak-headed and vain-glorious gallant, who believes that all
+the women must be in love with him, and who is led by a needy and
+designing parasite named Matthew Merygreeke. Rude as it is as a
+dramatic composition, it displays no lack of talent, and it is full
+of genuine humour. The humour in "Gammer Gurton's Needle" is none
+the less rich because it is of coarser and rather broader cast. The
+good dame of the piece, Gammer Gurton, during an interruption in the
+process of mending the breeches of her husband, Hodge, has lost her
+needle, and much lamentation follows a misfortune so great at a time
+when needles appear to have been rare and valuable articles in the
+rural household. In the midst of their trouble appears Diccon, who is
+described in the _dramatis personæ_ as "Diccon the Bedlam," meaning
+that he was an idiot, and who appears to hold the position of Vice in
+the play. Diccon, however, though weak-minded, is a cunning fellow, and
+especially given to making mischief, and he accuses a neighbour, Dame
+Chat, of stealing the needle. At the same time, the same mischievous
+individual tells Dame Chat that Gammer Gurton's cock had been stolen in
+the night from the henroost, and that she, Dame Chat, was accused of
+being the thief. Amid the general misunderstanding which results from
+Diccon's successful endeavours, they send for the parson of the parish,
+Dr. Rat, who appears to unite in himself the three parts of preacher,
+physician, and conjurer, in order to have advantage of his experience
+in finding the needle. Diccon now contrives a new piece of mischief.
+He persuades Dame Chat that Hodge intends to hide himself in a certain
+hole in the premises, in order, that night, to creep out and kill all
+her hens; and at the same time he informs Dr. Rat, that if he will
+hide in the same hole, he will give him ocular demonstration of Dame
+Chat's guilt of stealing the needle. The consequence is that Dame Chat
+attacks by surprise, and somewhat violently, the supposed depredator
+in the hole, and that Dr. Rat gets a broken head. Dame Chat is brought
+before "Master Bayly" for the assault, and the proceedings in the trial
+bring to light the deceptions which have been played upon them all,
+and Diccon stands convicted as the wicked perpetrator. In fact, the
+"bedlam" confesses it all, and it is finally decided by "Master Bayly"
+that there shall be a general reconciliation, and that Diccon shall
+take a solemn oath on Hodge's breech, that he will do his best to find
+the lost needle. Diccon has still the spirit of mischief in him, and
+instead of laying his hand quietly on Hodge's breech, he gives him a
+sharp blow, which is responded to by an unexpected scream. The needle,
+indeed, which has never quitted the breeches, is driven rather deep
+into the fleshy part of Hodge's body, and the general joy at having
+found it again overruling all other considerations, they all agree to
+be friends over a jug of "drink."
+
+We cannot but feel astonished at the short period which it required
+to develop rude attempts at dramatic composition like this into the
+wonderful creations of a Shakespeare; and it can only be explained
+by the fact that it was an age remarkable for producing men of
+extraordinary genius in every branch of intellectual development.
+Hitherto, the literature of the stage had represented the intelligence
+of the mass; it became individualised in Shakespeare, and this fact
+marks an entirely new era in the history of the drama. In the writings
+of our great bard, nearly all the peculiarities of the older national
+drama are preserved, even some which may be perhaps considered as its
+defects, but carried to a degree of perfection which they had never
+attained before. The drollery, which, as we have seen, could not be
+dispensed with even in the religious mysteries and miracle-plays, had
+become so necessary, that it could not be dispensed with in tragedy.
+Its omission belonged to a later period, when the foreign dramatists
+became objects of imitation in England. But in the earlier drama, these
+scenes of drollery seem frequently to have no connection whatever with
+the general plot, while Shakespeare always interweaves them skilfully
+with it, and they seem to form an integral and necessary part of it.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  DIABLERIE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.--EARLY TYPES OF THE DIABOLICAL
+     FORMS.--ST. ANTHONY.--ST. GUTHLAC.--REVIVAL OF THE TASTE FOR SUCH
+     SUBJECTS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.--THE FLEMISH
+     SCHOOL OF BREUGHEL.--THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN SCHOOLS, CALLOT,
+     SALVATOR ROSA.
+
+
+We have seen how the popular demonology furnished materials for the
+earliest exercise of comic art in the middle ages, and how the taste
+for this particular class of grotesque lasted until the close of the
+mediæval period. After the "renaissance" of art and literature, this
+taste took a still more remarkable form, and the school of grotesque
+_diablerie_ which flourished during the sixteenth century, and the
+first half of the seventeenth, justly claims a chapter to itself.
+
+The birthplace of this demonology, as far as it belongs to
+Christianity, must probably be sought in the deserts of Egypt. It
+spread thence over the east and the west, and when it reached our
+part of the world, it grafted itself, as I have remarked in a former
+chapter, on the existing popular superstitions of Teutonic paganism.
+The playfully burlesque, which held so great a place in these
+superstitions, no doubt gave a more comic character to this Christian
+demonology than it had possessed before the mixture. Its primitive
+representative was the Egyptian monk, St. Anthony, who is said to have
+been born at a village called Coma, in Upper Egypt, in the year 251.
+His history was written in Greek by St. Athanasius, and was translated
+into Latin by the ecclesiastical historian Evagrius. Anthony was
+evidently a fanatical visionary, subject to mental illusions, which
+were fostered by his education. To escape from the temptations of the
+world, he sold all his property, which was considerable, gave it to
+the poor, and then retired into the desert of the Thebaid, to live a
+life of the strictest asceticism. The evil one persecuted him in his
+solitude, and sought to drive him back into the corruptions of worldly
+life. He first tried to fill his mind with regretful reminiscences
+of his former wealth, position in society, and enjoyments; when this
+failed, he disturbed his mind with voluptuous images and desires, which
+the saint resisted with equal success. The persecutor now changed his
+tactics, and presenting himself to Anthony in the form of a black and
+ugly youth, confessed to him, with apparent candour, that he was the
+spirit of uncleanness, and acknowledged that he had been vanquished by
+the extraordinary merits of Anthony's sanctity. The saint, however,
+saw that this was only a stratagem to stir up in him the spirit of
+pride and self-confidence, and he met it by subjecting himself to
+greater mortifications than ever, which of course made him still more
+liable to these delusions. Now he sought greater solitude by taking
+up his residence in a ruined Egyptian sepulchre, but the farther he
+withdrew from the world, the more he became the object of diabolical
+persecution. Satan broke in upon his privacy with a host of attendants,
+and during the night beat him to such a degree, that one morning the
+attendant who brought him food found him lying senseless in his cell,
+and had him carried to the town, where his friends were on the point of
+burying him, believing him to be dead, when he suddenly revived, and
+insisted on being taken back to his solitary dwelling. The legend tells
+us that the demons appeared to him in the forms of the most ferocious
+animals, such as lions, bulls, wolves, asps, serpents, scorpions,
+panthers, and bears, each attacking him in the manner peculiar to its
+species, and with its peculiar voice, thus making together a horrible
+din. Anthony left his tomb to retire farther into the desert, where he
+made a ruined castle his residence; and here he was again frightfully
+persecuted by the demons, and the noise they made was so great and
+horrible that it was often heard at a vast distance. According to the
+narrative, Anthony reproached the demons in very abusive language,
+called them hard names, and even spat in their faces; but his most
+effective weapon was always the cross. Thus the saint became bolder,
+and sought a still more lonely abode, and finally established himself
+on the top of a high mountain in the upper Thebaid. The demons still
+continued to persecute him, under a great variety of forms; on one
+occasion their chief appeared to him under the form of a man, with the
+lower members of an ass.
+
+The demons which tormented St. Anthony became the general type for
+subsequent creations, in which these first pictures were gradually, and
+in the sequel, greatly improved upon. St. Anthony's persecutors usually
+assumed the shapes of _bonâ fide_ animals, but those of later stories
+took monstrous and grotesque forms, strange mixtures of the parts of
+different animals, and of others which never existed. Such were seen
+by St. Guthlac, the St. Anthony of the Anglo-Saxons, among the wild
+morasses of Croyland. One night, which he was passing at his devotions
+in his cell, they poured in upon him in great numbers; "and they filled
+all the house with their coming, and they poured in on every side,
+from above and from beneath, and everywhere. They were in countenance
+horrible, and they had great heads, and a long neck, and lean visage;
+they were filthy and squalid in their beards, and they had rough ears,
+and distorted face, and fierce eyes, and foul mouths; and their teeth
+were like horses' tusks, and their throats were filled with flame, and
+they were grating in their voice; they had crooked shanks, and knees
+big and great behind, and distorted toes, and shrieked hoarsely with
+their voices; and they came with such immoderate noises and immense
+horror, that it seemed to him that all between heaven and earth
+resounded with their dreadful cries." On another similar occasion, "it
+happened one night, when the holy man Guthlac fell to his prayers, he
+heard the howling of cattle and various wild beasts. Not long after
+he saw the appearance of animals and wild beasts and creeping things
+coming in to him. First he saw the visage of a lion that threatened him
+with his bloody tusks, also the likeness of a bull, and the visage of
+a bear, as when they are enraged. Also he perceived the appearance of
+vipers, and a hog's grunting, and the howling of wolves, and croaking
+of ravens, and the various whistlings of birds, that they might, with
+their fantastic appearance, divert the mind of the holy man."
+
+Such were the suggestions on which the mediæval sculptors and
+illuminators worked with so much effect, as we have seen repeatedly
+in the course of our preceding chapters. After the revival of art
+in western Europe in the fifteenth century, this class of legends
+became great favourites with painters and engravers, and soon gave
+rise to the peculiar school of _diablerie_ mentioned above. At that
+time the story of the Temptation of St. Anthony attracted particular
+attention, and it is the subject of many remarkable prints belonging
+to the earlier ages of the art of engraving. It employed the pencils
+of such artists as Martin Schongauer, Israel van Mechen, and Lucas
+Cranach. Of the latter we have two different engravings on the same
+subject--St. Anthony carried into the air by the demons, who are
+represented in a great variety of grotesque and monstrous forms. The
+most remarkable of the two bears the date of 1506, and was, therefore,
+one of Cranach's earlier works. But the great representative of this
+earlier school of _diablerie_ was Peter Breughel, a Flemish painter
+who flourished in the middle of the sixteenth century. He was born at
+Breughel, near Breda, and lived some time at Antwerp, but afterwards
+established himself at Brussels. So celebrated was he for the love of
+the grotesque displayed in his pictures, that he was known by the name
+of Peter the Droll. Breughel's "Temptation of St. Anthony," like one
+or two others of his subjects of the same class, was engraved in a
+reduced form by J. T. de Bry. Breughel's demons are figures of the most
+fantastic description--creations of a wildly grotesque imagination;
+they present incongruous and laughable mixtures of parts of living
+things which have no relation whatever to one another. Our cut No. 155
+represents a group of these grotesque demons, from a plate by Breughel,
+engraved in 1565, and entitled _Divus Jacobus diabolicis præstigiis
+ante magnum sistitur_ (St. James is arrested before the magician by
+diabolical delusions). The engraving is full of similarly grotesque
+figures. On the right is a spacious chimney, and up it witches, riding
+on brooms, are making their escape, while in the air are seen other
+witches riding away upon dragons and a goat. A kettle is boiling over
+the fire, around which a group of monkeys are seen sitting and warming
+themselves. Behind these a cat and a toad are holding a very intimate
+conversation. In the background stands and boils the great witches'
+caldron. On the right of the picture the _magus_, or magician, is
+seated, reading his _grimoire_; with a frame before him supporting the
+pot containing his magical ingredients. The saint occupies the middle
+of the picture, surrounded by the demons represented in our cut and by
+many others; and as he approaches the magician, he is seen raising his
+right hand in the attitude of pronouncing a benediction, the apparent
+consequence of which is a frightful explosion of the magician's pot,
+which strikes the demons with evident consternation. Nothing can be
+more _bizarre_ than the horse's head upon human legs in armour, the
+parody upon a crawling spider behind it, the skull (apparently of a
+horse) supported upon naked human legs, the strangely excited animal
+behind the latter, and the figure furnished with pilgrim's hood
+and staff, which appears to be mocking the saint. Another print--a
+companion to the foregoing--represents the still more complete
+discomfiture of the _magus_. The saint here occupies the right-hand
+side of the picture, and is raising his hand higher, with apparently
+a greater show of authority. The demons have all turned against their
+master the magician, whom they are beating and hurling headlong from
+his chair. They seem to be proclaiming their joy at his fall by all
+sorts of playful attitudes. It is a sort of demon fair. Some of them,
+to the left of the picture, are dancing and standing upon their heads
+on a tight-rope. Near them another is playing some game like that
+which we now call the thimble-rig. The monkeys are dancing to the
+tune of a great drum. A variety of their mountebank tricks are going
+on in different parts of the scene. Three of these playful actors are
+represented in our cut No. 156.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 156. Strange Demons._]
+
+Breughel also executed a series of similarly grotesque engravings,
+representing in this same fantastic manner the virtues and vices, such
+as Pride (_superbia_), Courage (_fortitudo_), Sloth (_desidia_), &c.
+These bear the date of 1558. They are crowded with figures equally
+grotesque with those just mentioned, but a great part of which it
+would be almost impossible to describe. I give two examples from the
+engraving of "Sloth," in the accompanying cut (No. 157).
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 155. St. James and his Persecutors._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 157. Imps of Sloth._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 158. The Folly of Hunting._]
+
+From making up figures from parts of animals, this early school of
+grotesque proceeded to create animated figures out of inanimate
+things, such as machines, implements of various kinds, household
+utensils, and other such articles. A German artist, of about the same
+time as Breughel, has left us a singular series of etchings of this
+description, which are intended as an allegorical satire on the follies
+of mankind. The allegory is here of such a singular character, that
+we can only guess at the meaning of these strange groups through four
+lines of German verse which are attached to each of them. In this
+manner we learn that the group represented in our cut, No. 158, which
+is the second in this series, is intended as a satire upon those who
+waste their time in hunting, which, the verses tell us, they will in
+the sequel lament bitterly; and they are exhorted to cry loud and
+continually to God, and to let that serve them in the place of hound
+and hawk.
+
+          _Die zeit die du verleurst mit jagen,
+            Die wirstu zwar noch schmertzlich klagen;
+          Ruff laut zu Gott gar oft und vil,
+            Das sey dein hund und federspil._
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 159. The Wastefulness of Youth._]
+
+The next picture in the series, which is equally difficult to describe,
+is aimed against those who fail in attaining virtue or honour through
+sluggishness. Others follow, but I will only give one more example. It
+forms our cut No. 159, and appears, from the verses accompanying it,
+to be aimed against those who practice wastefulness in their youth,
+and thus become objects of pity and scorn in old age. Whatever may be
+the point of the allegory contained in the engraving, it is certainly
+far-fetched, and not very apparent.
+
+This German-Flemish school of grotesque does not appear to have
+outlived the sixteenth century, or at least it had ceased to flourish
+in the century following. But the taste for the _diablerie_ of the
+Temptation scenes passed into France and Italy, in which countries
+it assumed a much more refined character, though at the same time
+one equally grotesque and imaginative. These artists, too, returned
+to the original legend, and gave it forms of their own conception.
+Daniel Rabel, a French artist, who lived at the end of the sixteenth
+century, published a rather remarkable engraving of the "Temptation of
+St. Anthony," in which the saint appears on the right of the picture,
+kneeling before a mound on which three demons are dancing. On the
+right hand of the saint stands a naked woman, sheltering herself with
+a parasol, and tempting the saint with her charms. The rest of the
+piece is filled with demons in a great variety of forms and postures.
+Another French artist, Nicholas Cochin, has left us two "Temptations of
+St. Anthony," in rather spirited etching, of the earlier part of the
+seventeenth century. In the first, the saint is represented kneeling
+before a crucifix, surrounded by demons. The youthful and charming
+temptress is here dressed in the richest garments, and the highest
+style of fashion, and displays all her powers of seduction. The body of
+the picture is, as usual, occupied by multitudes of diabolical figures,
+in grotesque forms. In Cochin's other picture of the Temptation of St.
+Anthony, the saint is represented as a hermit engaged in his prayers;
+the female figure of voluptuousness (_voluptas_) occupies the middle of
+the picture, and behind the saint is seen a witch with her besom.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 160. The Demon Tilter (Callot)._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 161. Uneasy Riding (Callot)._]
+
+But the artist who excelled in this subject at the period at which we
+now arrive, was the celebrated Jacques Callot, who was born at Nancy,
+in Brittany, in 1593, and died at Florence on the 24th of March, 1635,
+which, according to the old style of calculating, may mean March,
+1636. Of Callot we shall have to speak in another chapter. He treated
+the subject of the Temptation of St. Anthony in two different plates,
+which are considered as ranking among the most remarkable of his
+works, and to which, in fact, he appears to have given much thought
+and attention. He is known, indeed, to have worked diligently at it.
+They resemble those of the older artists in the number of diabolical
+figures introduced into the picture, but they display an extraordinary
+vivid imagination in the forms, postures, physiognomies, and even
+the equipments, of the chimerical figures, all equally droll and
+burlesque, but which present an entire contrast to the more coarse and
+vulgar conceptions of the German-Flemish school. This difference will
+be understood best by an example. One of Callot's demons is represented
+in our cut No. 160. Many of them are mounted on nondescript animals,
+of the most extraordinary demoniacal character, and such is the case
+of the demon in our cut, who is running a tilt at the saint with his
+tilting spear in his hand, and, to make more sure, his eyes well
+furnished with a pair of spectacles. In our next cut, No. 161, we give
+a second example of the figures in Callot's peculiar _diablerie_.
+The demon in this case is riding very uneasily, and, in fact, seems
+in danger of being thrown. The steeds of both are of an anomalous
+character; the first is a sort of dragon-horse; the second a mixture
+of a lobster, a spider, and a craw-fish. Mariette, the art-collector
+and art-writer of the reign of Louis XV. as well as artist, considers
+this grotesque, or, as he calls it, "fantastic and comic character,"
+as almost necessary to the pictures of the Temptation of St. Anthony,
+which he treats as one of Callot's especially _serious_ subjects.
+"It was allowable," he says, "to Callot, to give a flight to his
+imagination. The more his fictions were of the nature of dreams,
+the more they were fitted to what he had to express. For the demon
+intending to torment St. Anthony, it is to be supposed that he must
+have thought of all the forms most hideous, and most likely to strike
+terror."
+
+Callot's first and larger print of the Temptation of St. Anthony is
+rare. It is filled with a vast number of figures. Above is a fantastic
+being who vomits thousands of demons. The saint is seen at the entrance
+of a cavern, tormented by some of these. Others are scattered about in
+different occupations. On one side, a demoniacal party are drinking
+together, and pledging each other in their glasses; here, a devil is
+playing on the guitar; there, others are occupied in a dance; all
+such grotesque figures as our two examples would lead the reader to
+expect. In the second of Callot's "Temptations," which is dated in
+1635, and must therefore have been one of his latest works, the same
+figure vomiting the demons occupies the upper part of the plate, and
+the field is covered with a prodigious number of imps, more hideous in
+their forms, and more varied in their extraordinary attitudes, than in
+the same artist's first design. Below, a host of demons are dragging
+the saint to a place where new torments are prepared for him. Callot's
+prints of the Temptation of St. Anthony gained so great a reputation,
+that imitations of them were subsequently published, some of which so
+far approached his style, that they were long supposed to be genuine.
+
+Callot, though a Frenchman, studied and flourished in Italy, and
+his style is founded upon Italian art. The last great artist whose
+treatment of the Temptation I shall quote, is Salvator Rosa, an Italian
+by birth, who flourished in the middle of the seventeenth century.
+His style, according to some opinions, is refined from that of Callot;
+at all events, it is bolder in design. Our cut No. 162 represents St.
+Anthony protecting himself with the cross against the assaults of the
+demon, as represented by Salvator Rosa. With this artist the school of
+_diablerie_ of the sixteenth century may be considered to have come to
+its end.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 162. St. Anthony and his Persecutor._]
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  CALLOT AND HIS SCHOOL.--CALLOT'S ROMANTIC HISTORY.--HIS
+     "CAPRICI," AND OTHER BURLESQUE WORKS.--THE "BALLI" AND THE
+     BEGGARS.--IMITATORS OF CALLOT; DELLA BELLA.--EXAMPLES OF DELLA
+     BELLA.--ROMAIN DE HOOGHE.
+
+
+The art of engraving on copper, although it had made rapid advances
+during the sixteenth century, was still very far from perfection; but
+the close of that century witnessed the birth of a man who was destined
+not only to give a new character to this art, but also to bring in a
+new style of caricature and burlesque. This was the celebrated Jacques
+Callot, a native of Lorraine, and descended from a noble Burgundian
+family. His father, Jean Callot, held the office of herald of Lorraine.
+Jacques was born in the year 1592,[91] at Nancy, and appears to have
+been destined for the church, with a view to which his early education
+was regulated. But the early life of Jacques Callot presents a
+romantic episode in the history of art aspirations. While yet hardly
+more than an infant, he seized every opportunity of neglecting more
+serious studies to practise drawing, and he displayed especially a
+very precocious taste for satire, for his artistic talent was shown
+principally in caricaturing all the people he knew. His father, and
+apparently all his relatives, disapproved of his love for drawing, and
+did what they could to discourage it; but in vain, for he still found
+means of indulging it. Claude Henriet, the painter to the court of
+Lorraine, gave him lessons, and his son, Israel Henriet, formed for
+him a boy's friendship. He also learnt the elements of the art of
+engraving of Demange Crocq, the engraver to the duke of Lorraine.
+
+ [91] This is the date fixed by Meaume, in his excellent work on
+      Callot, entitled "Recherches sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de
+      Jacques Callot," 2 tom. 8vo., 1860.
+
+About this time, the painter Bellange, who had been a pupil of Claude
+Henriet, returned from Italy, and gave young Callot an exciting account
+of the wonders of art to be seen in that country; and soon afterwards
+Claude Henriet dying, his son Israel went to Rome, and his letters
+from thence had no less effect on the mind of the young artist at
+Nancy, than the conversation of Bellange. Indeed the passion of the boy
+for art was so strong, that, finding his parents obstinately opposed
+to all his longings in this direction, he left his father's house
+secretly, and, in the spring of 1604, when he had only just entered his
+thirteenth year, he set out for Italy on foot, without introductions
+and almost without money. He was even unacquainted with the road, but
+after proceeding a short distance, he fell in with a band of gipsies,
+and, as they were going to Florence, he joined their company. His
+life among the gipsies, which lasted seven or eight weeks, appears to
+have furnished food to his love of burlesque and caricature, and he
+has handed down to us his impressions, in a series of four engravings
+of scenes in gipsy life, admirably executed at a rather later period
+of his life, which are full of comic humour. When they arrived at
+Florence, Jacques Callot parted company with the gipsies, and was
+fortunate enough to meet with an officer of the grand duke's household,
+who listened to his story, and took so much interest in him, that he
+obtained him admission to the studio of Remigio Canta Gallina. This
+artist gave him instructions in drawing and engraving, and sought to
+correct him of his taste for the grotesque by keeping him employed upon
+serious subjects.
+
+After studying for some months under Canta Gallina, Jacques Callot
+left Florence, and proceeded to Rome, to seek his old friend Israel
+Henriet; but he had hardly arrived, when he was recognised in the
+streets by some merchants from Nancy, who took him, and in spite of
+his tears and resistance, carried him home to his parents. He was
+now kept to his studies more strictly than ever, but nothing could
+overcome his passion for art, and, having contrived to lay by some
+money, after a short interval he again ran away from home. This time
+he took the road to Lyons, and crossed Mont Cenis, and he had reached
+Turin when he met in the street of that city his elder brother Jean,
+who again carried him home to Nancy. Nothing could now repress young
+Callot's ardour, and soon after this second escapade, he engraved a
+copy of a portrait of Charles III., duke of Lorraine, to which he put
+his name and the date 1607, and which, though it displays little skill
+in engraving, excited considerable interest at the time. His parents
+were now persuaded that it was useless to thwart any longer his natural
+inclinations, and they not only allowed him to follow them, but they
+yielded to his wish to return to Italy. The circumstances of the moment
+were especially favourable. Charles III., duke of Lorraine, was dead,
+and his successor, Henry II., was preparing to send an embassy to Rome
+to announce his accession. Jean Callot, by his position of herald,
+had sufficient interest to obtain for his son an appointment in the
+ambassador's retinue, and Jacques Callot started for Rome on the 1st
+of December, 1608, under more favourable auspices than those which had
+attended his former visits to Italy.
+
+Callot reached Rome at the beginning of the year 1609, and now at
+length he joined the friend of his childhood, Israel Henriet, and began
+to throw all his energy into his art-labours. It is more than probable
+that he studied under Tempesta, with Henriet, who was a pupil of that
+painter, and another Lorrainer, Claude Dervet. After a time, Callot
+began to feel the want of money, and obtained employment of a French
+engraver, then residing in Rome, named Philippe Thomassin, with whom he
+worked nearly three years, and became perfect in handling the graver.
+Towards the end of the year 1611, Callot went to Florence, to place
+himself under Julio Parigi, who then flourished there as a painter and
+engraver. Tuscany was at this time ruled by its duke Cosmo de' Medicis,
+a great lover of the arts, who took Callot under his patronage, giving
+him the means to advance himself. Hitherto his occupation had been
+principally copying the works of others, but under Parigi he began to
+practise more in original design, and his taste for the grotesque came
+upon him stronger than ever. Although Parigi blamed it, he could not
+help admiring the talent it betrayed. In 1615, the grand duke gave a
+great entertainment to the prince of Urbino, and Callot was employed
+to make engravings of the festivities; it was his first commencement
+in a class of designs by which he afterwards attained great celebrity.
+In the year following, his engagement with Parigi ended, and he became
+his own master. He now came out unfettered in his own originality. The
+first fruits were seen in a new kind of designs, to which he gave the
+name of "Caprices," a series of which appeared about the year 1617,
+under the title of "Caprici di varie Figure." Callot re-engraved them
+at Nancy in later years, and in the new title they were stated to have
+been originally engraved in 1616. In a short preface, he speaks of
+these as the first of his works on which he set any value. They now
+strike us as singular examples of the fanciful creations of a most
+grotesque imagination, but they no doubt preserve many traits of the
+festivals, ceremonies, and manners of that land of masquerade, which
+must have been then familiar to the Florentines; and these engravings
+would, doubtless, be received by them with absolute delight. One is
+copied in our cut No. 163; it represents a cripple supporting himself
+on a short crutch, with his right arm in a sling. Our cut No. 164 is
+another example from the same set, and represents a masked clown, with
+his left hand on the hilt of his dagger, or perhaps of a wooden sword.
+From this time, although he was very industrious and produced much,
+Callot engraved only his own designs.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 163. A Cripple._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 164. A Grotesque Masker._]
+
+While employed for others, Callot had worked chiefly with the graver,
+but now that he was his own master, he laid aside that implement, and
+devoted himself almost entirely to etching, in which he attained the
+highest proficiency. His work is remarkable for the cleanness and ease
+of his lines, and for the life and spirit he gave to his figures.
+His talent lay especially in the extraordinary skill with which he
+grouped together great numbers of diminutive figures, each of which
+preserved its proper and full action and effect. The great annual fair
+of the Impruneta was held with extraordinary festivities, and attended
+by an immense concourse of people of all classes on St. Luke's Day,
+the 18th of October, in the outskirts of Florence. Callot engraved
+a large picture of this fair, which is absolutely wonderful. The
+picture embraces an extensive space of ground, which is covered with
+hundreds of figures, all occupied, singly or in groups, in different
+manners, conversing, masquerading, buying and selling, playing games,
+and performing in various ways; each group or figure is a picture in
+itself. This engraving produced quite a sensation, and it was followed
+by other pictures of fairs, and, after his final return to Nancy,
+Callot engraved it anew. It was this talent for grouping large masses
+of persons which caused the artist to be so often employed in drawing
+great public ceremonies, sieges, and other warlike operations.
+
+By the duke of Florence, Cosmo II., Callot was liberally patronised
+and loaded with benefits, but on his death the government had to be
+placed in the hands of a regency, and art and literature no longer met
+with the same encouragement. In this state of things, Callot was found
+by Charles of Lorraine, afterwards duke Charles IV., and persuaded to
+return to his native country. He arrived at Nancy in 1622, and began to
+work there with greater activity even than he had displayed before. It
+was not long after this that he produced his sets of grotesques, the
+Balli (or dancers), the Gobbi (or hunchbacks), and the Beggars. The
+first of these sets, called in the title _Balli_, or _Cucurucu_,[92]
+consists of twenty-four small plates, each of them containing two comic
+characters in grotesque attitudes, with groups of smaller figures in
+the distance. Beneath the two prominent figures are their names, now
+unintelligible, but at that time no doubt well known on the comic stage
+at Florence. Thus, in the couple given in our cut No. 165, which is
+taken from the fourth plate of the series, the personage to the left
+is named Smaraolo Cornuto, which means simply Smaraolo the cuckold;
+and the one on the right is called Ratsa di Boio. In the original the
+background is occupied by a street, full of spectators, looking on at
+a dance of pantaloons, round one who is mounted on stilts and playing
+on the tabour. The couple in our cut No. 166, represents another of
+Callot's "Caprices," from a set differing from the first "Caprices,"
+or the Balli. The Gobbi, or hunchbacks, form a set of twenty-one
+engravings; and the set of the Gipsies, already alluded to, which was
+also executed at Nancy, was included in four plates, the subjects of
+which were severally--1, the gipsies travelling; 2, the avant-guard;
+3, the halt; and 4, the preparations for the feast. Nothing could be
+more truthful, and at the same time more comic, than this last set of
+subjects. We give, as an example of the set of the Baroni, or beggars,
+Callot's figure of one of that particular class--for beggars and rogues
+of all kinds were classified in those days--whose part it was to
+appeal to charity by wounds and sores artificially represented. In the
+English slang of the seventeenth century, these artificial sores were
+called _clymes_, and a curious account of the manner in which they were
+made will be found in that singular picture of the vicious classes of
+society in this country at that period, the "English Rogue," by Head
+and Kirkman. The false cripple in our cut is holding up his leg to make
+a display of his pretended infirmity.
+
+ [92] Meaume appears to be doubtful of the meaning of this word; a
+      friend has pointed out to me the correction. It was the title
+      of a song, so called because the burden was an imitation of the
+      crowing of a cock, the singer mimicking also the action of the
+      bird. When Bacchus, in Redi's "Bacco in Toscana," is beginning
+      to feel the exhilarating effects of his critical investigation
+      of the Tuscan wines, he calls upon Ariadne to sing to him "sulla
+      mandola la Cucurucù," "on the mandola the Cucurucu." A note
+      fully explains the word as we have stated it--"Canzone cosi
+      detta, perchè in esse si replica molte volte la voce del gallo; e
+      cantandola si fanno atti e moti simili a quegli di esso gallo."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 165. Smaraolo Cornuto.--Ratsa di Boio._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 166. A Caprice._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 167. The False Cripple._]
+
+Callot remained at Nancy, with merely temporary absences, during the
+remainder of his life. In 1628, he was employed at Brussels in drawing
+and engraving the "Siege of Breda," one of the most finished of his
+works, and he there made the personal acquaintance of Vandyck. Early
+in 1629, he was called to Paris to execute engravings of the siege of
+La Rochelle, and of the defence of the Isle of Rhé, but he returned to
+Nancy in 1630. Three years afterwards his native country was invaded
+by the armies of Louis XIII., and Nancy surrendered to the French on
+the 25th of September, 1633. Callot was required to make engravings
+to celebrate the fall of his native town; but, although he is said
+to have been threatened with violence, he refused; and afterwards he
+commemorated the evils brought upon his country by the French invasion
+in those two immortal sets of prints, the lesser and greater "Misères
+de la Guerre." About two years after this, Callot died, in the prime of
+life, on the 24th of March, 1635.
+
+The fame of Callot was great among his contemporaries, and his name
+is justly respected as one of the most illustrious in the history of
+French art. He had, as might be expected, many imitators, and the
+Caprices, the Balli, and the Gobbi, became very favourite subjects.
+Among these imitators, the most successful and the most distinguished
+was Stephano Della Bella; and, indeed, the only one deserving of
+particular notice. Della Bella was born at Florence, on the 18th of
+May, 1610;[93] his father, dying two years afterwards, left him an
+orphan, and his mother in great poverty. As he grew up, he showed, like
+Callot himself, precocious talents in art, and of the same kind. He
+eagerly attended all public festivals, games, &c., and on his return
+from them made them the subject of grotesque sketches. It was remarked
+of him, especially, that he had a curious habit of always beginning
+to draw a human figure from the feet, and proceeding upwards to the
+head. He was struck at a very early period of his pursuit of art by the
+style of Callot, of which, at first, he was a servile imitator, but he
+afterwards abandoned some of its peculiarities, and adopted a style
+which was more his own, though still founded upon that of Callot. He
+almost rivalled Callot in his success in grouping multitudes of figures
+together, and hence he also was much employed in producing engravings
+of sieges, festive entertainments, and such elaborate subjects. As
+Callot's aspirations had been directed towards Italy, those of Della
+Bella were turned towards France, and when in the latter days of
+the ministry of Cardinal Richelieu, the grand duke of Florence sent
+Alexandro del Nero as his resident ambassador in Paris, Della Bella
+was permitted to accompany him. Richelieu was occupied in the siege
+of Arras, and the engraving of that event was the foundation of Della
+Bella's fame in France, where he remained about ten years, frequently
+employed on similar subjects. He subsequently visited Flanders and
+Holland, and at Amsterdam made the acquaintance of Rembrandt. He
+returned to Florence in 1650, and died there on the 23rd of July, 1664.
+
+ [93] The materials for the history of Della Bella and his works,
+      will be found in a carefully compiled volume, by C. A. Jombert,
+      entitled, "Essai d'un Catalogue de l'Oeuvre d'Etienne de la
+      Bella." 8vo., Paris, 1772.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 168. A Witch Mounted._]
+
+While still in Florence, Della Bella executed four prints of dwarfs
+quite in the grotesque style of Callot. In 1637, on the occasion of
+the marriage of the grand duke Ferdinand II., Della Bella published
+engravings of the different scenes represented, or performed, on that
+occasion. These were effected by very elaborate machinery, and were
+represented in six engravings, the fifth of which (_scena quinta_)
+represents hell (_d' Inferno_), and is filled with furies, demons, and
+witches, which might have found a place in Callot's "Temptation of St.
+Anthony."
+
+A specimen of these is given in our cut No. 168--a naked witch seated
+upon a skeleton of an animal that might have been borrowed from some
+far distant geological period. In 1642, Della Bella executed a set of
+small "Caprices," consisting of thirteen plates, from the eighth of
+which we take our cut No. 169. It represents a beggar-woman, carrying
+one child on her back, while another is stretched on the ground. In
+this class of subjects Della Bella imitated Callot, but the copyist
+never succeeded in equalling the original. His best style, as an
+original artist of burlesque and caricature, is shown in a set of five
+plates of Death carrying away people of different ages, which he
+executed in 1648. The fourth of this set is copied in our cut No. 170,
+and represents Death carrying off, on his shoulder, a young woman, in
+spite of her struggles to escape from him.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 169. Beggary._]
+
+With the close of the seventeenth century these "Caprices" and
+masquerade scenes began to be no longer in vogue, and caricature and
+burlesque assumed new forms; but Callot and Della Bella had many
+followers, and their examples had a lasting influence upon art.
+
+We must not forget that a celebrated artist, in another country, at the
+end of the same century, the well-known Romain de Hooghe, was produced
+from the school of Callot, in which he had learnt, not the arts of
+burlesque and caricature, but that of skilfully grouping multitudes of
+figures, especially in subjects representing episodes of war, tumults,
+massacres, and public processions.
+
+Of Romain de Hooghe we shall have to speak again in a subsequent
+chapter. In his time the art of engraving had made great advance
+on the Continent, and especially in France, where it met with more
+encouragement than elsewhere. In England this art had, on the whole,
+made much less progress, and was in rather a low condition, one branch
+only excepted, that of portraits. Of the two distinguished engravers
+in England during the seventeenth century, Hollar was a Bohemian, and
+Faithorne, though an Englishman, learnt his art in France. We only
+began to have an English school when Dutch and French engravers came in
+with King William to lay the groundwork.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 170. Death carrying off his Prey._]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  THE SATIRICAL LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.--PASQUIL.--
+     MACARONIC POETRY.--THE EPISTOLÆ OBSURORUM VIRORUM.--RABELAIS.--
+     COURT OF THE QUEEN OF NAVARRE, AND ITS LITERARY CIRCLE;
+     BONAVENTURE DES PERIERS.--HENRI ETIENNE.--THE LIGUE, AND ITS
+     SATIRE: THE "SATYRE MÉNIPPÉE."
+
+
+The sixteenth century, especially on the Continent, was a period of
+that sort of violent agitation which is most favourable to the growth
+of satire. Society was breaking up, and going through a course of
+decomposition, and it presented to the view on every side spectacles
+which provoked the mockery, perhaps more than the indignation, of
+lookers-on. Even the clergy had learnt to laugh at themselves, and
+almost at their own religion; and people who thought or reflected were
+gradually separating into two classes--those who cast all religion
+from them, and rushed into a jeering scepticism, and those who entered
+seriously and with resolution into the work of reformation. The
+latter found most encouragement among the Teutonic nations, while the
+sceptical element appears to have had its birth in Italy, and even in
+Rome itself, where, among popes and cardinals, religion had degenerated
+into empty forms.
+
+At some period towards the close of the fifteenth century, a mutilated
+ancient statue was accidentally dug up in Rome, and it was erected
+on a pedestal in a place not far from the Ursini Palace. Opposite
+it stood the shop of a shoemaker, named Pasquillo, or Pasquino, the
+latter being the form most commonly adopted at a later period. This
+Pasquillo was notorious as a facetious fellow, and his shop was usually
+crowded by people who went there to tell tales and hear news; and, as
+no other name had been invented for the statue, people agreed to give
+it the name of the shoemaker, and they called it Pasquillo. It became
+a custom, at certain seasons, to write on pieces of paper satirical
+epigrams, sonnets, and other short compositions in Latin or Italian,
+mostly of a personal character, in which the writer declared whatever
+he had seen or heard to the discredit of somebody, and these were
+published by depositing them with the statue, whence they were taken
+and read. One of the Latin epigrams which pleads against committing
+these short personal satires to print, calls the time at which it was
+usual to compose them Pasquil's festival:--
+
+          Jam redit illa dies in qua Romana juventus
+              Pasquilli festum concelebrabit ovans.
+          Sed versus impressos obsecro ut edere omittas,
+              Ne noceant iterum quæ nocuere semel.
+
+The festival was evidently a favourite one, and well celebrated. "The
+soldiers of Xerxes," says another epigram, placed in Pasquil's mouth,
+"were not so plentiful as the paper bestowed upon me; I shall soon
+become a bookseller"--
+
+          Armigerûm Xerxi non copia tanta papyri
+              Quanta mihi: fiam bibliopola statim.
+
+The name of Pasquil was soon given to the papers which were deposited
+with the statue, and eventually a _pasquil_, or _pasquin_, was only
+another name for a lampoon or libel. Not far from this statue stood
+another, which was found in the forum of Mars (_Martis forum_), and was
+thence popularly called Marforio. Some of these satirical writings were
+composed in the form of dialogues between Pasquil and Marforio, or of
+messages from one to the other.
+
+A collection of these pasquils was published in 1544 in two small
+volumes.[94] Many of them are extremely clever, and they are sharply
+pointed. The popes are frequent objects of bitterest satire. Thus we
+are reminded in two lines upon pope Alexander VI. (_sextus_), the
+infamous Borgia, that Tarquin had been a Sextus, and Nero also, and now
+another Sextus was at the head of the Romans, and told that Rome was
+always ruined under a Sextus--
+
+                         De Alexandro VI. Pont.
+            _Sextus Tarquinius, Sextus Nero, Sextus et iste:
+                 Semper sub Sextis perdita Roma fuit._
+
+The following is given for an epitaph on Lucretia Borgia, pope
+Alexander's profligate daughter:--
+
+            _Hoc tumulo dormit Lucretia nomine, sed re
+                Thais, Alexandri filia, sponsa, nurus._
+
+[94] "Pasquillorum Tomi duo." Eleutheropoli, MDXLIIII.
+
+In another of a rather later date, Rome, addressing herself to Pasquil,
+is made to complain of two successive popes, Clement VII. (Julio de
+Medicis, 1523-1534) and Paul III. (Alexandro Farnese, 1534-1549), and
+also of Leo X. (1513-1521). "I am," Rome says, "sick enough with the
+physician (_Medicus_, as a pun on the Medicis), I was also the prey of
+the lion (_Leo_), now, Paul, you tear my vitals like a wolf. You, Paul,
+are not a god to me, as I thought in my folly, but you are a wolf,
+since you tear the food from my mouth"--
+
+          _Sum Medico satis ægra, fui quoque præda Leonis,
+              Nunc mea dilaceras viscera, Paule, lupus.
+          Non es, Paule, mihi numen, ceu stulta putabam,
+              Sed lupus es, quoniam subtrahis ore cibum._
+
+Another epigram, addressed to Rome herself, involves a pun in Greek
+(in the words _Paulos_, Paul, and _Phaulos_, wicked). "Once, Rome," it
+says, "lords of lords were thy subjects, now thou in thy wretchedness
+art subject to the serfs of serfs; once you listened to the oracles of
+St. Paul, but now you perform the abominable commands of the wicked"--
+
+          _Quondam, Roma, tibi suberant domini dominorum,
+                Servorum servis nunc miseranda subes;
+          Audisti quondam divini oracula Παύλου,
+                At nunc των φαύλων jussa nefanda facis._
+
+The idea, of course, is the contrast of Rome in her Pagan glory, with
+Rome in her Christian debasement, very much the same as that which
+struck Gibbon, and gave birth to his great history of Rome's "decline
+and fall."[95]
+
+ [95] Pasquil and Pasquin became, during the latter part of the
+      sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries, a
+      well-known name in French and English literature. In English
+      popular literature he was turned into a jester, and a book was
+      published in 1604 under the title "Pasquil's Jests; with the
+      Merriments of Mother Bunch. Wittie, pleasant, and delightfull."
+
+The pasquils formed a body of satire which struck indiscriminately at
+everybody within its range, but satirists were now rising who took for
+their subjects special cases of the general disorder. Rotten at the
+heart, society presented an external glossiness, a mixture of pedantry
+and affectation, which offered subjects enough for ridicule in whatever
+point of view it was taken. The ecclesiastical body was in a state of
+fermentation, out of which new feelings and new doctrines were about to
+rise. The old learning and literature of the middle ages remained in
+form after their spirit had passed away, and they were now contending
+clumsily and unsuccessfully against new learning and literature of a
+more refined and healthier character. Feudalism itself had fallen, or
+it was struggling vainly against new political principles, yet the
+aristocracy clung to feudal forms and feudal assumptions, with an
+exaggeration which was meant for an appearance of strength. Among the
+literary affectations of this false feudalism, was the fashion for
+reading the long, dry, old romances of chivalry; while the churchmen
+and schoolmen were corrupting the language in which mediæval learning
+had been expressed, into a form the most barbarous, or introducing
+words compounded from the later into the vernacular tongue. These
+peculiarities were among the first to provoke literary satire. Italy,
+where this class of satire originated, gave it its name also, though it
+appears still to be a matter of doubt why it was called _macaronic_,
+or in its Italian form _maccharonea_. Some have considered this name
+to have been taken from the article of food called _macaroni_, to
+which the Italians were, and still are, so much attached; while others
+pretend that it was derived from an old Italian word _macarone_, which
+meant a lubberly fellow. Be this, however, as it may, what is called
+macaronic composition, which consists in giving a Latin form to words
+taken from the vulgar tongue, and mixing them with words which are
+purely Latin, was introduced in Italy at the close of the fifteenth
+century.
+
+Four Italian writers in macaronic verse are known to have lived before
+the year 1500.[96] The first of these was named Fossa, and he tells
+us that he composed his poem entitled "Vigonce," on the second day
+of May, 1494. It was printed in 1502. Bassano, a native of Mantua,
+and the author of a macaronic which bears no title, was dead in 1499;
+and another, a Paduan named Fifi degli Odassi, was born about the
+year 1450. Giovan Georgio Allione, of Asti, who is believed also to
+have written during the last ten years of the fifteenth century,
+is a name better known through the edition of his French works,
+published by Monsieur J. C. Brunet in 1836. All these present the
+same coarseness and vulgarity of sentiment, and the same licence in
+language and description, which appear to have been taken as necessary
+characteristics of macaronic composition. Odassi appears to give
+support to the derivation of the name from macaroni, by making the
+principal character of his poem a fabricator of that article in Padua--
+
+          _Est unus in Padua natus speciale cusinus,
+          In maccharonea princeps bonus atque magister._
+
+ [96] The great authority on the history of Macaronic literature is my
+      excellent friend Monsieur Octave Delepierre, and I will simply
+      refer the reader to his two valuable publications, "Macaronéana,
+      ou Mélanges de Littérature Macaronique des differents Peuples de
+      l'Europe," 8vo., Paris, 1852; and "Macaronéana," 4to., 1863; the
+      latter printed for the Philobiblon Club.
+
+But the great matter of macaronic poetry was Teofilo Folengo, of whose
+life we know just sufficient to give us a notion of the personal
+character of these old literary caricaturists. Folengo was descended
+from a noble family, which had its seat at the village of Cipada, near
+Mantua, where he was born on the 8th of November, 1491, and baptised by
+the name of Girolamo. He pursued his studies, first in the university
+of Ferrara, under the professor Visago Cocaio, and afterwards in that
+of Bologna, under Pietro Pomponiazzo; or rather, he ought to have
+pursued them, for his love of poetry, and his gaiety of character, led
+him to neglect them, and at length his irregularities became so great,
+that he was obliged to make a hasty flight from Bologna. He was ill
+received at home, and he left it also, and appears to have subsequently
+led a wild life, during part of which he adopted the profession of a
+soldier, until at length he took refuge in a Benedictine convent near
+Brescia, in 1507, and became a monk. The discipline of this house
+had become entirely relaxed, and the monks appear to have lived very
+licentiously; and Folengo, who, on his admission to the order, had
+exchanged his former baptismal name for Teofilo, readily conformed to
+their example. Eventually he abandoned the convent and the habit, ran
+away with a lady named Girolama Dedia, and for some years he led a
+wandering, and, it would seem, very irregular life. Finally, in 1527,
+he returned to his old profession of a monk, and remained in it until
+his death, in the December of 1544. He is said to have been extremely
+vain of his poetical talents, and a story is told of him which, even if
+it were invented, illustrates well the character which was popularly
+given to him. It is said that when young, he aspired to excel in
+Latin poetry, and that he wrote an epic which he himself believed to
+be _superior_ to the Æneid. When, however, he had communicated the
+work to his friend the bishop of Mantua, and that prelate, intending
+to compliment him, told him that he had equalled Virgil, he was so
+mortified, that he threw the manuscript on the fire, and from that time
+devoted his talents entirely to the composition of macaronic verse.
+
+Such was the man who has justly earned the reputation of being the
+first of macaronic poets. When he adopted this branch of literature,
+while he was in the university of Bologna, he assumed in writing it
+the name of Merlinus Cocaius, or Coccaius, probably from the name of
+his professor at Ferrara. Folengo's printed poems consist of--1. The
+Zanitonella, a pastoral in seven eclogues, describing the love of
+Tonellus for Zanina; 2, the macaronic romance of Baldus, Folengo's
+principal and most remarkable work; 3, the Moschæa, or dreadful battle
+between the flies and the ants; and 4, a book of Epistles and Epigrams.
+
+The first edition of the Baldus appeared in 1517. It is a sort of
+parody on the romances of chivalry, and combines a jovial satire upon
+everything, which, as has been remarked, spares neither religion nor
+politics, science nor literature, popes, kings, clergy, nobility, or
+people. It consists of twenty-five cantos, or, as they are termed in
+the original, _phantasiæ_, fantasies. In the first we are told of the
+origin of Baldus. There was at the court of France a famous knight
+named Guy, descended from that memorable paladin Renaud of Montauban.
+The king, who showed a particular esteem for Guy, had also a daughter
+of surpassing beauty, named Balduine, who had fallen in love with
+Guy, and he was equally amorous of the princess. In the sequel of a
+grand tournament, at which Guy has distinguished himself greatly, he
+carries off Balduine, and the two lovers fly on foot, in the disguise
+of beggars, reach the Alps in safety, and cross them into Italy. At
+Cipada, in the territory of Brescia, they are hospitably entertained by
+a generous peasant named Berte Panade, with whom the princess Balduine,
+who approaches her time of confinement, is left; while her lover goes
+forth to conquer at least a marquisate for her. After his departure
+she gives birth to a fine boy, which is named Baldus. Such, as told
+in the second canto, is the origin of Folengo's hero, who is destined
+to perform marvellous acts of chivalry. The peasant Berte Panade has
+also a son named Zambellus, by a mother who had died in childbirth
+of him. Baldus passes for the son of Berte also, so that the two are
+supposed to be brothers. Baldus is successively led through a series of
+extraordinary adventures, some low and vulgar, others more chivalrous,
+and some of them exhibiting a wild fertility of imagination, which are
+too long to enable me to take my readers through them, until at length
+he is left by the poet in the country of Falsehood and Charlatanism,
+which is inhabited by astrologers, necromancers, and poets. Thus
+is the hero Baldus dragged through a great number of marvellous
+accidents, some of them vulgar, many of them ridiculous, and some,
+again, wildly poetical, but all of them presenting, in one form or
+other, an opportunity for satire upon some of the follies, or vices,
+or corruptions of his age. The hybrid language in which the whole is
+written, gives it a singularly grotesque appearance; yet from time to
+time we have passages which show that the author was capable of writing
+true poetry, although it is mixed with a great amount of coarse and
+licentious ideas, expressed no less coarsely and licentiously. What we
+may term the filth, indeed, forms a large proportion of the Italian
+macaronic poetry. The pastoral of Zanitonella presents, as might be
+expected, more poetic beauty than the romance of Balbus. As an example
+of the language of the latter, and indeed of that of the Italian
+macaronics in general, I give a few lines of a description of a storm
+at sea, from the twelfth canto, with a literal translation:--
+
+          _Jam gridor æterias hominum concussit abyssos,
+          Sentiturque ingens cordarum stridor, et ipse
+          Pontus habet pavidos vultus, mortisque colores.
+          Nunc Sirochus habit palmam, nunc Borra superchiat;
+          Irrugit pelagus, tangit quoque fluctibus astra,
+          Fulgure flammigero creber lampezat Olympus;
+          Vela forata micant crebris lacerata balottis;
+          Horrendam mortem nautis ea cuncta minazzant.
+          Nunc sbalzata ratis celsum tangebat Olympum,
+          Nunc subit infernam unda sbadacchiante paludem._
+
+                              TRANSLATION
+
+          _Now the clamour of the men shook the ethereal abysses,
+          And the mighty crashing of the ropes is felt, and the very
+          Sea has pale looks, and the hue of death.
+          Now the Sirocco has the palm, now Eurus exults over it;
+          The sea roars, and touches the stars with its waves,
+          Olympus continually blazes out with flaming thunder,
+          The pierced sails glitter torn with frequent thunderbolts;
+          All these threaten frightful death to the sailors.
+          Now the ship tossed up touched the top of Olympus,
+          Now, the wave yawning, it sinks into the infernal lake._
+
+Teofilo Folengo was followed by a number of imitators, of whom it
+will be sufficient to state that he stands in talent as far above his
+followers as above those who preceded him. One of these minor Italian
+macaronic writers, named Bartolommeo Bolla, of Bergamo, who flourished
+in the latter half of the sixteenth century, had the vanity to call
+himself, in the title of one of his books, "the Apollo of poets, and
+the Cocaius of this age;" but a modern critic has remarked of him
+that he is as far removed from his model Folengo, as his native
+town Bergamo is distant from Siberia. An earlier poet, named Guarino
+Capella, a native of the town of Sarsina, in the country of Forli, on
+the borders of Tuscany, approached far nearer in excellence to the
+prince of macaronic writers. His work also is a mock romance, the
+history of "Cabrinus, king of Gagamagoga," in six books or cantos,
+which was printed at Arimini in 1526, and is now a book of excessive
+rarity.
+
+The taste for macaronics passed rather early, like all other fashions
+in that age, from Italy into France, where it first brought into
+literary reputation a man who, if he had not the great talent of
+Folengo, possessed a very considerable amount of wit and gaiety.
+Antoine de la Sable, who Latinised his name into Antonius de Arena,
+was born of a highly respectable family at Soliers, in the diocese
+of Toulon, about the year 1500, and, being destined from his youth
+to follow the profession of the law, studied under the celebrated
+jurisconsult Alciatus. He had only arrived at the simple dignity of
+_juge_, at St. Remy, in the diocese of Arles, when he died in the year
+1544. In fact, he appears to have been no very diligent student, and we
+gather from his own confessions that his youth had been rather wild.
+The volume containing his macaronics, the second edition of which (as
+far as the editions are known) was printed in 1529, bears a title which
+will give some notion of the character of its contents,--"_Provencalis
+de bragardissima villa de Soleriis, ad suos compagnones qui sunt de
+persona friantes, bassas dansas et branlas practicantes novellas, de
+guerra Romana, Neapolitana, et Genuensi mandat; una cum epistola ad
+falotissimam suam garsam, Janam Rosæam, pro passando tempora_"--(_i.e._
+a Provençal of the most swaggering town of Soliers, sends this to his
+companions, who are dainty of their persons, practising basse dances
+and new brawls, concerning the war of Rome, Naples, and Genoa; with an
+epistle to his most merry wench, Jeanne Rosée, for pastime). In the
+first of these poems Arena traces in his burlesque verse, which is an
+imitation of Folengo, his own adventures and sufferings in the war in
+Italy which led to the sack of Rome, in 1527, and in the subsequent
+expeditions to Naples and Genoa. From the picture of the horrors of
+war, he passes very willingly to describe the joyous manners of the
+students in Provençal universities, of whom he tells us, that they are
+all fine gallants, and always in love with the pretty girls.
+
+          _Gentigalantes sunt omnes instudiantes,
+              Et bellas garsas semper amare solent._
+
+He goes on to describe the scholars as great quarrellers, as well as
+lovers of the other sex, and after dwelling on their gaiety and love
+of the dance, he proceeds to treat in the same burlesque style on the
+subject of dancing; but I pass over this to speak of Arena's principal
+piece, the satirical description of the invasion of Provence by the
+emperor Charles V. in 1536. This curious poem, which is entitled
+"Meygra Enterprisa Catoloqui imperatoris," and which extends to upwards
+of two thousand lines, opens with a laudatory address to the king of
+France, François I., and with a sneer at the pride of the emperor, who,
+believing himself to be the master of the whole world, had foolishly
+thought to take away France and the cities of Provence from their
+rightful monarch. It was Antonio de Leyva, the boaster, who had put
+this project into the emperor's head, and they had already pillaged
+and ravaged a good part of Provence, and were dividing the plunder,
+when, harassed continually by the peasantry, the invaders were brought
+to a stand by the difficulty of subsisting in a devastated country,
+and by the diseases to which this difficulty gave rise. Nevertheless,
+the Spaniards and their allies committed terrible devastation, which
+is described by Arena in strong language. He commemorates the valiant
+resistance of his native town of Soliers, which, however, was taken
+and sacked, and he lost in it his house and property. Arles held the
+imperialists at bay, while the French, under the constable Montmorency,
+established themselves firmly at Avignon. At length disease gained
+possession of Antonio de Leyva himself, and the emperor, who had been
+making an unsuccessful demonstration against Marseilles, came to him
+in his sickness. The first lines of the description of this interview,
+will serve as a specimen of the language of the French macaronics:--
+
+        _Sed de Marsella bragganti quando retornat,
+          Fort male contentus, quando repolsat eum,
+        Antonium Levam trobavit forte maladum,
+          Cui mors terribilis triste cubile parat.
+        Ethica torquet eum per costas, et dolor ingens:
+          Cum male res vadit, vivere fachat eum.
+        Dixerunt medici, speransa est nulla salutis:
+          Ethicus in testa vivere pauca potest.
+        Ante suam mortem voluit parlare per horam
+          Imperelatori, consiliumque dare.
+        Scis, Cæsar, stricte nostri groppantur amores,
+          Namque duas animas corpus utrumque tenet,
+        Heu! fuge Provensam fortem, fuge littus amarum,
+          Fac tibi non noceat gloria tanta modo._
+
+                         TRANSLATION.
+
+        _But when he returns from boasting Marseilles,
+          Very ill content, that she had repulsed him,
+        He found Antonio de Leyva very ill,
+          For whom terrible death is preparing a sorrowful bed.
+        Hectic fever tortures him in the ribs, and great pain;
+          Since things are going ill, he is weary of life.
+        Before his death he wished to speak an hour
+          To the emperor, and to give him counsel.
+        "You know, Cæsar, our affections are closely bound together,
+          For either body holds the two souls,
+        Alas! fly Provence the strong, fly the bitter shore,
+          Take care that your great glory prove not an injury to you."_
+
+Thus Leyva goes on to persuade the emperor to abandon his enterprise,
+and then dies. Arena exults over his death, and over the emperor's
+grief for his loss, and then proceeds to describe the disastrous
+retreat of the imperial army, and the glory of France in her king.
+
+Antonius de Arena wrote with vigour and humour, but his verses are
+tame in comparison with his model, Folengo. The taste for macaronic
+verse never took strong root in France, and the few obscure writers
+who attempted to shine in that kind of composition are now forgotten,
+except by the laborious bibliographer. One named Jean Germain, wrote
+a macaronic history of the invasion of Provence by the imperialists
+in rivalry of Arenas. I will not follow the taste for this class of
+burlesque composition into Spain or Germany, but merely add that it
+was not adopted in England until the beginning of the seventeenth
+century, when several authors employed it at about the same time.
+The most perfect example of these early English macaronics is the
+"Polemo-Middiana," _i.e._ battle of the dunghill, by the talented and
+elegant-minded Drummond of Hawthornden. We may take a single example of
+the English macaronic from this poem, which will not need an English
+translation. One of the female characters in the dunghill war, calls,
+among others, to her aid--
+
+        _Hunc qui dirtiferas tersit cum dishclouty dishras,
+        Hunc qui gruelias scivit bene lickere plettas,
+        Et saltpannifumos, et widebricatos fisheros,
+        Hellæosque etiam salteros duxit ab antris,
+        Coalheughos nigri girnantes more divelli;
+        Lifeguardamque sibi sævas vocat improba lassas,
+        Maggyam magis doctam milkare covœas,
+        Et doctam suepare flouras, et sternere beddas,
+        Quæque novit spinnare, et longas ducere threddas;
+        Nansyam, claves bene quæ keepaverat omnes,
+        Quæque lanam cardare solet greasy-fingria Betty._
+
+Perhaps before this was written, the eccentric Thomas Coryat had
+published in the volume of his Crudities, printed in 1611, a short
+piece of verse, which is perfect in its macaronic style, but in which
+Italian and other foreign words are introduced, as well as English. The
+celebrated comedy of "Ignoramus," composed by George Ruggle in 1615,
+may also be mentioned as containing many excellent examples of English
+macaronics.
+
+While Italy was giving birth to macaronic verse, the satire upon the
+ignorance and bigotry of the clergy was taking another form in Germany,
+which arose from some occurrences which it will be necessary to relate.
+In the midst of the violent religious agitation at the beginning of
+the sixteenth century in Germany, there lived a German Jew named
+Pfeffercorn, who embraced Christianity, and to show his zeal for his
+new faith, he obtained from the emperor an edict ordering the Talmud
+and all the Jewish writings which were contrary to the Christian faith
+to be burnt. There lived at the same time a scholar of distinction,
+and of more liberal views than most of the scholastics of his time,
+named John Reuchlin. He was a relative of Melancthon, and was secretary
+to the palsgrave, who was tolerant like himself. The Jews, as might
+be expected, were unwilling to give up their books to be burnt, and
+Reuchlin wrote in their defence, under the assumed name of Capnion,
+which is a Hebrew translation of his own name of Reuchlin, meaning
+smoke, and urged that it was better to refute the books in question
+than to burn them. The converted Pfeffercorn replied in a book entitled
+"Speculum Manuale," in answer to which Reuchlin wrote his "Speculum
+Oculare." The controversy had already provoked much bigoted ill-feeling
+against Reuchlin. The learned doctors of the university of Cologne
+espoused the cause of Pfeffercorn, and the principal of the university,
+named in Latin Ortuinus Gratius, supported by the Sorbonne in Paris,
+lent himself to be the violent organ of the intolerant party. Hard
+pressed by his bigoted opponents, Reuchlin found good allies, but one
+of the best of these was a brave baron named Ulric von Hutten, of an
+old and noble family, born in 1488 in the castle of Staeckelberg,
+in Franconia. He had studied in the schools at Fulda, Cologne, and
+Frankfort on the Oder, and distinguished himself so much as a scholar,
+that he obtained the degree of Master of Arts before the usual age.
+But Ulric possessed an adventurous and chivalrous spirit, which led
+him to embrace the profession of a soldier, and he served in the wars
+in Italy, where he was distinguished by his bravery. He was at Rome
+in 1516, and defended Reuchlin against the Dominicans. The same year
+appeared the first edition of that marvellous book, the "Epistolæ
+Obscurorum Virorum," one of the most remarkable satires that the world
+has yet seen. It is believed that this book came entirely from the
+pen of Ulric von Hutten; and the notion that Reuchlin himself, or
+any others of his friends, had a share in it appears to be without
+foundation. Ulric was in the following year made poet-laureat.
+Nevertheless, this book greatly incensed the monks against him, and he
+was often threatened with assassination. Yet he boldly advocated the
+cause and embraced the opinions of Luther, and was one of the staunch
+supporters of Lutheranism. After a very turbulent life, Ulric von
+Hutten died in the August of the year 1523.
+
+The "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum," or letters of obscure men, are
+supposed to be addressed to Ortuinus Gratius, mentioned above, by
+various individuals, some his scholars, others his friends, but all
+belonging to the bigoted party opposed to Reuchlin, and they were
+designed to throw ridicule on the ignorance, bigotry, and immorality
+of the clergy of the Romish church. The old scholastic learning
+had become debased into a heavy and barbarous system of theology,
+literary composition consisted in writing a no less barbarous Latin,
+and even the few classical writers who were admitted into the schools,
+were explained and commented upon in a strange half-theological
+fashion. These old scholastics were bitterly opposed to the new
+learning, which had taken root in Italy, and was spreading abroad,
+and they spoke contemptuously of it as "secular." The letters of the
+obscure individuals relate chiefly to the dispute between Reuchlin
+and Pfeffercorn, to the rivalry between the old scholarship and the
+new, and to the low licentious lives of the theologists; and they
+are written in a style of Latin which is intended for a parody on
+that of the latter, and which closely resembles that which we call
+"dog-Latin."[97] They are full of wit and humour of the most exquisite
+description, but they too often descend into details, treated in terms
+which can only be excused by the coarse and licentious character of
+the age. The literary and scientific questions discussed in these
+letters are often very droll. The first in order of the correspondents
+of Ortuinus Gratius, who boasts of the rather formidable name, Thomas
+Langschneiderius, and addresses master Ortuinus as "poet, orator,
+philosopher, and theologist, and more if he would," propounds to him a
+difficult question:--
+
+     "There was here one day an Aristotelian dinner, and doctors,
+     licenciates, and masters too, were very jovial, and I was
+     there too, and we drank at the first course three draughts of
+     Malmsey, ... and then we had six dishes of flesh and chickens
+     and capons, and one of fish, and as we passed from one dish to
+     another, we continually drunk wine of Kotzburg and the Rhine,
+     and ale of Embeck, and Thurgen, and Neuburg. And the masters
+     were well satisfied, and said that the new masters had acquitted
+     themselves well and with great honour. Then the masters in their
+     hilarity began to talk learnedly on great questions, and one
+     asked whether it were correct to say _magister nostrandus_, or
+     _noster magistrandus_, for a person fit to be made doctor in
+     theology.... And immediately Master Warmsemmel, who is a subtle
+     Scotist, and has been master eighteen years, and was in his time
+     twice rejected and thrice delayed for the degree of master,
+     and he went on offering himself, until he was promoted for the
+     honour of the university, ... spoke, and held that we should say
+     _noster magistrandus_.... Then Master Andreas Delitsch, who is
+     very subtle, and half poet, half artist (_i.e._ one who professed
+     in the faculty of arts), physician, and jurist; and now he
+     reads ordinarily 'Ovid on the Metamorphoses,' and expounds all
+     the fables allegorically and literally, and I was his hearer,
+     because he expounds very fundamentally, and he also reads at home
+     Quintillian and Juvencus, and he held the opposite to Master
+     Warmsemmel, and said that we ought to say _magister nostrandus_.
+     For as there is a difference between _magister noster_ and _noster
+     magister_, so also there is a difference between _magister
+     nostrandus_ and _noster magistrandus_; for a doctor in theology
+     is called _magister noster_, and it is one word, but _noster
+     magister_ are two words, and it is taken for any master; and he
+     quoted Horace in support of this. Then the masters much admired
+     his subtlety, and one drank to him a cup of Neuburg ale. And
+     he said, 'I will wait, but spare me,' and touched his hat, and
+     laughed heartily, and drank to Master Warmsemmel, and said,
+     'There, master, don't think I am an enemy,' and he drank it off at
+     one draught, and Master Warmsemmel replied to him with a strong
+     draught. And the masters were all merry till the bell rang for
+     Vespers."
+
+ [97] This style differs entirely from the macaronic. It consists
+      merely in using the words of the Latin language with the forms
+      and construction of the vulgar tongue, as illustrated by the
+      directions of the professor who, lecturing in the schools, was
+      interrupted by the entrance of a dog, and shouted out to the
+      doorkeeper, _Verte canem ex_, meaning thereby that he should
+      "turn the dog out." It was perhaps from this, or some similar
+      occurrence, that this barbarous Latin gained the name of
+      dog-Latin. The French call it _Latin de cuisine_.
+
+Master Ortuin is pressed for his judgment on this weighty question. A
+similar scene described in another letter ends less peacefully. The
+correspondent on this occasion is Magister Bornharddus Plumilegus, who
+addresses Ortuinus Gratius as follows:--
+
+     "Wretched is the mouse which has only one hole for a refuge! So
+     also I may say of myself, most venerable sir, for I should be poor
+     if I had only one friend, and when that one should fail me, then
+     I should not have another to treat me with kindness. As is the
+     case now with a certain poet here, who is called George Sibutus,
+     and he is one of the secular poets, and reads publicly in poetry,
+     and is in other respects a good fellow (_bonus socius_). But as
+     you know these poets, when they are not theologists like you, will
+     always reprehend others, and despise the theologists. And once
+     in a drinking party in his house, when we were drinking Thurgen
+     ale, and sat until the hour of tierce, and I was moderately drunk,
+     because that ale rose into my head, then there was one who was not
+     before friendly with me, and I drank to him half a cup, and he
+     accepted it. But afterwards he would not return the compliment.
+     And thrice I cautioned him, and he would not reply, but sat in
+     silence and said nothing. Then I thought to myself, Behold this
+     man treats thee with contempt, and is proud, and always wants to
+     confound you. And I was stirred in my anger, and took the cup, and
+     threw it at his head. Then that poet was angry at me, and said
+     that I had caused a disturbance in his house, and said I should go
+     out of his house in the devil's name. Then I replied, 'What matter
+     is it if you are my enemy? I have had as bad enemies as you, and
+     yet I have stood in spite of them. What matters it if you are a
+     poet? I have other poets who are my friends, and they are quite as
+     good as you, _ego bene merdarem in vestram poetriam_! Do you think
+     I am a fool, or that I was born under a tree like apples?' Then he
+     called me an ass, and said that I never saw a poet. And I said,
+     'You are an ass in your skin, I have seen many more poets than
+     you.' And I spoke of you.... Wherefore I ask you very earnestly to
+     write me one piece of verse, and then I will show it to this poet
+     and others, and I will boast that you are my friend, and you are a
+     much better poet than he."
+
+The war against the secular poets, or advocates of the new learning,
+is kept up with spirit through this ludicrous correspondence. One
+correspondent presses Ortuinus Gratius to "write to me whether it be
+necessary for eternal salvation that scholars learn grammar from the
+secular poets, such as Virgil, Tullius, Pliny, and others; for," he
+adds, "it seems to me that this is not a good method of studying." "As
+I have often written to you," says another, "I am grieved that this
+ribaldry (_ista ribaldria_), namely, the faculty of poetry, becomes
+common, and is spread through all provinces and regions. In my time
+there was only one poet, who was called Samuel; and now, in this city
+alone, there are at least twenty, and they vex us all who hold with the
+ancients. Lately I thoroughly defeated one, who said that _scholaris_
+does not signify a person who goes to the school for the purpose of
+learning; and I said, 'Ass! will you correct the holy doctor who
+expounded this word?'" The new learning was, of course, identified
+with the supporters of Reuchlin. "It is said here," continues the same
+correspondent, "that all the poets will side with doctor Reuchlin
+against the theologians. I wish all the poets were in the place where
+pepper grows, that they might let us go in peace!"
+
+Master William Lamp, "master of arts," sends to Master Ortuinus
+Gratius, a narrative of his adventures in a journey from Cologne to
+Rome. First he went to Mayence, where his indignation was moved by the
+open manner in which people spoke in favour of Reuchlin, and when he
+hazarded a contrary opinion, he was only laughed at, but he held his
+tongue, because his opponents all carried arms and looked fierce. "One
+of them is a count, and is a long man, and has white hair; and they
+say that he takes a man in armour in his hand, and throws him to the
+ground, and he has a sword as long as a giant; when I saw him, then I
+held my tongue." At Worms, he found things no better, for the "doctors"
+spoke bitterly against the theologians, and when he attempted to
+expostulate, he got foul words as well as threats, a learned doctor in
+medicine affirming "_quod merdaret super nos omnes_." On leaving Worms,
+Lamp and his companion, another theologist, fell in with plunderers who
+made them pay two florins to drink, "and I said _occulte_, Drink what
+may the devil bless to you!" Subsequently they fell into low amours
+at country inns, which are described coarsely, and then they reached
+Insprucken, where they found the emperor, and his court and army, with
+whole manners and proceedings Magister Lamp became sorely disgusted.
+I pass over other adventures till they reach Mantua, the birthplace
+of Virgil, and of a late mediæval Latin poet, named from it Baptista
+Mantuanus. Lamp, in his hostile spirit towards the "secular poets,"
+proceeds,--"And my companion said, 'Here Virgil was born.' I replied,
+'What do I care for that pagan? We will go to the Carmelites, and see
+Baptista Mantuanus, who is twice as good as Virgil, as I have heard
+full ten times from Ortuinus;' and I told him how you once reprehended
+Donatus, when he says, 'Virgil was the most learned of poets, and
+the best;' and you said, 'If Donatus were here, I would tell him to
+his face that he lies, for Baptista Mantuanus is above Virgil.' And
+when we came to the monastery of the Carmelites, we were told that
+Baptista Mantuanus was dead; then I said, 'May he rest in peace!'" They
+continued their journey by Bologna, where they found the inquisitor
+Jacob de Hochstraten, and Florence, to Siena. "After this there are
+small towns, and one is called Monte-flascon, where we drunk excellent
+wine, such as I never drank in my life. And I asked the host what that
+wine is called, and he replied that it is lachryma Christi. Then said
+my companion, 'I wish Christ would cry in our country!' And so we drank
+a good bout, and two days after we entered Rome."
+
+In the course of these letters the theologists, the poets especially,
+the character of the clergy, and particularly Reuchlin and
+Pfeffercorn, afford continual subjects for dispute and pleasantry.
+The last mentioned individual, in the opinion of some, had merited
+hanging for theft, and it was pretended that the Jews had expelled
+him from their society for his wicked courses. One argued that all
+Jews stink, and as it was well known that Pfeffercorn continued to
+stink like a Jew, it was quite evident that he could not be a good
+Christian. Some of Ortuinus's correspondents consult him on difficult
+theological questions. Here is an example in a letter from one Henricus
+Schaffmulius, another of his scholars who had made the journey to
+Rome:--
+
+     "Since, before I journeyed to the Court, you said to me that I am
+     to write often to you, and that sometimes I am to send you any
+     theological questions, which you will solve for me better than
+     the courtiers of Rome, therefore now I ask your mastership what
+     you hold as to the case when any one on a Friday, or any other
+     fast day, eats an egg, and there is a chicken inside. Because
+     the other day we sat in a tavern in the Campo-flore, and made a
+     collation, and eat eggs, and I, opening an egg, saw that there was
+     a young chicken in it, which I showed to my companion, and then he
+     said, 'Eat it quickly before the host sees it, for if he sees it,
+     then you will be obliged to give a carlino or a julio for a hen,
+     because it is the custom here that, when the host places anything
+     on the table, you must pay for it, for they will not take it back.
+     And when he sees there is a young hen in the egg, he will say,
+     Pay me for the hen, because he reckons a small one the same as a
+     large one.' And I immediately sucked up the egg, and with it the
+     chicken, and afterwards I bethought me that it was Friday, and I
+     said to my companion. 'You have caused me to commit a mortal sin,
+     in eating flesh on Friday.' And he said that it is not a mortal
+     sin, nor even a venial sin, because that embryo of a chicken is
+     not reckoned other than an egg till it is born; and he told me
+     that it is as in cheeses, in which there are sometimes worms,
+     and in cherries, and fresh peas and beans, yet they are eaten on
+     Fridays, and also in the vigils of the apostles. But the hosts
+     are such rogues, that they say that they are flesh, that they may
+     have more money. Then I went away, and thought about it. And, _per
+     Deum_! Magister Ortuinus, I am much troubled, and I know not how
+     I ought to rule myself. If I went to ask advice of a courtier [of
+     the papal court], I know that they have not good consciences. It
+     seems to me that these young hens in the eggs are flesh, because
+     the matter is already formed and figured in members and bodies of
+     an animal, and it has life; it is otherwise with worms in cheeses
+     and other things, because worms are reputed for fishes, as I have
+     heard from a physician, who is a very good naturalist. Therefore I
+     ask you very earnestly, that you will give me your reply on this
+     question. Because if you hold that it is a mortal sin, then I will
+     purchase an absolution here, before I return to Germany. Also you
+     must know that our master Jacobus de Hochstraten has obtained a
+     thousand florins from the bank, and I think that with these he
+     will gain his cause, and the devil confound that John Reuchlin,
+     and the other poets and jurists, because they will be against
+     the church of God, that is, against the theologists, in whom is
+     founded the church, as Christ said: Thou art Peter, and upon this
+     rock I will build my church. And so I commend you to the Lord God.
+     Farewell. Given from the city of Rome."
+
+While in Italy macaronic literature was reaching its greatest
+perfection, there arose in the very centre of France a man of great
+original genius, who was soon to astonish the world by a new form of
+satire, more grotesque and more comprehensive than anything that had
+been seen before. Teofilo Folengo may fairly be considered as the
+precursor of Rabelais, who appears to have taken the Italian satirist
+as his model. What we know of the life of François Rabelais is rather
+obscure at best, and is in some parts no doubt fabulous. He was born
+at Chinon in Touraine, either in 1483 or in 1487, for this seems to
+be a disputed point, and some doubt has been thrown on the trade or
+profession of his father, but the most generally received opinion is
+that he was an apothecary. He is said to have shown from his youth a
+disposition more inclined to gaiety than to serious pursuits, yet at
+an early age he had made great proficiency in learning, and is said to
+have acquired a very sufficient knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,
+two of which, at least, were not popular among the popish clergy, and
+not only of the modern languages and literature of Italy, Germany, and
+Spain, but even of Arabic. Probably this estimate of his acquirements
+in learning is rather exaggerated. It is not quite clear where the
+young Rabelais gained all this knowledge, for he is said to have been
+educated in convents and among monks, and to have become at a rather
+early age a Franciscan friar in the convent of Fontenai-le-Compte, in
+Lower Poitou, where he became an object of jealousy and ill-feeling to
+the other friars by his superior acquirements. It was a tradition, at
+least, that the conduct of Rabelais was not very strictly conventual,
+and that he had so far shown his contempt for monastic rule, and for
+the bigotry of the Romish church, that he was condemned to the prison
+of his monastery, upon a diet of bread and water, which, according to
+common report, was very uncongenial with the tastes of this jovial
+friar. Out of this difficulty he is said to have been helped by his
+friend the bishop of Maillezais, who obtained for him the pope's
+licence to change the order of St. Francis for the much more easy and
+liberal order of St. Benedict, and he became a member of the bishop's
+own chapter in the abbey of Maillezais. His unsteady temper, however,
+was not long satisfied with this retreat, which he left, and, laying
+aside the regular habit, assumed that of a secular priest. In this
+character he wandered for some time, and then settled at Montpellier,
+where he took a degree as doctor in medicine, and practised for some
+time with credit. There he published in 1532 a translation of some
+works of Hippocrates and Galen, which he dedicated to his friend the
+bishop of Maillezais. The circumstances under which he left Montpellier
+are not known, but he is supposed to have gone to Paris upon some
+business of the university, and to have remained there. He found
+there a staunch friend in Jean de Bellay, bishop of Paris, who soon
+afterwards was raised to the rank of cardinal. When the cardinal de
+Bellay went as ambassador to Rome from the court of France, Rabelais
+accompanied him, it is said in the character of his private medical
+adviser, but during his stay in the metropolis of Christendom, as
+Christendom was understood in those days by the Romish church, Rabelais
+obtained, on the 17th of January, 1536 the papal absolution for all
+his transgressions, and licence to return to Maillezais, and practise
+medicine there and elsewhere as an act of charity. Thus he became again
+a Benedictine monk. He, however, changed again, and became a secular
+canon, and finally settled down as the curé of Meudon, near Paris, with
+which he also held a fair number of ecclesiastical benefices. Rabelais
+died in 1553, according to some in a very religious manner, but others
+have given strange accounts of his last moments, representing that,
+even when dying, he conversed in the same spirit of mockery, not only
+of Romish forms and ceremonies, but of all religions whatever, which
+was ascribed to him during his life, and which are but too openly
+manifested in the extraordinary satirical romance which has given so
+much celebrity to his name.
+
+During the greater part of his life, Rabelais was exposed to troubles
+and persecutions. He was saved from the intrigues of the monks by
+the friendly influence of popes and cardinals; and the favour of two
+successive kings, François I. and Henri II., protected him against the
+still more dangerous hostility of the Sorbonne and the parliament of
+Paris. This high protection has been advanced as a reason for rejecting
+the anecdotes and accounts which have been commonly received relating
+to the personal character of Rabelais, and his irregularities may
+possibly have been exaggerated by the hatred which he had drawn upon
+himself by his writings. But nobody, I think, who knows the character
+of society at that time, who compares what we know of the lives of
+the other satirists, and who has read the history of Gargantua and
+Pantagruel, will consider such an argument of much weight against the
+deliberate statements of those who were his contemporaries, or be
+inclined to doubt that the writer of this history was a man of jovial
+character, who loved a good bottle and a broad joke, and perhaps other
+things that were equally objectionable. His books present a sort
+of wild riotous orgy, without much order or plan, except the mere
+outline of the story, in which is displayed an extraordinary extent
+of reading in all classes of literature, from the most learned to the
+most popular, with a wonderful command of language, great imagination,
+and some poetry, intermixed with a perhaps larger amount of downright
+obscene ribaldry, than can be found in the macaronics of Folengo,
+in the "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum," or in the works of any of the
+other satirists who had preceded him, or were his contemporaries. It
+is a broad caricature, poor enough in its story, but enriched with
+details, which are brilliant with imagery, though generally coarse,
+and which are made the occasions for turning to ridicule everything
+that existed. The five books of this romance were published separately
+and at different periods, apparently without any fixed intention of
+continuing them. The earlier editions of the first part were published
+without date, but the earliest editions with dates belong to the year
+1535, when it was several times reprinted. It appeared as the life of
+Gargantua. This hero is supposed to have flourished in the first half
+of the fifteenth century, and to have been the son of Grandgousier,
+king of Utopia, a country which lay somewhere in the direction of
+Chinon, a prince of an ancient dynasty, but a jovial fellow, who loved
+good eating and drinking better than anything else. Grandgousier
+married Gargamelle, daughter of the king of the Parpaillos, who became
+the mother of Gargantua. The first chapters relate rather minutely
+how the child was born, and came out at its mother's ear, why it was
+called Gargantua, how it was dressed and treated in infancy, what were
+its amusements and disposition, and how Gargantua was put to learning
+under the sophists, and made no progress. Thereupon Grandgousier sent
+his son to Paris, to seek instruction there, and he proceeds thither
+mounted on an immense mare, which had been sent as a present by the
+king of Numidia--it must be borne in mind that the royal race of Utopia
+were all giants. At Paris the populace assembled tumultuously to
+gratify their curiosity in looking at this new scholar; but Gargantua,
+besides treating them in a very contemptuous manner, carried off the
+great bells of Notre Dame to suspend at the neck of his mare. Great
+was the indignation caused by this theft. "All the city was risen up
+in sedition, they being, as you know, upon any slight occasions, so
+ready to uproars and insurrections, that foreign nations wonder at the
+patience of the kings of France, who do not by good justice restrain
+them from such tumultuous courses." The citizens take counsel, and
+resolve on sending one of the great orators of the university, Master
+Janotus de Bragmardo, to expostulate with Gargantua, and obtain the
+restoration of the bells. The speech which this worthy addresses to
+Gargantua, in fulfilment of his mission, is an amusing parody on the
+pedantic style of Parisian oratory. The bells, however, are recovered,
+and Gargantua, under skilful instructors, pursues his studies with
+credit, until he is suddenly called home by a letter from his father.
+In fact, Grandgousier was suddenly involved in a war with his neighbour
+Picrocole, king of Lerné, caused by a quarrel about cakes between some
+cake-makers of Lerné and Grandgousier's shepherds, in consequence of
+which Picrocole had invaded the dominions of Grandgousier, and was
+plundering and ravaging them. His warlike humour is stirred up by the
+counsels of his three lieutenants, who persuade him that he is going
+to become a great conqueror, and that they will make him master of the
+whole world. It is not difficult to see, in the circumstances of the
+time, the general aim of the satire contained in the history of this
+war. It ends in the entire defeat and disappearance of king Picrocole.
+A sensual and jovial monk named brother Jean des Entommeurs, who has
+first distinguished himself by his prowess and strength in defending
+his own abbey against the invaders, contributes largely to the victory
+gained by Gargantua against his father's enemies, and Gargantua
+rewards him by founding for him that pleasant abbey of Thélème, a
+grand establishment, stored with everything which could contribute to
+terrestrial happiness, from which all hypocrites and bigots were to be
+excluded, and the rule of which was comprised in the four simple words,
+"Do as you like."
+
+Such is the history of Gargantua, which was afterwards formed by
+Rabelais into the first book of his great comic romance. It was
+published anonymously, the author merely describing himself as
+"l'abstracteur de quinte essence;" but he afterwards adopted the
+pseudonyme of Alcofribas Nasier, which is merely an anagram of his own
+name, François Rabelais. A very improbable story has been handed down
+to us relating to this book. It is pretended that, having published
+a book of medical science which had no sale, and the publisher
+complaining that he had lost money by it, Rabelais promised to make
+amends for his loss, and immediately wrote the history of Gargantua,
+by which the same book-seller made his fortune. There can be no doubt
+that this remarkable satire had a deeper origin than any casual
+accident like this; but it was exactly suited to the taste and temper
+of the age. It was quite original in its form and style, and it met
+with immediate and great success. Numerous editions followed each
+other rapidly, and its author, encouraged by its popularity, very soon
+afterwards produced a second romance, in continuation, to which he
+gave the title of Pantagruel. The caricature in this second romance
+is bolder even than in the first, the humour broader, and the satire
+more pungent. Grandgousier has disappeared from the scene, and his son,
+Gargantua, is king, and has a son named Pantagruel, whose kingdom is
+that of the Dipsodes. The first part of this new romance is occupied
+chiefly with Pantagruel's youth and education, and is a satire on
+the university and on the lawyers, in which the parodies on their
+style of pleading as then practised is admirable. In the latter part,
+Pantagruel, like his father Gargantua, is engaged in great wars. It was
+perhaps the continued success of this new production of his pen which
+led Rabelais to go on with it, and form the design of making these two
+books part only of a more extensive romance. During his studies in
+Paris, Pantagruel has made the acquaintance of a singular individual
+named Panurge, who becomes his attached friend and constant companion,
+holding somewhat the position of brother Jean in the first book, but
+far more crafty and versatile. The whole subject of the third book
+arises out of Pantagreul's desire to marry, and its various amusing
+episodes describe the different expedients which, at the suggestion of
+Panurge, he adopts to arrive at a solution of the question whether his
+marriage would be fortunate or not.
+
+In publishing his fourth book, Rabelais complains that his writings
+had raised him enemies, and that he was accused of having at least
+written heresy. In fact, he had bitterly provoked both the monks and
+the university and parliament; and, as the increasing reaction of
+Romanism in France gave more power of persecution to the two latter,
+he was not writing without some degree of danger, yet the satire of
+each successive book became bolder and more direct. The fifth, which
+was left unfinished at his death, and which was published posthumously,
+was the most severe of them all. The character of Gargantua, indeed,
+was almost forgotten in that of Pantagruel, and Pantagruelism became
+an accepted name for the sort of gay, reckless satire of which he was
+looked upon as the model. He described it himself as a _certaine gaieté
+d'esprit confite en mépris des choses fortuites_, in fact, neither
+Romanism nor Protestantism, but simply a jovial kind of Epicurianism.
+All the gay wits of the time aspired to be Pantagruelists, and the
+remainder of the sixteenth century abounded in wretched imitations of
+the style of Rabelais, which are now consigned as mere rarities to the
+shelves of the bibliophilist.
+
+Among the dangers which began to threaten them in France in the earlier
+part of the sixteenth century, liberal opinions found an asylum at the
+court of a princess who was equally distinguished by her beauty, by her
+talents and noble sentiments, and by her accomplishments. Marguerite
+d'Angoulême, queen of Navarre, was the only sister of François I., who
+was her junior by two years, and was affectionately attached to her.
+She was born on the 11th of April, 1492. She had married, first, that
+unfortunate duke d'Alençon, whose misconduct at Pavia was the cause of
+the disastrous defeat of the French, and the captivity of their king.
+The duke died, it was said of grief at his misfortune, in 1525; and
+two years afterwards, on the 24th of January, 1527, she married Henri
+d'Albret, king of Navarre. Their daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, carried
+this petty royalty to the house of Bourbon, and was the mother of Henri
+IV.
+
+Marguerite held her court in true princely manner in the castle of Pau
+or at Nérac, and she loved to surround herself with a circle of men
+remarkable for their character and talents, and ladies distinguished
+by beauty and accomplishments, which made it rival in brilliance
+even that of her brother François. She placed nearest to her person,
+under the character of her _valets-de-chambre_, the principal poets
+and _beaux-esprits_ of her time, such as Clement Marot, Bonaventure
+des Periers, Claude Gruget, Antoine du Moulin, and Jean de la Haye,
+and admitted them to such a tender familiarity of intercourse, as to
+excite the jealousy of the king her husband, from whose ill-treatment
+she was only protected by her brother's interference. The poets called
+her chamber a "veritable Parnassus." Hers was certainly a great
+mind, greedy of knowledge, dissatisfied with what was, and eager for
+novelties, and therefore she encouraged all who sought for them. It
+was in this spirit, combined with her earnest love for letters, that
+she threw her protection over both the sceptics and the religious
+reformers. At the beginning of the persecutions, as early as 1523,
+she openly declared herself the advocate of the Protestants. When
+Clement Marot was arrested by order of the Sorbonne and the Inquisitor
+on the charge of having eaten bacon in Lent, Marguerite caused him
+to be liberated from prison, in defiance of his persecutors. Some of
+the purest and ablest of the early French reformers, such as Roussel
+and Le Fèvre d'Etaples, and Calvin himself, found a safe asylum from
+danger in her dominions. As might be supposed, the bigoted party were
+bitterly incensed against the queen of Navarre, and were not backward
+in taking advantage of an opportunity for showing it. A moral treatise,
+entitled "Le Miroir de l'Ame Pécheresse," of which Marguerite was the
+author, was condemned by the Sorbonne in 1533, but the king compelled
+the university, in the person of its rector, Nicolas Cop, to disavow
+publicly the censure. This was followed by a still greater act of
+insolence, for, at the instigation of some of the more bigoted papists,
+the scholars of the college of Navarre, in concert with their regents,
+performed a farce in which Marguerite was transformed into a fury of
+hell. François I., greatly indignant, sent his archers to arrest the
+offenders, who further provoked his anger by resistance, and only
+obtained their pardon through the generous intercession of the princess
+whom they had so grossly insulted.
+
+Marguerite was herself a poetess, and she loved above all things
+those gay, and seldom very delicate, stories, the telling of which
+was at that time one of the favourite amusements of the evening,
+and one in which she was known to excel. Her poetical writings were
+collected and printed, under her own authority, in 1547, by her then
+_valet-de-chambre_, Jean de la Haye, who dedicated the volume to her
+daughter. They are all graceful, and some of them worthy of the best
+poets of her time. The title of this collection was, punning upon
+her name, which means a pearl, "Marguerites de la Marguerite des
+princesses, très illustre reyne de Navarre." Marguerite's stories
+(_nouvelles_) were more celebrated than her verses, and are said to
+have been committed to writing under her own dictation. All the ladies
+of her court possessed copies of them in writing. It is understood to
+have been her intention to form them into ten days' tales, of ten in
+each day, so as to resemble the "Decameron" of Boccaccio, but only
+eight days were finished at the time of her death, and the imperfect
+work was published posthumously by her _valet-de-chambre_, Claude
+Gruget, under the title of "L'Heptameron, ou Histoire des Amants
+Fortunés." It is by far the best collection of stories of the sixteenth
+century. They are told charmingly, in language which is a perfect model
+of French composition of that age, but they are all tales of gallantry
+such as could only be repeated in polite society in an age which was
+essentially licentious. Queen Marguerite died on the 21st of December,
+1549, and was buried in the cathedral of Pau. Her death was a subject
+of regret to all that was good and all that was poetic, not only in
+France, but in Europe, which had been accustomed to look upon her as
+the tenth Muse and the fourth Grace:--
+
+        _Musarum decima et Charitum quarta, inclyta regum
+              Et soror et conjux, Marguaris illa jacet._
+
+Before Marguerite's death, her literary circle had been broken up by
+the hatred of religious persecutors. Already, in 1536, the imprudent
+boldness of Marot had rendered it impossible to protect him any
+longer, and he had been obliged to retire to a place of concealment,
+from whence he sometimes paid a stealthy visit to her court. His
+place of _valet-de-chambre_ was given to a man of talents, even more
+remarkable, and who shared equally the personal esteem of the queen of
+Navarre, Bonaventure des Periers. Marot's successor paid a graceful
+compliment to him in a short poem entitled "L'Apologie de Marot
+absent," published in 1537. The earlier part of the year following
+witnessed the publication of the most remarkable work of Bonaventure
+des Periers, the "Cymbalum Mundi," concerning the real character
+of which writers are still divided in opinion. In it Des Periers
+introduced a new form of satire, imitated from the dialogues of Lucian.
+The book consists of four dialogues, written in language which forms a
+model of French composition, the personages introduced in them intended
+evidently to represent living characters, whose names are concealed
+in anagrams and other devices, among whom was Clement Marot. It was
+the boldest declaration of scepticism which had yet issued from the
+Epicurean school represented by Rabelais. The author sneers at the
+Romish church as an imposture, ridicules the Protestants as seekers
+after the philosopher's stone, and shows disrespect to Christianity
+itself. Such a book could hardly be published in Paris with impunity,
+yet it was printed there, secretly, it is said, by a well-known
+bookseller, Jean Morin, in the Rue St. Jacques, and therefore in the
+immediate vicinity of the persecuting Sorbonne. Private information
+had been given of the character of this work, possibly by the printer
+himself or by one of his men, and on the 6th of March, 1538, when it
+was on the eve of publication, the whole impression was seized at the
+printer's, and Morin himself was arrested and thrown into prison. He
+was treated rigorously, and is understood to have escaped only by
+disavowing all knowledge of the character of the book, and giving up
+the name of the author. The first edition of the "Cymbalum Mundi" was
+burnt, and Bonaventure des Periers, alarmed by the personal dangers
+in which he was thus involved, retired from the court of the queen of
+Navarre, and took refuge in the city of Lyons, where liberal opinions
+at that time found a greater degree of tolerance than elsewhere. There
+he printed a second edition of the "Cymbalum Mundi," which also was
+burnt, and copies of either edition are now excessively rare.[98]
+Bonaventure des Periers felt so much the weight of the persecution in
+which he had now involved himself, that, in the year 1539, as far as
+can be ascertained, he put an end to his own existence. This event cast
+a gloom over the court of the queen of Navarre, from which it seems
+never to have entirely recovered. The school of scepticism to which Des
+Periers belonged had now fallen into equal discredit with Catholics and
+Protestants, and the latter looked upon Marguerite herself, who had
+latterly conformed outwardly with Romanism, as an apostate from their
+cause. Henri Estienne, in his "Apologie pour Herodote," speaks of the
+"Cymbalum Mundi" as an infamous book.
+
+ [98] A cheap and convenient edition of the "Cymbalum Mundi," edited
+      by the Bibliophile Jacob (Paul Lacroix), was published in Paris
+      in 1841. I may here state that similar editions of the principal
+      French satirists of the sixteenth century have been printed
+      during the last twenty-five years.
+
+Bonaventure des Periers left behind him another work more amusing to us
+at the present day, and more characteristic of the literary tastes of
+the court of Marguerite of Navarre. This is a collection of facetious
+stories, which was published several years after the death of its
+author, under the title of "Les Contes, ou Les Nouvelles Récréations et
+Joyeux Devis de Bonaventure des Periers." They have some resemblance
+in style to the stories of the Heptameron, but are shorter, and rather
+more facetious, and are characterised by their bitter spirit of satire
+against the monks and popish clergy. Some of these stories remind us,
+in their peculiar character and tone, of the "Epistolæ Obscurorum
+Virorum," as, for an example, the following, which is given as an
+anecdote of the curé de Brou:--
+
+     "This curé had a way of his own to chant the different offices
+     of the church, and above all he disliked the way of saying the
+     Passion in the manner it was ordinarily said in churches, and he
+     chanted it quite differently. For when our Lord said anything to
+     the Jews, or to Pilate, he made him talk high and loud, so that
+     everybody could hear him, and when it was the Jews or somebody
+     else who spoke, he spoke so low that he could hardly be heard
+     at all. It happened that a lady of rank and importance, on her
+     way to Châteaudun, to keep there the festival of Easter, passed
+     through Brou on Good Friday, about ten o'clock in the morning,
+     and, wishing to hear service, she went to the church where the
+     curé was officiating. When it came to the Passion, he said it
+     in his own manner, and made the whole church ring again when
+     he said _Quem quæritis_? But when it came to the reply, _Jesum
+     Nazarenum_, he spoke as low as he possibly could. And in this
+     manner he continued the Passion. The lady, who was very devout,
+     and, for a woman, well informed in the holy scriptures, and
+     attentive to the ecclesiastical ceremonies, felt scandalised
+     at this mode of chanting, and wished she had never entered the
+     church. She had a mind to speak to the curé, and tell him what
+     she thought of it; and for this purpose sent for him to come to
+     her after the service. When he came, she said to him, 'Monsieur
+     le Curé, I don't know where you learnt to officiate on a day like
+     this, when the people ought to be all humility; but to hear you
+     perform the service, is enough to drive away anybody's devotion.'
+     'How so, madame?' said the curé. 'How so?' said she, 'you have
+     said a Passion contrary to all rules of decency. When our Lord
+     speaks, you cry as if you were in the town-hall; and when it is a
+     Caiaphas, or Pilate, or the Jews, you speak softly like a young
+     bride. Is this becoming in one like you? are you fit to be a curé?
+     If you had what you deserve, you would be turned out of your
+     benefice, and then you would be made to know your fault!' When the
+     curé had very attentively listened to her, he said, 'Is this what
+     you had to say to me, madame? By my soul! it is very true, what
+     they say; and the truth is, that there are many people who talk of
+     things which they do not understand. Madame, I believe that I know
+     my office as well as another, and I beg all the world to know that
+     God is as well served in this parish according to its condition,
+     as in any place within a hundred leagues of it. I know very well
+     that the other curés chant the Passion quite differently; I could
+     easily chant it like them if I would; but they do not understand
+     their business at all. I should like to know if it becomes those
+     rogues of Jews to speak as loud as our Lord! No, no, madame; rest
+     assured that in my parish it is my will that God be the master,
+     and He shall be as long as I live; and let the others do in their
+     parishes according to their understanding.'"
+
+Another story, equally worthy of Ulric von Hutten, is satirical enough
+on priestly pedantry:--
+
+     "There was a priest of a village who was as proud as might be,
+     because he had seen a little more than his Cato; for he had read
+     _De Syntaxi_, and his _Fauste precor gelida_ [the first eclogue
+     of Baptista Mantuanus]. And this made him set up his feathers,
+     and talk very grand, using words that filled his mouth, in order
+     to make people think him a great doctor. Even at confession, he
+     made use of terms which astonished the poor people. One day he
+     was confessing a poor working man, of whom he asked, 'Here, now,
+     my friend, tell me, art thou ambitious?' The poor man said 'No,'
+     thinking this was a word which belonged to great lords, and almost
+     repented of having come to confess to this priest; for he had
+     already heard that he was such a great clerk, and that he spoke
+     so grandly, that nobody understood him, which he now knew by this
+     word _ambitious_; for although he might have heard it somewhere,
+     yet he did not know at all what it was. The priest went on to
+     ask 'Art thou not a fornicator?' 'No,' said the labourer, who
+     understood as little as before. 'Art thou not a gourmand?' said
+     the priest. 'No.' 'Art thou not superbe [_proud_]?' 'No.' 'Art
+     thou not iracund?' 'No.' The priest seeing the man answer always
+     'No,' was somewhat surprised. 'Art thou not concupiscent?' 'No.'
+     'And what art thou, then?' said the priest. 'I am,' said he, 'a
+     mason; here is my trowel!'"
+
+At this time "Pantagruelism" had mixed itself more or less largely in
+all the satirical literature of France. It is very apparent in the
+writings of Bonaventure des Periers, and in a considerable number of
+satirical publications which now issued, many of them anonymously, or
+under the then fashionable form of anagrams, from the press in France.
+Among these writers were a few who, though far inferior to Rabelais,
+may be considered as not unequal to Des Periers himself. One of the
+most remarkable of these was a gentleman of Britany, Noel du Fail, lord
+of La Hérissaye, who was, like so many of these satirists, a lawyer,
+and who died, apparently at an advanced age, at the end of 1585, or
+beginning of 1586. In his publications, according to the fashion of
+that age, he concealed his name under an anagram, and called himself
+Leon Ladulfil (doubling the _l_ in the name Fail). Noel du Fail has
+been called the ape of Rabelais, though the mere imitation is not very
+apparent. He published (as far as has been ascertained), in 1548,
+his "Discours d'aucuns propos ruftiques facétieux, et de singulière
+récréation." This was followed immediately by a work entitled
+"Baliverneries, ou Contes Nouveaux d'Eutrapel;" but his last, and most
+celebrated book, the "Contes et Discours d'Eutrapel," was not printed
+until 1586, after the death of its author. The writings of Noel du Fail
+are full of charming pictures of rural life in the sixteenth century,
+and, though sufficiently free, they present less than most similar
+books of that period of the coarseness of Rabelais. I cannot say the
+same of a book which is much more celebrated than either of these,
+and the history of which is still enveloped in obscurity. I mean the
+"Moyen de Parvenir." This book, which is full of wit and humour, but
+the licentiousness of which is carried to a degree which renders it
+unreadable at the present day, is now ascribed by bibliographers, in
+its present form, to Béroalde de Verville, a gentleman of a Protestant
+family who had embraced Catholicism, and obtained advancements in the
+church, and it was not printed until 1610, but it is supposed that in
+its present form it is only a revision of an earlier composition,
+perhaps even an unacknowledged work of Rabelais himself, which had been
+preserved in manuscript in Beroald's family.
+
+Pantagruelism, or, if you like, Rabelaism, did not, during the
+sixteenth century, make much progress beyond the limits of France.
+In the Teutonic countries of Europe, and in England, the sceptical
+sentiment was small in comparison with the religious feeling, and the
+only satirical work at all resembling those we have been describing,
+was the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More, a work comparatively spiritless,
+and which produced a very slight sensation. In Spain, the state of
+social feeling was still less favourable to the writings of Rabelais,
+yet he had there a worthy and true representative in the author of
+Don Quixote. It was only in the seventeenth century that the works of
+Rabelais were translated into English; but we must not forget that our
+satirists of the last century, such as Swift and Sterne, derived their
+inspiration chiefly from Rabelais, and from the Pantagruelistic writers
+of the latter half of the sixteenth century. These latter were most of
+them poor imitators of their original, and, like all poor imitators,
+pursued to exaggeration his least worthy characteristics. There is
+still some humour in the writings of Tabourot, the sieur des Accords,
+especially in his "Bigarrures," but the later productions, which
+appeared under such names as Bruscambille and Tabarin, sink into mere
+dull ribaldry.
+
+There had arisen, however, by the side of this satire which smelt
+somewhat too much of the tavern, another satire, more serious,
+which still contained a little of the style of Rabelais. The French
+Protestants at first looked upon Rabelais as one of their towers of
+strength, and embraced with gratitude the powerful protection they
+received from the graceful queen of Navarre; but their gratitude
+failed them, when Marguerite, though she never ceased to give them her
+protection, conformed outwardly, from attachment to her brother, to the
+forms of the Catholic faith, and they rejected the school of Rabelais
+as a mere school of Atheists. Among them arose another school of
+satire, a sort of branch from the other, which was represented in its
+infancy by the celebrated scholar and printer, Henri Estienne, better
+known among us as Henry Stephens.
+
+The remarkable book called an "Apologie pour Herodote," arose out of
+an attack upon its writer by the Romanists. Henri Estienne, who was
+known as a staunch Protestant, published, at great expense, an edition
+of Herodotus in Greek and Latin, and the zealous Catholics, out of
+spite to the editor, decried his author, and spoke of Herodotus as a
+mere collector of monstrous and incredible tales. Estienne, in revenge,
+published what, under the form of an apology for Herodotus, was really
+a violent attack on the Romish church. His argument is that all
+historians must relate transactions which appear to many incredible,
+and that the events of modern times were much more incredible, if
+they were not known to be true, than anything which is recorded by
+the historian of antiquity. After an introductory dissertation on the
+light in which we ought to regard the fable of the Golden Age, and on
+the moral character of the ancient peoples, he goes on to show that
+their depravity was much less than that of the middle ages and of his
+own time, indeed of all periods during which people were governed by
+the Church of Rome. Not only did this dissoluteness of morals pervade
+lay society, but the clergy were more vicious even than the people, to
+whom they ought to serve as an example. A large part of the book is
+filled with anecdotes of the immoral lives of the popish clergy of the
+sixteenth century, and of their ignorance and bigotry; and he describes
+in detail the methods employed by the Romish church to keep the mass
+of the people in ignorance, and to repress all attempts at inquiry.
+Out of all this, he says, had risen a school of atheists and scoffers,
+represented by Rabelais and Bonaventure des Periers, both of whom he
+mentions by name.
+
+As we approach the end of the sixteenth century, the struggle of
+parties became more political than religious, but not less bitter than
+before. The literature of the age of that celebrated "Ligue," which
+seemed at one time destined to overthrow the ancient royalty of France,
+consisted chiefly of libellous and abusive pamphlets, but in the midst
+of them there appeared a work far superior to any purely political
+satire which had yet been seen, and the fame of which has never passed
+away. Its object was to turn to ridicule the meeting of the Estates
+of France, convoked by the duke of Mayenne, as leader of the Ligue,
+and held at Paris on the 10th of February, 1503. The grand object of
+this meeting was to exclude Henri IV. from the throne; and the Spanish
+party proposed to abolish the Salic law, and proclaim the infanta of
+Spain queen of France. The French ligueurs proposed plans hardly less
+unpatriotic, and the duke of Mayenne, indignant at the small account
+made of his own personal pretensions, prorogued the meeting, and
+persuaded the two parties to hold what proved a fruitless conference at
+Suresne. It was the meeting of the Estates in Paris which gave rise to
+that celebrated _Satyre Ménippée_, of which it was said, that it served
+the cause of Henri IV. as much as the battle of Ivry itself.
+
+This satire originated among a party of friends, of men distinguished
+by learning, wit, and talent, though most of their names are obscure,
+who used to meet in an evening in the hospitable house of one of
+them, Jacques Gillot, on the Quai des Orfèvres in Paris, and there
+talk satirically over the violence and insolence of the ligueurs.
+They all belonged either to the bar or to the university, or to the
+church. Gillot himself, a Burgundian, born about the year 1560, had
+been a dean in the church of Langres, and afterwards canon of the
+Sainte Chapelle in Paris, and was at this time conseiller-clerc to
+the parliament of Paris. In 1589 he was committed to the Bastille,
+but was soon afterwards liberated. Nicolas Rapin, one of his friends,
+was born in 1535, and was said to have been the son of a priest, and
+therefore illegitimate. He was a lawyer, a poet, and a soldier, for he
+fought bravely in the ranks of Henri IV. at Ivry, and his devotion to
+that prince was so well known, that he was banished from Paris by the
+ligueurs, but had returned thither before the meeting of the Estates in
+1593. Jean Passerat, born in 1534, was also a poet, and a professor in
+the Collège Royal. Florent Chrestien, born at Orleans in 1540, had been
+the tutor of Henri IV., and was well known as a man of sound learning.
+The most learned of the party was Pierre Pithou, born at Troyes in
+1539, who had abjured Calvinism to return to Romanism, and who held
+a distinguished position at the French bar. The last of this little
+party of men of letters was a canon of Rouen named Pierre le Roy, a
+patriotic ecclesiastic, who held the office of almoner to the cardinal
+de Bourbon. It was Le Roy who drew up the first sketch of the "Satyre
+Ménippée," each of the others executed his part in the composition, and
+Pithou finally revised it. For several years this remarkable satire
+circulated only secretly, and in manuscript, and it was not printed
+until Henri IV. was established on the throne.
+
+The satire opens with an account of the virtues of the "Catholicon,"
+or nostrum for curing all political diseases, or the _higuiero
+d'infierno_, which had been so effective in the hands of the Spaniards,
+who invented it. Some of these are extraordinary enough. If, we are
+told, the lieutenant of Don Philip "have some of this Catholicon on
+his flags, he will enter without a blow into an enemy's country, and
+they will meet him with crosses and banners, legates and primates; and
+though he ruin, ravage, usurp, massacre, and sack everything, and carry
+away, ravish, burn, and reduce everything to a desert, the people of
+the country will say, 'These are our friends, they are good Catholics;
+they do it for our peace, and for our mother holy church.'" "If an
+indolent king amuse himself with refining this drug in his escurial,
+let him write a word into Flanders to Father Ignatius, sealed with
+the Catholicon, he will find him a man who (_salva conscientia_) will
+assassinate his enemy whom he has not been able to conquer by arms in
+twenty years." This, of course, is an allusion to the murder of the
+prince of Orange. "If this king proposes to assure his estates to his
+children after his death, and to invade another's kingdom at little
+expense, let him write a word to Mendoza, his ambassador, or to Father
+Commelet (one of the most seditious orators of the Ligue), and if he
+write with the _higuiero del infierno_, at the bottom of his letter,
+the words _Yo el Rey_, they will furnish him with an apostate monk, who
+will go under a fair semblance, like a Judas, and assassinate 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 canonise
+the murderer, and place this Judas above St. Peter, and baptise this
+prodigious and horrible crime with the name of a providential event,
+of which the godfathers will be cardinals, legates, and primates." The
+allusion here is to the assassination of Henri III. by Jacques Clement.
+These are but a few of the marvellous properties of the political drug,
+after the enumeration of which the report of the meeting of the Estates
+is introduced by a burlesque description of the grand procession
+which preceded it. Then we are introduced to the hall of assembly, and
+different subjects pictured on the tapestries which cover its walls,
+all having reference to the politics of the Ligue, are described fully.
+Then we come to the report of the meeting, and to the speeches of the
+different speakers, each of which is a model of satire. It is not known
+which of the little club of satirists wrote the open speech of the duke
+of Mayenne, but that of the Roman legate is known to be the work of
+Gillot, and that of the cardinal de Pelvé, a masterpiece of Latin in
+the style of the "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum," was written by Florent
+Chrestien. Nicolas Rapin composed the "harangue" placed in the mouth
+of the archbishop of Lyons, as well as that of Rose, the rector of
+the university; and the long speech of Claude d'Aubray was by Pithou.
+Passerat composed most of the verses which are scattered through the
+book, and it is understood that Pithou finally revised the whole. This
+mock report of the meeting of the Estates closes with a description of
+a series of political pictures which are arranged on the wall of the
+staircase of the hall.
+
+These pictures, as well as those on the tapestries of the hall of
+meeting, are simply so many caricatures, and the same may be said of
+another set of pictures, of which a description is given in one of the
+satirical pieces which followed the "Satyre Ménippée," on the same
+side, entitled, "Histoire des Singeries de la Ligue." It was amid
+the political turmoil of the sixteenth century in France that modern
+political caricature took its rise.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX.
+
+  POLITICAL CARICATURE IN ITS INFANCY.--THE REVERS DU JEU DES
+     SUYSSES.--CARICATURE IN FRANCE.--THE THREE ORDERS.--PERIOD OF THE
+     LEAGUE; CARICATURES AGAINST HENRI III.--CARICATURES AGAINST THE
+     LEAGUE.--CARICATURE IN FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--GENERAL
+     GALAS.--THE QUARREL OF AMBASSADORS.--CARICATURE AGAINST LOUIS
+     XIV.; WILLIAM OF FÜRSTEMBERG.
+
+
+It has been already remarked that political caricature, in the modern
+sense of the word, or even personal caricature, was inconsistent with
+the state of things in the middle ages, until the arts of engraving
+and printing became sufficiently developed, because it requires the
+facility of quick and extensive circulation. The political or satirical
+song was carried everywhere by the minstrel, but the satirical picture,
+represented only in some solitary sculpture or illumination, could
+hardly be finished before it had become useless even in the small
+sphere of its influence, and then remained for ages a strange figure,
+with no meaning that could be understood. No sooner, however, was
+the art of printing introduced, than the importance of political
+caricature was understood and turned to account. We have seen what a
+powerful agent it became in the Reformation, which in spirit was no
+less political than religious; but even before the great religious
+movement had begun, this agent had been brought into activity. One
+of the earliest engravings which can be called a caricature--perhaps
+the oldest of our modern caricatures known--is represented in our
+cut No. 171, is no doubt French, and belongs to the year 1499. It is
+sufficiently explained by the history of the time.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 171. The Political Game of Cards._]
+
+At the date just mentioned, Louis XII. of France, who had been king
+less than twelve months, was newly married to Anne of Britany, and
+had resolved upon an expedition into Italy, to unite the crown of
+Naples with that of France. Such an expedition affected many political
+interests and Louis had to employ a certain amount of diplomacy with
+his neighbours, several of whom were strongly opposed to his projects
+of ambition, and among those who acted most openly were the Swiss,
+who were believed to have been secretly supported by England and the
+Netherlands. Louis, however, overcame their opposition, and obtained a
+renewal of the alliance which had expired with his predecessor Charles
+VIII. This temporary difficulty with the Swiss is the subject of our
+caricature, the original of which bears the title "Le Revers du Jeu
+des Suysses" (the defeat of the game of the Swiss). The princes most
+interested are assembled round a card-table, at which are seated the
+king of France to the right, opposite him the Swiss, and in front the
+doge of Venice, who was in alliance with the French against Milan. At
+the moment represented, the king of France is announcing that he has a
+flush of cards, the Swiss acknowledges the weakness of his hand, and
+the doge lays down his cards--in fact, Louis XII. has won the game.
+But the point of the caricature lies principally in the group around.
+To the extreme right the king of England, Henry VII., distinguished
+by his three armorial lions, and the king of Spain, are engaged in
+earnest conversation. Behind the former stands the infanta Margarita,
+who is evidently winking at the Swiss to give him information of the
+state of the cards of his opponents. At her side stands the duke of
+Wirtemberg, and just before him the pope, the infamous Alexander VI.
+(Borgia), who, though in alliance with Louis, is not able, with all his
+efforts, to read the king's game, and looks on with evident anxiety.
+Behind the doge of Venice stands the Italian refugee, Trivulci, an able
+warrior, devoted to the interests of France; and at the doge's right
+hand, the emperor, holding in his hands another pack of cards, and
+apparently exulting in the belief that he has thrown confusion into
+the king of France's game. In the background to the left are seen the
+count Palatine and the marquis of Montserrat, who also look uncertain
+about the result; and below the former appears the duke of Savoy, who
+was giving assistance to the French designs. The duke of Lorraine is
+serving drink to the gamblers, while the duke of Milan, who was at this
+time playing rather a double part, is gathering up the cards which have
+fallen to the ground, in order to make a game for himself. Louis XII.
+carried his designs into execution; the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza,
+nick-named the Moor, played his cards badly, lost his duchy, and died
+in prison.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 172. The Three Orders of the State._]
+
+Such is this earliest of political caricatures--and in this case it
+was purely political--but the question of religion soon began not only
+to mix itself up with the political question, but almost to absorb it,
+as we have seen in the review of the history of caricature under the
+Reformation. Before this period, indeed, political caricature was only
+an affair between crowned heads, or between kings and their nobles, but
+the religious agitation had originated a vast social movement, which
+brought into play popular feelings and passions: these gave caricature
+a totally new value. Its power was greatest on the middle and lower
+classes of society, that is, on the people, the _tiers état_, which was
+now thrown prominently forward. The new social theory is proclaimed
+in a print, of which a fac-simile will be found in the "Musée de la
+Caricature," by E. J. Jaime, and which, from the style and costume,
+appears to be German. The three orders, the church, the lord of the
+land, and the people, represented respectively by a bishop, a knight,
+and a cultivator, stand upon the globe in an honourable equality, each
+receiving direct from heaven the emblems or implements of his duties.
+To the bishop is delivered his bible, to the husbandman his mattock,
+and to the knight the sword with which he is to protect and defend the
+others. This print--see cut No. 172--which bears the title, in Latin,
+"Quis te prætulit?" (Who chose thee?) belongs probably to the earlier
+half of the sixteenth century. A painting in the Hôtel de Ville of
+Aix, in Provence, represents the same subject much more satirically,
+intending to delineate the three orders as they were, and not as they
+ought to be. The divine hand is letting down from heaven an immense
+frame in the form of a heart, in which is a picture representing a king
+kneeling before the cross, intimating that the civil power was to be
+subordinate to the ecclesiastical. The three orders are represented
+by a cardinal, a noble, and a peasant, the latter of whom is bending
+under the burthen of the heart, the whole of which is thrown upon his
+shoulders, while the cardinal and the noble, the latter dressed in
+the fashionable attire of the court minions of the day, are placing
+one hand to the heart on each side, in a manner which shows that they
+support none of the weight.
+
+Amid the fierce agitation which fell upon France in the sixteenth
+century, for a while we find but few traces of the employment of
+caricature by either party. The religious reformation there was rather
+aristocratic than popular, and the reformers sought less to excite
+the feelings of the multitude, which, indeed, went generally in the
+contrary direction. There was, moreover, a character of gloom in the
+religion of Calvin, which contracted strongly with the joyousness of
+that of the followers of Luther; and the factions in France sought to
+slaughter, rather than to laugh at, each other. The few caricatures
+of this period which are known, are very bitter and coarse. As far as
+I am aware, no early Huguenot caricatures are known, but there are a
+few directed against the Huguenots. It was, however, with the rise of
+the Ligue that the taste for political caricature may be said to have
+taken root in France, and in that country it long continued to flourish
+more than anywhere else. The first caricatures of the ligueurs were
+directed against the person of the king, Henri de Valois, and possess
+a brutality almost beyond description. It was now an object to keep up
+the bitterness of spirit of the fanatical multitude. In one of these
+caricatures a demon is represented waiting on the king to summon him
+to a meeting of the "Estates" in hell; and in the distance we see
+another demon flying away with him. Another relates to the murder of
+the Guises, in 1588, which the ligueurs professed to ascribe to the
+councils of M. d'Epernon, one of his favourites, on whom they looked
+with great hatred. It is entitled, "Soufflement et Conseil diabolique
+de d'Epernon à Henri de Valois pour faccager les Catholiques." In the
+middle of the picture stands the king, and beside him D'Epernon, who
+is blowing into his ear with a bellows. On the ground before them lie
+the headless corpses of the _deux frères Catholiques_, the duke of
+Guise, and his brother the cardinal, while the executioner of royal
+vengeance is holding up their heads by the hair. In the distance is
+seen the castle of Blois, in which this tragedy took place; and on the
+left of the picture appear the cardinal de Bourbon, the archbishop of
+Blois, and other friends of the Guises, expressing their horror at the
+deed. Henri III. was himself murdered in the year following, and the
+caricatures against him became still more brutal during the period in
+which the ligueurs tried to set up a king of their own in his place. In
+one caricature, which has more of an emblematical character than most
+of the others, he is pictured as "Henri le Monstrueux;" and in others,
+entitled "Les Hermaphrodites," he is exhibited under forms which point
+at the infamous vices with which he was charged.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 173. The Assembly of Apes._]
+
+The tide of caricature, however, soon turned in the contrary direction,
+and the coarse, unprincipled abuse employed by the ligueurs found a
+favourable contrast in the powerful wit and talent of the satirists
+and caricaturists who now took up pen and pencil in the cause of
+Henri IV. The former was, on the whole, the more formidable weapon,
+but the latter represented to some eyes more vividly in picture what
+had already been done in type. This was the case on both sides; the
+caricature last mentioned was founded upon a very libellous satirical
+pamphlet against Henri III., entitled "L'Isle des Hermaphrodites." It
+is the case also with the first caricatures against the ligueurs, which
+I have to mention. The Estates held in Paris by the duke of Mayenne
+and the ligueurs for the purpose of electing a new king in opposition
+to Henri of Navarre, were made the subject of the celebrated "Satyre
+Ménippée," in which the proceedings of these Estates were turned to
+ridicule in the most admirable manner. Four large editions were sold
+in less than as many months. Several caricatures arose out of or
+accompanied this remarkable book. One of these is a rather large print,
+entitled "La Singerie des Estats de la Ligue, l'an 1593," in which the
+members of the Estates and the ligueurs are pictured with the heads
+of monkeys. The central part represents the meeting of the Estates,
+at which the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the duke of Mayenne,
+seated on the throne, presides. Above him is suspended a large portrait
+of the infanta of Spain, _L'Espousée de la Ligue_, as she is called
+in the satire, ready to marry any one whom the Estates shall declare
+king of France. In chairs, on each side of Mayenne, are the two "ladies
+of honour" of the said future spouse. To the left are seated in a row
+the celebrated council of sixteen (_les seize_), reduced at this time
+to twelve, because the duke of Mayenne, to check their turbulence,
+had caused four of them to be hanged. They wear the favours of the
+future spouse. Opposite to them are the representatives of the three
+orders, all, we are told, devoted to the service of "the said lady."
+Before the throne are the two musicians of the Ligue, one described as
+Phelipottin, the blind performer on the viel, or hurdy-gurdy, to the
+Ligue, and his subordinate, the player on the triangle, "kept at the
+expense of the future spouse." These were to entertain the assembly
+during the pauses between the orations of the various speakers. All
+this is a satire on the efforts of the king of Spain to establish a
+monarch of his own choice. On the bench behind the musicians sit the
+deputies from Lyons, Poitiers, Orleans, and Rheims, cities where the
+influence of the Ligue was strong, discussing the question as to who
+should be king. Thus much of this picture is represented in our cut
+No. 173. There are other groups of figures in the representation of
+the assembly of the Estates; and there are two side compartments--that
+on the left representing a forge, on which the fragments of a broken
+king are laid to be refounded, and a multitude of apes, with hammers
+and an anvil, ready to work him into a new king; the other side of
+the picture represents the circumstances of a then well-known act of
+tyranny perpetrated by the Estates of the Ligue. Another large and
+well-executed engraving, published at Paris in 1594, immediately after
+Henri IV. had obtained possession of his capital, also represents the
+grand procession of the Ligue as described at the commencement of the
+"Satyre Ménippée," and was intended to hold up to ridicule the warlike
+temper of the French Catholic clergy. It is entitled, "La Procession de
+la Ligue."
+
+Henri's triumph over the Ligue was made the subject of a series of
+three caricatures, or perhaps, more correctly, of a caricature in three
+divisions. The first is entitled the "Naissance de la Ligue," and
+represents it under the form of a monster with three heads, severally
+those of a wolf, a fox, and a serpent, issuing from hell-mouth. Under
+it are the following lines:--
+
+        _L'enfer, pour asservir soubs ses loix tout le monde,
+        Vomit ce monstre hideux, fait d'un loup ravisseur,
+        D'un renard enveilly, et d'un serpent immonde,
+        Affublé d'un manteau propre à toute couleur._
+
+The second division, the "Declin de la Ligue," representing its
+downfall, is copied in our cut No. 174. Henri of Navarre, in the form
+of a lion, has pounced fiercely upon it, and not too soon, for it had
+already seized the crown and sceptre. In the distance, the sun of
+national prosperity is seen rising over the country. The third picture,
+the "Effets de la Ligue," represents the destruction of the kingdom and
+the slaughter of the people, of which the Ligue had been the cause.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 174. The Destruction of the Ligue._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 175. General Galas._]
+
+The caricatures in France became more numerous during the seventeenth
+century, but they are either so elaborate or so obscure, that each
+requires almost a dissertation to explain it, and they often relate to
+questions or events which have little interest for us at the present
+day. Several rather spirited ones appeared at the time of the disgrace
+of the mareschal d'Ancre and his wife; and the inglorious war with
+the Netherlands, in 1635, furnished the occasion for others, for
+the French, as usual, could make merry in their reverses as well as
+in their successes. The imperialist general Galas inflicted serious
+defeat on the French armies, and compelled them to a very disastrous
+retreat from the countries they had invaded, and they tried to amuse
+themselves at the expense of their conqueror. Galas was rather
+remarkable for obesity, and the French caricaturists of the day made
+this circumstance a subject for their satire. Our cut No. 175 is copied
+from a print in which the magnitude of the stomach of General Galas
+is certainly somewhat exaggerated. He is represented, not apparently
+with any good reason, as puffed up with his own importance, which is
+evaporating in smoke; and along with the smoke thus issuing from his
+mouth, he is made to proclaim his greatness in the following rather
+doggrel verses:--
+
+        _Je suis ce grand Galas, autrefois dans l'armée
+        La gloire de l'Espagne et de mes compagnons;
+        Maintenant je ne suis qu'un corps plein de fumée,
+        Pour avoir trop mangé de raves et d'oignons.
+        Gargantua jamais n'eut une telle panse, &c._
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 176. Batteville Humiliated._]
+
+Caricatures in France began to be tolerably abundant during the middle
+of the seventeenth century, but under the crushing tyranny of Louis
+XIV., the freedom of the press, in all its forms, ceased to exist, and
+caricatures relating to France, unless they came from the court party,
+had to be published in other countries, especially in Holland. It will
+be sufficient to give two examples from the reign of Louis XIV. In the
+year 1661, a dispute arose in London between the ambassador of France,
+M. D'Estrades, and the Spanish ambassador, the baron de Batteville,
+on the question of precedence, which was carried so far as to give
+rise to a tumult in the streets of the English capital. At this very
+moment, a new Spanish ambassador, the marquis de Fuentes, was on his
+way to Paris, but Louis, indignant at Batteville's behaviour in London,
+sent orders to stop Fuentes on the frontier, and forbid his further
+advance into his kingdom. The king of Spain disavowed the act of his
+ambassador in England, who was recalled, and Fuentes received orders
+to make an apology to king Louis. This event was made the subject of
+a rather boasting caricature, the greater portion of which is given in
+our cut No. 176. It is entitled "Batteville vient adorer le Soliel"
+(Batteville comes to worship the sun). In the original the sun is seen
+shining in the upper corner of the picture to the right, and presenting
+the juvenile face of Louis XIV., but the caricaturist appears to have
+substituted Batteville in the place of Fuentes. Beneath the whole are
+the following boastful lines:--
+
+        _On ne va plus à Rome, on vient de Rome en France,
+        Mériter le pardon de quelque grande offence.
+        L'Italie tout entière est soumise à ces loix;
+        Un Espagnol s'oppose à ce droit de nos rois.
+        Mais un Français puissant joua des bastonnades,
+        Et punit l'insolent de ses rodomontades._
+
+From this time there sprung up many caricatures against the Spaniards;
+but the most ferocious caricature, or rather book of caricatures, of
+the reign of Louis XIV., came from without, and was directed against
+the king and his ministers and courtiers. The revocation of the edict
+of Nantes took place in October, 1685, and was preceded and followed
+by frightful persecutions of the Protestants, which drove away in
+thousands the earnest, intelligent, and industrious part of the
+population of France. They carried with them a deep hatred to their
+oppressors, and sought refuge especially in the countries most hostile
+to Louis XIV.--England and Holland. The latter country, where they
+then enjoyed the greatest freedom of action, soon sent forth numerous
+satirical books and prints against the French king and his ministers,
+of which the book just alluded to was one of the most remarkable. It
+is entitled "Les Heros de la Ligue, ou la Procession Monacale conduite
+par Louis XIV. pour la Conversion des Protestans de son Royaume," and
+consists of a series of twenty-four most grotesque faces, intended to
+represent the ministers and courtiers of the "grand roi" most odious
+to the Calvinists. It must have provoked their wrath exceedingly. I
+give one example, and as it is difficult to select, I take the first in
+the list, which represents William of Fürstemberg, one of the German
+princes devoted to Louis XIV., who, by his intrigues, had forced him
+into the archbishopric of Cologne, by which he became an elector
+of the empire. For many reasons William of Fürstemberg was hated by
+the French Protestants, but it is not quite clear why he is here
+represented in the character of one of the low merchants of the Halles.
+Over the picture, in the original, we read, _Guillaume de Furstemberg,
+crie, ite, missa est_, and beneath are the four lines:--
+
+        _J'ay quitté mon pais pour servir à la France,
+        Soit par ma trahison, soit par ma lacheté;
+        J'ay troublé les états par ma méchanceté,
+              Une abbaye est ma recompense._
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 177. William of Fürstemberg._]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXI.
+
+  EARLY POLITICAL CARICATURE IN ENGLAND.--THE SATIRICAL WRITINGS
+     AND PICTURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH PERIOD.--SATIRES AGAINST
+     THE BISHOPS; BISHOP WILLIAMS.--CARICATURES ON THE CAVALIERS;
+     SIR JOHN SUCKLING.--THE ROARING BOYS; VIOLENCE OF THE
+     ROYALIST SOLDIERS.--CONTEST BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND
+     INDEPENDENTS.--GRINDING THE KING'S NOSE.--PLAYING-CARDS USED AS
+     THE MEDIUM FOR CARICATURE; HASELRIGGE AND LAMBERT.--SHROVETIDE.
+
+
+During the sixteenth century caricature can hardly be said to have
+existed in England, and it did not come much into fashion, until the
+approach of the great struggle which convulsed our country in the
+century following. The popular reformers have always been the first to
+appreciate the value of pictorial satire as an offensive weapon. Such
+was the case with the German reformers in the age of Luther; as it was
+again with the English reformers in the days of Charles I., a period
+which we may justly consider as that of the birth of English political
+caricature. From 1640 to 1661 the press launched forth an absolute
+deluge of political pamphlets, many of which were of a satirical
+character, scurrilous in form and language, and, on whatever side
+they were written, very unscrupulous in regard to the truth of their
+statements. Among them appeared a not unfrequent engraving, seldom
+well executed, whether on copper or wood, but displaying a coarse and
+pungent wit that must have told with great effect on those for whom it
+was intended. The first objects of attack in these caricatures were
+the Episcopalian party in the church and the profaneness and insolence
+of the cavaliers. The Puritans or Presbyterians who took the lead
+in, and at first directed, the great political movement, looked upon
+Episcopalianism as differing in little from popery, and, at all events,
+as leading direct to it. Arminianism was with them only another name
+for the same thing, and was equally detested. In a caricature published
+in 1641, Arminius is represented supported on one side by Heresy,
+wearing the triple crown, while on the other side Truth is turning away
+from him, and carrying with her the Bible. It was the indiscreet zeal
+of archbishop Laud which led to the triumph of the Puritan party, and
+the downfall of the episcopal church government, and Laud became the
+butt for attacks of all descriptions, in pamphlets, songs and satirical
+prints, the latter usually figuring in the titles of the pamphlets.
+Laud was especially obnoxious to the Puritans for the bitterness with
+which he had persecuted them.
+
+In 1640 Laud was committed to the Tower, an event which was hailed
+as the first grand step towards the overthrow of the bishops. As an
+example of the feeling of exultation displayed on this occasion by his
+enemies, we may quote a few lines from a satirical song, published in
+1641, and entitled "The Organs Eccho. To the Tune of the Cathedrall
+Service." It is a general attack on the prelacy, and opens with a cry
+of triumph over the fall of William Laud, of whom the song says--
+
+          _As he was in his braverie,
+          And thought to bring us all in slaverie,
+          The parliament found out his knaverie;
+                    And so fell William.
+                    Alas! poore William!_
+
+          _His pope-like domineering,
+          And some other tricks appearing,
+          Provok'd Sir Edward Deering
+                    To blame the old prelate.
+                    Alas! poore prelate!_
+
+          _Some say he was in hope
+          To bring England againe to th' pope;
+          But now he is in danger of an axe or a rope.
+                    Farewell, old Canterbury.
+                    Alas! poore Canterbury!_
+
+Wren, bishop of Ely, was another of the more obnoxious of the prelates,
+and there was hardly less joy among the popular party when he was
+committed to the Tower in the course of the year 1641. Another song,
+in verse similar to the last, contains a general review of the demerits
+of the members of the prelacy, under the title of "The Bishops Last
+Good-night." At the head of the broadside on which it is printed stand
+two satirical woodcuts, but it must be confessed that the words of the
+song are better than the engraving. The bishop of Ely, we are told, had
+just gone to join his friend Laud in the Tower--
+
+          _Ely, thou hast alway to thy power
+          Left the church naked in a storme and showre,
+          And now for 't thou must to thy old friend i' th' Tower.
+                    To the Tower must Ely;
+                    Come away, Ely._
+
+A third obnoxious prelate was bishop Williams. Williams was a Welshman
+who had been high in favour with James I., but he had given offence
+to the government of Charles I., and been imprisoned in the Tower
+during the earlier part of that king's reign. He was released by the
+parliament in 1640, and so far regained the favour of king Charles,
+that he was raised to the archbishopric of York in the year following.
+When the civil war began, he retired into Wales, and garrisoned Conway
+for the king. Williams's warlike behaviour was the source of much mirth
+among the Roundheads. In 1642 was published a large caricature on the
+three classes to whom the parliamentarians were especially hostile--the
+royalist judges, the prelates, and the ruffling cavaliers; represented
+here, as we are told in writing in the copy among the king's pamphlets,
+by judge Mallet, bishop Williams, and colonel Lunsford. These three
+figures are placed in as many compartments with doggrel verses under
+each. That of bishop Williams is copied in our cut No. 178. The bishop
+is armed cap-à-pie, and in the distance behind him are seen on one
+side his cathedral church, and on the other his war-horse. The verses
+beneath it contain an allusion to this prelate's Welsh extraction in
+the orthography of some of the words:--
+
+          _Oh, sir, I'me ready, did you never heere
+          How forward I have byn t'is many a yeare,
+          T'oppose the practice dat is now on foote,
+          Which plucks my brethren up both pranch and roote?
+          My posture and my hart toth well agree
+          To fight; now plud is up: come, follow mee._
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 178. The Church Militant._]
+
+The country had now begun to experience the miseries of war, and to
+smart under them; and the cavaliers were especially reproached for the
+cruelty with which they plundered and ill-treated people whenever they
+gained the mastery. Colonel Lunsford was especially notorious for the
+barbarities committed by himself and his men--to such a degree that he
+was popularly accused of eating children, a charge which is frequently
+alluded to in the popular songs of the time. Thus one of these songs
+couples him with two other obnoxious royalists:--
+
+          _From Fielding, and from Vavasour,
+              Both ill-affected men,
+          From Lunsford eke deliver us,
+              Who eateth up children._
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 179. The Sucklington Faction._]
+
+In the third compartment of the caricature just mentioned, we see in
+the background of the picture, behind colonel Lunsford, his soldiers
+occupied in burning towns, and massacring women and children. The model
+of the gay cavalier of the earlier period of this great revolution,
+before the war had broken out in its intensity, was the courtly Sir
+John Suckling, the poet of the drawing-room and tavern, the admired
+of "roaring boys," and the hated of rigid Puritans. Sir John outdid
+his companions in extravagance in everything which was fashionable,
+and the display of his zeal in the cause of royalty was not calculated
+to conciliate the reformers. When the king led an army against the
+Scottish Covenanters in 1639, Suckling raised a troop of a hundred
+horse at his own expense; but they gained more reputation by their
+extraordinary dress than by their courage, and the whole affair was
+made a subject of ridicule. From this time the name of Suckling became
+identified with that gay and profligate class who, disgusted by the
+outward show of sanctity which the Puritans affected, rushed into
+the other extreme, and became notorious for their profaneness, their
+libertinism, and their indulgence in vice, which threw a certain degree
+of discredit upon the royalist party. There is a large broadside
+among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum, entitled, "The
+Sucklington Faction; or (Sucklings) Roaring Boys." It is one of those
+satirical compositions which were then fashionable under the title
+of "Characters," and is illustrated by an engraving, from which our
+cut No. 179 is copied. This engraving, which from its superior style
+is perhaps the work of a foreign artist, represents the interior of
+a chamber, in which two of the Roaring Boys are engaged in drinking
+and smoking, and forms a curious picture of contemporary manners.
+Underneath the engraving we read the following lines:--
+
+          _Much meate doth gluttony produce,
+              And makes a man a swine;
+          But hee's a temperate man indeed
+              That with a leafe can dine._
+
+          _Hee needes no napkin for his handes,
+              His fingers for to wipe;
+          He hath his kitchin in a box,
+              His roast meate in a pipe._
+
+When the war spread itself over the country, many of these Roaring
+Boys became soldiers, and disgraced the profession by rapacity and
+cruelty. The pamphlets of the parliamentarians abound with complaints
+of the outrages perpetrated by the Cavaliers, and the evil appears to
+have been increased by the ill-conduct of the auxiliaries brought over
+from Ireland to serve the king, who were especially objects of hatred
+to the Puritans. A broadside among the king's pamphlets is adorned
+by a satirical picture of "The English Irish Souldier, with his new
+discipline, new armes, old stomacke, and new taken pillage; who had
+rather eat than fight." It was published in 1642. The English Irish
+soldier is, as may be supposed, heavily laden with plunder. In 1646
+appeared another caricature, which is copied in our cut No. 180. It
+represents "England's Wolfe with Eagles clawes: the cruell impieties
+of bloud-thirsty royalists and blasphemous anti-parliamentarians,
+under the command of that inhumane prince Rupert, Digby, and the rest,
+wherein the barbarous crueltie of our civill uncivill warres is briefly
+discovered." England's wolf, as will be seen, is dressed in the high
+fashion of the gay courtiers of the time.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 180. "England's Wolf."_]
+
+A few large caricatures, embodying satire of a more comprehensive
+description, appeared from time to time, during this troubled age. Such
+is a large emblematical picture, published on the 9th of November,
+1642, and entitled "Heraclitus' Dream," for the scene is supposed to
+be manifested to the philosopher in a vision. In the middle of the
+picture the sheep are seen shearing their shepherd; while one cuts his
+hair, another treats his beard in the same manner. Under the picture we
+read the couplet--
+
+        _The flocke that was wont to be shorne by the herd,
+        Now polleth the shepherd in spight of his beard_.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 181. Folly Uppermost._]
+
+On the 19th of January, 1647, a caricature appeared under the title
+"An Embleme of the Times." On one side War, represented as a giant in
+armour, is seen standing upon a heap of dead and mutilated bodies,
+while Hypocrisy, in the form of a woman with two faces, is flying
+towards a distant city. "Libertines," "anti-sabbatarians," and others,
+are hastening in the same direction; and the angel of pestilence,
+hovering over the city, is ready to pounce upon it.
+
+The party of the parliament was now triumphant, and the question of
+religion again became the subject of dispute. The Presbyterians had
+been establishing a sort of tyranny over men's minds, and sought to
+proscribe all other sects, till their intolerance gradually raised up
+a strong and general feeling of resistance. Since 1643 a brisk war of
+political pamphlets had been carried on between the Presbyterians and
+their opponents, when, in 1647, the Independents, whose cause had been
+espoused by the army, gained the mastery. "Sir John Presbyter" or to
+use the more familiar phrase, "Jack Presbyter," furnished a subject
+for frequent satire, and the Presbyterians were not slow in returning
+the blow. In the collection in the British Museum we find a caricature
+which must have come from the Presbyterian party, entitled "Reall
+Persecution, or the Foundation of a general Toleration, displaied
+and portrayed by a proper emblem, and adorned with the same flowers
+wherewith the scoffers of this last age have strowed their libellous
+pamphlets." The group which occupies the middle part of this broadside,
+is copied in our cut No. 181. It has its separate title, "The Picture
+of an English Persecutor, or a foole-ridden ante-Presbeterian sectary."
+(I give the spelling as in the original.) Folly is riding on the
+sectarian, whom he holds with a bridle, the sectarian having the ears
+of an ass. The following homely rhymes are placed in the mouth of
+Folly,--
+
+          _Behould my habit, like my witt,
+          Equalls his on whom sitt._
+
+Anti-Presbyterian is, as will be seen, dressed in the height of the
+fashion, and says--
+
+          _My cursed speeches against Presbetry
+          Declares unto the world my foolery._
+
+The mortification of the Presbyterians led in Scotland to the
+proclamation of Charles II. as king, and to the ill-fated expedition
+which ended in the battle of Worcester in 1651, when satirical
+pamphlets, ballads, and caricatures against the Scottish Presbyterians
+became for a while very popular. One of the best of the latter
+is represented in our cut No. 182. Its object is to ridicule the
+conditions which the Presbyterians exacted from the young prince
+before they offered him the crown. It is printed in the middle of the
+broadside, in prose, published on the 14th of July, 1651, with the
+general title, "Old Sayings and Predictions verified and fulfilled,
+touching the young King of Scotland and his gude subjects." The
+picture has its separate title, "The Scots holding their young kinges
+nose to the grinstone." followed by the lines--
+
+        _Come to the grinstone, Charles, 'tis now to late
+        To recolect, 'tis presbiterian fate,
+        You covinant pretenders, must I bee
+        The subject of youer tradgie-comedie?_
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 182. Conditions of Royalty._]
+
+In fact, the picture represents Presbyterianism--Jack
+Presbyter--holding the young king's nose to the grindstone, which is
+turned by the Scots, personified as Jockey. The following lines are put
+into the mouths of the three actors in this scene:--
+
+  _Jockey._--I, Jockey, turne the stone of all your plots,
+                  For none turnes faster than the turne-coat Scots.
+
+  _Presbyter._--We for our ends did make thee king, be sure,
+                     Not to rule us, we will not that endure.
+
+  _King._--You deep dissemblers, I kow what you doe,
+                And, for revenges sake, I will dissemble too.
+
+Charles's defeat and flight from Worcester furnished materials for a
+much more elaborate caricature than most of the similar productions
+of this period, and of a somewhat singular design. It was published
+on the 6th of November, 1651, and bears the title "A Mad Designe; or
+a Description of the king of Scots marching in his disguise, after
+the Rout at Worcester." A long, and not unnecessary, explanation of
+the several groups forming this picture, enables us to understand it.
+On the left Charles is seated on the globe "in a melancholy posture."
+A little to the right, and nearly in front, the bishop of Clogher is
+performing mass, at which lords Ormond and Inchquin, in the shapes of
+strange animals, hold torches, and the lord Taaf, in the form of a
+monkey, holds up the bishop's train. The Scottish army is seen marching
+up, consisting, according to the description, of papists, prelatical
+malignants, Presbyterians, and old cavaliers; the latter of whom are
+represented by the "fooles head upon a pole in the rear." The next
+group consists of two monkeys, one with a fiddle, the other carrying
+a long staff with a torch at the end, concerning which we learn that
+"The two ridiculous anticks, one with a fiddle, and the other with
+a torch, set forth the ridiculousness of their condition when they
+marched into England, carried up with high thoughts, yet altogether
+in the darke, having onely a fooles bawble to be their light to walke
+by, mirth of their own whimsies to keep up their spirits, and a
+sheathed sword to truste in." Next come a troop of women, children,
+and papists, lamenting over their defeat. Two monkeys on foot, and one
+on horseback, follow, the latter riding with his face turned to the
+horse's tail, and carrying in his hand a spit with provisions on it.
+It is explained as "The Scots Kings flight from Worcester, represented
+by the foole on horseback, riding backward, turning his face every way
+in feares, ushered by duke Hambleton and the lord Wilmot." Lastly,
+a crowd of women with flags bring up the rear. It cannot be said
+that the wit displayed in this satire is of the very highest order.
+
+After this period we meet with comparatively few caricatures until the
+death of Cromwell, and the eve of the Restoration, when there came
+a new and fierce struggle of political parties. The Dutch were the
+subject of some satirical prints and pamphlets in 1652; and we find a
+small number of caricatures on the social evils, such as drunkenness
+and gluttony, and on one or two subjects of minor agitation. With the
+close of the Commonwealth a new form of caricature came in. Playing
+cards had, during this seventeenth century, been employed for various
+purposes which were quite alien to their original character. In France
+they were made the means of conveying instruction to children. In
+England, at the time of which we are speaking, they were adopted as
+the medium for spreading political caricature. The earliest of these
+packs of cards known is one which appears to have been published at the
+very moment of the restoration of Charles II., and which was, perhaps,
+engraved in Holland. It contains a series of caricatures on the
+principal acts of the Commonwealth, and on the parliamentary leaders.
+Among other cards of a similar character which have been preserved is
+a pack relating to the popish plot, another relating to the Rye House
+conspiracy, one on the Mississippi scheme, published in Holland, and
+one on the South Sea bubble.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 183. Arthur Haselrigg._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 184. General Lambert_.]
+
+The earliest of these packs of satirical cards, that on the
+Commonwealth, belonged a few years ago to a lady of the name of Prest,
+and is very fully described in a paper by Mr. Pettigrew, printed in
+the "Journal of the British Archæological Association." Each of the
+fifty-two cards presents a picture with a satirical title. Thus the
+ace of diamonds represents "The High Court of Justice, or Oliver's
+Slaughter House." The eight of diamonds is represented in our cut No.
+183; its subject is "Don Haselrigg, Knight of the Codled Braine." It
+is hardly necesiary to say that Sir Arthur Haselrigg acted a very
+prominent and remarkable part during the whole of the Commonwealth
+period, and that his manners were impetuous and authoritative, which
+was probably the meaning of the epithet here given to him. The card
+of the king of diamonds represents rather unequivocally the subject
+indicated by its title, "Sir H. Mildmay solicits a citizen's wife, for
+which his owne corrects him." It is an allusion to one of the petty
+scandals of the republican period. The eight of hearts is a satire on
+major-general Lambert. This able and distinguished man was remarkably
+fond of flowers, took great pleasure in cultivating them, and was
+skilful in drawing them, which was one of his favourite amusements.
+He withdrew to Amsterdam during the Protectorate, and there gave
+full indulgence to this love of flowers, and I need hardly say that
+it was the age of the great tulip mania in Holland. When, after the
+Restoration, he was involved in the fate of the regicides, but had
+his sentence commuted for thirty years of imprisonment, he alleviated
+the dulness of his long confinement in the isle of Guernsey by the
+same amusement. In the card we have engraved, Lambert is represented
+in his garden, holding a large tulip in his hand; and it is no doubt
+in allusion to this innocent taste that he is here entitled "Lambert,
+Knight of the Golden Tulip."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 185. Shrovetide._]
+
+The Restoration furnished better songs than prints, and many years
+passed before any caricatures worthy of notice appeared in England.
+Even burlesque subjects of any merit occur but rarely, and I hardly
+know of one which is worth describing here. Among the best of those I
+have met with, is a pair of plates, published in 1660, representing
+Lent and Shrovetide, and these, I believe, are copied or imitated from
+foreign prints. Lent is come as a thin miserable-looking knight-errant,
+appropriately armed and mounted, ready to give battle to Shrovetide,
+whose good living is pernicious to the whole community, and he abuses
+his opponent in good round terms. In the companion print, of which our
+cut No. 185 is a copy, Shrovetide appears as a jolly champion, quite
+ready to meet his enemy. He is best described in the following lines,
+extracted from the verses which accompany the prints:--
+
+          _Fatt Shrovetyde, mounted on a good fatt oxe,
+          Supposd that Lent was mad, or caught a foxe,[99]
+          Armed cap-a-pea from head unto the heel,
+          A spit his long sword, somewhat worse than steale,
+          (Sheath'd in a fatt pigge and a peece of porke),
+          His bottles fild with wine, well stopt with corke;
+          The two plump capons fluttering at his crupper;
+          And 's shoulders lac'd with sawsages for supper;
+          The gridir'n (like a well strung instrument)
+          Hung at his backe, and for the turnament
+          His helmet is a brasse pott, and his flagge
+          A cookes foule apron, which the wind doth wagg,
+          Fixd to a broome: thus bravely he did ride,
+          And boldly to his foe he thus replied._
+
+ [99] _i.e._, was drunk.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  ENGLISH COMEDY.--BEN JONSON.--THE OTHER WRITERS OF HIS
+     SCHOOL.--INTERRUPTION OF DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES.--COMEDY AFTER
+     THE RESTORATION.--THE HOWARDS BROTHERS; THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM;
+     THE REHEARSAL.--WRITERS OF COMEDY IN THE LATTER PART OF
+     THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--INDECENCY OF THE STAGE.--COLLEY
+     CIBBER.--FOOTE.
+
+
+In England, as in Athens of old, perfect comedy arose gradually out
+of the personalities of the rude dramatic attempts of an earlier
+period. Such productions as Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton's
+Needle were mere imperfect attempts at, we may perhaps rather say
+feelers towards, comedy itself--that drama, the object of which was to
+caricature, and thus to dissect and apply correctives to, the vices
+and weaknesses of contemporary society. The genius of Shakespeare was
+far too exquisitely poetical to qualify him for a task like this; it
+wanted some one who could use the lancet and scalpel skilfully, but
+soberly, and who was not liable to be led astray by too much vigour of
+imagination.
+
+Such a one was Ben Jonson, whom we may rightly consider as the father
+of English comedy. "Bartholomew Fair," first performed at the Hope
+Theatre, on Bankside, London, on the 31st of October, 1614, is the
+most perfect and most remarkable example of the truly English comedy,
+remarkable, among many other things, for the extraordinary number of
+characters who were brought upon the stage in one piece, and who are
+all at the same time grouped and individualised with a skill that
+reminds us of the pictorial triumphs of a Callot or a Hogarth. London
+life is placed before us in all its more popular forms in one grand
+tableau, the one in which it would show itself in its more grotesque
+attitudes; the London citizen, his vain or easy wife, sharpers of
+every description, and their victims no less varied in character,
+the petty city officers, all come in for their share of satire. The
+different groups are distributed so naturally, that it is difficult
+to say who is the principal character of the piece--and who ever was
+the principal character in Bartholomew Fair? Perhaps the character of
+Cokes, the young booby squire from Harrow--for in those times even
+so near London as Harrow, a young squire was considered to be in all
+probability but a young country booby--strikes us most. It is said to
+have been at a later period the favourite character of Charles II.
+Among the other principal characters of the play are a proctor of
+the Arches Court named Littlewit, who imagines himself to be a _bel
+esprit_ of the first order; his wife, and her mother, dame Purecraft,
+who is a widow; Justice Overdo, a London magistrate, to whose ward,
+Grace Wellborn, Cokes is affianced in marriage; a zealous Puritan,
+named Zeal-of-the-land Busy, who is a suitor to the widow Purecraft,
+herself also a Puritan; Winwife, Busy's rival; and a gamester named
+Tom Quarlous, who figures as Winwife's friend and companion. All these
+meet in town, on the morning of the fair, Cokes under the care of a
+sort of steward or upper servant, named Waspe, who was of a quarrelsome
+disposition, and separate in groups among the crowd which filled
+Smithfield and its vicinity, each having their separate adventures, but
+meeting from time to time, and reassembling at the end. Cokes behaves
+as a simpleton from the country, longs for everything, and wonders at
+everything, buys up toys and gingerbread, is separated from all his
+companions, robbed of his money and even of his outer garments, and in
+this condition finally settles down at a puppet-show. Meanwhile the
+Puritan Busy, by his zeal against the "heathen abominations" of the
+fair on one hand, and Waspe, by his quarrelsome temper on the other,
+fall into a series of scrapes, which end in both being carried to the
+stocks. They are there joined by another important personage. Justice
+Overdo, who is distinguished by an extraordinary zeal for the right
+administration of justice and the suppression of social vices of all
+kinds, has come into the fair in disguise, in order to make himself
+acquainted with its various abuses, and he passes among them unknown;
+and his inquisitive intermeddling brings him into a variety of mishaps,
+in the course of which he also is seized by the constable, and allows
+himself to be taken to the stocks, rather than betray his identity.
+Thus all three, Busy, Waspe, and Overdo, are placed in the stocks
+at the same time; but Waspe, by a clever trick, escapes, and leaves
+the Puritan and the justice confined together, the one looking upon
+himself as a martyr for religion's sake, the other rather glorying in
+suffering through his disinterested zeal for the common good. They,
+too, after a while make their escape through an accidental oversight of
+their keepers, and mix again with the mob. The women, likewise, have
+been separated from their male companions, have fallen among sharpers
+and bullies, been made drunk, and escaped but narrowly from still
+worse disasters. They all finally meet before the puppet-show, which
+has fixed the attention of Cokes, and there justice Overdo discovers
+himself. Such are the materials of Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair,"
+the busiest and most amusing of plays. It is said, when first acted,
+to have given great satisfaction to king James, by the ridicule thrown
+upon the Puritans, and it continued to be a favourite comedy when
+revived after the Restoration.
+
+"The Alchemist," by the same author, preceded "Bartholomew Fair," by
+four years, and was designed as a satire upon a class of impostors
+who, in that age, were among the greatest pests of society, and were
+instruments, one way or other, in the greatest crimes of the day.
+"The Alchemist" belongs, also, to the pure English comedy, but its
+plot is more simple and distinct than that of "Bartholomew Fair." It
+involves events which may have occurred frequently, at periods when the
+metropolis was from time to time exposed to the vicissitudes of the
+plague. On one of these occasions, Lovewit, a London gentleman, obliged
+to quit the metropolis in order to avoid the plague, leaves his town
+house to the charge of one man-servant, Face, who proves dishonest,
+associates himself with a rogue named Subtle, and an immoral woman
+named Dol Common, and introduces them into the house, which is made the
+basis for their subsequent operations. Subtle assumes the character of
+a magician and alchemist, while Dol acts various female parts, and Face
+goes about alluring people into their snares. Among their dupes are a
+knight who lives upon the town, two English Puritans from Amsterdam, a
+lawyer's clerk, a tobacco man, a young country squire, and his sister
+dame Pliant, a widow. The various intrigues in which these individuals
+are involved, show us the way in which the pretended conjurers and
+alchemists contributed to all the vices of the town. At length their
+base dealings are on the point of being exposed by the cunning of
+one upon whom they had attempted to impose, when Truewit, the master
+of the house, returns unexpectedly, and all is discovered, but the
+alchemist and his female associate contrive to escape. The object of
+their last intrigue had been to entrap dame Pliant, who was rich, into
+a marriage with a needy sharper; and Lovewit, finding the lady in the
+house, and liking her, marries her himself, and, in consideration of
+the satisfaction he has thus procured, forgives his unfaithful servant.
+Many have considered the Alchemist to be the best of Jonson's dramas.
+"Epicœne, or the Silent Woman," which belongs to the year 1609, is
+another satirical picture of London society, in which the same class of
+characters appear. Morose, an eccentric gentleman of fortune, who has
+a great horror for noise, and even obliges his servants to communicate
+with him by signs, has a nephew, a young knight named Sir Dauphine
+Eugenie, with whom he is dissatisfied, and he refuses to allow him
+money for his support. A plot is laid by his friends, whereby the uncle
+is led into a marriage with a supposed silent woman, named Epicœne,
+but she only sustains the character until the wedding formalities
+are completed, and these are followed by a scene of noise and riot,
+which completely horrifies Morose, and leads to a reconciliation with
+his nephew, to whom he makes over half his fortune. The earliest of
+Ben Jonson's comedies, "Every Man in his Humour," was composed in
+its present form in 1598, and is the first of these dramatic satires
+on the manners and character of the citizens of London, of whom it
+was fashionable at the courts of James I. and Charles I. to speak
+contemptuously. Kno'well, an old gentleman of respectability, is
+highly displeased with his son Edward, because the latter has taken to
+writing poetry, and has formed a friendship with another gentleman of
+his own age, who loves poetry and frequents the rather gay society of
+the poets and wits of the town. Wellbred has a half-brother, a "plain
+squire," named Downright, and a sister married to a rich city merchant
+named Kitely. Kitely, the merchant, who is extremely jealous of his
+wife, has a great desire to reform Wellbred, and draw him to a steadier
+line of life, a sentiment in which Downright heartily joins. Kitely's
+jealousy, and the steps taken to reform Wellbred, lead to the most
+comic parts of the play, which concludes with the marriage of young
+Kno'well to Kitely's daughter, Miss Bridget, and his reconciliation
+with his father. Among the other characters in the piece are captain
+Bobadil, "a blustering coward," justice Clement, "an old merry
+magistrate," his clerk, Roger Formal, and a country gull and a town
+gull.
+
+These comedies of London life became popular, and continued so
+during this and the following reign--in fact, the mass of those who
+attended the theatres could understand and appreciate them better
+than any others, and, what was more, they felt them. Among Jonson's
+contemporaries in the literature of this English comedy were Middleton
+and Thomas Heywood, both very prolific writers, Chapman, and Marston.
+Certain classes of characters are continually repeated in this comedy,
+because they belonged especially to the London society of the time,
+but the employment and distribution of these characters admitted of
+great variations, and they perhaps often had at the time a special
+interest, as representing known individuals, or as being combined in a
+plot which was built upon real incidents in London life. Among these
+were usually a country gentleman of fortune, who was very avaricious,
+and had a spendthrift son, or who had a daughter, a rich heiress, who
+was the object of the intrigues of spendthrift suitors; young heirs,
+who have just come to their estates, and are spending them in London;
+young country squires who are easy victims; a needy knight, as poor
+in principles as in money, who lived upon the public in every way he
+could; designing and unscrupulous women; bullies and sharpers of every
+description. In fact, we seem to be always in the smell of the tavern,
+and in the midst of dissipation. Then there are fat, sleek, and wealthy
+citizens, whole souls are entirely wrapt up in their merchandise,
+who are proud, nevertheless, of their position; and easy, credulous
+city wives, who are fond of finery and of praise, eager for gaiety
+and display, impatient of the rule of husbands, or of the dulness of
+home, and very ready to listen to the advances of the gay gallants
+from the court end of the town, or from the tavern. The city tradesman
+has generally an apprentice or two, sometimes very sober but perhaps
+more frequently dissipated, who play their parts in the piece; and
+often a daughter, who is either a model of modesty and all the domestic
+virtues, and is finally the reward of some hero of good principles,
+who has been temporarily led astray, and his character misinterpreted,
+or who is gay and intriguing, and comes to disgrace. But the favourite
+idea of excellence, or, to use a technical phrase, the _beau ideal_
+of this comedy, appears to have been a wild youth, who goes through
+every scene of dissipation, in a gentlemanly manner (as the term was
+then understood), and comes out at the end of the play as an honest,
+virtuous man, and receives the reward for qualities which he had not
+previously displayed.
+
+Sometimes the writers of this comedy indulged in personal, or even
+in political, allusions which brought them into trouble. In the year
+1605, Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston, wrote jointly a
+comedy entitled "Eastward Hoe." It is a very excellent and amusing
+comedy, and was very popular. Touchstone, an honest goldsmith in the
+city, has two apprentices, Golding, a sober and industrious youth, and
+Quicksilver, who is an irreclaimable rake. Touchstone has also two
+daughters, the eldest of whom, Gertrude, affects the fine lady, and
+is ambitious of finding a husband in the fashionable world, while her
+younger sister, Mildred, is all virtue and humility. An attachment
+arises between Golding and Mildred. Another character in this drama
+is a needy, scheming knight, who lives upon the town, and rejoices in
+the name of Sir Petronel Flash. Sir Petronel is attracted by the rich
+dowry which the young lady, Gertrude, had to expect, pays his court
+to her, and easily works upon her vanity; and, her mother encouraging
+her, they are hastily married, contrary to the wishes of her father.
+The knight is supposed to possess a magnificent castle somewhere to the
+east of London, and the young bride and her mother proceed in search of
+this, from which the comedy derives its title of "Eastward Hoe," but
+they are involved in various disagreeable adventures in the search,
+which ends in the conviction that it is all a fable. Another character
+in the play is a greedy and unprincipled usurer, who is so jealous of
+his young and pretty wife, that he keeps her under lock and key; and
+this man is deeply involved in money-lending with Sir Petronel Flash,
+and they are engaged in a series of unprincipled transactions, which
+lead to the disgrace of them all, and in the course of which the virtue
+of the usurer's wife falls a sacrifice. Meanwhile the fortunes of the
+two apprentices have been advancing in directly opposite directions.
+Quicksilver, the unworthy apprentice, leaves his master, proceeds
+from bad to worse, and finally is committed to prison, for a crime
+the punishment of which was death. On the other hand, Golding has not
+only gained his master's esteem and married his daughter Mildred, and
+been adopted as the heir to his wealth, but he has merited the respect
+of his fellow-citizens, and has been promoted in municipal rank. It
+becomes Golding's duty to preside over the trial of his old fellow
+apprentice Quicksilver, but the latter escapes through Golding's
+generosity.
+
+There is some sound morality in the spirit of this comedy, and a
+very large amount of immorality in the text. There was, indeed, a
+coarse licence in the relations of society at this period, which are
+but too faithfully represented in its literature. But there are two
+circumstances, accidentally attached to this drama, which give it
+a peculiar interest. When brought out upon the stage it contained
+reflections upon Scotchmen which provoked the anger of king James I.
+to such a degree, that all the authors were seized and thrown into
+prison, and narrowly escaped the loss of their ears and noses, but they
+obtained their release with some difficulty, and only through powerful
+intercession. In the copy which has been brought down to us through
+the press, we find no reflections whatever upon Scotchmen, so that it
+must have been altered from the original text. When we consider that,
+at this time, the English court and capital were crowded with needy
+Scottish adventurers, who were looked upon with great jealousy, it is
+not improbable that in the original form of the comedy, Sir Petronel
+Flash may have been a Scotchman, and intended not only as a satire upon
+the Scottish adventurers in general, but to have been designed for some
+one in particular who had the means of bringing upon the authors the
+extreme displeasure of the court.
+
+The other circumstance which has given celebrity to this comedy, is one
+of still greater interest. After the Restoration, it was new modelled
+by Nicholas Tate, and brought again upon the stage under the title of
+"Cuckold's Haven." Perhaps through this remodelled edition, Hogarth
+took from the comedy of "Eastward Hoe," the idea of his series of
+plates of the history of the Idle and Industrious Apprentices.
+
+When we consider the ridicule which was continually thrown upon them
+in this earlier period of the English comedy, we can easily understand
+the bitterness with which the Puritans regarded the stage and the
+drama. When they obtained power, the stage, as might be expected, was
+suppressed, and for some years England was without a theatre. At the
+Restoration, however, the theatres were opened again, and with greater
+freedom than ever. At first the old comedies of the days of James I.
+and Charles I. were revived, and many of them, modified and adapted to
+the new circumstances, were again brought upon the stage. The original
+comedies which appeared immediately after the Restoration, were often
+marked with a political tinge; as the stage saw its natural protectors
+in the court, and in the court party, it embraced their politics; and
+Puritans, Roundheads, Whigs, all whose principles were supposed to be
+contrary to royalty and arbitrary power, fell under its satire. Such
+was the character of the comedy of "The Cheats," by a play-writer of
+some repute named Wilson, which was brought out in 1662. The object
+of this play appears to have been, in the first place, to satirise
+the Nonconformists or Puritanical clergy--with whom were classed the
+astrologers and conjurers, who had increased in number during the
+Commonwealth time, and infested society more than ever--and the city
+magistrates, who were not looked upon as being generally over-loyal.
+The three cheats who are the heroes of this comedy, are Scruple, the
+Nonconformist, Mopus, a pretender to physic and astrology, and alderman
+Whitebroth. Direct personal attacks had been introduced into the comedy
+of the Restoration, and it is probable that somebody of influence was
+satirised under the name of Scruple, for the play was suppressed by
+authority, and at a later period, when it was revived, the prologue
+announces this fact in the following words:--
+
+          _Sad news, my masters; and too true, I fear,
+          For us--Scruple's a silenc'd minister.
+          Would ye the cause? The brethren snivel, and say,
+          'Tis scandalous that any cheat but they._
+
+Many of the dramatists of the Restoration were men of good and
+aristocratic families, witty and profligate cavaliers, who had returned
+from exile with their king. The family of the earl of Berkshire
+produced no less than four writers of comedy, all brothers, Edward
+Howard, colonel Henry Howard, sir Robert Howard, and James Howard,
+while their sister, the lady Elizabeth Howard, was married to the
+poet Dryden. Edward Howard's first dramatic piece was a tragi-comedy
+entitled "The Usurper," which came out in 1668, and was intended as
+a satire upon Cromwell. His best known comedies were "The Man of
+Newmarket," and "Woman's Conquest." Colonel Henry Howard composed a
+comedy entitled "United Kingdoms," which appears not to have been
+printed. To James Howard, the youngest of the brothers, the play-going
+public, even then rather a large one, owed "The English Mounsieur,"
+and "All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple." Sir Robert Howard was the best
+writer of the four, and wrote both tragedies and comedies, which were
+afterwards published collectively. The best of his comedies is "The
+Committee," which was first brought on the stage in 1665, and through
+some chance, certainly not by its merit, continued to be an acting play
+during the whole of the last century.
+
+"The Committee" is by far the best of the dramatic writings of the
+Howards. Its design was to turn to ridicule the Commonwealth men and
+the Puritans. Colonel Blunt and colonel Careless are two royalists,
+whose estates are in the hands of the committee of sequestrations,
+and who repair to London for the purpose of compounding for them.
+The chairman of the committee is a Mr. Day, a worldly-minded and
+sufficiently selfish Puritan, but who is ruled by his more crafty and
+still less scrupulous wife, a designing and very talkative woman. Both
+are of low origin, for Mrs. Day had been a kitchen-woman, and both are
+very proud and very tyrannical. Among the other principal characters
+are Abel Day, their son, Obadiah, the clerk to the committee, a man in
+the interest of the Days, and an Irish servant named Teague, who had
+been the servant of Careless's dear friend, a royalist officer killed
+in battle, and whom the colonel finds in great distress, and takes into
+his own service out of charity. The character of Teague is a very poor
+caricature upon an Irishman, and his blunders and bulls are of a very
+spiritless description. Here is an example. Teague has overheard the
+two colonels state that they should be obliged to take the Covenant,
+and express their reluctance to do it, and in his inconsiderate zeal,
+he hurries away to try if he cannot take the covenant for them, and
+thus save them a disagreeable operation. In the street he meets a
+wandering bookseller--a class of pedlars who were then common--and a
+scene takes place which is best given in the words of the original:--
+
+    _Bookseller._--New books, new books! A Desperate Plot and
+       Engagement of the Bloody Cavaliers! Mr. Saltmarshe's Alarum
+       to the Nation, after having been three days dead! Mercurius
+       Britannicus--
+
+    _Teague._--How's that? They cannot live in Ireland after they are
+       dead three days!
+
+    _Book._--Mercurius Britannicus, or the Weekly Post, or the Solemn
+       League and Covenant!
+
+    _Teag._--What is that you say? Is it the Covenant you have?
+
+    _Book._--Yes; what then, sir?
+
+    _Teag._--Which is that Covenant?
+
+    _Book._--Why, this is the Covenant.
+
+    _Teag._--Well, I must take that Covenant.
+
+    _Book._--You take my commodities?
+
+    _Teag._--I must take that Covenant, upon my soul, now.
+
+    _Book._--Stand off, sir, or I'll set you further!
+
+    _Teag._--Well, upon my soul, now, I will take the Covenant for my
+       master.
+
+    _Book._--Your master must pay me for't, then!
+
+    _Teag._--I must take it first, and my master will pay you
+       afterwards.
+
+    _Book._--You must pay me now.
+
+    _Teag._--Oh! that I will [_Knocks him down_]. Now you're paid, you
+       thief of the world. Here's Covenants enough to poison the whole
+       nation.
+
+                                                               [_Exit._
+
+    _Book._--What a devil ails this fellow? [_Crying_]. He did not come
+       to rob me, certainly; for he has not taken above two-pennyworth
+       of lamentable ware away; but I feel the rascal's fingers. I may
+       light upon my wild Irishman again, and, if I do, I will fix him
+       with some catchpole, that shall be worse than his own country
+       bogs.
+
+                                                               [_Exit._
+
+In the sequel, Teague is caught by the constables, and is liberated
+at the interference of his master, who pays twopence for the book.
+The plot of the comedy is but a simple one, and is neither skilfully
+nor naturally carried out. Colonel Blunt comes to London from Reading
+in the inside of a stage-coach, having for his travelling companions
+Mrs. Day, her supposed daughter Ruth, and Arabella, a young lady whose
+father is recently dead, leaving his estates in the hands of the
+committee of sequestrations. Ruth is, in truth, a young lady whose
+estates the Days have, under similar circumstances, robbed her of, and
+it is their design to treat Arabella in the same manner, under disguise
+of forcing her to marry their son Abel, a vain silly lad. To effect
+this, as the committee itself requires some influencing to engage them
+in the selfish plans of their chairman, Day and his wife forge a letter
+from the exiled king, complimenting the former on his great power and
+influence and talents as a statesman, and offering him great rewards
+if he will secretly promote his cause. Day communicates this to the
+committee under the pretext that it is his duty to make them acquainted
+with all such perfidious designs that might come to his knowledge, and
+they, convinced of his honesty and value to them, give up Arabella's
+estates to the Days, and she falls entirely under their power.
+Meanwhile, on the one hand, Arabella has gained the confidence of
+Ruth, who makes her acquainted with the whole plot against her and her
+estates, and on the other, Ruth falls in love with colonel Careless,
+and colonel Blunt is smitten with the charms of Arabella, and all this
+takes place in the committee room. Various incidents follow, which seem
+not very much to the purpose, but at last, as the marriage of Arabella
+to Abel Day is pressed forward, the two young ladies, although as yet
+they have hardly had an interview with the colonels, resolve to make
+their escape from the house of the chairman of the committee, and fly
+to their lovers for protection. A short absence from the house of Mr.
+and Mrs. Day and their son together, presents the desired opportunity,
+and Day having accidentally left his keys behind him, the idea suggests
+itself to Ruth to open his cabinet, and gain possession of the deeds
+and papers of her own estates and those of Arabella. As she had before
+this secretly observed the private drawer in which they were placed,
+she met with no difficulty in effecting her purpose, and not only found
+these documents, but also with them the forged letter from the king,
+and some letters addressed to Day by young women whom he was secretly
+keeping, and who demanded money for the support of children they had by
+him, and alluded to matters of a still more serious character. Ruth
+takes possession of all these, and thus laden, the two damsels hurry
+away, and reach without interruption the house where they were to meet
+the colonels. The Days return home immediately after the departure
+of their wards, and at once suspect the real state of affairs, which
+is fully confirmed, when Mr. Day finds that his most private drawer
+has been opened, and his most important papers carried off. They
+immediately proceed in search of the fugitives, having sent orders for
+a detachment of soldiers to assist them, and the house in which the
+lovers have taken refuge is surrounded before they have had time to
+escape. Finding it useless to attempt resistance by force, the besieged
+call for a parley, and then Ruth frightens Day by acquainting him with
+the contents of the private letters she has become possessed of, and
+his wife by the knowledge she has obtained of the forged letter, which
+also she has in her possession. The Days are thus overreached, and the
+play ends with a general reconciliation. The ladies are left with the
+titles of their estates, and with their lovers, and we are left to
+suppose that they afterwards married, and were happy.
+
+The plot of "The Committee," it will be seen, is not a very capital
+one, but the manner in which it is worked out is still worse. The
+dialogue is extremely tame, and the incidents are badly interwoven.
+When I say that the example of wit given above is the best in the play,
+and that there are not many attempts at wit in it, it will hardly be
+thought that it could be amusing, and we cannot but feel astonished
+at the popularity which it once enjoyed. This popularity, indeed, is
+only explained by the fashion of ridiculing the Puritans, which then
+prevailed so strongly; and it perhaps retained its place on the stage
+during the last century chiefly from the circumstance of its wanting
+the objectionable qualities which characterised the written plays of
+the latter half of the seventeenth century.
+
+"The Committee" is, after all, one of the very best comedies of the
+school of dramatists represented by the brothers Howard. Contemporary
+with this school of flat comedies, there was a school of equally
+inflated tragedy, and both soon became objects of ridicule to the
+satirists of the day. Of these, one of the boldest was George Villiers,
+duke of Buckingham, the son of the favourite of king James I., and
+equally celebrated for his talents and his profligacy. Buckingham is
+said to have planned and begun his satirical comedy of "The Rehearsal"
+as early as the year 1663, and to have had it ready for representation
+towards the December of 1665, when the breaking out of the great plague
+caused the theatres to be closed. After this interruption its author,
+who was a desultory writer, appears to have laid it aside for some
+time and then, new objects for satire having presented themselves, he
+altered and modified it, and it was finally completed in 1671, when it
+was brought out at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden. It is said that
+Buckingham was assisted in the composition of this satire, but it is
+not stated in what manner, by Butler, and by Martin Clifford, of the
+Charter-house. It is understood that, in the first form of his satire,
+Buckingham had chosen the Hon. Edward Howard for its hero, and that he
+afterwards exchanged him for Sir William Davenant, but he finally fixed
+upon Dryden, whose tragedies and comedies are certainly not the best of
+his writings--possibly some personal pique may have had an influence
+in the selection. Nevertheless, with Dryden, the Howards, Davenant,
+and one or two other writers of comedy, come in for their share of
+ridicule. Dryden, under the name of Bayes, has composed a new drama,
+and a friend named Johnson goes to witness the rehearsal of this play,
+taking with him a country friend of the name of Smith. The play itself
+is a piece of mockery throughout, made up of parodies, often very
+happy, on the different play-writers of the day, and especially upon
+Dryden; and it is mixed up with a running conversation between Bayes,
+the author, and his two visitors, which is full of satirical humour.
+The first part of the prologue explains to us sufficiently the spirit
+in which this satire was written.
+
+        _We might well call this short mock-play of ours
+        A posie made of weeds instead of flowers;
+        Yet such have been presented to your noses,
+        And there are such, I fear, who thought 'em roses.
+        Would some of 'em were here, to see this night
+        What stuff it is in which they took delight.
+        Here, brisk, insipid rogues, for wit, let fall
+        Sometimes dull sense, but oft'ner none at all;
+        There, strutting heroes, with a grim-fac'd train,
+        Shalt brave the gods, in king Cambyses vein.
+        For (changing rules, of late, as if men writ
+        In spite of reason, nature, art, and wit)
+        Our poets make us laugh at tragedy,
+        And with their comedies they make us cry._
+
+A short account of this satire will, perhaps, be best understood, if I
+explain that the antagonism of two contending kings of Granada having
+been a favourite idea of Dryden in his tragedies, Buckingham is said to
+have designed to ridicule him in making two, not rival, but associate
+kings of Brentford, though others say that these two kings of Brentford
+were intended for a sneer upon king Charles II. and the duke of York.
+These two kings are the heroes of Bayes's play. The first act of
+"The Rehearsal" consists of a discussion between Bayes, Johnson, and
+Smith, on the general character of the play, in which Bayes exhibits
+a large amount of vanity and self-confidence, said to have been a
+characteristic of all these play-writers of the earlier period of the
+Restoration, and he informs them that he has "made a prologue and an
+epilogue, which may both serve for either; that is, the prologue for
+the epilogue, or the epilogue for the prologue, (do you mark!) nay,
+they may both serve, too, 'egad, for any other play as well as this."
+Smith observes, "That's indeed artificial." Finally Bayes explains,
+that as other authors, in their prologues, sought to flatter and
+propitiate their audience, in order to gain their favourable opinion of
+the plot, he, on the contrary, intended to force their applause out of
+them by mere dint of terror, and for that purpose, he had introduced
+as speakers of his prologue, no less personages than Thunder and
+Lightning. This prologue, disengaged from the remarks of Bayes and his
+friends, runs as follows:--
+
+                    _Enter_ THUNDER _and_ LIGHTNING.
+
+        _Thun._--I am the bold Thunder.
+
+        _Light._--The brisk Lightning I.
+
+        _Thun._--I am the bravest Hector of the sky.
+
+        _Light._--And I fair Helen, that made Hector die.
+
+        _Thun._--I strike men down.
+
+        _Light._--I fire the town.
+
+        _Thun_.--Let critics take heed how they grumble,
+                 For then I begin for to rumble.
+
+        _Light_.--Let the ladies allow us their graces,
+                  Or I'll blast all the paint on their faces,
+                  And dry up their peter to soot.
+
+        _Thun_.--Let the critics look to't.
+
+        _Light_.--Let the ladies look to't.
+
+        _Thun_.--For the Thunder will do't.
+
+        _Light_.--For the Lightning will shoot.
+
+        _Thun_.--I'll give you dash for dash.
+
+        _Light_.--I'll give you flash for flash.
+                  Gallants, I'll singe your feather.
+
+        _Thun_.--I'll Thunder you together.
+
+        _Both_.--Look to't, look to't; we'll do't, we'll do't;
+                 look to't; we'll do't. [_Twice or thrice repeated._
+
+Bayes calls this "but a slash of a prologue," in reply to which, Smith
+observes, "Yes; 'tis short, indeed, but very terrible." It is a parody
+on a scene in "The Slighted Maid," a play by Sir Robert Stapleton,
+where Thunder and Lightning were introduced, and their conversation
+begins in the same words. But the poet has another difficulty on which
+he desires the opinion of his visitors. "I have made," he says, "one of
+the most delicate, dainty similes in the whole world, 'egad, if I knew
+how to apply it. 'Tis," he adds, "an allusion to love." This is the
+simile--
+
+          _So boar and sow, when any storm is nigh
+          Snuff up, and smell it gathering in the sky;
+          Boar beckons sow to trot in chesnut groves,
+          And there consummate their unfinished loves:
+          Pensive in mud they wallow all alone,
+          And snore and gruntle to each others moan._
+
+It is a rather coarse, but clever parody on a simile in Dryden's
+"Conquest of Granada," part ii.:--
+
+          _So two kind turtles, when a storm is nigh,
+          Look up, and see it gathering in the sky;
+          Each calls his mate to shelter in the groves,
+          Leaving, in murmurs, their unfinished loves;
+          Perch'd on some dropping branch, they sit alone,
+          And coo, and hearken to each other's moan._
+
+It is decided that the simile should be added to the prologue, for, as
+Johnson remarks to Bayes, "Faith, 'tis extraordinary fine, and very
+applicable to Thunder and Lightning, methinks, because it speaks of a
+storm." In the second act we come to the opening of the play, the first
+scene consisting of whispering, in ridicule of a scene in Davenant's
+"Play-house to Let," where Drake senior says--
+
+          _Draw up your men,
+          And in low whispers give your orders out._
+
+In fact, the Gentleman-Usher and the Physician of the two kings of
+Brentford appear upon the scene alone, and discuss a plot to dethrone
+the two kings of Brentford, which they communicate by whispers into
+each other's ears, which are totally inaudible. In Scene ii., "Enter
+the two kings, hand in hand," and Bayes remarks to his visitors,
+"Oh! these are now the two kings of Brentford; take notice of their
+style--'twas never yet upon the stage; but, if you like it, I could
+make a shift, perhaps, to show you a whole play, writ all just so." The
+kings begin, rather familiarly, because, as Bayes adds, "they are both
+persons of the same quality:"--
+
+      _1st King._--Did you observe their whispers, brother king?
+
+      _2nd King._--I did, and heard, besides, a grave bird sing,
+                   That they intend, sweetheart, to play us pranks.
+
+      _1st King._--If that design appears,
+                   I'll lay them by the ears,
+                   Until I make 'em crack.
+
+      _2nd King._--And so will I, i' fack!
+
+      _1st King._--You must begin, _mon foi_.
+
+      _2nd King._--Sweet sir, _pardonnez moi_.
+
+Bayes observes that he makes the two kings talk French in order
+"to show their breeding." In the third act, Bayes introduces a new
+character, prince Prettyman, a parody upon the character of Leonidas,
+in Dryden's "Marriage-a-la-Mode." The prince falls asleep, and then
+his beloved Cloris comes in, and is surprised, upon which Bayes
+remarks, "Now, here she must make a simile." "Where's the necessity of
+that, Mr. Bayes?" asks the critical Mr. Smith. "Oh," replies Bayes,
+"because she's surprised. That's a general rule. You must ever make
+a simile when you are surprised; 'tis a new way of writing." Now
+we have another parody upon one of Dryden's similes. In the fourth
+scene, the Gentleman-Usher and Physician appear again, discussing the
+question whether their whispers had been heard or not, a discussion
+which they conclude by seizing on the two thrones, and occupying them
+with their drawn swords in their hands. Then they march out to raise
+their forces, and a battle to music takes place, four soldiers on each
+side, who are all killed. Next we have a scene between prince Prettyman
+and his tailor, Tom Thimble, which involves a joke upon the princely
+principle of non-payment. A scene or two follows in a similar tone,
+without at all advancing the plot; although it appears that another
+prince, Volscius, who, we are to suppose, supports the old dynasty of
+Brentford, has made his escape to Piccadilly, while the army which he
+is to lead has assembled, and is concealed, at Knightsbridge. This
+incident produces a discussion between Mr. Bayes and his friends:--
+
+    _Smith._--But pray, Mr. Bayes, is not this a little difficult, that
+          you were saying e'en now, to keep an army thus concealed in
+          Knightsbridge?
+
+    _Bayes._--In Knightsbridge?--stay.
+
+    _Johnson._--No, not if inn-keepers be his friends.[100]
+
+    _Bayes._--His friends? Ay, sir, his intimate acquaintance; or else,
+          indeed, I grant it could not be.
+
+    _Smith._--Yes, faith, so it might be very easy.
+
+    _Bayes._--Nay, if I don't make all things easy, 'egad, I'll give
+          'em leave to hang me. Now you would think that he is going
+          out of town; but you will see how prettily I have contrived
+          to stop him, presently.
+
+ [100] Knightsbridge, as the principal entrance to London from the west,
+       was full of inns.
+
+Accordingly, prince Volscius yields to the influence of a fair
+_demoiselle_, who bears the classical name of Parthenope, and after
+various exhibitions of hesitation, he does not leave town. Another
+scene or two, with little meaning, but full of clever parodies on the
+plays of Dryden, the Howards, and their contemporaries. The first scene
+of the fourth act opens with a funeral, a parody upon colonel Henry
+Howard's play of the "United Kingdoms." Pallas interferes, brings the
+lady who is to be buried to life, gets up a dance, and furnishes a very
+extempore feast. The princes Prettyman and Volscius dispute about their
+sweethearts. At the commencement of the fifth act the two usurping
+kings appear in state, attended by four cardinals, the two princes,
+all the lady-loves, heralds, and sergeants-at-arms, &c. In the middle
+of all this state, "the two right kings of Brentford descend in the
+clouds, singing, in white garments, and three fiddlers sitting before
+them in green." "Now," says Bayes to his friends, "because the two
+right kings descend from above, I make 'em sing to the tune and style
+of our modern spirits." And accordingly they proceeded in a continuous
+parody:--
+
+      _1st King._--Haste, brother king, we are sent from above.
+
+      _2nd King._--Let us move, let us move;
+                   Move, to remove the fate
+                   Of Brentford's long united state.
+
+      _1st King._--Tara, tan, tara!--full east and by south.
+
+      _2nd King._--We sail with thunder in our mouth.
+                   In scorching noon-day, whilst the traveller stays,
+                     Busy, busy, busy, busy, we bustle along,
+                   Mounted upon warm Phœbus's rays,
+                       Through the heavenly throng,
+                         Hasting to those
+                   Who will feast us at night with a pig's pettytoes.
+
+      _1st King._--And we'll fall with our plate
+                   In an olio of hate
+
+      _2nd King._--But, now supper's done, the servitors try,
+                   Like soldiers, to storm a whole half-moon pie.
+
+      _1st King._--They gather, they gather, hot custards in spoons:
+                   But, alas! I must leave these half-moons,
+                   And repair to my trusty dragoons.
+
+      _2nd King._--O stay! for you need not as yet go astray;
+                   The tide, like a friend, has brought ships in our way,
+                   And on their high ropes we will play;
+                   Like maggots in filberts, we'll snug in our shell,
+                           We'll frisk in our shell,
+                           We'll firk in our shell,
+                                 And farewell.
+
+      _1st King._--But the ladies have all inclination to dance,
+                   And the green frogs croak out a coranto of France.
+
+All this is quite Aristophanic. It is interrupted by a discussion
+between Bayes and his visitors on the music and the dance, and then the
+two kings continue:--
+
+      _2nd King._--Now mortals, that hear
+                   How we tilt and career,
+                   With wonder, will fear
+               The event of such things as shall never appear.
+
+      _1st King._--Stay you to fulfil what the gods have decreed.
+
+      _2nd King._--Then call me to help you, if there shall be need.
+
+      _1st King._--So firmly resolved is a true Brentford king,
+                   To save the distressed, and help to 'em bring,
+                   That, ere a full pot of good ale you can swallow,
+                   He's here with a whoop, and gone with a halloo.
+
+The rather too inquisitive Smith wonders at all this, and complains
+that, to him, the sense of this is "not very plain." "Plain!" exclaims
+Bayes, "why, did you ever hear any people in the clouds speak plain?
+They must be all for flight of fancy, at its full range, without the
+least check or control upon it. When once you tie up sprites and people
+in clouds to speak plain, you spoil all." The two kings of Brentford
+now "light out of the clouds, and step into the throne," continuing the
+same _dignified_ conversation:--
+
+      _1st King._--Come, now to serious council we'll advance.
+
+      _2nd King._--I do agree; but first, let's have a dance.
+
+This confidence of the two kings of Brentford is suddenly disturbed
+by the sound of war. Two heralds announce that the army, that of
+Knightsbridge, had come to protect them, and that it had come _in
+disguise_, an arrangement which puzzles the author's two visitors:--
+
+      _1st King._--What saucy groom molests our privacies?
+
+      _1st Herald._--The army's at the door, and, in disguise,
+                     Desires a word with both your majesties.
+
+      _2nd Herald._--Having from Knightsbridge hither march'd by stealth.
+
+      _2nd King._--Bid 'em attend a while, and drink our health.
+
+      _Smith._--How, Mr. Bayes? The army in disguise!
+
+      _Bayes._--Ay, sir, for fear the usurpers might discover them, that
+                went out but just now.
+
+War itself follows, and the commanders of the two armies, the general
+and the lieutenant-general, appear upon the stage in another parody
+upon the opening scenes of Dryden's "Siege of Rhodes:"--
+
+     _Enter, at several doors, the_ GENERAL _and_ LIEUTENANT-GENERAL,
+     _armed cap-à-pie, with each a lute in his hand, and his sword
+     drawn, and hung with a scarlet riband at the wrist_.
+
+      _Lieut.-Gen._--Villain, thou liest.
+
+      _Gen._--Arm, arm, Gonsalvo, arm. What! ho!
+              The lie no flesh can brook, I trow.
+
+      _Lieut.-Gen._--Advance from Acton with the musqueteers.
+
+      _Gen._--Draw down the Chelsea cuirassiers.
+
+      _Lieut.-Gen._--The band you boast of, Chelsea cuirassiers,
+                     Shall in my Putney pikes now meet their peers.
+
+      _Gen._--Chiswickians, aged, and renowned in fight,
+                Join with the Hammersmith brigade.
+
+      _Lieut.-Gen._--You'll find my Mortlake boys will do them right,
+                       Unless by Fulham numbers over-laid.
+
+      _Gen._--Let the left wing of Twick'n'am foot advance,
+              And line that eastern hedge.
+
+      _Lieut.-Gen._--The horse I raised in Petty France
+                     Shall try their chance,
+                     And scour the meadows, overgrown with sedge.
+
+      _Gen._--Stand: give the word.
+
+      _Lieut.-Gen._--Bright sword.
+
+      _Gen._--That may be thine,
+              But 'tis not mine.
+
+      _Lieut.-Gen._--Give fire, give fire, at once give fire,
+                     And let those recreant troops perceive mine ire.
+
+      _Gen._--Pursue, pursue; they fly,
+              That first did give the lie!             [_Exeunt._
+
+Thus the battle is carried on in talk between two individuals. Bayes
+alleges, as an excuse for introducing these trivial names of places,
+that "the spectators know all these towns, and may easily conceive
+them to be within the dominions of the two kings of Brentford."
+The battle is finally stopped by an eclipse, and three personages,
+representing the sun, moon, and earth, advance upon the stage, and
+by dint of singing and manœuvring, one gets in a line between the
+other two, and this, according to the strict rules of astronomy,
+constituted the eclipse. The eclipse is followed by another battle
+of a more desperate character, to which a stop is put in an equally
+extraordinary manner, by the entrance of the furious hero Drawcansir,
+who slays all the combatants on both sides. The marriage of prince
+Prettyman was to form the subject of the fifth act, but while Bayes,
+Johnson, and Smith withdraw temporarily, all the players, in disgust,
+run away to their dinners, and thus ends "The Rehearsal" of Mr. Bayes's
+play. The epilogue returns to the moral which the play was designed to
+inculcate:--
+
+          _The play is at an end, but where's the plot?
+          That circumstance the poet Bayes forgot.
+          And we can boast, though 'tis a plotting age,
+          No place is freer from it than the stage._
+
+Formerly people sought to write so that they might be understood, but
+"this new way of wit" was altogether incomprehensible:--
+
+          _Wherefore, for ours, and for the kingdom's peace,
+          May this prodigious way of writing cease;
+          Let's have, at least once in our lives, a time
+          When we may hear some reason, not all rhyme.
+          We have this ten years felt its influence;
+          Pray let this prove a year of prose and sense._
+
+English comedy was certainly greatly reformed, in some senses of the
+word reform, during the period which followed the publication of "The
+Rehearsal," and, in the hands of writers like Wycherley, Shadwell,
+Congreve, and D'Urfey, the dulness of the Howards was exchanged for
+an extreme degree of vivacity. The plot was as little considered as
+ever--it was a mere peg on which to hang scenes brilliant with wit
+and _repartee_. The small intrigue is often but a frame for a great
+picture of society in its forms then most open to caricature, with
+all the petty intrigues inseparable from it. "Epsom Wells," one of
+Shadwell's earlier comedies, and perhaps his best, will bear comparison
+with Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair." The personages represented in it
+are exactly those which then shone in such society--three "men of wit
+and pleasure," one of the class of country squires whom the wits of
+London loved to laugh at, and who is described as "a country justice,
+a public spirited, politick, discontented fop, an immoderate hater of
+London, and a lover of the country above measure, a hearty true English
+coxcomb." Then we have "two cheating, sharking, cowardly bullies."
+The citizens of London are represented by Bisket, "a comfit-maker, a
+quiet, humble, civil cuckold, governed by his wife, whom he very much
+fears and loves at the same time, and is very proud of," and Fribble,
+"a haberdasher, a surly cuckold, very conceited, and proud of his
+wife, but pretends to govern and keep her under," and their wives, the
+first "an impertinent, imperious strumpet," and the other, "an humble,
+submitting wife, who jilts her husband that way, a very ----." One
+or two other characters of the same stamp, with "two young ladies of
+wit, beauty, and fortune," who behave themselves not much better than
+the others, and a full allowance of "parsons, hectors, constables,
+watchmen, and fiddlers," complete the _dramatis personæ_ of "Epsom
+Wells." With such materials anybody will understand the character of
+the piece, which was brought out on the stage in 1672. "The Squire of
+Alsatia," by the same author, brought upon the stage in the eventful
+year 1688, is a vivid picture of one of the wildest phases of London
+life in those still rather primitive times. Alsatia, as every reader of
+Walter Scott knows, was a cant name for the White Friars, in London, a
+locality which, at that time, was beyond the reach of the law and its
+officers, a refuge for thieves and rogues, and especially for debtors,
+where they could either resist with no great fear of being overcome,
+or, when resistance was no longer possible, escape with ease. With such
+a scene, and such people for characters, we are not surprised that the
+printed edition of this play is prefaced by a vocabulary of the cant
+words employed in it. The principal characters in the play are of the
+same class with those which form the staple of all these old comedies.
+First there is a country father or uncle, who is rich and severe upon
+the vices of youth, or arbitrary, or avaricious. He is here represented
+by sir William Belfond, "a gentleman of about £3000 per annum, who in
+his youth had been a spark of the town; but married and retired into
+the country, where he turned to the other extreme--rigid, morose, most
+sordidly covetous, clownish, obstinate, positive, and forward." He must
+have a London brother, or near relative, endowed with exactly contrary
+qualities, here represented by sir Edward Belfond, sir William's
+brother, "a merchant, who by lucky hits had gotten a great estate,
+lives single with ease and pleasure, reasonably and virtuously, a man
+of great humanity and gentleness and compassion towards mankind, well
+read in good books, possessed with all gentlemanlike qualities." Sir
+William Belfond has two sons. Belfond senior, the eldest, is "bred
+after his father's rustic, swinish manner, with great rigour and
+severity, upon whom his father's estate is entailed, the confidence
+of which makes him break out into open rebellion to his father, and
+become lewd, abominably vicious, stubborn, and obstinate." The younger
+Belfond, Sir William's second son, had been "adopted by Sir Edward,
+and bred from his childhood by him, with all the tenderness and
+familiarity, and bounty, and liberty that can be;" he was "instructed
+in all the liberal sciences, and in all gentleman-like education;
+somewhat given to women, and now and then to good fellowship; but
+an ingenious, well-accomplished gentleman; a man of honour, and of
+excellent disposition and temper." Then we have some of the leading
+heroes of Alsatia, and first Cheatly, who is described as "a rascal,
+who by reason of debts, dares not stir out of Whitefryers, but there
+inveigles young heirs in tail; and helps 'em to goods and money upon
+great disadvantages; is bound for them, and shares with them, till he
+undoes them; a lewd, impudent, debauched fellow, very expert in the
+cant about the town." Shamwell is "cousin to the Belfonds, an heir,
+who, being ruined by Cheatly, is made a decoy-duck for others; not
+daring to stay out of Alsatia, where he lives; is bound with Cheatly
+for heirs, and lives upon them, a dissolute, debauch'd life." Another
+of these characters is captain Hackum, "a block-headed bully of
+Alsatia; a cowardly, impudent, blustering fellow; formerly a sergeant
+in Flanders, run from his colours, retreating into Whitefryers for a
+very small debt; where by the Alsatians he is dubb'd a captain; marries
+one that lets lodgings, sells cherry-brandy, and is a bawd." Nor is
+Alsatia without a representative of the Puritanical part of society, in
+Scrapeall, "a hypocritical, repeating, praying, psalm-singing, precise
+fellow, pretending to great piety; a godly knave, who joins with
+Cheatly, and supplies young heirs with goods and money." A rather large
+number of inferior characters fill up the canvas; and the females,
+with two exceptions, belong to the same class. The plot of this play is
+very simple. The elder son of sir William Belfond has taken to Alsatia,
+but sir William, on his return from abroad, hearing talk of the fame of
+a squire Belfond among the Alsatians, imagines that it is his younger
+son, and out of this mistake a considerable amount of misunderstanding
+arises. At last sir William discovers his error, and finds his eldest
+son in Whitefryers, but the youth sets him at defiance. The father, in
+great anger, brings tipstaff constables, to take away his son by force;
+but the Alsatians rise in force, the officers of the law are beaten,
+and sir William himself taken prisoner. He is rescued by the younger
+Belfond, and in the conclusion the elder brother becomes penitent, and
+is reconciled with his father. There is an underplot, far from moral
+in its character, which ends in the marriage of Belfond junior. It is
+a busy, noisy play, and was a great favourite on the stage; but it is
+now chiefly interesting as a vivid picture of London life in the latter
+half of the seventeenth century. "Bury Fair," by Shadwell, is another
+comedy of the same description; with little interest in the plot, but
+full of life and movement. If "The Squire of Alsatia" was noisy, "The
+Scowrers," another comedy by the same author, first brought on the
+stage in 1691, was still more so. The wild and riotous gallants who,
+in former times of inefficient police regulation, infested the streets
+at night, and committed all sorts of outrages, were known at different
+periods by a variety of names. In the reign of James I. and Charles
+I. they were the "roaring boys;" in the time of Shadwell, they were
+called the "scowrers," because they scowered the streets at night, and
+rather roughly cleared them of all passengers; a few years later they
+took the name of Mohocks, or Mohawks. During the night London lay at
+the mercy of these riotous classes, and the streets witnessed scenes of
+brutal violence, which, at the present day, we can hardly imagine. This
+state of things is pictured in Shadwell's comedy. Sir William Rant,
+Wildfire, and Tope, are noted scowrers, well known in the town, whose
+fame has excited emulation in men of less distinction in their way,
+Whachum, "a city wit and scowrer, imitator of sir William," and "two
+scoundrells," his companions, Bluster and Dingboy. Great enmity arises
+between the two parties of rival scowrers. The more serious characters
+in the play are Mr. Rant, sir William Rant's father, and sir Richard
+Maggot, "a foolish Jacobite alderman" (it must be remembered that we
+are now in the reign of king William). Sir Richard's wife, lady Maggot,
+like the citizen's wives of the comedy of the Restoration generally,
+is a lady rather wanting in virtue, ambitious of mixing with the gay
+and fashionable world, and somewhat of a tyrant over her husband. She
+has two handsome daughters, whom she seeks to keep confined from the
+world, lest they should become her rivals. There are low characters
+of both sexes, who need not be enumerated. Much of the play is taken
+up with street rows, capital satirical pictures of London life. The
+play ends with marriages, and with the reconciliation of sir William
+Rant with his father, the serious old gentleman of the play. Shadwell
+excelled in these busy comedies. One of the nearest approaches to him
+is Mountfort's comedy of "Greenwich Park," which is another striking
+satire on the looseness of London life at that time. As in the others,
+the plot is simply nothing. The play consists of a number of intrigues,
+such as may be imagined, at a time when morality was little respected,
+in places of fashionable resort like Greenwich Park and Deptford Wells.
+
+An element of satire was now introduced into English comedy which does
+not appear to have belonged to it before--this was mimicry. Although
+the principal characters in the play bore conventional names, they
+appear often to have been intended to represent individuals then well
+known in society, and these individuals were caricatured in their
+dress, and mimicked in their language and manners. We are told that
+this mimicry contributed greatly to the success of "The Rehearsal,"
+the duke of Buckingham having taken incredible pains to make Lacy, who
+acted the part of Bayes, perfect in imitating the voice and manner
+of Dryden, whose dress and gait were minutely copied. This personal
+satire was not always performed with impunity. On the 1st of February,
+1669, Pepys went to the Theatre Royal to see the performance of "The
+Heiress," in which it appears that sir Charles Sedley was personally
+caricatured, and the secretary of king Charles's admiralty has left
+in his diary the following entry:--"To the king's house, thinking to
+have seen the Heyresse, first acted on Saturday, but when we come
+thither we find no play there; Kynaston, that did act a part therein
+in abuse to sir Charles Sedley, being last night exceedingly beaten
+with sticks by two or three that saluted him, so as he is mightily
+bruised, and forced to keep his bed." It is said that Dryden's comedy
+of "Limberham," brought on the stage in 1678, was prohibited after the
+first night, because the character of Limberham was considered to be
+too open a satire on the duke of Lauderdale.
+
+Another peculiarity in the comedies of the age of the Restoration was
+their extraordinary indelicacy. The writers seemed to emulate each
+other in presenting upon the stage scenes and language which no modest
+ear or pure mind could support. In the earlier period coarseness in
+conversation was characteristic of an unpolished age--the language put
+in the mouths of the actors, as remarked before, smelt of the tavern;
+but under Charles II. the tone of fashionable society, as represented
+on the stage, is modelled upon that of the brothel. Even the veiled
+allusion is no longer resorted to, broad and direct language is
+substituted in its place. This open profligacy of the stage reached its
+greatest height between the years 1670 and 1680. The staple material
+of this comedy may be considered to be the commission of adultery,
+which is presented as one of the principal ornaments in the character
+of the well-bred gentleman, varied with the seducing of other men's
+mistresses, for the keeping of mistresses appears as the rule of
+social life. The "Country Wife," one of Wycherley's comedies, which is
+supposed to have been brought on the stage perhaps as early as 1672,
+is a mass of gross indecency from beginning to end. It involves two
+principal plots, that of a voluptuary who feigns himself incapable of
+love and insensible to the other sex, in order to pursue his intrigues
+with greater liberty; and that of a citizen who takes to his wife a
+silly and innocent country girl, whose ignorance he believes will be
+a protection to her virtue, but the very means he takes to prevent
+her, lead to her fall. The "Parson's Wedding," by Thomas Killigrew,
+first acted in 1673, is equally licentious. The same at least may be
+said of Dryden's "Limberham, or the Kind Keeper," first performed in
+1678, which, according to the author's own statement, was prohibited
+on account of its freeness, but more probably because the character
+of Limberham was believed to be intended for a personal satire on the
+unpopular earl of Lauderdale. Its plot is simple enough; it is the
+story of a debauched old gentleman, named Aldo, whose son, after a
+rather long absence on the Continent, returns to England, and assumes
+the name of Woodall, in order to enjoy freely the pleasures of London
+life before he makes himself known to his friends. He takes a lodging
+in a house occupied by some loose women, and there meets with his
+father, but, as the latter does not recognise his son, they become
+friends, and live together licentiously so long, that when the son at
+length discovers himself, the old man is obliged to overlook his vices.
+Otway's comedy of "Friendship in Fashion," performed the same year, was
+not a whit more moral. But all these are far outdone by Ravenscroft's
+comedy of "The London Cuckolds," first brought out in 1682, which,
+nevertheless, continued to be acted until late in the last century. It
+is a clever comedy, full of action, and consisting of a great number
+of different incidents, selected from the less moral tales of the old
+story-tellers as they appear in the "Decameron" of Boccaccio, among
+which that of the ignorant and uneducated young wife, similar to the
+plot of Wycherley's "Country Wife," is again introduced.
+
+The corruption of morals had become so great, that when women took
+up the pen, they exceeded in licentiousness even the other sex, as
+was the case with Mrs. Behn. Aphra Behn is understood to have been
+born at Canterbury, but to have passed some part of her youth in the
+colony of Surinam, of which her father was governor. She evidently
+possessed a disposition for intrigue, and she was employed by the
+English government, a few years after the Restoration, as a political
+spy at Antwerp. She subsequently settled in London, and gained a living
+by her pen, which was very prolific in novels, poems, and plays. It
+would be difficult to point out in any other works such scenes of
+open profligacy as those presented in Mrs. Behn's two comedies of
+"Sir Patient Fancy" and "The City Heiress, or Sir Timothy Treat-all,"
+which appeared in 1678 and 1681. Concealment of the slightest kind is
+avoided, and even that which cannot be exposed to view, is tolerably
+broadly described.
+
+It appears that the performance of the "London Cuckolds" had been the
+cause of some scandal, and there were, even among play-goers, some who
+took offence at such outrages on the ordinary feelings of modesty.
+The excess of the evil had begun to produce a reaction. Ravenscroft,
+the author of that comedy, produced on the stage, in 1684, a comedy,
+entitled "Dame Dobson, or the Cunning Woman," which was intended to be
+a modest play, but it was unceremoniously "damned" by the audience.
+The prologue to this new comedy intimates that the "London Cuckolds"
+had pleased the town and diverted the court, but that some "squeamish
+females" had taken offence at it, and that he had now written a "dull,
+civill" play to make amends. They are addressed, therefore, in such
+terms as these:--
+
+          _In you, chaste ladies, then we hope to-day,
+          This is the poet's recantation play.
+          Come often to 't, that he at length may see
+          'Tis more than a pretended modesty.
+          Stick by him now, for if he finds you falter,
+          He quickly will his way of writing alter;
+          And every play shall send you blushing home,
+          For, though you rail, yet then we're sure you'll come._
+
+And it is further intimated,--
+
+          _A naughty play was never counted dull--
+          Nor modest comedy e'er pleased you much._
+
+"I remember," says Colley Cibber in his "Apology," looking back to
+these times, "I remember the ladies were then observed to be decently
+afraid of venturing bare-faced to a new comedy, till they had been
+assured they might do it without the risk of an insult to their
+modesty; or if their curiosity were too strong for their patience,
+they took care at least to save appearances, and rarely came upon the
+first days of acting but in masks (then daily worn, and admitted in the
+pit, the side boxes, and gallery), which custom, however, had so many
+ill consequences attending it, that it has been abolished these many
+years." According to the _Spectator_, ladies began now to desert the
+theatre when comedies were brought out, except those who "never miss
+the first day of a new play, lest it should prove too luscious to admit
+of their going with any countenance to the second."
+
+In the midst of this abuse, there suddenly appeared a book which
+created at the time a great sensation. The comedies of the latter half
+of the seventeenth century were not only indecent, but they were filled
+with profane language, and contained scenes in which religion itself
+was treated with contempt. At that time there lived a divine of the
+Church of England, celebrated for his Jacobitism--for I am now speaking
+of the reign of king William--for his talents as a controversial
+writer, and for his zeal in any cause which he undertook. This was
+Jeremy Collier, the author of several books of some merit, which are
+seldom read now, and who suffered for his zeal in the cause of king
+James, and for his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to king
+William. In the year 1698 Collier published his "Short View of the
+Immorality and Profaneness of the English stage," in which he boldly
+attacked the licentiousness of the English comedy. Perhaps Collier's
+zeal carried him a little too far; but he had offended the wits, and
+especially the dramatic poets, on all sides, and he was exposed to
+attacks from all quarters, in which Dryden himself took an active part.
+Collier showed himself fully capable of dealing with his opponents, and
+the controversy had the effect of calling attention to the immoralities
+of the stage, and certainly contributed much towards reforming them.
+They were become much less frequent and less gross at the opening of
+the eighteenth century.
+
+Towards the end of the reign of king Charles II., the stage was more
+largely employed as a political agent, and under his successor, James
+II., the Puritans and the Whigs were constantly held up to scorn. After
+the Revolution, the tables were turned, and the satire of the stage
+was often aimed at Tories and Non-jurors. "The Non-juror," by Colley
+Cibber, which appeared in 1717, at a very opportune moment, gained for
+its author a pension and the office of poet-laureate. It was founded
+upon the "Tartuffe" of Molière, for the English comedy writers borrowed
+much from the foreign stage. A disguised priest, who passes under the
+name of Dr. Wolf, and who had been engaged in the rebellion of 1715,
+has insinuated himself into the household of a gentleman of fortune, of
+not very strong judgment, Sir John Woodvil, whom, under the title of a
+Non-juror, he has not only induced to become an abettor of rebels, but
+he has persuaded him to disinherit his son, and he labours to seduce
+his wife and to deceive his daughter. His baseness is exposed only just
+soon enough to defeat his designs. Such a production as this could
+not fail to give great offence to all the Jacobite party, of whatever
+shade, who were then rather numerous in London, and Cibber assures us
+that his reward was a considerable amount of adverse criticism in every
+quarter where the Tory influence reached. His comedies were inferior in
+brilliance of dialogue to those of the previous age, but the plots were
+well imagined and conducted, and they are generally good acting plays.
+
+To Samuel Foote, born in 1722, we owe the last change in the form and
+character of English comedy. A man of infinite wit and humour, and
+possessed of extraordinary talent as a mimic, Foote made mimicry the
+principal instrument of his success on the stage. His plays are above
+all light and amusing; he reduced the old comedy of five acts to three
+acts, and his plots were usually simple, the dialogue full of wit and
+humour; but their peculiar characteristic was their open boldness of
+personal satire. It is entirely a comedy of his own. He sought to
+direct his wit against all the vices of society, but this he did by
+holding up to ridicule and scorn the individuals who had in some way
+or other made themselves notorious by the practice of them. All his
+principal characters were real characters, who were more or less known
+to the public, and who were so perfectly mimicked on the stage in
+their dress, gait, and speech, that it was impossible to mistake them.
+Thus, in "The Devil upon Two Sticks," which is a general satire on the
+low condition to which the practice of medicine had then fallen, the
+personages introduced in it all represented quacks well known about the
+town. "The Maid of Bath" dragged upon the stage scandals which were
+then the talk of Bath society. The nabob of the comedy which bears
+that title, had also his model in real life. "The Bankrupt" may be
+considered as a general satire on the baseness of the newspaper press
+of that day, which was made the means of propagating private scandals
+and libellous accusations in order to extort money, yet the characters
+introduced are said to have been all portraits from the life; and the
+same statement is made with regard to the comedy of "The Author."
+
+It is evident that a drama of this inquisitorial character is a
+dangerous thing, and that it could hardly be allowed to exist where the
+rights of society are properly defined; and we are not surprised if
+Foote provoked a host of bitter enemies. But in some cases the author
+met with punishment of a heavier and more substantial description.
+One of the individuals introduced into "The Maid of Bath," extorted
+damages to the amount of £3,000. One of the persons who figured in
+"The Author," obtained an order from the lord chamberlain for putting
+a stop to the performance after it had had a short run; and the
+consequences of "The Trip to Calais," were still more disastrous.
+It is well known that the character of lady Kitty Crocodile in that
+play was a broad caricature on the notorious duchess of Kingston.
+Through the treachery of some of the people employed by Foote, the
+duchess obtained information of the nature of this play before it was
+ready for representation, and she had sufficient influence to obtain
+the lord chamberlain's prohibition for bringing it on the stage. Nor
+was this all, for as the play was printed, if not acted,--and it was
+subsequently brought out in a modified form, with omission of the part
+of lady Kitty Crocodile, though the characters of some of her agents
+were still retained,--infamous charges were got up against Foote, in
+retaliation, which caused him so much trouble and grief, that they are
+said to have shortened his days.
+
+The drama which Samuel Foote had invented did not outlive him; its
+caricature was itself transferred to the caricature of the print-shop.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+  CARICATURE IN HOLLAND.--ROMAIN DE HOOGHE.--THE ENGLISH
+     REVOLUTION.--CARICATURES ON LOUIS XIV. AND JAMES II.--DR.
+     SACHEVERELL.--CARICATURE BROUGHT FROM HOLLAND TO ENGLAND.--ORIGIN
+     OF THE WORD "CARICATURE."--MISSISSIPPI AND THE SOUTH SEA; THE YEAR
+     OF BUBBLES.
+
+
+Modern political caricature, born, as we have seen, in France, may be
+considered to have had its cradle in Holland. The position of that
+country, and its greater degree of freedom, made it, in the seventeenth
+century, the general place of refuge to the political discontents of
+other lands, and especially to the French who fled from the tyranny of
+Louis XIV. It possessed at that time some of the most skilful artists
+and best engravers in Europe, and it became the central spot from which
+were launched a multitude of satirical prints against that monarch's
+policy, and against himself and his favourites and ministers. This was
+in a great measure the cause of the bitter hatred which Louis always
+displayed towards that country. He feared the caricatures of the Dutch
+more than their arms, and the pencil and graver of Romain de Hooghe
+were among the most effective weapons employed by William of Nassau.
+
+The marriage of William with Mary, daughter of the duke of York, in
+1677, naturally gave the Dutch a greater interest than they could
+have felt before in the domestic affairs of Great Britain, and a new
+stimulus to their zeal against Louis of France, or, which was the
+same thing, against arbitrary power and Popery, both of which had
+been rendered odious under his name. The accession of James II. to
+the throne of England, and his attempt to re-establish Popery, added
+religious as well as political fuel to these feelings, for everybody
+understood that James was acting under the protection of the king
+of France. The very year of king James's accession, in 1685, the
+caricature appeared which we have copied in our cut No. 186, and which,
+although the inscription is in English, appears to have been the work
+of a foreign artist. It was probably intended to represent Mary of
+Modena, the queen of James II., and her rather famous confessor, father
+Petre, the latter under the character of the wolf among the sheep. Its
+aim is sufficiently evident to need no explanation. At the top, in the
+original, are the Latin words, _Converte Angliam_, "convert England,"
+and beneath, in English, "It is a foolish sheep that makes the wolf her
+confessor."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 186. A Dangerous Confessor._]
+
+The period during which the Dutch school of caricature flourished,
+extended through the reign of Louis XIV., and into the regency in
+France, and two great events, the revolution of 1688 in England, and
+the wild money speculations of the year 1720, exercised especially the
+pencils of its caricaturists. The first of these events belongs almost
+entirely to Romain de Hooghe. Very little is known of the personal
+history of this remarkable artist, but he is believed to have been born
+towards the middle of the seventeenth century, and to have died in
+the earlier years of the eighteenth century. The older French writers
+on art, who were prejudiced against Romain de Hooghe for his bitter
+hostility to Louis XIV., inform us that in his youth he employed his
+graver on obscene subjects, and led a life so openly licentious, that
+he was banished from his native town of Amsterdam, and went to live
+at Haerlem. He gained celebrity by the series of plates, executed in
+1672, which represented the horrible atrocities committed in Holland by
+the French troops, and which raised against Louis XIV. the indignation
+of all Europe. It is said that the prince of Orange (William III.
+of England), appreciating the value of his satire as a political
+weapon, secured it in his own interests by liberally patronising the
+caricaturist; and we owe to Romain de Hooghe a succession of large
+prints in which the king of France, his _protégé_ James II., and the
+adherents of the latter, are covered with ridicule. One, published
+in 1688, and entitled "Les Monarches Tombants," commemorates the
+flight of the royal family from England. Another, which appeared at
+the same date, is entitled, in French, "Arlequin fur l'hypogryphe à
+la croisade Loioliste," and in Dutch, "Armeé van de Heylige League
+voor der Jesuiten Monarchy" (_i.e._ "the army of the holy league for
+establishing the monarchy of the Jesuits"). Louis XIV. and James II.
+were represented under the characters of Arlequin and Panurge, who are
+seated on the animal here called a "hypogryphe," but which is really
+a wild ass. The two kings have their heads joined together under one
+Jesuit's cap. Other figures, forming part of this army of Jesuitism,
+are distributed over the field, the most grotesque of which is that
+given in our cut No. 187. Two personages introduced in some ridiculous
+position or other, in most of these caricatures, are father Petre, the
+Jesuit, and the infant prince of Wales, afterwards the old Pretender.
+It was pretended that this infant was in fact the child of a miller,
+secretly introduced into the queen's bed concealed in a warming-pan;
+and that this ingenious plot was contrived by father Petre. Hence the
+boy was popularly called Peterkin, or Perkin, _i.e._ little Peter,
+which was the name given afterwards to the Pretender in songs and
+satires at the time of his rebellion; and in the prints a windmill
+was usually given to the child as a sign of its father's trade. In
+the group represented in our cut, father Petre, with the child in his
+arms, is seated on a rather singular steed, a lobster. The young prince
+here carries the windmill on his head. On the lobster's back, behind
+the Jesuit, are carried the papal crown, surmounted by a fleur-de-lis,
+with a bundle of relics, indulgences, &c., and it has seized in one
+claw the English church service book, and in the other the book of the
+laws of England. In the Dutch description of this print, the child is
+called "the new born Antichrist." Another of Romain de Hooghe's prints,
+entitled "Panurge secondé par Arlequin Deodaat à la croisade d'Irlande,
+1689," is a satire on king James's expedition to Ireland, which led to
+the memorable battle of the Boyne. James and his friends are proceeding
+to the place of embarkation, and, as represented in our cut No. 188,
+father Petre marches in front, carrying the infant prince in his arms.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 187. A Jesuit well Mounted._]
+
+The drawing of Romain de Hooghe is not always correct, especially in
+his larger subjects, which perhaps may be ascribed to his hasty and
+careless manner of working; but he displays great skill in grouping
+his figures, and great power in investing them with a large amount of
+satirical humour. Most of the other caricatures of the time are poor
+both in design and execution. Such is the case with a vulgar satirical
+print which was published in France in the autumn of 1690, on the
+arrival of a false rumour that king William had been killed in Ireland.
+In the field of the picture the corpse of the king is followed by a
+procession consisting of his queen and the principal supporters of
+his cause. The lower corner on the left hand is occupied by a view of
+the interior of the infernal regions, and king William introduced in
+the place allotted to him among the flames. In different parts of the
+picture there are several inscriptions, all breathing a spirit of very
+insolent exultation. One of them is the--
+
+                       _Billet d'Enterrement._
+
+     Vous estes priez d'assister au convoy, service, et enterrement
+     du tres haut, tres grand, et tres infame Prince infernal, grand
+     stadouter, des Armés diaboliques de la ligue d'Ausbourg, et
+     insigne usurpateur des Royaumes d'Angleterre, d'Eccosse, et
+     d'Irlande, décédé dans l'Irlande au mois d'Aoust 1690, qui se
+     fera le dit mois, dans sa paroisse infernale, ou assisteront Dame
+     Proserpine, Radamonte, et les Ligueurs.
+
+     Les Dames lui diront s'il leur plaist des injures.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 188. Off to Ireland._]
+
+The prints executed in England at this time were, if possible, worse
+than those published in France. Almost the only contemporary caricature
+on the downfall of the Stuarts that I know, is an ill-executed print,
+published immediately after the accession of William III., under the
+title, "England's Memorial of its wonderful deliverance from French
+Tyranny and Popish Oppression." The middle of the picture is occupied
+by "the royal orange tree," which flourishes in spite of all the
+attempts to destroy it. At the upper corner, on the left side, is a
+representation of the French king's "council," consisting of an equal
+number of Jesuits and devils, seated alternately at a round table.
+
+The circumstance that the titles and inscriptions of nearly all
+these caricatures are in Dutch, seems to show that their influence
+was intended to be exercised in Holland rather than elsewhere. In
+two or three only of them these descriptions were accompanied with
+translations in English or French; and after a time, copies of them
+began to be made in England, accompanied with English descriptions. A
+curious example of this is given in the fourth volume of the "Poems
+on State Affairs," printed in 1707. In the preface to this volume the
+editor takes occasion to inform the reader--"That having procur'd
+from beyond sea a Collection of Satyrical Prints done in Holland and
+elsewhere, by Rom. de Hoog, and other the best masters, relating to
+the French King and his Adherents, since he unjustly begun this war,
+I have persuaded the Bookseller to be at the expense of ingraving
+several of them; to each of which I have given the Explanation in
+English verse, they being in Dutch, French, or Latin in the originals."
+Copies of seven of these caricatures are accordingly given at the end
+of the volume, which are certainly inferior in every respect to those
+of the best period of Romain de Hooghe. One of them commemorates the
+eclipse of the sun on the 12th of May, 1706. The sun, as it might be
+conjectured, is Louis XIV., eclipsed by queen Anne, whose face occupies
+the place of the moon. In the foreground of the picture, just under the
+eclipse, the queen is seated on her throne under a canopy, surrounded
+by her counsellors and generals. With her left arm she holds down the
+Gallic cock, while with the other hand she clips one of its wings
+(see our cut No. 189). In the upper corner on the right, is inserted
+a picture of the battle of Ramillies, and in the lower corner on the
+left, a sea-fight under admiral Leake, both victories gained in that
+year. Another of these copies of foreign prints is given in our cut
+No. 190. We are told that "these figures represent a French trumpet and
+drum, sent by Louis le Grand to enquire news of several citys lost by
+the Mighty Monarch last campaign." The trumpeter holds in his hand a
+list of lost towns, and another is pinned to the breast of the drummer;
+the former list is headed by the names of "Gaunt, Brussels, Antwerp,
+Bruges," the latter by "Barcelona."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 189. Clipping the Cock's Wings._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 190. Trumpet and Drum._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 191. The Three False Brethren._]
+
+The first remarkable outburst of caricatures in England was caused by
+the proceedings against the notorious Dr. Sacheverell in 1710. It is
+somewhat curious that Sacheverell's partisans speak of caricatures
+as things brought recently from Holland, and new in England, and
+ascribe the use of them as peculiar to the Whig party. The writer of
+a pamphlet, entitled "The Picture of Malice, or a true Account of Dr.
+Sacheverell's Enemies, and their behaviour with regard to him," informs
+us that "the chief means by which all the lower order of that sort of
+men call'd Whigs, shall ever be found to act for the ruin of a potent
+adversary, are the following three--by the Print, the Canto or Doggrell
+Poem, and by the Libell, grave, calm, and cool, as the author of the
+'True Answer' describes it. These are not all employed at the same
+time, any more than the ban and arierban of a kingdom is raised, unless
+to make sure work, or in cases of great exigency and imminent danger."
+"The Print," he goes on to say, "is originally a Dutch talisman
+(bequeathed to the ancient Batavians by a certain Chinese necromancer
+and painter), with a virtue far exceeding that of the Palladium, not
+only of guarding their cities and provinces, but also of annoying their
+enemies, and preserving a due balance amongst the neighbouring powers
+around." This writer warms up so much in his indignation against this
+new weapon of the Whigs, that he breaks out in blank verse to tell
+us how even the mysterious power of the magician did not destroy its
+victims--
+
+          _Swifter than heretofore the Print effac'd
+          The pomp of mightiest monarchs, and dethron'd
+          The dread idea of royal majesty;
+          Dwindling the prince below the pigmy size.
+          Witness the once Great Louis in youthful pride,
+          And Charles of happy days, who both confess'd
+          The magic power of mezzotinto[101] shade,
+          And form grotesque, in manifestoes loud
+          Denouncing death to boor and burgomaster.
+          Witness, ye sacred popes with triple crown,
+          Who likewise victims fell to hideous print,
+          Spurn'd by the populace who whilome lay
+          Prostrate, and ev'n adored before your thrones._
+
+ [101] The method of engraving called mezzotinto was very generally
+       adopted in England in the earlier part of the last century for
+       prints and caricatures. It was continued to rather a late period
+       by the publishing house of Carrington Bowles.
+
+We are then told that "this, if not the first, has yet been the chief
+machine which his enemies have employ'd against the doctor; they have
+exposed him in the same piece with the pope and the devil, and who now
+could imagine that any simple priest should be able to stand before a
+power which had levelled popes and monarchs?" At least one copy of the
+caricature here alluded to is preserved, although a great rarity, and
+it is represented in our cut No. 191. Two of the party remained long
+associated together in the popular outcry, and as the name of the third
+fell into contempt and oblivion, the doctor's place in this association
+was taken by a new cause of alarm, the Pretender, the child whom we
+have just seen so joyously brandishing his windmill. It is evident,
+however, that this caricature greatly exasperated Sacheverell and the
+party which supported him.
+
+It will have been noticed that the writer just quoted, in using the
+term "print," ignores altogether that of caricature, which, however,
+was about this time beginning to come into use, although it is not
+found in the dictionaries, I believe, until the appearance of that of
+Dr. Johnson, in 1755. _Caricature_ is, of course, an Italian word,
+derived from the verb _caricare_, to charge or load; and therefore,
+it means a picture which is charged, or exaggerated (the old French
+dictionaries say, "_c'est la même chose que charge en peinture_").
+The word appears not to have come into use in Italy until the latter
+half of the seventeenth century, and the earliest instance I know of
+its employment by an English writer is that quoted by Johnson from
+the "Christian Morals" of Sir Thomas Brown, who died in 1682, but it
+was one of his latest writings, and was not printed till long after
+his death:--"Expose not thyself by four-footed manners unto monstrous
+draughts (_i.e._ drawings) and _caricatura_ representations." This very
+quaint writer, who had passed some time in Italy, evidently uses it as
+an exotic word. We find it next employed by the writer of the Essay No.
+537, of the "Spectator," who, speaking of the way in which different
+people were led by feelings of jealousy and prejudice to detract from
+the characters of others, goes on to say, "From all these hands we
+have such draughts of mankind as are represented in those burlesque
+pictures which the Italians call _caricaturas_, where the art consists
+in preserving, amidst distorted proportions and aggravated features,
+some distinguishing likeness of the person, but in such a manner as to
+transform the most agreeable beauty into the most odious monster." The
+word was not fully established in our language in its English form of
+_caricature_ until late in the last century.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 192. Atlas._]
+
+The subject of agitation which produced a greater number of caricatures
+than any previous event was the wild financial scheme introduced into
+France by the Scottish adventurer, Law, and imitated in England in
+the great South Sea Bubble. It would be impossible here, within our
+necessary limits, to attempt to trace the history of these bubbles,
+which all burst in the course of the year 1720; and, in fact, it is a
+history of which few are ignorant. On this, as on former occasions, the
+great mass of the caricatures, especially those against the Mississippi
+scheme, were executed in Holland, but they are much inferior to the
+works of Romain de Hooghe. In fact, so great was the demand for these
+caricatures, that the publishers, in their eagerness for gain, not
+only deluged the world with plates by artists of no talent, which were
+without point or interest, but they took old plates of any subject
+in which there was a multitude of figures, put new titles to them,
+and published them as satires on the Mississippi scheme; for people
+were ready to take anything which represented a crowd as a satire on
+the eagerness with which Frenchmen rushed into the share-market.
+One or two curious instances of this deception might be pointed out.
+Thus, an old picture, evidently intended to represent the meeting
+of a king and a nobleman, in the court of a palace, surrounded by
+a crowd of courtiers, in the costume probably of the time of Henri
+IV., was republished as a picture of people crowding to the grand
+scene of stock-jobbing in Paris, the Rue Quinquenpoix; and the old
+picture of the battle between Carnival and Lent came out again, a
+little re-touched, under the Dutch title, "Stryd tuszen de smullende
+Bubbel-Heeren en de aanstaande Armoede," _i.e._, "The battle between
+the good-living bubble-lords and approaching poverty."
+
+Besides being issued singly, a considerable number of these prints
+were collected and published in a volume, which is still met with not
+unfrequently, under the title "Het groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid,"
+"The great picture of folly." One of this set of prints represents a
+multitude of persons, of all ages and sexes, acting the part of Atlas
+in supporting on their backs globes, which, though made only of paper,
+had become, through the agitation of the stock exchange, heavier than
+gold. Law himself (see our cut No. 192) stands foremost, and requires
+the assistance of Hercules to support his enormous burthen. In the
+French verses accompanying this print, the writer says--
+
+          _Ami Atlas, on voit (sans conter vous et moi)
+          Faire l'Atlas partout des divers personnages,
+          Riche, pauvre, homme, femme, et sot et quasi-sage,
+          Valet, et paisan, le gueux s'eleve en roi._
+
+Another of these caricatures represents Law in the character of Don
+Quixote, riding upon Sancho's donkey. He is hastening to his Dulcinia,
+who waits for him in the _actie huis_ (action or share-house), towards
+which people are dragging the animal on which he is seated. The
+devil (see our cut No. 193), sits behind Law, and holds up the ass's
+tail, while a shower of paper, in the form of shares in companies,
+is scattered around, and scrambled for by the eager _actionnaires_.
+In front, the animal is laden with the money into which this paper
+has been turned,--the box bears the inscription, "_Bombarioos
+Geldkist_, 1720," "Bombario's (Law's) gold chest;" and the flag bears
+the inscription, "_Ik koom, ik koom, Dulcinia_," "I come, I come,
+Dulcinia." The best, perhaps, of this lot of caricatures is a large
+engraving by the well-known Picart, inserted among the Dutch collection
+with explanations in Dutch and French, and which was re-engraved in
+London, with English descriptions and applications. It is a general
+satire on the madness of the memorable year 1720. Folly appears as
+the charioteer of Fortune, whose car is drawn by the representatives
+of the numerous companies which had sprung up at this time, most of
+which appear to be more or less unsound. Many of these agents have the
+tails of foxes, "to show their policy and cunning," as the explanation
+informs us. The devil is seen in the clouds above, blowing bubbles of
+soap, which mix with the paper which Fortune is distributing to the
+crowd. The picture is crowded with figures, scattered in groups, who
+are employed in a variety of occupations connected with the great folly
+of the day, one of which, as an example, is given in our cut No. 194.
+It is a transfer of stock, made through the medium of a Jew broker.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 193. The Don Quixote of Finance._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 194. Transfer of Stock._]
+
+It was in this bubble agitation that the English school of caricature
+began, and a few specimens are preserved, though others which are
+advertised in the newspapers of that day, seem to be entirely lost. In
+fact, a very considerable portion of the caricature literature of a
+period so comparatively recent as the first half of the last century,
+appears to have perished; for the interest of these prints was in
+general so entirely temporary that few people took any care to preserve
+them, and few of them were very attractive as pictures. As yet, indeed,
+these English prints are but poor imitations of the works of Picart
+and other continental artists. A pair of English prints, entitled
+"The Bubbler's Mirrour," represents, one a head joyful at the rise in
+the value of stock, the other, a similar head sorrowful at its fall,
+surrounded in each case with lists of companies and epigrams upon them.
+They are engraved in mezzotinto, a style of art supposed to have been
+invented in England--its invention was ascribed to Prince Rupert--and
+at this time very popular. In the imprint of these last-mentioned
+plates, we are informed that they were "Printed for Carington Bowles,
+next y^e Chapter House, in St. Paul's Ch. Yard, London," a well-known
+name in former years, and even now one quite familiar to collectors,
+of this class of prints, especially. Of Carington Bowles we shall have
+more to say in the next chapter. With him begins the long list of
+celebrated English printsellers.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  ENGLISH CARICATURE IN THE AGE OF GEORGE II.--ENGLISH
+     PRINTSELLERS.--ARTISTS EMPLOYED BY THEM.--SIR ROBERT
+     WALPOLE'S LONG MINISTRY.--THE WAR WITH FRANCE.--THE NEWCASTLE
+     ADMINISTRATION.--OPERA INTRIGUES.--ACCESSION OF GEORGE III., AND
+     LORD BUTE IN POWER.
+
+
+With the accession of George II., the taste for political caricatures
+increased greatly, and they had become almost a necessity of social
+life. At this time, too, a distinct English school of political
+caricature had been established, and the print-sellers became more
+numerous, and took a higher position in the commerce of literature
+and art. Among the earliest of these printsellers the name of Bowles
+stands especially conspicuous. Hogarth's burlesque on the Beggar's
+Opera, published in 1728, was "printed for John Bowles, at the Black
+Horse, in Cornhill." Some copies of "King Henry the Eighth and Anna
+Bullen," engraved by the same great artist in the following year,
+bear the imprint of John Bowles; and others were "printed for Robert
+Wilkinson, Cornhill, Carington Bowles, in St. Paul's Church Yard, and
+R. Sayer, in Fleet Street." Hogarth's "Humours of Southwark Fair" was
+also published, in 1733, by Carington and John Bowles. This Carington
+Bowles was, perhaps, dead in 1755, for in that year the caricature
+entitled "British Resentment" bears the imprint, "Printed for T.
+Bowles, in St. Paul's Church Yard, and Jno. Bowles & Son, in Cornhill."
+John Bowles appears to have been the brother of the first Carington
+Bowles in St. Paul's Churchyard, and a son named Carington succeeded to
+that business, which, under him and his son Carington, and then as the
+establishment of Bowles and Carver, has continued to exist within the
+memory of the present generation. Another very celebrated printshop was
+established in Fleet Street by Thomas Overton, probably as far back
+as the close of the seventeenth century. On his death his business was
+purchased by Robert Sayers, a mezzotinto engraver of merit, whose name
+appears as joint publisher of a print by Hogarth in 1729. Overton is
+said to have been a personal friend of Hogarth. Sayers was succeeded in
+the business by his pupil in mezzotinto engraving, named Laurie, from
+whom it descended to his son, Robert H. Laurie, known in city politics,
+and it became subsequently the firm of Laurie and Whittle. This
+business still exists at 53, Fleet Street, the oldest establishment
+in London for the publication of maps and prints. During the reign of
+the second George, the number of publishers of caricatures increased
+considerably, and among others, we meet with the names of J. Smith, "at
+Hogarth's Head, Cheapside," attached to a caricature published August,
+1756; Edwards and Darly, "at the Golden Acorn, facing Hungerford,
+Strand," who also published caricatures during the years 1756-7;
+caricatures and burlesque prints were published by G. Bickham, May's
+Buildings, Covent Garden, and one, directed against the employment of
+foreign troops, and entitled "A Nurse for the Hessians," is stated to
+have been "sold in May's Buildings, Covent Garden, where is 50 more;"
+"The Raree Show," published in 1762, was "sold at Sumpter's Political
+Print-shop, Fleet Street," and many caricatures on contemporary
+costume, especially on the Macaronis, about the year 1772, were
+"published by T. Bowen, opposite the Haymarket, Piccadilly." Sledge,
+"printseller, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden," is also met with about
+the middle of the last century. Among other burlesque prints, Bickham,
+of May's Buildings, issued a series of figures representing the various
+trades, made up of the different tools, &c., used by each. The house
+of Carington Bowles, in St. Paul's Churchyard, produced an immense
+number of caricatures, during the last century and the present, and of
+the most varied character, but they consisted more of comic scenes of
+society than of political subjects, and many of them were engraved in
+mezzotinto, and rather highly coloured. Among them were caricatures on
+the fashions and foibles of the day, amusing accidents and incidents,
+common occurrences of life, characters, &., and they are frequently
+aimed at lawyers and priests, and especially at monks and friars,
+for the anti-Catholic feeling was strong in the last century. J.
+Brotherton, at No. 132, New Bond Street, published many of Bunbury's
+caricatures; while the house of Laurie and Whittle gave employment
+especially to the Cruikshanks. But perhaps the most extensive publisher
+of caricatures of them all was S. W. Fores, who dwelt first at No. 3,
+Piccadilly, but afterwards established himself at No. 50, the corner
+of Sackville Street, where the name still remains. Fores seems to have
+been most fertile in ingenious expedients for the extension of his
+business. He formed a sort of library of caricatures and other prints,
+and charged for admission to look at them; and he afterwards adopted a
+system of lending them out in portfolios for evening parties, at which
+these portfolios of caricatures became a very fashionable amusement
+in the latter part of the last century. At times, some remarkable
+curiosity was employed to add to the attractions of his shop. Thus, on
+caricatures published in 1790, we find the statement that, "In Fores'
+Caricature Museum is the completest collection in the kingdom. Also
+_the head and hand of Count Struenzee_. Admittance, 1_s._" Caricatures
+against the French revolutionists, published in 1793, bear imprints
+stating that they were "published by S. W. Fores, No. 3, Piccadilly,
+where may be seen _a complete Model of the Guillotine_--admittance, one
+shilling." In some this model is said to be six feet high.
+
+Among the artists employed by the print-publishers of the age of
+George II., we still find a certain number of foreigners. Coypel, who
+caricatured the opera in the days of Farinelli, and pirated Hogarth,
+belonged to a distinguished family of French painters. Goupy, who
+also caricatured the _artistes_ of the opera (in 1727), and Boitard,
+who worked actively for Carington Bowles from 1750 to 1770, were also
+Frenchmen. Liotard, another caricaturist of the time of George II.,
+was a native of Geneva. The names of two others, Vandergucht and
+Vanderbank, proclaim them Dutchmen. Among the English caricaturists who
+worked for the house of Bowles, were George Bickham, the brother of
+the printseller, John Collet, and Robert Dighton, with others of less
+repute. R. Attwold, who published caricatures against admiral Byng in
+1750, was an imitator of Hogarth. Among the more obscure caricaturists
+of the latter part of the half-century, were MacArdell--whose print
+of "The Park Shower," representing the confusion raised among the
+fashionable company in the Mall in St. James's Park by a sudden fall
+of rain, is so well known--and Darley. Paul Sandby, who was patronised
+by the duke of Cumberland, executed caricatures upon Hogarth. Many of
+these artists of the earlier period of the English school of caricature
+appear to have been very ill paid--the first of the family of Bowles is
+said to have boasted that he bought many of the plates for little more
+than their value as metal. The growing taste for caricature had also
+brought forward a number of amateurs, among whom were the countess of
+Burlington, and general, afterwards marquis, Townshend. The former, who
+was the lady of that earl who built Burlington House, in Piccadilly,
+was the leader of one of the factions in the opera disputes at the
+close of the reign of George I., and is understood to have designed the
+well-known caricature upon Cuzzoni, Farinelli, and Heidegger, which was
+etched by Goupy, whom she patronised. It must not be forgotten that
+Bunbury himself, as well as Sayers, were amateurs; and among other
+amateurs I may name captain Minthull, captain Baillie, and John Nixon.
+The first of these published caricatures against the Macaronis (as the
+dandies of the earlier part of the reign of George III. were called),
+one of which, entitled "The Macaroni Dressing-Room," was especially
+popular.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 195. A Party of Mourners._]
+
+English political caricature came into its full activity with the
+ministry of Sir Robert Walpole, which, beginning in 1721, lasted
+through the long period of twenty years. In the previous period
+the Whigs were accused of having invented caricature, but now the
+Tories certainly took the utmost advantage of the invention, for,
+during several years, the greater number of the caricatures which
+were published were aimed against the Whig ministry. It is also a
+rather remarkable characteristic of society at this period, that the
+ladies took so great an interest in politics, that the caricatures
+were largely introduced upon fans, as well as upon other objects of
+an equally personal character. Moreover, the popular notion of what
+constituted a caricature was still so little fixed, that they were
+usually called _hieroglyphics_, a term, indeed, which was not ill
+applied, for they were so elaborate, and so filled with mystical
+allusions, that now it is by no means easy to understand or appreciate
+them. Towards the year 1739, there was a marked improvement in the
+political caricatures--they were better designed, and displayed more
+talent, but still they required rather long descriptions to render them
+intelligible. One of the most celebrated was produced by the motion in
+the House of Commons, Feb. 13, 1741, against the minister Walpole. It
+was entitled "The Motion," and was a Whig satire upon the opposition,
+who are represented as driving so hurriedly and inconsiderately to
+obtain places, that they are overthrown before they reach their object.
+The party of the opposition retaliated by a counter-caricature,
+entitled, "The Reason," which was in some respects a parody upon the
+other, to which it was inferior in point and spirit. At the same time
+appeared another caricature against the ministry, under the title of
+"The Motive." These provoked another, entitled, "A Consequence of the
+Motion;" which was followed the day after its publication by another
+caricature upon the opposition, entitled, "The Political Libertines;
+or, Motion upon Motion;" while the opponents of the government also
+brought out a caricature, entitled, "The Grounds," a violent and rather
+gross attack upon the Whigs. Among other caricatures published on this
+occasion, one of the best was entitled, "The Funeral of Faction,"
+and bears the date of March 26, 1741. Beneath it are the words,
+"Funerals performed by Squire S----s," alluding to Sandys, who was the
+motion-maker in the House of Commons, and who thus brought on his party
+a signal defeat. Among the chief mourners on this occasion are seen the
+opposition journals, _The Craftsman_, the creation of Bolingbroke and
+Pulteney, the still more scurrilous _Champion_, _The Daily Post_, _The
+London and Evening Post_, and _The Common Sense Journal_. This mournful
+group is reproduced in our cut No. 195.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 196. British Resentment._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 197. Britannia in a New Dress._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 198. Caught by a Bait._]
+
+From this time there was no falling off in the supply of caricatures,
+which, on the contrary, seemed to increase every year, until
+the activity of the pictorial satirists was roused anew by the
+hostilities with France in 1755, and the ministerial intrigues of
+the two following years. The war, accepted by the English government
+reluctantly, and ill prepared for, was the subject of much discontent,
+although at first hopes were given of great success. One of the
+caricatures, published in the middle of these early hopes, at a time
+when an English fleet lay before Louisbourg, in Canada, is entitled,
+"British Resentment, or the French fairly coop'd at Louisbourg,"
+and came from the pencil of the French artist Boitard. One of its
+groups, representing the courageous English sailor and the despairing
+Frenchman, is given in our cut No. 196, and may serve as an example
+of Boitard's style of drawing. It became now the fashion to print
+political caricatures, in a diminished form, on cards, and seventy-five
+of these were formed into a small volume, under the title of "A
+Political and Satirical History of the years 1756 and 1757. In a
+series of seventy-five humorous and entertaining Prints, containing
+all the most remarkable Transactions, Characters, and Caricaturas of
+those two memorable years.... London: printed for E. Morris, near St.
+Paul's." The imprints of the plates, which bear the dates of their
+several publications, inform us that they came from the well-known
+shop of "Darly and Edwards, at the Acorn, facing Hungerford, Strand."
+These caricatures begin with our foreign relations, and express the
+belief that the ministers were sacrificing English interests to French
+influence. In one of them (our cut No. 197), entitled, "England made
+odious, or the French Dressers," the minister, Newcastle, in the garb
+of a woman, and his colleague, Fox, have dressed Britannia in a new
+French robe, which does not fit her. She exclaims, "Let me have my own
+cloathes. I cannot stir my arms in these; besides, everybody laughs at
+me." Newcastle replies, rather imperiously, "Hussy, be quiet, you have
+no need to stir your arms--why, sure! what's here to do?" While Fox, in
+a more insinuating tone, offers her a fleur-de-lis, and says, "Here,
+madam, stick this in your bosom, next your heart." The two pictures
+which adorn the walls of the room represent an axe and a halter; and
+underneath we read the lines,--
+
+          _And shall the substitutes of power
+            Our genius thus bedeck?
+          Let them remember there's an hour
+            Of quittance--then, ware neck._
+
+In another print of this series, this last idea is illustrated more
+fully. It is aimed at the ministers, who were believed to be enriching
+themselves at the expense of the nation, and is entitled, "The Devil
+turned Bird-catcher." On one side, while Fox is greedily scrambling
+for the gold, the fiend has caught him in a halter suspended to the
+gallows; on the other side another demon is letting down the fatal
+axe on Newcastle, who is similarly employed. The latter (see our cut
+No. 198) is described as a "Noddy catching at the bait, while the
+bird-catcher lets drop an axe." This implement of execution is a
+perfect picture of a guillotine, long before it was so notoriously in
+use in France.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 199. British Idolatry._]
+
+The third example of these caricatures which I shall quote is entitled
+"The Idol," and has for its subject the extravagancies and personal
+jealousies connected with the Italian opera. The rivalry between
+Mingotti and Vanneschi was now making as much noise there as that of
+Cuzzoni and Faustina some years before. The former acted arbitrarily
+and capriciously, and could with difficulty be bound to sing a few
+times during the season for a high salary: it is said, £2,000 for the
+season. In the caricature to which I allude, this lady appears raised
+upon a stool, inscribed "£2,000 per annum," and is receiving the
+worship of her admirers. Immediately before her an ecclesiastic is seen
+on his knees, exclaiming, "Unto thee be praise now and for evermore!"
+In the background a lady appears, holding up her pug-dog, then the
+fashionable pet, and addressing the opera favourite, "'Tis only pug and
+you I love." Other men are on their knees behind the ecclesiastic, all
+persons of distinction; and last comes a nobleman and his lady, the
+former holding in his hand an order for £2,000, his subscription to the
+opera, and remarking, "We shall have but twelve songs for all this
+money." The lady replies, with an air of contempt, "Well, and enough
+too, for the paltry trifle." The idol, in return for all this homage,
+sings rather contemptuously--
+
+                    _Ra, ru, ra, rot ye,
+                    My name is Mingotti,
+                    If you worship me notti,
+                    You shall all go to potti._
+
+The closing years of the reign of George II., under the vigorous
+administration of the first William Pitt, witnessed a calm in the
+domestic politics of the country, which presented a strange contrast
+to the agitation of the previous period. Faction seemed to have hidden
+its head, and there was comparatively little employment for the
+caricaturist. But this calm lasted only a short time after that king's
+death, and the new reign was ushered in by indications of approaching
+political agitation of the most violent description, in which satirists
+who had hitherto contented themselves with other subjects were tempted
+to embark in the strife of politics. Among these was Hogarth, whose
+discomforts as a political caricaturist we shall have to describe in
+our next chapter.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 200. Fox on Boots._]
+
+Perhaps no name ever provoked a greater amount of caricature and
+satirical abuse than that of Lord Bute, who, through the favour of
+the Princess of Wales, ruled supreme at court during the first period
+of the reign of George III. Bute had taken into the ministry, as his
+confidential colleague, Fox--the Henry Fox who became subsequently
+the first Lord Holland, a man who had enriched himself enormously
+with the money of the nation, and these two appeared to be aiming at
+the establishment of arbitrary power in the place of constitutional
+government. Fox was usually represented in the caricatures with the
+head and tail of the animal represented by his name rather strongly
+developed; while Bute was drawn, as a very bad pun upon his name, in
+the garb of a Scotchman, wearing two large boots, or sometimes a single
+boot of still greater magnitude. In these caricatures Bute and Fox are
+generally coupled together. Thus, a little before the resignation of
+the duke of Newcastle in 1762, there appeared a caricature entitled
+"The State Nursery," in which the various members of the ministry, as
+it was then formed under Lord Bute's influence, are represented as
+engaged in childish games. Fox, as the whipper-in of parliamentary
+majorities, is riding, armed with his whip, on Bute's shoulders (see
+our cut No. 200), while the duke of Newcastle performs the more menial
+service of rocking the cradle. In the rhymes which accompany this
+caricature, the first of these groups is described as follows (Fox was
+commonly spoken of in satire by the title of Volpone)--
+
+                  _First you see old sly Volpone-y,
+                  Riding on the shoulders brawny
+                  Of the muckle favourite Sawny;
+                            Doodle, doodle, doo._
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 201. Fanaticism in another Shape._]
+
+The number of caricatures published at this period was very great, and
+they were almost all aimed in one direction, against Bute and Fox,
+the Princess of Wales, and the government they directed. Caricature,
+at this time, ran into the least disguised licence, and the coarsest
+allusions were made to the supposed secret intercourse between the
+minister and the Princess of Wales, of which perhaps the most harmless
+was the addition of a petticoat to the boot, as a symbol of the
+influence under which the country was governed. In mock processions
+and ceremonies a Scotchman was generally introduced carrying the
+standard of the boot and petticoat. Lord Bute, frightened at the amount
+of odium which was thus heaped upon him, fought to stem the torrent
+by employing satirists to defend the government, and it is hardly
+necessary to state that among these mercenary auxiliaries was the great
+Hogarth himself, who accepted a pension, and published his caricature
+entitled, "The Times, Nov. 1," in the month of September, 1762. Hogarth
+did not excel in political caricature, and there was little in this
+print to distinguish it above the ordinary publications of a similar
+character. It was the moment of negotiations for Lord Bute's unpopular
+peace, and Hogarth's satire is directed against the foreign policy of
+the great ex-minister Pitt. It represents Europe in a state of general
+conflagration, and the flames already communicating to Great Britain.
+While Pitt is blowing the fire, Bute, with a party of soldiers and
+sailors zealously assisted by his favourite Scotchmen, is labouring
+to extinguish it. In this he is impeded by the interference of the
+duke of Newcastle, who brings a wheelbarrow full of _Monitors_ and
+_North Britons,_ the violent opposition journals, to feed the flames.
+The advocacy of Bute's mercenaries, whether literary or artistic, did
+little service to the government, for they only provoked increased
+activity among its opponents. Hogarth's caricature of "The Times," drew
+several answers, one of the best of which was a large print entitled
+"The Raree Show: a political contrast to the print of 'The Times,' by
+William Hogarth." It is the house of John Bull which is here on fire,
+and the Scots are dancing and exulting at it. In the centre of the
+picture appears a great actors' barn, from an upper window of which
+Fox thrusts out his head and points to the sign, representing Æneas
+and Dido entering the cave together, as the performance which was
+acting within. It is an allusion to the scandal in general circulation
+relating to Bute and the princess, who, of course, were the Æneas and
+Dido of the piece, and appear in those characters on the scaffold in
+front, with two of Bute's mercenary writers, Smollett, who edited the
+_Briton_, and Murphy, who wrote in the _Auditor_, one blowing the
+trumpet and the other beating the drum. Among the different groups
+which fill the picture, one, behind the actors' barn (see our cut No.
+201), is evidently intended for a satire on the spirit of religious
+fanaticism which was at this time spreading through the country.
+An open-air preacher, mounted on a stool, is addressing a not very
+intellectual-looking audience, while his inspiration is conveyed to him
+in a rather vulgar manner by the spirit, not of good, but of evil.
+
+The violence of this political warfare at length drove Lord Bute from
+at least ostensible power. He resigned on the 6th of April, 1763. One
+of the popular favourites at this time was the duke of Cumberland, the
+hero of Culloden, who was regarded as the leader of the opposition
+in the House of Lords. People now believed that it was the duke of
+Cumberland who had overthrown "the boot," and his popularity increased
+on a sudden. The triumph was commemorated in several caricatures. One
+of these is entitled, "The Jack-Boot kick'd down, or English Will
+triumphant: a Dream." The duke of Cumberland, whip in hand, has kicked
+the boot out of the house, exclaiming to a young man in tailor's
+garb who follows him, "Let me alone, Ned; I know how to deal with
+Scotsmen. Remember Culloden." The youth replies, "Kick hard, uncle,
+keep him down. Let me have a kick too." Nearly the same group, using
+similar language, is introduced into a caricature of the same date,
+entitled, "The Boot and the Blockhead." The youthful personage is no
+doubt intended for Cumberland's nephew, Edward, duke of York, who was
+a sailor, and was raised to the rank of rear-admiral, and who appears
+to have joined his uncle in his opposition to Lord Bute. The "boot," as
+seen in our cut No. 202, is encircled with Hogarth's celebrated "line
+of beauty," of which I shall have to speak more at length in the next
+chapter.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 202. The Overthrow of the Boot._]
+
+With the overthrow of Bute's ministry, we may consider the English
+school of caricature as completely formed and fully established. From
+this time the names of the caricaturists are better known, and we shall
+have to consider them in their individual characters. One of these,
+William Hogarth, had risen in fame far above the group of the ordinary
+men by whom he was surrounded.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXV.
+
+  HOGARTH.--HIS EARLY HISTORY.--HIS SETS OF PICTURES.--THE HARLOT'S
+     PROGRESS.--THE RAKE'S PROGRESS.--THE MARRIAGE A LA MODE.--HIS
+     OTHER PRINTS.--THE ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY, AND THE PERSECUTION ARISING
+     OUT OF IT.--HIS PATRONAGE BY LORD BUTE.--CARICATURE OF THE
+     TIMES.--ATTACKS TO WHICH HE WAS EXPOSED BY IT, AND WHICH HASTENED
+     HIS DEATH.
+
+
+On the 10th of November, 1697, William Hogarth was born in the city of
+London. His father, Richard Hogarth, was a London schoolmaster, who
+laboured to increase the income derived from his scholars by compiling
+books, but with no great success. From his childhood, as he tells us
+in his "Anecdotes" of himself, the young Hogarth displayed a taste for
+drawing, and especially for caricature; and, out of school, he appears
+to have been seldom without a pencil in his hand. The limited means
+of Richard Hogarth compelled him to take the boy from school at an
+early age, and bind him apprentice to a steel-plate engraver. But this
+occupation proved little to the taste of one whose ambition rose much
+higher; and when the term of his apprenticeship had expired, he applied
+himself to engraving on copper; and, setting up on his own account, did
+considerable amount of work, first in engraving arms and shop-bills,
+and afterwards in designing and engraving book illustrations, none
+of which displayed any superiority over the ordinary run of such
+productions. Towards 1728 Hogarth began to practice as a painter, and
+he subsequently attended the academy of sir James Thornhill, in Covent
+Garden, where he became acquainted with that painter's only daughter,
+Jane. The result was a clandestine marriage in 1730, which met the
+disapproval and provoked the anger of the lady's father. Subsequently,
+however, sir James became convinced of the genius of his son-in-law,
+and a reconciliation was effected through the medium of lady Thornhill.
+
+At this time Hogarth had already commenced that new style of design
+which was destined to raise him soon to a degree of fame as an artist
+few men have ever attained. In his "Anecdotes" of himself, the
+painter has given us an interesting account of the motives by which
+he was guided. "The reasons," he says, "which induced me to adopt
+this mode of designing were, that I thought both writers and painters
+had, in the historical style, totally overlooked that intermediate
+species of subjects which may be placed between the sublime and the
+grotesque. I therefore wished to compose pictures on canvas similar
+to representations on the stage; and further hope that they will be
+tried by the same test, and criticised by the same criterion. Let it
+be observed, that I mean to speak only of those scenes where the human
+species are actors, and these, I think, have not often been delineated
+in a way of which they are worthy and capable. In these compositions,
+those subjects that will both entertain and improve the mind bid fair
+to be of the greatest public utility, and must therefore be entitled to
+rank in the highest class. If the execution is difficult (though that
+is but a secondary merit), the author has claim to a higher degree of
+praise. If this be admitted, comedy, in painting as well as writing,
+ought to be allotted the first place, though _the sublime_, as it is
+called, has been opposed to it. Ocular demonstration will carry more
+conviction to the mind of a sensible man than all he would find in a
+thousand volumes, and this has been attempted in the prints I have
+composed. Let the decision be left to every unprejudiced eye; let the
+figures in either pictures or prints be considered as players dressed
+either for the sublime, for genteel comedy or farce, for high or low
+life. I have endeavoured to treat my subjects as a dramatic writer: my
+picture is my stage, and men and women my players, who, by means of
+certain actions and gestures, are to exhibit _a dumb-show_."
+
+The great series of pictures, indeed, which form the principal
+foundation of Hogarth's fame, are comedies rather than caricatures,
+and noble comedies they are. Like comedies, they are arranged, by a
+series of successive plates, in acts and scenes; and they represent
+contemporary society pictorially, just as it had been and was
+represented on the stage in English comedy. It is not by delicacy
+or excellence of drawing that Hogarth excels, for he often draws
+incorrectly; but it is by his extraordinary and minute delineation of
+character, and by his wonderful skill in telling a story thoroughly. In
+each of his plates we see a whole act of a play, in which nothing is
+lost, nothing glossed over, and, I may add, nothing exaggerated. The
+most trifling object introduced into the picture is made to have such
+an intimate relationship with the whole, that it seems as if it would
+be imperfect without it. The art of producing this effect was that in
+which Hogarth excelled. The first of Hogarth's great _suites_ of prints
+was "The Harlot's Progress," which was the work of the years 1733 and
+1734. It tells a story which was then common in London, and was acted
+more openly in the broad face of society than at the present day; and
+therefore the effect and consequent success were almost instantaneous.
+It had novelty, as well as excellence, to recommend it. This series
+of plates was followed, in 1735, by another, under the title of "The
+Rake's Progress." In the former, Hogarth depicted the shame and ruin
+which attended a life of prostitution; in this, he represented the
+similar consequences which a life of profligacy entailed on the other
+sex. In many respects it is superior to the "Harlot's Progress," and
+its details come more home to the feelings of people in general,
+because those of the prostitute's history are more veiled from the
+public gaze. The progress of the spendthrift in dissipation and riot,
+from the moment he becomes possessed of the fruits of paternal avarice,
+until his career ends in prison and madness, forms a marvellous drama,
+in which every incident presents itself, and every agent performs his
+part, so naturally, that it seems almost beyond the power of acting.
+Perhaps no one ever pictured despair with greater perfection than it
+is shown in the face and bearing of the unhappy hero of this history,
+in the last plate but one of the series, where, thrown into prison
+for debt, he receives from the manager of a theatre the announcement
+that the play which he had written in the hope of retrieving somewhat
+of his position--his last resource--has been refused. The returned
+manuscript and the manager's letter lie on the wretched table (cut No.
+203); while on the one side his wife reproaches him heartlessly with
+the deprivations and sufferings which he has brought upon her, and
+on the other the jailer is reminding him of the fact that the fees
+exacted for the slight indulgence he has obtained in prison are unpaid,
+and even the pot-boy refuses to deliver him his beer without first
+receiving his money. It is but a step further to Bedlam, which, in the
+next plate, closes his unblessed career.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 203. Despair._]
+
+Ten years almost from this time had passed away before Hogarth gave to
+the world his next grand series of what he called his "modern moral
+subjects." This was "The Marriage _à la mode_," which was published in
+six plates in 1745, and which fully sustained the reputation built upon
+the "Harlot's Progress" and the "Rake's Progress." Perhaps the best
+plate of the "Marriage _à la mode_," is the fourth--the music scene--in
+which one principal group of figures especially arrests the attention.
+It is represented in our cut No. 204. William Hazlitt has justly
+remarked upon it that, "the preposterous, overstrained admiration of
+the lady of quality; the sentimental, insipid, patient delight of the
+man with his hair in papers, and sipping his tea; the pert, smirking,
+conceited, half-distorted approbation of the figure next to him; the
+transition to the total insensibility of the round face in profile, and
+then to the wonder of the negro boy at the rapture of his mistress,
+form a perfect whole."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 204. Fashionable Society._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 205. An Old Maid and her Page._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 206. Loss and Gain._]
+
+In the interval between these three great monuments of his talent,
+Hogarth had published various other plates, belonging to much the same
+class of subjects, and displaying different degrees of excellence. His
+engraving of "Southwark Fair," published in 1733, which immediately
+preceded the "Harlot's Progress," may be regarded almost as an attempt
+to rival the fairs of Gallot. "The Midnight Modern Conversation"
+appeared in the interval between the "Harlot's Progress" and the
+"Rake's Progress;" and three years after the series last mentioned, in
+1738, the engraving, remarkable equally in design and execution, of
+the "Strolling Actresses in a Barn," and the four plates of "Morning,"
+"Noon," "Evening," and "Night," all full of choicest bits of humour.
+Such is the group of the old maid and her footboy in the first of this
+series (cut No. 205)--the former stiff and prudish, whose religion
+is evidently not that of charity; while the latter crawls after,
+shrinking at the same time under the effects of cold and hunger,
+which he sustains in consequence of the hard, niggardly temper of his
+mistress. Among the humorous events which fill the plate of "Noon," we
+may point to the disaster of the boy who has been sent to the baker's
+to fetch home the family dinner, and who, as represented in our cut No.
+206, has broken his pie-dish, and spilt its contents on the ground;
+and it is difficult to say which is expressed with most fidelity to
+nature--the terror and shame of the unfortunate lad, or the feeling
+of enjoyment in the face of the little girl who is feasting on the
+fragments of the scattered meal. In 1741 appeared the plate of "The
+Enraged Musician." During this period Hogarth appears to have been
+hesitating between two subjects for his third grand pictorial drama.
+Some unfinished sketches have been found, from which it would seem
+that, after depicting the miseries of a life of dissipation in either
+sex, he intended to represent the domestic happiness which resulted
+from a prudent and well-assorted marriage; but for some reason or
+other he abandoned this design, and gave the picture of wedlock in
+a less amiable light, in his "Marriage _à la mode_." The title was
+probably taken from that of Dryden's comedy. In 1750 appeared "The
+March to Finchley," in many respects one of Hogarth's best works. It
+is a striking exposure of the want of discipline, and the low _morale_
+of the English army under George II. Many amusing groups fill this
+picture, the scene of which is laid in Tottenham Court Road, along
+which the guards are supposed to be marching to encamp at Finchley, in
+consequence of rumours of the approach of the Pretender's army in the
+Rebellion of '45. The soldiers in front are moving on with some degree
+of order, but in the rear we see nothing but confusion, some reeling
+about under the effects of liquor, and confounded by the cries of women
+and children, camp-followers, ballad-singers, plunderers, and the like.
+One of the latter, as represented in our cut No. 207, is assisting a
+fallen soldier with an additional dose of liquor, while his pilfering
+propensities are betrayed by the hen screaming from his wallet, and by
+the chickens following distractedly the cries of their parent.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 207. A brave Soldier._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 208. A Painter's Amusements._]
+
+Hogarth presents a singular example of a satirist who suffered under
+the very punishment which he inflicted on others. He made many personal
+enemies in the course of his labours. He had begun his career with a
+well-known personal satire, entitled "The Man of Taste," which was
+a caricature on Pope, and the poet is said never to have forgiven
+it. Although the satire in his more celebrated works appears to us
+general, it told upon his contemporaries personally; for the figures
+which act their parts in them were so many portraits of individuals
+who moved in contemporary society, and who were known to everybody,
+and thus he provoked a host of enemies. It was like Foote's mimicry.
+He was to an extraordinary degree vain of his own talent, and jealous
+of that of others in the same profession; and he spoke in terms of
+undisguised contempt of almost all artists, past or present. Thus, the
+painter introduced into the print of "Beer Street," is said to be a
+caricature upon John Stephen Liotard, one of the artists mentioned in
+the last chapter. He thus provoked the hostility of the greatest part
+of his contemporaries in his own profession, and in the sequel had
+to support the full weight of their anger. When George II., who had
+more taste for soldiers than pictures, saw the painting of the "March
+to Finchley," instead of admiring it as a work of art, he is said to
+have expressed himself with anger at the insult which he believed
+was offered to his army; and Hogarth not only revenged himself by
+dedicating his print to the king of Prussia, by which it did become
+a satire on the British army, but he threw himself into the faction
+of the prince of Wales at Leicester House. The first occasion for the
+display of all these animosities was given in the year 1753, at the
+close of which he published his "Analysis of Beauty." Though far from
+being himself a successful painter of beauty, Hogarth undertook in
+this work to investigate its principles, which he referred to a waving
+or serpentine line, and this he termed the "line of beauty." In 1745
+Hogarth had published his own portrait as the frontispiece to a volume
+of his collected works, and in one corner of the plate he introduced a
+painter's palette, on which was this waving line, inscribed "The line
+of beauty." For several years the meaning of this remained either quite
+a mystery, or was only known to a few of Hogarth's acquaintances, until
+the appearance of the book just mentioned. Hogarth's manuscript was
+revised by his friend, Dr. Morell, the compiler of the "Thesaurus,"
+whose name became thus associated with the book. This work exposed
+its author to a host of violent attacks, and to unbounded ridicule,
+especially from the whole tribe of offended artists. A great number of
+caricatures upon Hogarth and his line of beauty appeared during the
+year 1754, which show the bitterness of the hatred he had provoked;
+and to hold still further their terror over his head, most of them
+are inscribed with the words, "To be continued." Among the artists
+who especially signalised themselves by their zeal against him, was
+Paul Sandby, to whom we owe some of the best of these anti-Hogarthian
+caricatures. One of these is entitled, "A New Dunciad, done with a view
+of [fixing] the fluctuating ideas of taste." In the principal group
+(which is given in our cut No. 208), Hogarth is represented playing
+with a _pantin_, or figure which was moved into activity by pulling a
+string. The string takes somewhat the form of the line of beauty, which
+is also drawn upon his palette. This figure is described underneath the
+picture as "a painter at the proper exercise of his taste." To his
+breast is attached a card (the knave of hearts), which is described
+by a very bad pun as "the fool of arts." On one side "his genius" is
+represented in the form of a black harlequin; while behind appears a
+rather jolly personage (intended, perhaps, for Dr. Morell), who, we
+are told, is one of his admirers. On the table are the foundations, or
+the remains, of "a house of cards." Near him is Hogarth's favourite
+dog, named Trump, which always accompanies him in these caricatures.
+Another caricature which appeared at this time represents Hogarth on
+the stage as a quack doctor, holding in his hand the line of beauty,
+and recommending its extraordinary qualities. This print is entitled
+"A Mountebank Painter demonstrating to his admirers and subscribers
+that crookedness is y^e most beautifull." Lord Bute, whose patronage at
+Leicester House Hogarth now enjoyed, is represented fiddling, and the
+black harlequin serves as "his puff." In the front a crowd of deformed
+and hump-backed people are pressing forwards (see our cut No. 209), and
+the line of beauty fits them all admirably.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 209. The Line of Beauty exemplified._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 210. Piracy Exposed._]
+
+Much as this famous line of beauty was ridiculed, Hogarth was not
+allowed to retain the small honour which seemed to arise from it
+undisputed. It was said that he had stolen the idea from an Italian
+writer named Lomazzo, Latinised into Lomatius, who had enounced it in
+a treatise on the Fine Arts, published in the sixteenth century.[102]
+In another caricature by Paul Sandby, with a vulgar title which I will
+not repeat, Hogarth is visited, in the midst of his glory, by the ghost
+of Lomazzo, carrying in one hand his treatise on the arts, and with his
+other holding up to view the line of beauty itself. In the inscriptions
+on the plate, the principal figure is described as "An author sinking
+under the weight of his saturnine analysis;" and, indeed, Hogarth's
+terror is broadly painted, while the volume of his analysis is resting
+heavily upon "a strong support bent in the line of beauty by the mighty
+load upon it." Beside Hogarth stands "his faithful pug," and behind
+him "a friend of the author endeavouring to prevent his sinking to his
+natural lowness." On the other side stands Dr. Morell, or, perhaps,
+Mr. Townley, the master of Merchant Taylors' School, who continued
+his service in preparing the book for the press after Morell's death,
+described as "the author's friend and corrector," astonished at the
+sight of the ghost. The ugly figure on the left hand of the picture
+is described as "Deformity weeping at the condition of her darling
+son," while the dog is "a greyhound bemoaning his friend's condition."
+This group is represented in our cut No. 210. The other caricatures
+which appeared at this time were two numerous to allow us to give a
+particular description of them. The artist is usually represented,
+under the influence of his line of beauty, painting ugly pictures from
+deformed models, or attempting historical pictures in a style bordering
+on caricature, or, on one occasion, as locked up in a mad-house, and
+allowed only to exercise his skill upon the bare walls. One of these
+caricatures is entitled, in allusion to the title of one of his most
+popular prints, "The Painter's March through Finchley, dedicated to the
+king of the gipsies, as an encourager of arts, &c." Hogarth appears in
+full flight through the village, closely pursued by women and children,
+and animals in great variety, and defended only by his favourite dog.
+
+ [102] It was translated into English by Richard Haydocke, under the
+       title of "The Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge, Buildinge,"
+       fol. 1598. This is one of the earliest works on art in the
+       English language.
+
+With the "Marriage _à la mode_," Hogarth may be considered as having
+reached his highest point of excellence. The set of "Industry and
+Idleness" tells a good and useful moral story, but displays inferior
+talent in design. "Beer Street" and "Gin Lane" disgust us by their
+vulgarity, and the "Four Stages of Cruelty" are equally repulsive
+to our feelings by the unveiled horrors of the scenes which are too
+coarsely depicted in them. In the four prints of the proceedings at
+an election, which are the last of his pictures of this description,
+published in 1754, Hogarth rises again, and approaches in some degree
+to his former elevation.
+
+In 1757, on the death of his brother-in-law, John Thornhill, the office
+of sergeant-painter of all his Majesty's works became vacant, and it
+was bestowed upon Hogarth, who, according to his own account, received
+from it an income of about £200 a-year. This appointment caused another
+display of hostility towards him, and his enemies called him jeeringly
+the king's chief panel painter. It was at this moment that a plan for
+the establishment of an academy of the fine arts was agitated, which,
+a few years later, came into existence under the title of the Royal
+Academy, and Hogarth proclaimed so loud an opposition to this project,
+that the old cry was raised anew, that he was jealous and envious of
+all his profession, and that he sought to stand alone as superior to
+them all. It was the signal for a new onslaught of caricatures upon
+himself and his line of beauty. Hitherto his assailants had been found
+chiefly among the artists, but the time was now approaching when he
+was destined to thrust himself into the midst of a political struggle,
+where the attacks of a new class of enemies carried with them a more
+bitter sting.
+
+George II. died on the 17th of October, 1760, and his grandson
+succeeded him to the throne as George III. It appears evident that
+before this time Hogarth had gained the favour of lord Bute, who,
+by his interest with the princess of Wales, was all-powerful in the
+household of the young prince. The painter had hitherto kept tolerably
+clear of politics in his prints, but now, unluckily for himself,
+he suddenly rushed into the arena of political caricature. It was
+generally said that Hogarth's object was, by displaying his zeal in the
+cause of his patron, lord Bute, to obtain an increase in his pension;
+and he acknowledges himself that his object was gain. "This," he says,
+"being a period when war abroad and contention at home engrossed every
+one's mind, prints were thrown into the background; and the stagnation
+rendered it necessary that I should do some _timed thing_ [the italics
+are Hogarth's] to recover my lost time, and stop a gap in my income."
+Accordingly he determined to attack the great minister, Pitt, who had
+then recently been compelled to resign his office, and had gone over to
+the opposition. It is said that John Wilkes, who had previously been
+Hogarth's friend, having been privately informed of his design, went
+to the painter, expostulated with him, and, as he continued obstinate,
+threatened him with retaliation. In September, 1762, appeared the print
+entitled "The Times, No. I," indicating that it was to be followed by
+a second caricature. The principal features of the picture are these:
+Europe is represented in flames, which are communicating to Great
+Britain, but lord Bute, with soldiers and sailors, and the assistance
+of Highlanders, is labouring to extinguish them, while Pitt is blowing
+the fire, and the duke of Newcastle brings a barrowful of _Monitors_
+and _North Britons_, the violent journals of the popular party, to
+feed it. There is much detail in the print which it is not necessary
+to describe. In fulfilment of his threat, Wilkes, in the number of
+the _North Briton_ published on the Saturday immediately following
+the publication of this print, attacked Hogarth with extraordinary
+bitterness, casting cruel reflections upon his domestic as well as his
+professional character. Hogarth, stung to the quick, retaliated by
+publishing the well-known caricature of Wilkes. Thereupon Churchill,
+the poet, Wilkes's friend, and formerly the friend of Hogarth also,
+published a bitter invective in verse against the painter, under the
+title of an "Epistle to William Hogarth." Hogarth retaliated again:
+"Having an old plate by me," he tells us, "with some parts ready,
+such as a background and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn
+so much work laid aside to some account, so patched up a print of
+Master Churchill in the character of a bear." The unfinished picture
+was intended to be a portrait of Hogarth himself; the canonical bear,
+which represented Churchill, held a pot of porter in one hand, and
+in the other a knotted club, each knot labelled "lie 1," "lie 2," &c.
+The painter, in his "Anecdotes," exults over the pecuniary profit he
+derived from the extensive sale of these two prints.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 211. An Independent Draughtsman._]
+
+The virulence of the caricaturists against Hogarth became on this
+occasion greater than ever. Parodies on his own works, sneers at his
+personal appearance and manners, reflections upon his character, were
+all embodied in prints which bore such names as Hogg-ass, Hoggart,
+O'Garth, &c. Our cut No. 211 represents one of the caricature portraits
+of the artist. It is entitled "Wm. Hogarth, Esq., drawn from the Life."
+Hogarth wears the thistle on his hat, as the sign of his dependence on
+lord Bute. At his breast hangs his palette, with the line of beauty
+inscribed upon it. He holds behind his back a roll of paper inscribed
+"Burlesque on L--d B--t." In his right hand he presents to view two
+pictures, "The Times," and the "Portrait of Wilkes." At the upper
+corner to the left is the figure of Bute, offering him in a bag a
+pension of "£300 per ann." Some of the allusions in this picture are
+now obscure, but they no doubt relate to anecdotes well known at the
+time. They receive some light from the following mock letters which are
+written at the foot of the plate:--
+
+     "_Copy of a Letter from Mr. Hog-garth to Lord Mucklemon, w^{th}
+     his Lordship's Answer._
+
+     "My Lord,--The enclosed is a design I intend to publish; you are
+     sensible it will not redound to your honour, as it will expose you
+     to all the world in your proper colours. You likewise know what
+     induced me to do this; but it is in y^r power to prevent it from
+     appearing in publick, which I would have you do immediately.
+
+                                                 "WILL^M HOG-GARTH.
+
+     "Mais^r Hog-garth,--By my saul, mon, I am sare troobled for what
+     I have done; I did na ken y^r muckle merit till noow; say na mair
+     aboot it; I'll mak au things easy to you, & gie you bock your
+     Pension.
+
+                                                 "SAWNEY MUCKLEMON."
+
+In an etching without a title, published at this time, and copied in
+our cut No. 212, the Hogarthian dog is represented barking from a
+cautious distance at the canonical bear, who appears to be meditating
+further mischief. Pugg stands upon his master's palette and the line of
+beauty, while Bruin rests upon the "Epistle to Wm. Hogarth," with the
+pen and ink by its side. On the left, behind the dog, is a large frame,
+with the words "Pannel Painting" inscribed upon it.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 212. Beauty and the Bear._]
+
+The article by Wilkes in the _North Briton_, and Churchill's metrical
+epistle, irritated Hogarth more than all the hostile caricatures, and
+were generally believed to have broken his heart. He died on the 26th
+of October, 1764, little more than a year after the appearance of the
+attack by Wilkes, and with the taunts of his political as well as his
+professional enemies still ringing in his ears.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  THE LESSER CARICATURISTS OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE III.--PAUL
+     SANDBY.--COLLET; THE DISASTER, AND FATHER PAUL IN HIS
+     CUPS.--JAMES SAYER; HIS CARICATURES IN SUPPORT OF PITT, AND
+     HIS REWARD.--CARLO KHAN'S TRIUMPH.--BUNBURY; HIS CARICATURES
+     ON HORSEMANSHIP.--WOODWARD; GENERAL COMPLAINT.--ROWLANDSON'S
+     INFLUENCE ON THE STYLE OF THOSE WHOSE DESIGNS HE ETCHED.--JOHN KAY
+     OF EDINBURGH: LOOKING A ROCK IN THE FACE.
+
+
+The school of caricature which had grown amid the political agitation
+of the reigns of the two first Georges, gave birth to a number of men
+of greater talent in the same branch of art, who carried it to its
+highest degree of perfection during that of George III. Among them are
+the three great names of Gillray, Rowlandson, and Cruikshank, and a
+few who, though second in rank to these, are still well remembered for
+the talent displayed in their works, or with the effect they produced
+on contemporaries. Among these the principal were Paul Sandby, John
+Collet, Sayer, Bunbury, and Woodward.
+
+Sandby has been spoken of in the last chapter. He was not by profession
+a caricaturist, but he was one of those rising artists who were
+offended by the sneering terms in which Hogarth spoke of all artists
+but himself, and he was foremost among those who turned their satire
+against him. Examples of his caricatures upon Hogarth have already been
+given, sufficient to show that they display skill in composition as
+well as a large amount of wit and humour. After his death, they were
+republished collectively, under the title, "Retrospective Art, from the
+Collection of the late Paul Sandby, Esq., R.A." Sandby was, indeed, one
+of the original members of the Royal Academy. He was an artist much
+admired in his time, but is now chiefly remembered as a topographical
+draughtsman. He was a native of Nottingham, where he was born in
+1725,[103] and he died on the 7th of November, 1809.[104]
+
+ [103] His death is usually placed, but erroneously, in 1732.
+
+ [104] Sandby etched landscapes on steel, and in aquatinta, the latter
+       by a method peculiarly his own, besides painting in oil and
+       opaque colours. But his fame rests _mainly_ on being the founder
+       of the English school of _water-colour painting_, since he was
+       the first to show the capability of that material to produce
+       finished pictures, and to lead the way to the perfection in
+       effect and colour to which that branch of art has since attained.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 213. A Disaster._]
+
+John Collet, who also has been mentioned in a previous chapter, was
+born in London in 1725, and died there in 1780. Collet is said to have
+been a pupil of Hogarth, and there is a large amount of Hogarthian
+character in all his designs. Few artists have been more industrious
+and produced a greater number of engravings. He worked chiefly for
+Carrington Bowles, in St. Paul's Churchyard, and for Robert Sayers,
+at 53, Fleet Street. His prints published by Bowles were engraved
+generally in mezzotinto, and highly coloured for sale; while those
+published by Sayers were usually line engravings, and sometimes
+remarkably well executed. Collet chose for his field of labour that
+to which Hogarth had given the title of comedy in art, but he did not
+possess Hogarth's power of delineating whole acts and scenes in one
+picture, and he contented himself with bits of detail and groups of
+characters only. His caricatures are rarely political--they are aimed
+at social manners and social vanities and weaknesses, and altogether
+they form a singularly curious picture of society during an important
+period of the last century. The first example I give (No. 213) is taken
+from a line engraving, published by Sayers in 1776. At this time the
+natural adornments of the person in both sexes had so far yielded to
+artificial ornament, that even women cut off their own hair in order to
+replace it by an ornamental _peruque_, supporting a head-dress, which
+varied from time to time in form and in extravagance. Collet has here
+introduced to us a lady who, encountering a sudden and violent wind,
+has lost all her upper coverings, and wig, cap, and hat are caught by
+her footman behind. The lady is evidently suffering under the feeling
+of shame; and hard by, a cottager and his wife, at their door, are
+laughing at her discomfiture. A bill fixed against a neighbouring wall
+announces "A Lecture upon Heads."
+
+At this time the "no-popery" feeling ran very high. Four years
+afterwards it broke out violently in the celebrated lord Gordon riots.
+It was this feeling which contributed greatly to the success of
+Sheridan's comedy of "The Duenna," brought out in 1775. Collet drew
+several pictures founded upon scenes in this play, one of which is
+given in our cut No. 214. It forms one of Carington Bowles's rather
+numerous series of prints from designs by Collet, and represents the
+well-known drinking scene in the convent, in the fifth scene of the
+third act of "The Duenna." The scene, it will be remembered, is "a room
+in the priory," and the excited monks are toasting, among other objects
+of devotion, the abbess of St. Ursuline and the blue-eyed nun of St.
+Catherine's. The "blue-eyed nun" is, perhaps, the lady seen through the
+window, and the patron saint of her convent is represented in one of
+the pictures on the wall. There is great spirit in this picture, which
+is entitled "Father Paul in his Cups, or the Private Devotions of a
+Convent." It is accompanied with the following lines:--
+
+          _See with these friars how religion thrives,
+          Who love good living better than good lives;
+          Paul, the superior father, rules the roast,
+          His god's the glass, the blue-eyed nun his toast.
+          Thus priests consume what fearful fools bestow,
+          And saints' donations make the bumpers flow.
+          The butler sleeps--the cellar door is free--
+          This is a modern cloister's piety._
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 214. Father Paul in his Cups._]
+
+From Collet to Sayer we rush into the heat--I may say into the
+bitterness--of politics, for James Sayer is known, with very trifling
+exceptions, as a political caricaturist. He was the son of a captain
+of a merchant ship at Great Yarmouth, but was himself put to the
+profession of an attorney. As, however, he was possessed of a moderate
+independence, and appears to have had no great taste for the law, he
+neglected his business, and, with considerable talent for satire and
+caricature, he threw himself into the political strife of the day.
+Sayer was a bad draughtsman, and his pictures are produced more by
+labour than by skill in drawing, but they possess a considerable
+amount of humour, and were sufficiently severe to obtain popularity
+at a time when this latter character excused worse drawing even than
+that of Sayer. He made the acquaintance and gained the favour of the
+younger William Pitt, when that statesman was aspiring to power, and
+he began his career as a caricaturist by attacking the Rockingham
+ministry in 1782--of course in the interest of Pitt. Sayer's earliest
+productions which are now known, are a series of caricature portraits
+of the Rockingham administration, that appear to have been given to
+the public in instalments, at the several dates of April 6, May 14,
+June 17, and July 3, 1782, and bear the name of C. Bretherton as
+publisher. He published his first veritable caricature on the occasion
+of the ministerial changes which followed the death of lord Rockingham,
+when lord Shelburne was placed at the head of the cabinet, and Fox
+and Burke retired, while Pitt became chancellor of the exchequer.
+This caricature, which bears the title of "Paradise Lost," and is, in
+fact, a parody upon Milton, represents the once happy pair, Fox and
+Burke, turned out of their paradise, the Treasury, the arch of the
+gate of which is ornamented with the heads of Shelburne, the prime
+minister, and Dunning and Barré, two of his staunch supporters, who
+were considered to be especially obnoxious to Fox and Burke. Between
+these three heads appear the faces of two mocking fiends, and groups
+of pistols, daggers, and swords. Beneath are inscribed the well-known
+lines of Milton--
+
+                      _To the eastern side
+          Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
+          Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
+          With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms!
+          Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon.
+          The world was all before them, where to choose
+          Their place of rest, and providence their guide.
+          They, arm in arm, with wand'ring steps, and slow,
+          Thro' Eden took their solitary way._
+
+Nothing can be more lugubrious than the air of the two friends,
+Fox and Burke, as they walk away, arm in arm, from the gate of the
+ministerial paradise. From this time Sayer, who adopted all Pitt's
+virulence towards Fox, made the latter a continual subject of his
+satire. Nor did this zeal pass unrewarded, for Pitt, in power, gave the
+caricaturist the not unlucrative offices of marshal of the court of
+exchequer, receiver of the sixpenny duties, and cursitor. Sayer was,
+in fact, Pitt's caricaturist, and was employed by him in attacking
+successively the coalition under Fox and North, Fox's India Bill, and
+even, at a later period, Warren Hastings on his trial.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 215. A Contrast._]
+
+I have already remarked that Sayer was almost exclusively a political
+caricaturist. The exceptions are a few prints on theatrical subjects,
+in which contemporary actors and actresses are caricatured, and a
+single subject from fashionable life. A copy of the latter forms our
+cut No. 215. It has no title in the original, but in a copy in my
+possession a contemporary has written on the margin in pencil that
+the lady is Miss Snow and the gentleman Mr. Bird, no doubt well-known
+personages in contemporary society. It was published on the 19th of
+July, 1783.
+
+One of Sayer's most successful caricatures, in regard to the effect
+it produced on the public, was that on Fox's India Bill, published on
+the 5th of September, 1783. It was entitled "Carlo Khan's Triumphal
+Entry into Leadenhall Street," Carlo Khan being personified by Fox,
+who is carried in triumph to the door of the India House on the back
+of an elephant, which presents the face of lord North. Burke, who had
+been the principal supporter of the bill in debate, appears in the
+character of the imperial trumpeter, and leads the elephant on its way.
+On a banner behind Carlo, the old inscription, "The Man of the People,"
+the title popularly given to Fox, is erased, and the two Greek words,
+ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΝ "king of kings," substituted in its place. From
+a chimney above, the bird of ill omen croaks forth the doom of the
+ambitious minister, who, it was pretended, aimed at making himself more
+powerful than the king himself; and on the side of the house just below
+we read the words--
+
+     _The night-crow cried foreboding luckless time._--Shakespeare.
+
+Henry William Bunbury belonged to a more aristocratic class in society
+than any of the preceding. He was the second son of sir William
+Bunbury, Bart., of Mildenhall, in the county of Suffolk, and was
+born in 1750. How he first took so zealously to caricature we have
+no information, but he began to publish before he was twenty-one
+years of age. Bunbury's drawing was bold and often good, but he had
+little skill in etching, for some of his earlier prints, published
+in 1771, which he etched himself, are coarsely executed. His designs
+were afterwards engraved by various persons, and his own style was
+sometimes modified in this process. His earlier prints were etched and
+sold by James Bretherton, who has been already mentioned as publishing
+the works of James Sayer. This Bretherton was in some esteem as an
+engraver, and he also had a print-shop at 132, New Bond Street, where
+his engravings were published. James had a son named Charles, who
+displayed great talent at an early age, but he died young. As early as
+1772, when the macaronis (the dandies of the eighteenth century) came
+into fashion, James Bretherton's name appears on prints by Bunbury as
+the engraver and publisher, and it occurs again as the engraver of
+his print of "Strephon and Chloe" in 1801, which was published by
+Fores. At this and a later period some of his designs were engraved
+by Rowlandson, who always transferred his own style to the drawings
+he copied. A remarkable instance of this is furnished by a print of a
+party of anglers of both sexes in a punt, entitled "Anglers of 1811"
+(the year of Bunbury's death). But for the name, "H. Bunbury, del.,"
+very distinctly inscribed upon it, we should take this to be a genuine
+design by Rowlandson; and in 1803 Rowlandson engraved some copies of
+Bunbury's prints on horsemanship for Ackermann, of the Strand, in which
+all traces of Bunbury's style are lost. Bunbury's style is rather
+broadly burlesque.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 216. How to Travel on Two Legs in a Frost._]
+
+Bunbury had evidently little taste for political caricature, and he
+seldom meddled with it. Like Collet, he preferred scenes of social
+life, and humorous incidents of contemporary manners, fashionable
+or popular. He had a great taste for caricaturing bad or awkward
+horsemanship or unmanageable horses, and his prints of such subjects
+were numerous and greatly admired. This taste for equestrian pieces
+was shown in prints published in 1772, and several droll series of
+such subjects appeared at different times, between 1781 and 1791,
+one of which was long famous under the title of "Geoffrey Gambado's
+Horsemanship." An example of these incidents of horsemanship is copied
+in our cut No. 216, where a not very skilful rider, with a troublesome
+horse, is taking advantage of the state of the ground for accelerating
+locomotion. It is entitled, "How to travel on Two Legs in a Frost," and
+is accompanied with the motto, in Latin, "_Ostendunt terris hunc tantum
+fata, neque ultra esse sinent_."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 217. Strephon and Chloe._]
+
+Occasionally Bunbury drew in a broader style of caricature, especially
+in some of his later works. Of our examples of this broader style, the
+first cut, No. 217, entitled "Strephon and Chloe," is dated the 1st of
+July, 1801. It is the very acme of sentimental courtship, expressed
+in a spirit of drollery which could not easily be excelled. The next
+group (cut No. 218), from a similar print published on the 21st of
+July in the same year, is a no less admirable picture of overstrained
+politeness. It is entitled in the original, "The Salutation Tavern,"
+probably with a temporary allusion beyond the more apparent design of
+the picture. Bunbury, as before stated, died in 1811. It is enough to
+say that sir Joshua Reynolds used to express a high opinion of him as
+an artist.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 218. A Fashionable Salutation._]
+
+Bunbury's prints rarely appeared without his name, and, except when
+they had passed through the engraving of Rowlandson, are easily
+recognised. No doubt his was considered a popular name, which was
+almost of as much importance as the print itself. But a large
+mass of the caricatures published at the latter end of the last
+century and the beginning of the present, appeared anonymously, or
+with imaginary names. Thus a political print, entitled "The Modern
+Atlas," bears the inscription "Mas^r Hook fecit;" another entitled
+"Farmer George delivered," has that of "Poll Pitt del." "Everybody
+delin^{it}," is inscribed on a caricature entitled "The Lover's Leap;"
+and one which appeared under the title of "Veterinary Operations,"
+is inscribed "Giles Grinagain fect." Some of these were probably
+the works of amateurs, for there appear to have been many amateur
+caricaturists in England at that time. In a caricature entitled
+"The Scotch Arms," published by Fores on the 3rd of January, 1787,
+we find the announcement, "Gentlemen's designs executed gratis,"
+which means, of course, that Fores would publish the caricatures of
+amateurs, if he approved them, without making the said amateurs pay
+for the engraving. But also some of the best caricaturists of the
+day published much anonymously, and we know that this was the case
+to a very great extent with such artists as Cruikshank, Woodward,
+&c., at all events until such time as their names became sufficiently
+popular to be a recommendation to the print. It is certain that many
+of Woodward's designs were published without his name. Such was the
+case with the print of which we give a copy in our cut No. 219, which
+was published on the 5th of May, 1796, and which bears strongly the
+marks of Woodward's style. The spring of this year, 1796, witnessed a
+general disappointment at the failure of the negociations for peace,
+and therefore the necessity of new sacrifices for carrying on the war,
+and of increased taxation. Many clever caricatures appeared on this
+occasion, of which this by Woodward was one. Of course, when war was
+inevitable, the question of generals was a very important one, and
+the caricaturist pretends that the greatest general of the age was
+"General Complaint." The general appears here with an empty purse in
+his right hand, and in his left a handful of papers containing a list
+of bankrupts, the statement of the budget, &c. Four lines beneath, in
+rather doggrel verse, explain the situation as follows:--
+
+      _Don't tell me of generals raised from mere boys,
+        Though, believe me, I mean not their laurel to taint;
+      But the general, I'm sure, that will make the most noise,
+        If the war still goes on, will be General Complaint._
+
+  [Illustration: _No. 219. General Complaint._]
+
+  [Illustration: _No. 220. Desire._]
+
+There was much of Bunbury's style in that of Woodward, who had a taste
+for the same broad caricatures upon society, which he executed in a
+similar spirit. Some of the _suites_ of subjects of this description
+that he published, such as the series of the "Symptoms of the Shop,"
+those of "Everybody out of town" and "Everybody in Town," and the
+"Specimens of Domestic Phrensy," are extremely clever and amusing.
+Woodward's designs were also not unfrequently engraved by Rowlandson,
+who, as usual, imprinted his own style upon them. A very good example
+of this practice is seen in the print of which we give a copy in our
+cut No. 220. Its title, in the original, is "Desire," and the passion
+is exemplified in the case of a hungry schoolboy watching through a
+window a jolly cook carrying by a tempting plum-pudding. We are told in
+an inscription underneath: "Various are the ways this passion might be
+depicted; in this delineation the subjects chosen are simple--a hungry
+boy and a plum-pudding." The design of this print is stated to be
+Woodward's; but the style is altogether that of Rowlandson, whose name
+appears on it as the etcher. It was published by R. Ackermann, on the
+20th of January, 1800. Woodward is well known by his prolific pencil,
+but we are so little acquainted with the man himself, that I cannot
+state the date either of his birth or of his death.
+
+  [Illustration: _No. 221. Looking a Rock in the Face._]
+
+There lived at this time in Edinburgh an engraver of some eminence in
+his way, but whose name is now nearly forgotten, and, in fact, it does
+not occur in the last edition of Bryan's "Dictionary of Engravers."
+This name was John Kay, which is found attached to prints, of which
+about four hundred are known, with dates extending from 1784 to 1817.
+As an engraver, Kay possessed no great talent, but he had considerable
+humour, and he excelled in catching and delineating the striking
+points in the features and gait of the individuals who then moved in
+Edinburgh Society. In fact, a large proportion of his prints consist of
+caricature portraits, often several figures on the same plate, which is
+usually of small dimensions. Among them are many of the professors and
+other distinguished members of the university of Edinburgh. Thus one,
+copied in our cut No. 221, represents the eminent old geologist, Dr.
+James Hutton, rather astonished at the shapes which his favourite rocks
+have suddenly taken. The original print is dated in 1787, ten years
+before Dr. Hutton's death. The idea of giving faces to rocks was not
+new in the time of John Kay, and it has been frequently repeated. Some
+of these caricature portraits are clever and amusing, and they are at
+times very satirical. Kay appears to have rarely ventured on caricature
+of any other description, but there is one rare plate by him, entitled
+"The Craft in Danger," which is stated in a few words pencilled on the
+copy I have before me, to have been aimed at a cabal for proposing Dr.
+Barclay for a professorship in the university of Edinburgh. It displays
+no great talent, and is, in fact, now not very intelligible. The
+figures introduced in it are evidently intended for rather caricatured
+portraits of members of the university engaged in the cabal, and are in
+the style of Kay's other portraits.[105]
+
+ [105] In the library of the British Museum there is a collection of
+       John Kay's works bound in two volumes quarto, with a title and
+       table of contents in manuscript, but whether it is one of a few
+       copies intended for publication, or whether it is merely the
+       collection of some individual, I am not prepared to say. It
+       contains 343 plates, which are stated to be all Kay's works down
+       to the year 1813, when this collection was made. "The Craft in
+       Danger" is not among them. I have before me a smaller, but a very
+       choice selection, of Kay's caricatures, the loan of which I owe
+       to the kindness of Mr. John Camden Hotten, of Piccadilly. I am
+       indebted to Mr. Hotten for many courtesies of this description,
+       and especially for the use of a very valuable collection of
+       caricatures of the latter part of the eighteenth century and
+       earlier part of the present, mounted in four large folio volumes,
+       which has been of much use to me.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+  GILLRAY.--HIS FIRST ATTEMPTS.--HIS CARICATURES BEGIN WITH THE
+     SHELBURNE MINISTRY.--IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.--CARICATURES
+     ON THE KING; "NEW WAY TO PAY THE NATIONAL DEBT."--ALLEGED
+     REASON FOR GILLRAY'S HOSTILITY TO THE KING.--THE KING AND THE
+     APPLE-DUMPLINGS.--GILLRAY'S LATER LABOURS.--HIS IDIOTCY AND DEATH.
+
+
+In the year 1757 was born the greatest of English caricaturists,
+and perhaps of all caricaturists of modern times whose works are
+known--James Gillray. His father, who was named like himself, James,
+was a Scotchman, a native of Lanark, and a soldier, and, having
+lost one arm at the battle of Fontenoy, became an out-pensioner of
+Chelsea Hospital. He obtained also the appointment of sexton at the
+Moravian burial-ground at Chelsea, which he held forty years, and it
+was at Chelsea that James Gillray the younger was born. The latter,
+having no doubt shown signs of artistic talent, was put apprentice
+to letter-engraving; but after a time, becoming disgusted with this
+employment, he ran away, and joined a party of strolling players,
+and in their company passed through many adventures, and underwent
+many hardships. He returned, however to London, and received some
+encouragement as a promising artist, and obtained admission as a
+student in the Royal Academy--the then young institution to which
+Hogarth had been opposed. Gillray soon became known as a designer and
+engraver, and worked in these capacities for the publishers. Among
+his earlier productions, two illustrations of Goldsmith's "Deserted
+Village" are spoken of with praise, as displaying a remarkable freedom
+of effect. For a long time after Gillray became known as a caricaturist
+he continued to engrave the designs of other artists. The earliest
+known caricature which can be ascribed to him with any certainty, is
+the plate entitled "Paddy on Horseback," and dated in 1779, when he
+was twenty-two years of age. The "horse" on which Paddy rides is a
+bull; he is seated with his face turned to the tail. The subject of
+satire is supposed to be the character then enjoyed by the Irish as
+fortune-hunters. The point, however, is not very apparent, and indeed
+Gillray's earliest caricatures are tame, although it is remarkable
+how rapidly he improved, and how soon he arrived at excellence. Two
+caricatures, published in June and July, 1782, on the occasion of
+admiral Rodney's victory, are looked upon as marking his first decided
+appearance in politics.
+
+A distinguishing characteristic of Gillray's style is, the wonderful
+tact with which he seizes upon the points in his subject open to
+ridicule, and the force with which he brings those points out. In the
+fineness of his design, and in his grouping and drawing, he excels all
+the other caricaturists. He was, indeed, born with all the talents of
+a great historical painter, and, but for circumstances, he probably
+would have shone in that branch of art. This excellence will be the
+more appreciated when it is understood that he drew his picture with
+the needle on the plate, without having made any previous sketch of
+it, except sometimes a few hasty outlines of individual portraits or
+characters scrawled on cards or scraps of paper as they struck him.
+
+Soon after the two caricatures on Rodney's naval victory, the
+Rockingham administration was broken up by the death of its chief, and
+another was formed under the direction of Lord Shelburne, from which
+Fox and Burke retired, leaving in it their old colleague, Pitt, who
+now deserted the Whig party in parliament. Fox and Burke became from
+this moment the butt of all sorts of abuse and scornful satire from the
+caricaturists, such as Sayer, and newspaper writers in the pay of their
+opponents; and Gillray, perhaps because it offered at that moment the
+best chance of popularity and success, joined in the crusade against
+the two ex-ministers and their friends. In one of his caricatures,
+which is a parody upon Milton, Fox is represented in the character of
+Satan, turning his back upon the ministerial Paradise, but looking
+enviously over his shoulder at the happy pair (Shelburne and Pitt) who
+are counting their money on the treasury table:--
+
+                          _Aside he turned
+            For envy, yet with jealous leer malign
+            Eyed them askance._
+
+Another, also by Gillray, is entitled "Guy Faux and Judas Iscariot,"
+the former represented by Fox, who discovers the desertion of his
+late colleague, lord Shelburne, by the light of his lantern, and
+recriminates angrily, "Ah! what, I've found you out, have I? Who arm'd
+the high priests and the people? Who betray'd his mas--?" At this
+point he is interrupted by a sneering retort from Shelburne, who is
+carrying away the treasury bag with a look of great self-complacency,
+"Ha, ha! poor Gunpowder's vexed! He, he, he!--Shan't have the bag, I
+tell you, old Goosetooth!" Burke was usually caricatured as a Jesuit;
+and in another of Gillray's prints of this time (published Aug. 23,
+1782), entitled "Cincinnatus in Retirement," Burke is represented as
+driven into the retirement of his Irish cabin, where he is surrounded
+by Popish relics and emblems of superstition, and by the materials
+for drinking whisky. A vessel, inscribed "Relick No. 1., used by St.
+Peter," is filled with boiled potatoes, which Jesuit Burke is paring.
+Three imps are seen dancing under the table.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 222. A Strong Dose._]
+
+In 1783 the Shelburne ministry itself was dissolved, and succeeded
+by the Portland ministry, in which Fox was secretary of state for
+foreign affairs, and Burke, paymaster of the forces, and Lord North,
+who had joined the Whigs against lord Shelburne, now obtained office
+as secretary for the home department. Gillray joined warmly in the
+attacks on this coalition of parties, and from this time his great
+activity as a caricaturist begins. Fox, especially, and Burke, still
+under the character of a Jesuit, were incessantly held up to ridicule
+in his prints. In another year this ministry also was overthrown, and
+young William Pitt became established in power, while the ex-ministers,
+now the opposition, had become unpopular throughout the country. The
+caricature of Gillray followed them, and Fox and Burke constantly
+appeared under his hands in some ridiculous situation or other. But
+Gillray was not a hired libeller, like Sayer and some of the lower
+caricaturists of that time; he evidently chose his subjects, in some
+degree independently, as those which offered him the best mark for
+ridicule; and he had so little respect for the ministers or the court,
+that they all felt his satire in turn. Thus, when the plan of national
+fortifications--brought forward by the duke of Richmond, who had
+deserted the Whigs to be made a Tory minister, as master-general of
+the ordnance--was defeated in the House of Commons in 1787, the best
+caricature it provoked was one by Gillray, entitled "Honi soit qui
+mal y pense," which represents the horror of the duke of Richmond at
+being so unceremoniously compelled to swallow his own fortifications
+(cut No. 222). It is lord Shelburne, who had now become marquis of
+Lansdowne, who is represented as administering the bitter dose. Some
+months afterwards, in the famous impeachment against Warren Hastings,
+Gillray sided warmly against the impeachers, perhaps partly because
+these were Burke and his friends; yet several of his caricatures on
+this affair are aimed at the ministers, and even at the king himself.
+Lord Thurlow, who was a favourite with the king, and who supported the
+cause of Warren Hastings with firmness, after he had been deserted by
+Pitt and the other ministers, was especially an object of Gillray's
+satire. Thurlow, it will be remembered, was rather celebrated for
+profane swearing, and was sometimes spoken of as the thunderer. One
+of the finest of Gillray's caricatures at this period, published on
+the 1st of March, 1788, is entitled "Blood on Thunder fording the Red
+Sea," and represents Warren Hastings carried on chancellor Thurlow's
+shoulders through a sea of blood, strewed with the mangled corpses
+of Hindoos. As will be seen in our copy of the most important part of
+this print (cut No. 223), the "saviour of India," as he was called by
+his friends, has taken care to secure his gains. A remarkably bold
+caricature by Gillray against the government appeared on the 2nd of May
+in this year. It is entitled "Market-Day--every man has his price," and
+represents a scene in Smithfield, where the horned cattle exposed for
+sale are the supporters of the king's ministry. Lord Thurlow, with his
+characteristic frown, appears as the principal purchaser. Pitt, and
+his friend and colleague Dundas, are represented drinking and smoking
+jovially at the window of a public-house. On one side Warren Hastings
+is riding off with the king in the form of a calf, which he has just
+purchased, for Hastings was popularly believed to have worked upon king
+George's avarice by rich presents of diamonds. On another side, the
+overwhelming rush of the cattle is throwing over the van in which Fox,
+Burke, and Sheridan are driving. This plate deserves to be placed among
+Gillray's finest works.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 223. Blood on Thunder._]
+
+Gillray caricatured the heir to the throne with bitterness, perhaps
+because his dissipation and extravagance rendered him a fair subject
+of ridicule, and because he associated himself with Fox's party in
+politics; but his hostility to the king is ascribed in part to personal
+feelings. A large and very remarkable print by our artist, though his
+name was not attached to it, and one which displays in a special manner
+the great characteristics of Gillray's style, appeared on the 21st of
+April, 1786, just after an application had been made to the House of
+Commons for a large sum of money to pay off the king's debts, which
+were very great, in spite of the enormous income then attached to the
+crown. George was known as a careful and even a parsimonious man, and
+the queen was looked upon generally as a mean and very avaricious
+woman, and people were at a loss to account for this extraordinary
+expenditure, and they tried to explain it in various ways which were
+not to the credit of the royal pair. It was said that immense sums were
+spent in secret corruption to pave the way to the establishment of
+arbitrary power; that the king was making large savings, and hoarding
+up treasures at Hanover; and that, instead of spending money on his
+family, he allowed his eldest son to run into serious difficulties
+through the smallness of his allowance, and thus to become an object of
+pity to his French friend, the wealthy duc d'Orleans, who had offered
+him relief. The caricature just mentioned, which is extremely severe,
+is entitled "A new way to pay the National Debt." It represents the
+entrance to the treasury, from which king George and his queen, with
+their band of pensioners, are issuing, their pockets, and the queen's
+apron, so full of money, that the coins are rolling out and scattering
+about the ground. Nevertheless, Pitt, whose pockets also are full,
+adds to the royal treasures large bags of the national revenue, which
+are received with smiles of satisfaction. To the left, a crippled
+soldier sits on the ground, and asks in vain for relief; while the
+wall above is covered with torn placards, on some of which may be
+read, "God save the King;" "Charity, a romance;" "From Germany, just
+arrived a large and royal assortment...;" and "Last dying speech of
+fifty-four malefactors executed for robbing a hen-roost." The latter
+is a satirical allusion to the notorious severity with which the most
+trifling depredators on the king's private farm were prosecuted. In the
+background, on the right hand side of the picture, the prince appears
+in ragged garments, and in want of charity no less than the cripple,
+and near him is the duke of Orleans, who offers him a draft for
+£200,000. On the placards on the walls here we read such announcements
+as "Economy, an old song;" "British property, a farce;" and "Just
+published, for the benefit of posterity, the dying groans of Liberty;"
+and one, immediately over the prince's head, bears the prince's
+feathers, with the motto, "Ich starve." Altogether this is one of the
+most remarkable of Gillray's caricatures.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 224. Farmer George and his Wife._]
+
+The parsimoniousness of the king and queen was the subject of
+caricatures and songs in abundance, in which these illustrious
+personages appeared haggling with their tradesmen, and making bargains
+in person, rejoicing in having thus saved a small sum of money. It
+was said that George kept a farm at Windsor, not for his amusement,
+but to draw a small profit from it. By Peter Pindar he is described
+as rejoicing over the skill he has shown in purchasing his live stock
+as bargains. Gillray seized greedily all these points of ridicule,
+and, as early as 1786, he published a print of "Farmer George and his
+Wife" (see our cut No. 224), in which the two royal personages are
+represented in the very familiar manner in which they were accustomed
+to walk about Windsor and its neighbourhood. This picture appears to
+have been very popular; and years afterwards, in a caricature on a
+scene in "The School for Scandal," where, in the sale of the young
+profligate's effects, the auctioneer puts up a family portrait, for
+which a broker offers five shillings, and Careless, the auctioneer,
+says, "Going for no more than one crown," the family piece is the
+well-known picture of "Farmer George and his Wife," and the ruined
+prodigal is the prince of Wales, who exclaims, "Careless, knock down
+the farmer."
+
+Many caricatures against the undignified meanness of the royal
+household appeared during the years 1791 and 1792, when the king
+passed much of his time at his favourite watering-place, Weymouth;
+and there his domestic habits had become more and more an object of
+remark. It was said that, under the pretence of Weymouth being an
+expensive place, and taking advantage of the obligations of the royal
+mail to carry parcels for the king free, he had his provisions brought
+to him by that conveyance from his farm at Windsor. On the 28th of
+November, 1791, Gillray published a caricature on the homeliness of
+the royal household, in two compartments, in one of which the king
+is represented, in a dress which is anything but that of royalty,
+toasting his muffins for breakfast; and in the other, queen Charlotte,
+in no less homely dress, though her pocket is overflowing with money,
+toasting sprats for supper. In another of Gillray's prints, entitled
+"Anti-saccharites," the king and queen are teaching their daughters
+economy in taking their tea without sugar; as the young princesses show
+some dislike to the experiment, the queen admonishes them, concluding
+with the remark, "Above all, remember how much expense it will save
+your poor papa!"
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 225. A Flemish Proclamation._]
+
+According to a story which seems to be authentic, Gillray's dislike
+of the king was embittered at this time by an incident somewhat
+similar to that by which George II. had provoked the anger of Hogarth.
+Gillray had visited France, Flanders, and Holland, and he had made
+sketches, a few of which he engraved. Our cut No. 225 represents
+a group from one of these sketches, which explains itself, and is
+a fair example of Gillray's manner of drawing such subjects. He
+accompanied the painter Loutherbourg, who had left his native city
+of Strasburg to settle in England, and become the king's favourite
+artist, to assist him in making sketches for his great painting of
+"The Siege of Valenciennes," Gillray sketching groups of figures
+while Loutherbourg drew the landscape and buildings. After their
+return, the king expressed a desire to see their sketches, and they
+were placed before him. Loutherbourg's landscapes and buildings
+were plain drawings, and easy to understand, and the king expressed
+himself greatly pleased with them. But the king's mind was already
+prejudiced against Gillray for his satirical prints, and when he
+saw his hasty and rough, though spirited sketches, of the French
+soldiers, he threw them aside contemptuously, with the remark, "I
+don't understand these caricatures." Perhaps the very word he used was
+intended as a sneer upon Gillray, who, we are told, felt the affront
+deeply, and he proceeded to retort by a caricature, which struck at
+once at one of the king's vanities, and at his political prejudices.
+George III. imagined himself a great connoisseur in the fine arts, and
+the caricature was entitled "A Connoisseur examining a Cooper." It
+represented the king looking at the celebrated miniature of Oliver
+Cromwell, by the English painter, Samuel Cooper. When Gillray had
+completed this print, he is said to have exclaimed, "I wonder if the
+royal connoisseur will understand this!" It was published on the 18th
+of June, 1792, and cannot have failed to produce a sensation at that
+period of revolutions. The king is made to exhibit a strange mixture
+of alarm with astonishment in contemplating the features of this
+great overthrower of kingly power, at a moment when all kingly power
+was threatened. It will be remarked, too, that the satirist has not
+overlooked the royal character for domestic economy, for, as will be
+seen in our cut No. 226, the king is looking at the picture by the
+light of a candle-end stuck on a "save-all."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 226. A Connoisseur in Art._]
+
+From this time Gillray rarely let pass an opportunity of caricaturing
+the king. Sometimes he pictured his awkward and undignified gait, as he
+was accustomed to shuffle along the esplanade at Weymouth; sometimes
+in the familiar manner in which, in the course of his walks in the
+neighbourhood of his Windsor farm, he accosted the commonest labourers
+and cottagers, and overwhelmed them with a long repetition of trivial
+questions--for king George had a characteristic manner of repeating his
+questions, and of frequently giving the reply to them himself.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 227. Royal Affability._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 228. A Lesson in Apple Dumplings._]
+
+        _Then asks the farmer's wife, or farmer's maid,
+        How many eggs the fowls have laid;
+        What's in the oven, in the pot, the crock;
+        Whether 'twill rain or no, and what's o'clock;
+        Thus from poor hovels gleaning information,
+        To serve as future treasure for the nation._
+
+So said Peter Pindar; and in this _rôle_ king George was represented
+not unfrequently in satirical prints. On the 10th of February Gillray
+illustrated the quality of "Affability" in a picture of one of these
+rustic encounters. The king and queen, taking their walk, have arrived
+at a cottage, where a very coarse example of English peasantry is
+feeding his pigs with wash. The scene is represented in our cut No.
+227. The vacant stare of the countryman betrays his confusion at the
+rapid succession of questions--"Well, friend, where a' you going,
+hay?--What's your name, hay?--Where do you live, hay?--hay?" In other
+prints the king is represented running into ludicrous adventures while
+hunting, an amusement to which he was extremely attached. One of the
+best known of these has been celebrated equally by the pen of Peter
+Pindar and by the needle of Gillray. It was said that one day while
+king George was following the chase, he came to a poor cottage, where
+his usual curiosity was rewarded by the discovery of an old woman
+making apple dumplings. When informed what they were, he could not
+conceal his astonishment how the apples could have been introduced
+without leaving a seam in their covering. In the caricature by Gillray,
+from which we take our cut No. 228, the king is represented looking
+at the process of dumpling making through the window, inquiring
+in astonishment, "Hay? hay? apple dumplings?--how get the apples
+in?--how? Are they made without seams?" The story is told more fully
+in the following verses of Peter Pindar, which will serve as the best
+commentary on the engraving:--
+
+                   _THE KING AND THE APPLE DUMPLING._
+
+        _Once on a time a monarch, tired with whooping,
+          Whipping and spurring,
+          Happy in worrying
+        A poor, defenceless, harmless buck
+          (The horse and rider wet as muck),
+        From his high consequence and wisdom stooping,
+          Enter'd through curiosity a cot,
+          Where sat a poor old woman and her pot._
+        _The wrinkled, blear-eyed, good old granny,
+          In this same cot, illum'd by many a cranny.
+        Had finish'd apple dumplings for her pot.
+          In tempting row the naked dumplings lay,
+          When lo! the monarch in his usual way
+        Like lightning spoke, "What this? what this? what? what?"
+        Then taking up a dumpling in his hand,
+        His eyes with admiration did expand,
+          And oft did majesty the dumpling grapple.
+        "'Tis monstrous, monstrous hard, indeed?" he cried;
+        "What makes it, pray, so hard?"--The dame replied,
+          Low curtseying, "Please your majesty, the apple."
+        "Very astonishing, indeed! strange thing!"
+        Turning the dumpling round, rejoined the king;
+          "'Tis most extraordinary then, all this is--
+          It beats Pinetti's conjuring all to pieces--
+        Strange I should never of a dumpling dream!
+        But, Goody, tell me where, where, where's the seam?"
+        "Sir, there's no seam," quoth she, "I never knew
+        That folks did apple dumplings sew."
+        "No!" cried the staring monarch with a grin,
+        "How, how the devil got the apple in?"
+        On which the dame the curious scheme reveal'd
+        By which the apple lay so sly conceal'd,
+          Which made the Solomon of Britain start;
+        Who to the palace with full speed repair'd
+        And queen, and princesses so beauteous, scared,
+          All with the wonders of the dumpling art.
+        There did he labour one whole week, to show
+          The wisdom of an apple dumpling maker;
+        And lo! so deep was majesty in dough,
+          The palace seem'd the lodging of a baker!_
+
+Gillray was not the only caricaturist who turned the king's weaknesses
+to ridicule, but none caricatured them with so little gentleness, or
+evidently with so good a will. On the 7th of March, 1796, the princess
+of Wales gave birth to a daughter, so well known since as the princess
+Charlotte. The king is said to have been charmed with his grandchild,
+and this sentiment appears to have been anticipated by the public, for
+on the 13th of February, when the princess's accouchment was looked
+forward to with general interest, a print appeared under the title of
+"Grandpapa in his Glory." In this caricature, which is given in our
+cut No. 229, king George, seated, is represented nursing and feeding
+the royal infant in an extraordinary degree of homeliness. He is
+singing the nursery rhyme--
+
+          _There was a laugh and a craw,
+            There was a giggling honey,
+          Goody good girl shall be fed,
+            But naughty girl shall have noney._
+
+This print bears no name, but it is known to be by Woodward, though it
+betrays an attempt to imitate the style of Gillray. Gillray was often
+imitated in this manner, and his prints were not unfrequently copied
+and pirated. He even at times copied himself, and disguised his own
+style, for the sake of gaining money.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 229. Grandfather George._]
+
+At the period of the regency bill in 1789, Gillray attacked Pitt's
+policy in that affair with great severity. In a caricature published
+on the 3rd of January, he drew the premier in the character of an
+over-gorged vulture, with one claw fixed firmly on the crown and
+sceptre, and with the other seizing upon the prince's coronet, from
+which he is plucking the feathers. Among other good caricatures on this
+occasion, perhaps the finest is a parody on Fuseli's picture of "The
+Weird Sisters," in which Dundas, Pitt, and Thurlow, as the sisters,
+are contemplating the moon, the bright side of whose disc represents
+the face of the queen, and the other that of the king, overcast with
+mental darkness. Gillray took a strongly hostile view of the French
+revolution, and produced an immense number of caricatures against the
+French and their rulers, and their friends, or supposed friends, in
+this country, during the period extending from 1790 to the earlier
+years of the present century. Through all the changes of ministry or
+policy, he seems to have fixed himself strongly on individuals, and
+he seldom ceased to caricature the person who had once provoked his
+attacks. So it was with the lord chancellor Thurlow, who became the
+butt of savage satire in some of his prints which appeared in 1792,
+at the time when Pitt forced him to resign the chancellorship. Among
+these is one of the boldest caricatures which he ever executed. It is a
+parody, fine almost to sublimity, on a well-known scene in Milton, and
+is entitled, "Sin, Death, and the Devil." The queen, as Sin, rushes to
+separate the two combatants, Death (in the semblance of Pitt) and Satan
+(in that of Thurlow). During the latter part of the century Gillray
+caricatured all parties in turn, whether ministerial or opposition,
+with indiscriminate vigour; but his hostility towards the party of
+Fox, whom he persisted in regarding, or at least in representing,
+as unpatriotic revolutionists, was certainly greatest. In 1803 he
+worked energetically against the Addington ministry; and in 1806 he
+caricatured that which was known by the title of "All the Talents;" but
+during this later period of his life his labours were more especially
+aimed at keeping up the spirit of his countrymen against the threats
+and designs of our foreign enemies. It was, in fact, the caricature
+which at that time met with the greatest encouragement.
+
+In his own person, Gillray had lived a life of great irregularity, and
+as he grew older, his habits of dissipation and intemperance increased,
+and gradually broke down his intellect. Towards the year 1811 he
+ceased producing any original works; the last plate he executed was a
+drawing of Bunbury's, entitled "A Barber's Shop in Assize Time," which
+is supposed to have been finished in the January of that year. Soon
+afterwards his mind sank into idiotcy, from which it never recovered.
+James Gillray died in 1815, and was buried in St. James's churchyard,
+Piccadilly, near the rectory house.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+  GILLRAY'S CARICATURES ON SOCIAL LIFE.--THOMAS ROWLANDSON.--HIS EARLY
+     LIFE.--HE BECOMES A CARICATURIST.--HIS STYLE AND WORKS.--HIS
+     DRAWINGS.--THE CRUIKSHANKS.
+
+
+Gillray was, beyond all others, the great political caricaturist of
+his age. His works form a complete history of the greater and more
+important portion of the reign of George III. He appears to have had
+less taste for general caricature, and his caricatures on social life
+are less numerous, and with a few exceptions less important, than
+those which were called forth by political events. The exceptions are
+chiefly satires on individual characters, which are marked by the same
+bold style which is displayed in his political attacks. Some of his
+caricatures on the extravagant costume of the time, and on its more
+prominent vices, such as the rage for gambling, are also fine, but his
+social sketches generally are much inferior to his other works.
+
+This, however, was not the case with his contemporary, Thomas
+Rowlandson, who doubtlessly stands second to Gillray, and may, in some
+respects, be considered his equal. Rowlandson was born in the Old
+Jewry in London, the year before that of the birth of Gillray, in the
+July of 1756. His father was a city merchant, who had the means to
+give him a good education, but embarking rashly in some unsuccessful
+speculations, he fell into reduced circumstances, and the son had to
+depend upon the liberality of a relative. His uncle, Thomas Rowlandson,
+after whom probably he was named, had married a French lady, a
+Mademoiselle Chatelier, who was now a widow, residing in Paris, with
+what would be considered in that capital a handsome fortune, and she
+appears to have been attached to her English nephew, and supplied him
+rather freely with money. Young Rowlandson had shown at an early age
+great talent for drawing, with an especial turn for satire. As a
+schoolboy, he covered the margins of his books with caricatures upon
+his master and upon his fellow-scholars, and at the age of sixteen he
+was admitted a student in the Royal Academy in London, then in its
+infancy. But he did not profit immediately by this admission, for his
+aunt invited him to Paris, where he began and followed his studies in
+art with great success, and was remarked for the skill with which he
+drew the human body. His studies from nature, while in Paris, are said
+to have been remarkably fine. Nor did his taste for satirical design
+fail him, for it was one of his greatest amusements to caricature the
+numerous individuals, and groups of individuals, who must in that age
+have presented objects of ridicule to a lively Englishman. During
+this time his aunt died, leaving him all her property, consisting of
+about £7,000 in money, and a considerable amount in plate and other
+objects. The sudden possession of so much money proved a misfortune to
+young Rowlandson. He appears to have had an early love for gaiety, and
+he now yielded to all the temptations to vice held out by the French
+metropolis, and especially to an uncontrollable passion for gambling,
+through which he soon dissipated his fortune.
+
+Before this, however, had been effected, Rowlandson, after having
+resided in Paris about two years, returned to London, and continued
+his studies in the Royal Academy. But he appears for some years
+to have given himself up entirely to his dissipated habits, and
+to have worked only at intervals, when he was driven to it by the
+want of money. We are told by one who was intimate with him, that,
+when reduced to this condition, he used to exclaim, holding up his
+pencil, "I have been playing the fool, but here is my resource!"
+and he would then produce--with extraordinary rapidity--caricatures
+enough to supply his momentary wants. Most of Rowlandson's earlier
+productions were published anonymously, but here and there, among
+large collections, we meet with a print, which, by companion of the
+style with that of his earliest known works, we can hardly hesitate
+in ascribing to him; and from these it would appear that he had begun
+with political caricature, because, perhaps, at that period of great
+agitation, it was most called for, and, therefore, most profitable.
+Three of the earliest of the political caricatures thus ascribed to
+Rowlandson belong to the year 1784, when he was twenty-eight years
+of age, and relate to the dissolution of parliament in that year,
+the result of which was the establishment of William Pitt in power.
+The first, published on the 11th of March, is entitled "The Champion
+of the People." Fox is represented under this title, armed with the
+sword of Justice and the shield of Truth, combating the many-headed
+hydra, its mouths respectively breathing forth "Tyranny," "Assumed
+Prerogative," "Despotism," "Oppression," "Secret Influence," "Scotch
+Politics," "Duplicity," and "Corruption." Some of these heads are
+already cut off. The Dutchman, Frenchman, and other foreign enemies
+are seen in the background, dancing round the standard of "Sedition."
+Fox is supported by numerous bodies of English and Irishmen, the
+English shouting, "While he protects us, we will support him." The
+Irish, "He gave us a free trade and all we asked; he shall have our
+firm support." Natives of India, in allusion to his unsuccessful India
+Bill, kneel by his side and pray for his success. The second of these
+caricatures was published on the 26th of March, and is entitled "The
+State Auction." Pitt is the auctioneer, and is represented as knocking
+down with the hammer of "prerogative" all the valuable articles of
+the constitution. The clerk is his colleague, Henry Dundas, who holds
+up a weighty lot, entitled, "Lot 1. The Rights of the People." Pitt
+calls to him, "Show the lot this way, Harry--a'going, a'going--speak
+quick, or it's gone--hold up the lot, ye Dund-ass!" The clerk replies
+in his Scottish accent, "I can hould it na higher, sir." The Whig
+members, under the title of the "chosen representers," are leaving
+the auction room in discouragement, with reflections in their mouths,
+such as, "Adieu to Liberty!" "Despair not!" "Now or never!" While Fox
+stands firm in the cause, and exclaims--"I am determined to bid with
+spirit for Lot 1; he shall pay dear for it that outbids me!" Pitt's
+Tory supporters are ranged under the auctioneer, and are called the
+"hereditary virtuosis;" and their leader, who appears to be the lord
+chancellor, addresses them in the words, "Mind not the nonsensical
+biddings of those common fellows." Dundas remarks, "We shall get the
+supplies by this sale." The third of these caricatures is dated on the
+31st of March, when the elections had commenced, and is entitled,
+"The Hanoverian Horse and British Lion--a Scene in a new Play, lately
+acted in Westminster, with distinguished applause. Act 2nd, Scene
+last." At the back of the picture stands the vacant throne, with the
+intimation, "We shall resume our situation here at pleasure, _Leo
+Rex_." In front, the Hanoverian horse, unbridled, and without saddle,
+neighs "pre-ro-ro-ro-ro-rogative," and is trampling on the safeguard of
+the constitution, while it kicks out violently the "faithful commons"
+(alluding to the recent dissolution of parliament). Pitt, on the back
+of the horse, cries, "Bravo!--go it again!--I love to ride a mettled
+steed; send the vagabonds packing!" Fox appears on the other side of
+the picture, mounted on the British lion, and holding a whip and bridle
+in his hand. He says to Pitt, "Prithee, Billy, dismount before ye get a
+fall, and let some abler jockey take your seat;" and the lion observes,
+indignantly, but with gravity, "If this horse is not tamed, he will
+soon be absolute king of our forest."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 230. Opera Beauties._]
+
+If these prints are correctly ascribed to Rowlandson, we see him here
+fairly entered in the lists of political caricature, and siding with
+Fox and the Whig party. He displays the same boldness in attacking
+the king and his ministers which was displayed by Gillray--a boldness
+that probably did much towards preserving the liberties of the country
+from what was no doubt a resolute attempt to trample upon them, at a
+time when caricature formed a very powerful weapon. Before this time,
+however, Rowlandson's pencil had become practised in those burlesque
+pictures of social life for which he became afterwards so celebrated.
+At first he seems to have published his designs under fictitious names,
+and one now before me, entitled "The Tythe Pig," bears the early date
+of 1786, with the name of "Wigstead," no doubt an assumed one, which
+is found on some others of his early prints. It represents the country
+parson, in his own parlour, receiving the tribute of the tithe pig
+from an interesting looking farmer's wife. The name of Rowlandson,
+with the date 1792, is attached to a very clever and humorous etching
+which is now also before me, entitled "Cold Broth and Calamity," and
+representing a party of skaters, who have fallen in a heap upon the
+ice, which is breaking under their weight. It bears the name of Fores
+as publisher. From this time, and especially toward the close of the
+century, Rowlandson's caricatures on social life became very numerous,
+and they are so well known that it becomes unnecessary, nor indeed
+would it be easy, to select a few examples which would illustrate all
+his characteristic excellencies. In prints published by Fores at the
+beginning of 1794, the address of the publisher is followed by the
+words, "where may be had all Rowlandson's works," which shows how
+great was his reputation as a caricaturist at that time. It may be
+stated briefly that he was distinguished by a remarkable versatility of
+talent, by a great fecundity of imagination, and by a skill in grouping
+quite equal to that of Gillray, and with a singular ease in forming his
+groups of a great number of figures. Among those of his contemporaries
+who spoke of him with the highest praise were sir Joshua Reynolds and
+Benjamin West. It has been remarked, too, that no artist ever possessed
+the power of Rowlandson of expressing so much with so little effort. We
+trace a great difference in style between Rowlandson's earlier and his
+later works; although there is a general identity of character which
+cannot be mistaken. The figures in the former show a taste for grace
+and elegance that is rare in his later works, and we find a delicacy
+of beauty in his females which he appears afterwards to have entirely
+laid aside. An example of his earlier style in depicting female faces
+is furnished by the pretty farmer's wife, in the print of "The Tythe
+Pig," just alluded to; and I may quote as another example, an etching
+published on the 1st of January, 1794, under the title of "English
+Curiosity; or, the foreigner stared out of countenance." An individual,
+in a foreign costume, is seated in the front row of the boxes of a
+theatre, probably intended for the opera, where he has become the
+object of curiosity of the whole audience, and all eyes are eagerly
+directed upon him. The faces of the men are rather coarsely grotesque,
+but those of the ladies, two of which are given in our cut No. 230,
+possess a considerable degree of refinement. He appears, however,
+to have been naturally a man of no real refinement, who easily gave
+himself up to low and vulgar tastes, and, as his caricature became more
+exaggerated and coarse, his females became less and less graceful,
+until his model of female beauty appears to have been represented
+by something like a fat oyster-woman. Our cut No. 231, taken from a
+print in the possession of Mr. Fairholt, entitled, "The Trumpet and
+Bassoon," presents a good example of Rowlandson's broad humour, and of
+his favourite models of the human face. We can almost fancy we hear the
+different tones of this brace of snorers.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 231. The Trumpet and Bassoon._]
+
+A good example of Rowlandson's grotesques of the human figure is given
+in our cut No. 232, taken from a print published on the 1st of January,
+1796, under the title of "Anything will do for an Officer." People
+complained of the mean appearance of the officers in our armies, who
+obtained their rank, it was pretended, by favour and purchase rather
+than by merit; and this caricature is explained by an inscription
+beneath, which informs us how "Some school-boys, who were playing at
+soldiers, found one of their number so ill-made, and so much under
+size, that he would have disfigured the whole body if put into the
+ranks. 'What shall we do with him?' asked one. 'Do with him?' says
+another, 'why make an officer of him.'" This plate is inscribed with
+his name, "Rowlandson fecit."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 232. A Model Officer._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 233. Antiquaries at Work._]
+
+At this time Rowlandson still continued to work for Fores, but
+before the end of the century we find him working for Ackermann, of
+the Strand, who continued to be his friend and employer during the
+rest of his life, and is said to have helped him generously in many
+difficulties. In these, indeed, he was continually involved by his
+dissipation and thoughtlessness. Ackermann not only employed him in
+etching the drawings of other caricaturists, especially of Bunbury,
+but in furnishing illustrations to books, such as the several series
+of Dr. Syntax, the "New Dance of Death," and others. Rowlandson's
+illustrations to editions of the older standard novels, such as "Tom
+Jones," are remarkably clever. In transferring the works of other
+caricaturists to the copper, Rowlandson was in the habit of giving his
+own style to them to such a degree, that nobody would suspect that
+they were not his own, if the name of the designer were not attached
+to them. I have given one example of this in a former chapter, and
+another very curious one is furnished by a print now before me,
+entitled "Anglers of 1811," which bears only the name "H. Bunbury
+del.," but which is in every particular a perfect example of the style
+of Rowlandson. During the latter part of his life Rowlandson amused
+himself with making an immense number of drawings which were never
+engraved, but many of which have been preserved and are still found
+scattered through the portfolios of collectors. These are generally
+better finished than his etchings, and are all more or less burlesque.
+Our cut No. 233 is taken from one of these drawings, in the possession
+of Mr. Fairholt; it represents a party of antiquaries engaged
+in important excavations. No doubt the figures were intended for
+well-known archæologists of the day.
+
+Thomas Rowlandson died in poverty, in lodgings in the Adelphi, on the
+22nd of April, 1827.
+
+Among the most active caricaturists of the beginning of the present
+century we must not overlook Isaac Cruikshank, even if it were only
+because the name has become so celebrated in that of his more talented
+son. Isaac's caricatures, too, were equal to those of any of his
+contemporaries, after Gillray and Rowlandson. One of the earliest
+examples which I have seen bearing the well-known initials, I. C.,
+was published on the 10th of March, 1794, the year in which George
+Cruikshank was born, and probably, therefore, when Isaac was quite
+a young man. It is entitled "A Republican Belle," and is an evident
+imitation of Gillray. In another, dated the 1st of November, 1795, Pitt
+is represented as "The Royal Extinguisher," putting out the flame of
+"Sedition." Isaac Cruikshank published many prints anonymously, and
+among the numerous caricatures of the latter end of the last century we
+meet with many which have no name attached to them, but which resemble
+so exactly his known style, that we can hardly hesitate in ascribing
+them to him. It will be remarked that in his acknowledged works he
+caricatures the opposition; but perhaps, like other caricaturists of
+his time, he worked privately for anybody who would pay him, and was
+as willing to work against the government as for it, for most of the
+prints which betray their author only by their style are caricatures
+on Pitt and his measures. Such is the group given in our cut No. 234,
+which was published on the 15th of August, 1797, at a time when there
+were loud complaints against the burthen of taxation. It is entitled
+"Billy's Raree-Show; or, John Bull En-lighten'd," and represents Pitt,
+in the character of a showman, exhibiting to John Bull, and picking
+his pocket while his attention is occupied with the show. Pitt, in
+a true showman's style, says to his victim, "Now, pray lend your
+attention to the enchanting prospect before you,--this is the prospect
+of peace--only observe what a busy scene presents itself--the ports are
+filled with shipping, the quays loaded with merchandise, riches are
+flowing in from every quarter--this prospect alone is worth all the
+money you have got about you." Accordingly, the showman abstracts the
+same money from his pocket, while John Bull, unconscious of the theft
+exclaims with surprise, "Mayhap it may, master showman, but I canna zee
+ony thing like what you mentions,--I zees nothing but a woide plain,
+with some mountains and molehills upon't--as sure as a gun, it must be
+all behoind one of those!" The flag of the show is inscribed, "Licensed
+by authority, Billy Hum's grand exhibition of moving mechanism; or,
+deception of the senses."
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 234. The Raree-Show._]
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 235. Flight across the Herring Pond._]
+
+In a caricature with the initials of I. C., and published on the 20th
+of June, 1797, Fox is represented as "The Watchman of the State,"
+ironically, of course, for he is betraying the truth which he had
+ostentatiously assumed, and absenting himself at the moment when his
+agents are putting the match to the train they have laid to blow up
+the constitution. Yet Cruikshank's caricatures on the Irish union
+were rather opposed to ministers. One of these, published on the 20th
+of June, 1800, is full of humour. It is entitled "A Flight across the
+Herring Pond." England and Ireland are separated by a rough sea, over
+which a crowd of Irish "patriots" are flying, allured by the prospect
+of honours and rewards. On the Irish shore, a few wretched natives,
+with a baby and a dog, are in an attitude of prayer, expostulating
+with the fugitives,--"Och, och! do not leave us--consider your old
+house, it will look like a big wallnut-shell without a kernel." On the
+English shore, Pitt is holding open the "Imperial Pouch," and welcoming
+them,--"Come on, my little fellows, there's plenty of room for you
+all--the budget is not half full." Inside the "pouch" appears a host
+of men covered with honours and dignities, one of whom says to the
+foremost of the Irish candidates for favour, "Very snug and convenient,
+brother, I allure you." Behind Pitt, Dundas, seated on a pile of public
+offices united in his person, calls out to the immigrants, "If you've
+ony consciences at a', here's enugh to satisfy ye a'." A portion of
+this clever caricature is represented in our cut No. 235.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 236. A Case of Abduction._]
+
+There is a rare caricature on the subject of the Irish union, which
+exhibits a little of the style of Isaac Cruikshank, and a copy of which
+is in the possession of Mr. Fairholt. From this I have taken merely
+the group which forms our cut No. 236. It is a long print, dated on
+the 1st of January, 1800, and is entitled "The Triumphal entry of the
+Union into London." Pitt, with a paper entitled "Irish Freedom" in his
+pocket, is carrying off the young lady (Ireland) by force, with her
+natural accompaniment, a keg of whisky. The lord chancellor of Ireland
+(lord Clare) sits on the horse and performs the part of fiddler.
+In advance of this group are a long rabble of radicals, Irishman,
+&c., while close behind comes Grattan, carried in a sedan-chair, and
+earnestly appealing to the lady, "Ierne, Ierne! my sweet maid, listen
+not to him--he's a false, flattering, gay deceiver." Still farther in
+the rear follows St. Patrick, riding on a bull, with a sack of potatoes
+for his saddle, and playing on the Irish harp. An Irishman expostulates
+in the following words--"Ah, long life to your holy reverence's memory,
+why will you lave your own nate little kingdom, and go to another
+where they will tink no more of you then they would of an old brogue?
+Shure, of all the saints in the red-letter calendar, we give you the
+preference! och hone! och hone!" Another Irishman pulls the bull by
+the tail, with the lament, "Ah, masther, honey, why will you be after
+leaving us? What will become of poor Shelagh and all of us, when you
+are gone?" It is a regular Irish case of abduction.
+
+ [Illustration: _No. 237. The Farthing Rushlight._]
+
+The last example I shall give of the caricatures of Isaac Cruikshank is
+the copy of one entitled "The Farthing Rushlight," which, I need hardly
+say, is a parody on the subject of a well-known song. The rushlight
+is the poor old king, George, whom the prince of Wales and his Whig
+associates, Fox, Sheridan, and others, are labouring in vain to blow
+out. The latest caricature I possess, bearing the initials of Isaac
+Cruikshank, was published by Fores, on the 19th of April, 1810, and
+is entitled, "The Last Grand Ministerial Expedition (on the Street,
+Piccadilly)." The subject is the riot on the arrest of sir Francis
+Burdett, and it shows that Cruikshank was at this time caricaturing on
+the radical side in politics.
+
+Isaac Cruikshank left two sons who became distinguished as
+caricaturists, George, already mentioned, and Robert. George
+Cruikshank, who is still amongst us, has raised caricature in art to
+perhaps the highest degree of excellence it has yet reached. He began
+as a political caricaturist, in imitation of his father Isaac--in
+fact the two brothers are understood to have worked jointly with
+their father before they engraved on their own account. I have in my
+own possession two of his earliest works of this class, published by
+Fores, of Piccadilly, and dated respectively the 3rd and the 19th of
+March, 1815. George was then under twenty-one years of age. The first
+of these prints is a caricature on the restrictions laid upon the trade
+in corn, and is entitled "The Blessings of Peace, or, the Curse of
+the Corn Bill." A foreign boat has arrived, laden with corn at a low
+price--one of the foreign traders holds out a sample and says, "Here
+is de best for 50s." A group of bloated aristocrats and landholders
+stand on the shore, with a closed storehouse, filled with corn behind
+them; the foremost, warning the boat away with his hand, replies to
+the merchant, "We won't have it at any price--we are determined to
+keep up our own to 80s., and if the poor can't buy at that price, why
+they must starve. We love money too well to lower our rents again; the
+income tax is taken off." One of his companions exclaims, "No, no, we
+won't have it at all." A third adds, "Ay, ay, let 'em starve, and be
+d-- to 'em." Upon this another of the foreign merchants cries, "By
+gar, if they will not have it at all, we must throw it overboard!" and
+a sailor is carrying this alternative into execution by emptying a
+sack into the sea. Another group stands near the closed storehouse--it
+consists of a poor Englishman, his wife with an infant in the arms,
+and two ragged children, a boy and a girl. The father is made to say,
+"No, no, masters, I'll not starve; but quit my native country, where
+the poor are crushed by those they labour to support, and retire to one
+more hospitable, and where the arts of the rich do not interpose to
+defeat the providence of God." The corn bill was passed in the spring
+of 1815, and was the cause of much popular agitation and rioting. The
+second of these caricatures, on the same subject, is entitled, "The
+Scale of Justice reversed," and represents the rich exulting over the
+disappearance of the tax on property, while the poor are crushed under
+the weight of taxes which bore only upon them. These two caricatures
+present unmistakable traces of the peculiarities of style of George
+Cruikshank, but not as yet fully developed.
+
+George Cruikshank rose into great celebrity and popularity as a
+political caricaturist by his illustrations to the pamphlets of William
+Houe, such as "The Political House that Jack built," "The Political
+Showman at Home," and others upon the trial of queen Caroline; but this
+sort of work suited the taste of the public at that time, and not that
+of the artist, which lay in another direction. The ambition of George
+Cruikshank was to draw what Hogarth called moral comedies, pictures of
+society carried through a series of acts and scenes, always pointed
+with some great moral; and it must be confessed that he has, through a
+long career, succeeded admirably. He possesses more of the true spirit
+of Hogarth than any other artist since Hogarth's time, with greater
+skill in drawing. He possesses, even to a greater degree than Hogarth
+himself, that admirable talent of filling a picture with an immense
+number of figures, every one telling a part of the story, without
+which, however minute, the whole picture would seem to us incomplete.
+The picture of the "Camp at Vinegar Hill," and one or two other
+illustrations to Maxwell's "History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798,"
+are equal, if not superior, to anything ever produced by Hogarth or by
+Callot.
+
+The name of George Cruikshank forms a worthy conclusion to the "History
+of Caricature and Grotesque." He is the last representative of the
+great school of caricaturists formed during the reign of George III.
+Though there can hardly be said to be a school at the present day, yet
+our modern artists in this field have been all formed more or less
+under his influence; and it must not be forgotten that we owe to that
+influence, and to his example, to a great degree, the cleansing of this
+branch of art from the objectionable characteristics of which I have on
+more than one occasion been obliged to speak. May he still live long
+among the friends who not only admire him for his talents, but love him
+for his kindly and genial spirit; and none among them love and admire
+him more sincerely than the author of the present volume.
+
+                                 FINIS.
+
+
+
+
+[_Post Office Orders payable                          [DECEMBER, 1874.
+at Piccadilly Circus._
+
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+                            A List of Books
+
+                              PUBLISHED BY
+
+                            CHATTO & WINDUS
+
+                   74 & 75, _PICCADILLY, LONDON, W._
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                  THE
+                            TURNER GALLERY:
+
+                      A Series of Sixty Engravings
+
+       From the Principal Works of JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER.
+
+                 _With a Memoir and Illustrative Text_
+
+                       BY RALPH NICHOLSON WORNUM,
+
+                KEEPER AND SECRETARY, NATIONAL GALLERY.
+
+      Handsomely half-bound, India Proofs, Royal folio, £10; LARGE
+       PAPER copies, Artists' India Proofs, Elephant folio, £20.
+
+        _A Descriptive Pamphlet will be sent upon application._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                      NEW COPYRIGHT AMERICAN WORK.
+
+                             LOTOS LEAVES:
+
+   Comprising Original Stories, Essays, and Poems by <sc>Wilkie
+      Collins</sc>, MARK TWAIN, WHITELAW REED, JOHN HAY, NOAH BROOKS,
+      JOHN BROUGHAM, EDMUND YATES, P. V. NASBY, ISAAC BROMLEY, and
+      others. Profusely illustrated by ALFRED FREDERICKS, ARTHUR
+      LUMLEY, JOHN LA FARGE, GILBERT BERLING, GEORGE WHITE, and others.
+      Small quarto, handsomely bound, cloth extra, gilt, and gilt
+      edges. 21s.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                         THE NATIONAL GALLERY:
+
+                     A Selection from its Pictures,
+
+        By CLAUDE, REMBRANDT, CUYP, Sir DAVID WILKIE, CORREGGIO,
+            GAINSBOROUGH, CANALETTI, VANDYCK, PAUL VERONESE,
+                  CARACCI, RUBENS, N. and G. POUSSIN,
+                        and other great Masters.
+
+  Engraved by GEORGE DOO, JOHN BURNET, WILLIAM FINDEN, JOHN and
+  HENRY LE KEUX, JOHN PYE, </sc>Walter Bromley</sc>, and others.
+  With descriptive Text. A NEW EDITION, from the Original Plates, in
+  columbier 4to, cloth extra, full gilt and gilt edges, 42_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                      THE FAMOUS FRASER PORTRAITS.
+
+                          MACLISE'S GALLERY OF
+                    ILLUSTRIOUS LITERARY CHARACTERS.
+
+              With Notes by the late WILLIAM MAGINN, LL.D.
+
+  Edited, with copious Notes, by WILLIAM BATES, B.A. The volume
+  contains 83 SPLENDID AND MOST CHARACTERISTIC PORTRAITS, now first
+  issued in a complete form. In demy 4to, over 400 pages, cloth gilt
+  and gilt edges, 31_s._ 6_d._
+
+  "Most interesting."--_Saturday Review._
+
+  "Not possible to imagine a more elegant addition to a drawing-room
+  table."--_Fun._
+
+  "One of the most interesting volumes of this year's literature."
+  --_Times._
+
+  "Deserves a place on every drawing-room table, and may not unfitly be
+  removed from the drawing-room to the library."--_Spectator._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                  THE
+               WORKS OF JAMES GILLRAY, THE CARICATURIST.
+
+     _With the Story of his Life and Times, and full and Anecdotal
+                    Descriptions of his Engravings._
+
+              Edited by THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq., M.A., F.S.A.
+
+      Illustrated with 83 full-page Plates, and very numerous Wood
+       Engravings. Demy 4to, 600 pages, cloth extra, 31_s._ 6_d._
+
+  "High as the expectations excited by this description [in the
+  Introduction] may be, they will not be disappointed. With rare
+  exception, no source of information has been neglected by the editor,
+  and the most inquisitive or exacting reader will find ready gathered
+  to his hand, without the trouble of reference, almost every scrap
+  of narrative, anecdote, gossip, scandal, or epigram, in poetry or
+  prose, that he can possibly require for the elucidation of the
+  caricatures."--_Quarterly Review._
+
+  "The publishers have done good service in bringing so much that is
+  full of humour and of historical interest within the reach of a large
+  class."--_Saturday Review._
+
+  "One of the most amusing and valuable illustrations of the social
+  and polished life of that generation which it is possible to
+  conceive."--_Spectator._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                             NEW SERIES OF
+
+                          BEAUTIFUL PICTURES.
+
+  Including Examples by ARMYTAGE, FAED, GOODALL, HEMSLEY, HORSLEY,
+  MARKS, NICHOLLS, Sir NOEL PATON, PICKERSGILL, G. SMITH, MARCUS STONE,
+  SOLOMON, STRAIGHT, E. M. WARD, WARREN; all engraved in the highest
+  style of Art, with Notices of the Artists and of their Pictures by
+  SYDNEY ARMYTAGE, M.A. Imperial 4to, cloth extra, gilt, and gilt
+  edges, 21_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                 BEAUTIFUL PICTURES BY BRITISH ARTISTS:
+
+   _A Gathering of Favourites from our Picture Galleries, 1800-1870._
+
+  Including examples by WILKIE, CONSTABLE, TURNER, MULREADY, LANDSEER,
+    MACLISE, E. M. WARD, FRITH, Sir JOHN GILBERT, LESLIE, ANSDELL,
+    MARCUS STONE, Sir NOEL PATON, FAED, EYRE CROWE, GAVIN, O'NEIL, and
+    MADOX BROWN. Engraved on Steel in the highest style of Art. Edited,
+    with Notices of the Artists, by SYDNEY ARMYTAGE, M.A. Imperial 4to,
+    cloth extra, gilt and gilt edges, 21_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                   TOM HOOD'S NEW STORY FOR CHILDREN.
+
+                    From Nowhere to the North Pole:
+             A Noah's Arkæological Narrative. By TOM HOOD.
+
+  With 25 Illustrations by W. BRUNTON and E. C. BARNES. Sq. crown
+  8vo, in a handsome and specially-designed binding, gilt edges, 6_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                   NEW BOOK BY MR. WALTER THORNBURY.
+
+  =On the Slopes of Parnassus.= Illustrated by J. E. MILLAIS, F.
+  SANDYS, FRED. WALKER, G. J. PINWELL, J. D. HOUGHTON, E. J. POYNTER,
+  H. S. MARKS, J. WHISTLER, and others. Handsomely printed, crown 4to,
+  cloth extra, gilt and gilt edges, 21_s._        [_In preparation._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                        NEW GROTESQUE GIFT-BOOK.
+
+               =Queens and Kings, and other Things=:
+
+  A rare and choice Collection of Pictures, Poetry, and strange but
+  veritable Histories, designed and written by S. A. the PRINCESS
+  HESSE-SCHWARZBOURG. The whole imprinted in gold and many colours by
+  the Brothers DALZIEL. Imperial 4to, cloth gilt and gilt edges, One
+  Guinea.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Æsop's Fables=, translated into Human Nature by C. H. BENNETT.
+  Descriptive Text. Entirely New Edit. Cr. 4to, 24 Plates, beautifully
+  printed in colours, cloth extra, gilt, 6_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  [Illustration: "_The Bellman of London._"]
+
+  =Advertising, A History of=, from the Earliest Times.
+  Illustrated by Anecdotes, Curious Specimens, and Biographical Notes
+  of Successful Advertisers. By HENRY SAMPSON. Cr. 8vo, Coloured
+  Frontispiece and Illustrations, cloth gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "Learned, curious, amusing, and instructive is this
+     volume."--_Echo._
+
+     "Not only shows a vast amount of research, but, as a whole, is
+     most readable. The facsimiles of old newspapers it contains add
+     not a little to its value."--_Pictorial World._
+
+     "Mr. Sampson has exhibited great diligence and much curious
+     research; he appears to have overlooked nothing which could throw
+     light on his subject."--_Daily News._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Amusing Poetry.= A Selection of Humorous Verse from all the
+  Best Writers. Edited, with Preface, by SHIRLEY BROOKS. Fcap. 8vo, cl.
+  ex., gt. edges, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Anacreon.= Translated by THOMAS MOORE, and Illustrated by the
+  Exquisite Designs of GIRODET. Bound in Etruscan gold and blue, 12_s._
+  6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Army Lists of the Roundheads and Cavaliers in the Civil War,
+  1642.= SECOND EDITION, Corrected and considerably Enlarged.
+  Edited, with Notes and full Index, by EDWARD PEACOCK, F.S.A. 4to,
+  hf.-Roxburghe, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Artemus Ward, Complete.=--The Works of CHARLES FARRER BROWNE,
+  better known as ARTEMUS WARD, now first collected. Crown 8vo, with
+  fine Portrait, facsimile of handwriting, &c., 540 pages, cloth extra,
+  7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Artemus Ward's Lecture at the Egyptian Hall=, with the
+  Panorama. Edited by T. W. ROBERTSON and E. P. HINGSTON. 4to, green
+  and gold, TINTED ILLUST., 6_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+             UNIFORM WITH MR. RUSKIN'S EDITION OF "GRIMM."
+
+  =Bechstein's As Pretty as Seven=, and other Popular German Stories.
+  Collected by LUDWIG BECHSTEIN. With Additional Tales by the Brothers
+  GRIMM. 100 Illustrations by RICHTER. Small 4to, green and gold, 6_s._
+  6_d._; gilt edges, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Boccaccio's Decameron=; or, Ten Days' Entertainment. Now fully
+  translated into English, with Introduction by THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq.,
+  M.A., F.S.A. With Portrait after RAPHAEL, and STOTHARD'S Ten
+  Copper-plates. Crown 8vo, cloth, extra gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Booksellers, A History of.= Full Accounts of the Great Publishing
+  Houses and their Founders, both in London and the Provinces, the
+  History of their Rise and Progress, and of their greatest Works. By
+  HARRY CURWEN. Crown 8vo, over 500 pages, frontispiece and numerous
+  Portraits and Illusts., cloth extra, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+  [Illustration: HEADPIECE USED BY WILLIAM CAXTON.]
+
+     "_In these days, ten ordinary Histories of Kings and Courtiers
+     were well exchanged against the tenth part of one good History of
+     Booksellers._"--THOMAS CARLYLE.
+
+     "This stout little book is unquestionably amusing. Ill-starred,
+     indeed, must be the reader who, opening it anywhere, lights upon
+     six consecutive pages within the entire compass of which some good
+     anecdote or smart repartee is not to be found."--_Saturday Review._
+
+     "Mr. Curwen has produced an interesting work."--_Daily News._
+
+     "Ought to have a permanent place on library shelves."--_Court
+     Circular._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Book of Hall-Marks=; or, Manual of Reference for the Goldsmith and
+  Silversmith. By ALFRED LUTSCHAUNIG, Manager of the Liverpool Assay
+  Office. Crown 8vo, with 46 Plates of the Hall-Marks of the different
+  Assay Towns of the United Kingdom, as now stamped on Plate and
+  Jewellery, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+  *** _This work gives practical methods for testing the quality of gold
+  and silver. It was compiled by the author as a Supplement to
+  "Chaffers."_
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Boudoir Ballads=: Vers de Société. By J. ASHBY STERRY. Crown 8vo,
+  cloth extra, gilt, and gilt edges, 6_s._           [_In preparation._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Bret Harte's Complete Works=, in Prose and Poetry. Now First
+  Collected. With Introductory Essay by J. M. BELLEW, Portrait of the
+  Author, and 50 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 650 pages, cloth extra,
+  7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Brewster's (Sir David) More Worlds than One, the Creed of the
+  Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian.= A NEW EDITION, in small
+  crown 8vo, cloth, extra gilt, with full-page Astronomical Plates.
+  4_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+  =Brewster's (Sir D.) Martyrs of Science.= Small cr. 8vo, cloth, extra
+  gilt, with full-page Portraits. 4_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Bright's (Rt. Hon. J., M.P.) Speeches= on Public Affairs of the last
+  Twenty Years. Collated with the best Public Reports. Royal 16mo, 370
+  pages, cloth extra, 1_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+ [Illustration: "_A Border Song._"]
+
+                        COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS.
+
+  =Broad Grins.= My Nightgown and Slippers, and other Humorous Works,
+  Prose and Poetical, of GEORGE COLMAN the Younger. With Life and
+  Anecdotes of the Author by G. B. BUCKSTONE, and Frontispiece by
+  HOGARTH. Crown 8vo, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Broadstone Hall=, and other Poems. By W. E. WINDUS. With 40
+  Illustrations by ALFRED CONCANEN. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 5_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Conquest of the Sea=: A History of Diving, from the Earliest Times.
+  By HENRY SIEBE. Profusely Illustrated. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 4_s._
+  6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                       MISS BRADDON'S NEW NOVEL.
+
+  =Lost for Love: A Novel.= By M. E. BRADDON, Author of "Lady Audley's
+  Secret," &c. Now ready, in 3 vols., crown 8vo, at all Libraries, and
+  at the Booksellers.
+
+     "One of the best novels lately produced. In several important
+     respects, it appears to us, Miss Braddon's recent works deserve
+     the highest commendation."--_Illustrated London News._
+
+     "We may confidently predict for it a warm welcome from Miss
+     Braddon's numerous admirers."--_Graphic._
+
+     "'Lost for Love' must be placed high among Miss Braddon's novels.
+     It has a quiet power, which makes it attractive in a high
+     degree."--_Scotsman._
+
+     "Unaffected, simple, and easily written, it will disappoint Miss
+     Braddon's early admirers, and please that which we hope is a wider
+     public."--_Athenæum._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Byron's (Lord) Letters and Journals, with Notices of his Life.=
+  By THOMAS MOORE. A Reprint of the Original Edition, newly revised,
+  complete in a thick volume of 1060pp., with Twelve full-page Plates.
+  Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "We have read this book with the greatest pleasure. Considered
+     merely as a composition, it deserves to be classed among the
+     best specimens of English prose which our age has produced. It
+     contains, indeed, no single passage equal to two or three which
+     we could select from the Life of Sheridan; but, as a whole, it
+     is immeasurably superior to that work. The style is agreeable,
+     clear, and manly, and, when it rises into eloquence, rises
+     without effort or ostentation. Nor is the matter inferior to the
+     manner. It would be difficult to name a book which exhibits more
+     kindness, fairness, and modesty. It has evidently been written,
+     not for the purpose of showing--what, however, it often shows--how
+     well its author can write, but for the purpose of vindicating,
+     as far as truth will permit, the memory of a celebrated man who
+     can no longer vindicate himself. Mr. Moore never thrusts himself
+     between Lord Byron and the public. With the strongest temptations
+     to egotism, he has said no more about himself than the subject
+     absolutely required. A great part, indeed the greater part, of
+     these volumes consists of extracts from the Letters and Journals
+     of Lord Byron; and it is difficult to speak too highly of the
+     skill which has been shown in the selection and arrangement....
+     It is impossible, on a general survey, to deny that the task has
+     been executed with great judgment and great humanity. When we
+     consider the life which Lord Byron had led, his petulance, his
+     irritability, and his communicativeness, we cannot but admire the
+     dexterity with which Mr. Moore has contrived to exhibit so much
+     of the character and opinions of his friend, with so little pain
+     to the feelings of the living."--LORD MACAULAY, in the _Edinburgh
+     Review_.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Carols of Cockayne: Vers de Société descriptive of London Life. By
+  HENRY S. LEIGH. Third Edition. With numerous Illustrations by ALFRED
+  CONCANEN. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 5_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Carlyle (T.) on the Choice of Books. With New Life and Anecdotes.
+  Brown cloth, UNIFORM WITH THE 2_s._ EDITIONS OF HIS WORKS, 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+  Celebrated Claimants, Ancient and Modern. Being the Histories of all
+  the most celebrated Pretenders and Claimants from PERKINS WARBECK to
+  ARTHUR ORTON. Fcap. 8vo, 350 pages, illustrated boards, price 2_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                    MR. WILKIE COLLINS'S NEW NOVEL.
+
+  =The Law and the Lady=: A Novel. By WILKIE COLLINS, Author of "The
+  Woman in White." 3 vols., crown 8vo, 31_s._ 6_d._ [_Shortly._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Christmas Carols and Ballads.= Selected and Edited by JOSHUA
+  SYLVESTER. A New Edition, beautifully printed and bound in cloth,
+  extra gilt, gilt edges, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                    =Cruikshank's Comic Almanack.=
+
+  Complete in TWO SERIES: the FIRST from 1835 to 1843; the SECOND
+  from 1844 to 1853. A Gathering of the BEST HUMOUR of THACKERAY,
+  HOOD, MAYHEW, ALBERT SMITH, A'BECKETT, ROBERT BROUGH, &c. With
+  2,000 Woodcuts and Steel Engravings by CRUIKSHANK, HINE, LANDELLS,
+  &c. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, two very thick volumes, 15_s._; or,
+  separately, 7_s._ 6_d._ per volume.
+
+     *** _The "Comic Almanacks" of George Cruikshank have long been
+     regarded by admirers of this inimitable artist as among his
+     finest, most characteristic productions. Extending over a period
+     of nineteen years, from 1835 to 1853, inclusive, they embrace
+     the best period of his artistic career, and show the varied
+     excellences of his marvellous power. The late Mr. Tilt, of Fleet
+     Street, first conceived the idea of the "Comic Almanack," and
+     at various times there were engaged upon it such writers as_
+     THACKERAY, ALBERT SMITH, _the Brothers_ MAYHEW, _the late_ ROBERT
+     BROUGH, GILBERT A'BECKETT, _and, it has been asserted,_ TOM HOOD
+     _the elder._ THACKERAY'S _stories of "Stubbs' Calendar; or, The
+     Fatal Boots," which subsequently appeared as "Stubbs' Diary;" and
+     "Barber Cox; or, The Cutting of his Comb," formed the leading
+     attractions in the numbers for 1839 and 1840._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                      THE BEST GUIDE TO HERALDRY.
+
+  =Cussans' Handbook of Heraldry=; with Instructions for Tracing
+  Pedigrees and Deciphering Ancient MSS.; also, Rules for the
+  Appointment of Liveries, &c., &c. By JOHN E. CUSSANS. Illustrated
+  with 360 Plates and Woodcuts. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt and
+  emblazoned, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+   [Illustration]
+
+    *** _This volume, beautifully printed on toned paper, contains
+    not only the ordinary matter to be found in the best books on the
+    science of Armory, but several other subjects hitherto unnoticed.
+    Amongst these may be mentioned:_--1. DIRECTIONS FOR TRACING
+    PEDIGREES. 2. DECIPHERING ANCIENT MSS., ILLUSTRATED BY ALPHABETS
+    AND FACSIMILES. 3. THE APPOINTMENT OF LIVERIES. 4. CONTINENTAL AND
+    AMERICAN HERALDRY, &c.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                        NEW AND IMPORTANT WORK.
+
+  =Cyclopædia of Costume=; or, A Dictionary of Dress, Regal,
+  Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Military, from the Earliest Period in
+  England to the reign of George the Third. Including Notices of
+  Contemporaneous Fashions on the Continent, and preceded by a General
+  History of the Costume of the Principal Countries of Europe. By J. R.
+  PLANCHÉ, F.S.A., Somerset Herald.
+
+     _This work will be published in Twenty-four Monthly Parts, quarto,
+     at Five Shillings, profusely illustrated by Plates and Wood
+     Engravings; with each Part will also be issued a splendid Coloured
+     Plate, from an original Painting or Illumination, of Royal and
+     Noble Personages, and National Costume, both foreign and domestic.
+     The First Part will be ready on Jan. 1, 1875._
+
+     [Illustration]
+
+     In collecting materials for a History of Costume of more
+     importance than the little handbook which has met with so much
+     favour as an elementary work, I was not only made aware of my
+     own deficiencies, but surprised to find how much more vague are
+     the explanations, and contradictory the statements, of our best
+     authorities, than they appeared to me, when, in the plenitude of
+     my ignorance, I rushed upon almost untrodden ground, and felt
+     bewildered by the mass of unsifted evidence and unhesitating
+     assertion which met my eyes at every turn.
+
+     During the forty years which have elapsed since the publication
+     of the first edition of my "History of British Costume" in the
+     "Library of Entertaining Knowledge," archæological investigation
+     has received such an impetus by the establishment of metropolitan
+     and provincial peripatetic antiquarian societies, that a flood
+     of light has been poured upon us, by which we are enabled to
+     re-examine our opinions and discover reasons to doubt, if we
+     cannot find facts to authenticate.
+
+     That the former greatly preponderate is a grievous acknowledgment
+     to make after assiduously devoting the leisure of half my life
+     to the pursuit of information on this, to me, most fascinating
+     subject. It is some consolation, however, to feel that where I
+     cannot instruct, I shall certainly not mislead, and that the
+     reader will find, under each head, all that is known to, or
+     suggested by, the most competent writers I am acquainted with,
+     either here or on the Continent.
+
+     That this work appears in a glossarial form arises from the
+     desire of many artists, who have expressed to me the difficulty
+     they constantly meet with in their endeavours to ascertain the
+     complete form of a garment, or the exact mode of fastening a
+     piece of armour, or buckling of a belt, from their study of a
+     sepulchral effigy or a figure in an illumination; the attitude of
+     the personages represented, or the disposition of other portions
+     of their attire, effectually preventing the requisite examination.
+
+     The books supplying any such information are very few, and the
+     best confined to armour or ecclesiastical costume. The only
+     English publication of the kind required, that I am aware of,
+     is the late Mr. Fairholt's "Costume in England" (8vo, London,
+     1846), the last two hundred pages of which contain a glossary,
+     the most valuable portion whereof are the quotations from old
+     plays, mediæval romances, and satirical ballads, containing
+     allusions to various articles of attire in fashion at the time
+     of their composition. Twenty-eight years have expired since that
+     book appeared, and it has been thought that a more comprehensive
+     work on the subject than has yet issued from the English press,
+     combining the pith of the information of many costly foreign
+     publications, and, in its illustrations, keeping in view the
+     special requirement of the artist, to which I have alluded, would
+     be, in these days of educational progress and critical inquiry, a
+     welcome addition to the library of an English gentleman.
+
+                                                         J. R. PLANCHÉ.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Cussans' History of Hertfordshire.=
+
+  A County History, got up in a very superior manner, and ranging
+  with the finest works of its class. By JOHN E. CUSSANS. Illustrated
+  with full-page Plates on Copper and Stone, and a profusion of small
+  Woodcuts. Parts I. to VIII. are now ready, price 21_s._ each.
+
+     *** _An entirely new History of this important County, great
+     attention being given to all matters pertaining to Family History._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Dickens' Life and Speeches.= By THEODORE TAYLOR. Complete in One
+  Volume, square 16mo, cloth extra, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+               "DON QUIXOTE" IN THE ORIGINAL SPANISH. */
+
+  =El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha.= Nueva Edicion,
+  corregida y revisada. Por MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA. Complete in
+  one volume, post 8vo, nearly 700 pages, cloth extra, price 4_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                         GIL BLAS IN SPANISH.
+
+                 =Historia de Gil Blas de Santillana.=
+
+  Por LE SAGE. Traducida al Castellano por el PADRE ISLA. Nueva
+  Edicion, corregida y revisada. Complete in One Volume. Post 8vo,
+  cloth extra, nearly 600 pages, price 4_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Earthward Pilgrimage=, from the Next World to that which now is. By
+  MONCURE D. CONWAY. Crown 8vo, beautifully printed and bound, 7_s._
+  6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Ellis's (Mrs.) Mothers of Great Men.= A New Edition, with
+  Illustrations by VALENTINE W. BROMLEY. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, over
+  500 pages, 6_s._
+
+  "Mrs. Ellis believes, as most of us do, that the character of the
+  mother goes a long way; and, in illustration of this doctrine, she
+  has given us several lives written in her charming, yet earnest,
+  style. We especially commend the life of Byron's and Napoleon's
+  mothers.... The volume has some solid merits."--_Echo._
+
+  "This is a book which ought to be in the libraries of all who
+  interest themselves in the education of women."--_Victoria Magazine._
+
+  "An extremely agreeable and readable book, ... and its value is not
+  a little enhanced by Mr. Bromley's illustrations."--_Illustrated
+  Dramatic News._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Emanuel on Diamonds and Precious Stones=; Their History, Value,
+  and Properties; with Simple Tests for ascertaining their Reality.
+  By HARRY EMANUEL, F.R.G.S. With numerous Illustrations, Tinted and
+  Plain. A New Edition, Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 6_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  [Illustration: POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM.]
+
+  =Edgar Allan Poe's Prose and Poetical Works=; including Additional
+  Tales and his fine Critical Essays. With a Translation of CHARLES
+  BAUDELAIRE'S "Essay." 750 pages, crown 8vo, fine Portrait and
+  Illustrations, cloth extra, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =English Surnames=: Their Sources and Significations. By CHARLES
+  WAREING BARDSLEY, M.A. SECOND EDITION, revised throughout,
+  considerably enlarged, and partially re-written. Crown 8vo, cloth
+  extra, 9_s._
+
+     "Mr. Bardsley has faithfully consulted the original mediæval
+     documents and works from which the origin and development of
+     surnames can alone be satisfactorily traced. He has furnished a
+     valuable contribution to the literature of surnames, and we hope
+     to hear more of him in this field."--_Times._
+
+     "Mr. Bardsley's volume is a very good specimen of the work
+     which the nineteenth century can turn out. He has evidently
+     bestowed a great deal of attention, not only upon surnames,
+     but upon philology in general. The book is a mine of
+     information."--_Westminster Review._
+
+     "We welcome this book as an important addition to our knowledge of
+     an important and interesting subject."--_Athenæum._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Englishman's House= (The): A Practical Guide to all interested
+  in Selecting or Building a House, with full Estimates of Cost,
+  Quantities, &c. By C. J. RICHARDSON, Architect, Author of "Old
+  English Mansions," &c. Third Edition. With nearly 600 Illustrations.
+  Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+  *** _This Work might not inappropriately be termed "A Book of
+  Houses." It gives every variety of house, from a workman's cottage to
+  a nobleman's palace. The book is intended to supply a want long felt,
+  viz., a plain, non-technical account of every style of house, with
+  the cost and manner of building._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Faraday's Chemical History of a Candle.= Lectures delivered to a
+  Juvenile Audience. A New Edition, edited by W. CROOKES, Esq., F.C.S.,
+  &c. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with all the Original Illustrations,
+  4_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Faraday's Various Forces of Nature.= A New Edition, edited by W.
+  CROOKES, Esq., F.C.S., &c. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with all the
+  Original Illustrations, 4_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                        FATHER PROUT'S REMAINS.
+
+  =Final Reliques of Father Prout.= Collected and Edited, from MSS.
+  supplied by the Family of the Rev. FRANCIS MAHONEY, by BLANCHARD
+  JERROLD. [_In preparation._
+
+  =Finish to Life in and out of London=; or, The Final Adventures of
+  Tom, Jerry, and Logic. By PIERCE EGAN. Royal 8vo, cloth extra, with
+  Spirited Coloured Illustrations by CRUIKSHANK, 21_s._
+
+  =Flagellation and the Flagellants.=--A History of the Rod in all
+  Countries, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. By the Rev.
+  W. COOPER, B.A. Third Edition, revised and corrected, with numerous
+  Illustrations. Thick crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 12_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Fools' Paradise=; with the Many Wonderful Adventures there, as seen
+  in the strange, surprising Peep-Show of Professor Wolley Cobble.
+  Crown 4to, with nearly 350 very funny Coloured Pictures, cloth extra,
+  gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+  [Illustration: THE PROFESSOR'S LEETLE MUSIC LESSON.]
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                         RUSKIN AND CRUIKSHANK.
+
+  =German Popular Stories.= Collected by the Brothers GRIMM, and
+  Translated by EDGAR TAYLOR. Edited, with an Introduction, by JOHN
+  RUSKIN. With 22 Illustrations after the inimitable designs of GEORGE
+  CRUIKSHANK. Both Series complete. Square crown 8vo, 6_s._ 6_d._; gilt
+  leaves, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+    "The illustrations of this volume ... are of quite sterling and
+    admirable art, in a class precisely parallel in elevation to the
+    character of the tales which they illustrate; and the original
+    etchings, as I have before said in the Appendix to my 'Elements
+    of Drawing,' were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since
+    Rembrandt (in some qualities of delineation, unrivalled even by
+    him).... To make somewhat enlarged copies of them, looking at them
+    through a magnifying glass, and never putting two lines where
+    Cruikshank has put only one, would be an exercise in decision and
+    severe drawing which would leave afterwards little to be learnt in
+    schools."--_Extract from Introduction by_ JOHN RUSKIN.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Golden Treasury of Thought.= The Best Encyclopædia of Quotations
+  and Elegant Extracts, from Writers of all Times and all Countries,
+  ever formed. Selected and Edited by THEODORE TAYLOR. Crown 8vo, very
+  handsomely bound, cloth gilt, and gilt edges, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Genial Showman=; or, Show Life in the New World. Adventures with
+  Artemus Ward, and the Story of his Life. By E. P. HINGSTON. Third
+  Edition. Crown 8vo, Illustrated by W. BRUNTON, cloth extra, 7_s._
+  6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                          THE GOLDEN LIBRARY.
+
+  Square 16mo (Tauchnitz size), cloth, extra gilt, price 2_s._ per vol.
+
+  =Clerical Anecdotes=: The Humours and Eccentricities of "the Cloth."
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.= With an Introduction by
+  GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Holmes's Professor at the Breakfast Table.= With the STORY OF IRIS.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Hood's Whims and Oddities.= Both Series complete in One Volume, with
+  all the original Illustrations.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Lamb's Essays of Elia.= Both Series complete in One Volume.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Leigh Hunt's Essays=: A Tale for a Chimney Corner, and other Pieces.
+  With Portrait, and Introduction by EDMUND OLLIER.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Shelley's Early Poems=: Queen Mab, &c. Reprinted from the Author's
+  Original Editions. With Essay by LEIGH HUNT. (First Series of his
+  Works.)
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Shelley's Later Poems=: Laon and Cythna, the Cenci, and other
+  Pieces. Reprinted from the Author's Original Editions. With an
+  Introductory Essay. (Second Series of his Works.)
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Shelley's Miscellaneous Poems and Prose Works.= The Third and
+  Fourth Series. These Two Volumes will include the Posthumous Poems,
+  published by Mrs. SHELLEY in 1824; the Shelley Papers, published in
+  1833; the Six Weeks' Tour (1816); the Notes to "Queen Mab," &c.; the
+  Marlow and Dublin Pamphlets; "The Wandering Jew," a Poem; and the
+  two Novels, "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne." The three last now first
+  included in any edition of Shelley.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Great Condé (The), and the Period of the Fronde=: An Historical
+  Sketch. By WALTER FITZPATRICK. Second Edition, in 2 vols. 8vo, cloth
+  extra, 15_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Greenwood's (James) Wilds of London=: Being Descriptive Sketches,
+  from the Personal Observations and Experiences of the Writer, of
+  Remarkable Scenes, People, and Places in London. By JAMES GREENWOOD,
+  the "Lambeth Casual." With Twelve full-page tinted Illustrations by
+  ALFRED CONCANEN. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+    "Mr. James Greenwood presents himself once more in the character
+    of 'one whose delight it is to do his humble endeavour towards
+    exposing and extirpating social abuses and those hole-and-corner
+    evils which afflict society.'"--_Saturday Review._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Hall's (Mrs. S. C.) Sketches of Irish Character=. "WOOING AND
+  WEDDING," "JACK THE SHRIMP," "PETER THE PROPHET," "GOOD AND
+  BAD SPIRITS," "MABEL O'NEIL'S CURSE," &c., &c. With numerous
+  Illustrations on Steel and Wood, by DANIEL MACLISE, R.A., Sir JOHN
+  GILBERT, W. HARVEY, and G. CRUIKSHANK. 8vo, pp. 450, cloth extra,
+  7_s._ 6_d._
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+     "The Irish sketches of this lady resemble Miss Mitford's beautiful
+     English Sketches in 'Our Village,' but they are far more vigorous
+     and picturesque and bright."--_Blackwood's Magazine._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+               THE MOST COMPLETE HOGARTH EVER PUBLISHED.
+
+  =Hogarth's Works=: with Life and Anecdotal Descriptions of the
+  Pictures, by JOHN IRELAND and JOHN NICHOLS. The Work includes 160
+  Engravings, reduced in exact facsimile of the Original Plates,
+  specimens of which have now become very scarce. The whole in Three
+  Series, 8vo, cloth, gilt, 22_s._ 6_d._; or, separately, 7_s._ 6_d._
+  per volume. Each Series is Complete in itself.
+
+ [Illustration: THE TALKING HAND.]
+
+     "Will be a great boon to authors and artists as well as
+     amateurs.... Very cheap and very complete."--_Standard._
+
+     "For all practical purposes the three handsome volumes comprising
+     this edition are equal to a collection of Hogarthian prints. We
+     are quite sure that any one who adds this work to his library
+     will be amply repaid by the inexhaustible charms of its facsimile
+     prints."--_Birmingham Daily Mail._
+
+     "The plates are reduced in size, but yet truthfully reproduced.
+     The best and cheapest edition of Hogarth's complete works yet
+     brought forward."--_Building News._
+
+     "Three very interesting volumes, important and valuable additions
+     to the library. The edition is thoroughly well brought out, and
+     carefully printed on fine paper."--_Art Journal._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Hogarth's Five Days' Frolic=; or, Peregrinations by Land and Water.
+  Illustrated with Tinted Drawings, made by HOGARTH and SCOTT during
+  the Journey. 4to, beautifully printed, cloth, extra gilt, 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+     *** _A graphic and most extraordinary picture of the hearty
+     English times in which these merry artists lived._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Hogg's Jacobite Relics of Scotland=: Being the Songs, Airs, and
+  Legends of the Adherents to the House of Stuart. Collected and
+  Illustrated by JAMES HOGG. In 2 vols. Vol. I., a Facsimile of the
+  original Edition; Vol. II., the _original_ Edition. 8vo, cloth, 28_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Haunted=; or, Tales of the Weird and Wonderful. A new and entirely
+  original series of GHOST STORIES, by FRANCIS E. STAINFORTH. Post 8vo,
+  illust. bds., 2_s._                                  [_Nearly ready_.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Hawthorne's English and American Note Books=. Edited, with an
+  Introduction, by MONCURE D. CONWAY. Royal 16mo, paper cover, 1_s._;
+  in cloth, 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Hone's Scrap-Books=: The Miscellaneous Writings of WILLIAM HONE,
+  Author of "The Table-Book," "Every-Day Book," and the "Year Book:"
+  being a Supplementary Volume to those works. Now first collected.
+  With Notes, Portraits, and numerous Illustrations of curious and
+  eccentric objects. Crown 8vo, cloth extra.               [_Preparing_.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                           MR. HORNE'S EPIC.
+
+  =Orion.= An Epic Poem, in Three Books. By RICHARD HENGIST HORNE. With
+  Photographic Portrait-Frontispiece. TENTH EDITION. Crown 8vo, cloth
+  extra, 7_s._
+
+     "Orion will be admitted, by every man of genius, to be one of the
+     noblest, if not the very noblest poetical work of the age. Its
+     defects are trivial and conventional, its beauties intrinsic and
+     supreme."--EDGAR ALLAN POE.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Hunt's (Robert) Drolls of Old Cornwall=; or, POPULAR ROMANCES OF THE
+  WEST OF ENGLAND. With Illustrations by GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. Crown 8vo,
+  cloth extra, gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+  *** "Mr. Hunt's charming book of the Drolls and Stories of the West of
+  England."--_Saturday Review._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Irish Guide.--How to Spend a Month in Ireland.= Being a complete
+  Guide to the Country, with an Appendix containing information as
+  to the Fares between the Principal Towns in England and Ireland,
+  and as to Tourist Arrangements for the Season. With a Map and 80
+  Illustrations. By Sir CUSACK P. RONEY. A New Edition, Edited by Mrs.
+  J. H. RIDDELL. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, price 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+ [Illustration]
+
+  =Jennings' (Hargrave) One of the Thirty.= With curious Illustrations.
+  Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Jennings' (Hargrave) The Rosicrucians: Their Rites and Mysteries.=
+  With Chapters on the Ancient Fire and Serpent Worshippers and
+  Explanations of Mystic Symbols in Monuments and Talismans of Primeval
+  Philosophers. Crown 8vo, 300 Illustrations, 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Jerrold's (Blanchard) Cent. per Cent.= A Story Written on a Bill
+  Stamp. A New Edition. Fcap. 8vo, illustrated boards, 2_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                      NEW WORK BY DOUGLAS JERROLD.
+
+  =Jerrold's (Douglas) The Barber's Chair, and The Hedgehog Letters.=
+  Now first collected. Edited, with an Introduction, by his Son,
+  BLANCHARD JERROLD. Crown 8vo, with Steel Plate Portrait from his
+  Bust, engraved by W. H. MOTE, cloth extra, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "No library is complete without Douglas Jerrold's Works; _ergo_,
+     no library is complete without the 'Barber's Chair.' A delightful
+     volume; the papers are most amusing; they abound with sly touches
+     of sarcasm; they are full of playful wit and fancy."--_Pictorial
+     World._
+
+     "An amusing volume, full of Douglas Jerrold's well-known sharpness
+     and repartee."--_Daily News._
+
+     "Better fitted than any other of his productions to give an idea
+     of Douglas Jerrold's amazing wit; the 'Barber's Chair' may be
+     presumed to give as near an approach as is possible in print to
+     the wit of Jerrold's conversation."--_Examiner._
+
+                         *       *       *
+  =Jerrold's (Douglas) Brownrigg Papers=: The Actress at the Duke's;
+  Baron von Boots; Christopher Snubb; The Tutor Fiend and his Three
+  Pupils; Papers of a Gentleman at Arms, &c. By DOUGLAS JERROLD. Edited
+  by his Son, BLANCHARD JERROLD. Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Kalendars of Gwynedd.= Compiled by EDWARD BREESE, F.S.A. With Notes
+  by WILLIAM WATKIN EDWARD WYNNE, Esq., F.S.A. Demy 4to, cloth extra,
+  28_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Lamb's (Charles) Complete Works=, in Prose and Verse, reprinted from
+  the Original Editions, with many pieces now first included in any
+  Edition. Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by R. H. SHEPHERD. With
+  Two Portraits and facsimile of a page of the "Essay on Roast Pig."
+  Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "Is it not time for a new and final edition of Lamb's Works--a
+     finer tribute to his memory than any monument in Edmonton
+     churchyard? Lamb's writings, and more especially his fugitive
+     productions, have scarcely yet escaped from a state of
+     chaos."--_Westminster Review_, October, 1874.
+
+                         ABSTRACT OF CONTENTS.
+
+  ESSAYS OF ELIA, as originally published in _The London Magazine_,
+    _The Examiner_, _The Indicator_, _The Reflector_, _The New
+    Monthly_, _The Englishman's Magazine_, _The Athenæum_, &c.
+
+  PAPERS contributed to "Hone's Table Book," "Year Book," and "Every
+    Day Book," and to Walter Wilson's "Life of Defoe."
+
+  NOTES ON THE ENGLISH DRAMATISTS, 1808-1827.
+
+  REVIEW OF WORDSWORTH'S "EXCURSION" (from the _Quarterly Review_).
+
+  ROSAMOND GRAY (from the Edition of 1798).
+
+  TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE and from MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL.
+
+  THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
+
+  DRAMATIC PIECES:
+
+    John Woodvil: a Tragedy (from the Edition of 1802).
+
+    Mr. H----, a Farce.
+
+    The Wife's Trial; or, The Intruding Widow.
+
+    The Pawnbroker's Daughter.
+
+  POEMS:
+
+    Sonnets and other Poems printed with those of Coleridge in 1796-7,
+      1800, and 1813.
+
+    Blank Verse (from the Edition of 1798).
+
+    Poetry for Children, 1809.
+
+    Album Verses, 1830.
+
+    Satan in Search of a Wife, 1831, &c.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Lamb (Mary & Charles): Their Poems, Letters, and Remains.= Now first
+  collected, with Reminiscences and Notes, by W. CAREW HAZLITT. With
+  HANCOCK'S Portrait of the Essayist, Facsimiles of the Title-pages of
+  the rare First Editions of Lamb's and Coleridge's Works, Facsimile of
+  a Page of the Original MS. of the "Essay on Roast Pig," and numerous
+  Illustrations of Lamb's Favourite Haunts. Crown 8vo, cloth extra,
+  10_s._ 6_d._; LARGE-PAPER COPIES 21_s._
+
+     "Mr. W.C. Hazlitt has published a very pretty and interesting
+     little volume. It has many pictorial illustrations, which were
+     supplied by Mr. Camden Hotten; and, above all, it contains a
+     facsimile of the first page of Elia on 'Roast Pig.' It is well
+     got up, and has a good portrait of Elia. There are also some
+     letters and poems of Mary Lamb which are not easily accessible
+     elsewhere."--_Westminster Review._
+
+     "Must be consulted by all future biographers of the
+     Lambs."--_Daily News._
+
+     "Tells us a good deal that is interesting and something that is
+     fairly new."--_Graphic._
+
+     "Very many passages will delight those fond of literary trifles;
+     hardly any portion will fail to have its interest for lovers of
+     Charles Lamb and his sister."--_Standard._
+
+     "Mr. Hazlitt's work is very important and valuable, and all lovers
+     of Elia will thank him for what he has done."--_Sunday Times._
+
+     "Will be joyfully received by all Lambites."--_Globe._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Lee (General Edward): His Life and Campaigns.= By his Nephew,
+  EDWARD LEE CHILDE. With Portrait and Plans. 1 vol. Crown 8vo. [_In
+  preparation._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Life in London=; or, The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn
+  and Corinthian Tom. WITH THE WHOLE OF CRUIKSHANK'S VERY DROLL
+  ILLUSTRATIONS, in Colours, after the Originals. Crown 8vo, cloth
+  extra, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Literary Scraps.= A Folio Scrap-Book of 340 columns, with guards,
+  for the reception of Cuttings from Newspapers, Extracts, Miscellanea,
+  &c. In folio, half-roan, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Little London Directory of 1677.= The Oldest Printed List of the
+  Merchants and Bankers of London. Reprinted from the Rare Original,
+  with an Introduction by JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN. 16mo, binding after the
+  original, 6_s._ 6_d._
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  =Longfellow's Prose Works=, complete, including "Outre-Mer,"
+  "Hyperion," "Kavanagh," "Driftwood," "On the Poets and Poetry of
+  Europe." With Portrait and Illustrations by BROMLEY. 800 pages, crown
+  8vo, cloth gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     *** _The reader will find the present edition of Longfellow's
+     Prose Writings by far the most complete ever issued in this
+     country. "Outre-Mer" contains two additional chapters, restored
+     from the first edition; while "The Poets and Poetry of Europe,"
+     and the little collection of Sketches entitled "Driftwood," are
+     now first introduced to the English public._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Lost Beauties of the English Language.= An Appeal to Authors, Poets,
+  Clergymen, and Public Speakers. By CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D. Crown 8vo,
+  cloth extra, 6_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Linton's (Mrs. E. Lynn) True History of Joshua Davidson, Christian
+  and Communist.= SIXTH EDITION, with a New Preface. Small crown 8vo,
+  cloth extra, 4_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "In a short and vigorous preface, Mrs. Linton defends, in certain
+     points, her notion of the logical outcome of Christianity as
+     embodied in this attempt to conceive how Christ would have
+     acted, with whom He would have fraternised, and who would
+     have declined to receive Him, had He appeared in the present
+     generation."--_Examiner._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                     MRS. LYNN LINTON'S NEW NOVEL.
+
+  =Patricia Kemball=: A Novel, by E. LYNN LINTON, Author of "Joshua
+  Davidson," &c., in Three Vols. crown 8vo, is now ready at all the
+  Libraries and at the Booksellers'.
+
+     "Perhaps the ablest novel published in London this year.... We
+     know of nothing in the novels we have lately read equal to the
+     scene in which Mr. Hamley proposes to Dora.... We advise our
+     readers to send to the library for the story."--_Athenæum._
+
+     "This novel is distinguished by qualities which entitle it to a
+     place apart from the ordinary fiction of the day; ... displays
+     genuine humour, as well as keen social observation.... Enough
+     graphic portraiture and witty observation to furnish materials for
+     half a dozen novels of the ordinary kind."--_Saturday Review._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Madre Natura= _versus_ The Moloch of Fashion.= A Social Essay. By
+  LUKE LIMNER. With 32 Illustrations by the Author. FOURTH EDITION,
+  revised, corrected, and enlarged. Crown 8vo, cloth extra gilt, red
+  edges, price 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+     "Bravo, Luke Limner! In this treatise, aptly and ably illustrated,
+     the well-known artist scathingly exposes the evils of the present
+     fashions--more especially of tight-lacing. Girls should be made to
+     learn it by heart, and act on its precepts."--_Fun._
+
+     "Agreeably written and amusingly illustrated. Common sense and
+     erudition are brought to bear on the subjects discussed in
+     it."--_Lancet._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Magna Charta.= An exact Facsimile of the Original Document in the
+  British Museum, carefully drawn, and printed on fine plate paper,
+  nearly 3 feet long by 2 feet wide, with the Arms and Seals of the
+  Barons emblazoned in Gold and Colours. Price 5_s._
+
+  A full Translation, with Notes, printed on a large sheet, price 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                      AUTHOR'S CORRECTED EDITION.
+
+  =Mark Twain's Choice Works.= Revised and Corrected throughout by the
+  Author. With Life, Portrait, and numerous Illustrations. 700 pages,
+  cloth extra gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Mark Twain's Pleasure Trip on the Continent of Europe.= With
+  Frontispiece. 500 pages, illustrated boards, 2_s._; or cloth extra,
+  2_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Marston's (Dr. Westland) Poetical and Dramatic Works.= A New and
+  Collected Library Edition, in Two Vols. crown 8vo, is now in the
+  press, and will be ready very shortly.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                      MR. PHILIP MARSTON'S POEMS.
+
+  =Song Tide=, and other Poems. By PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. SECOND
+  EDITION. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 8_s._
+
+     "This is a first work of extraordinary performance and of still
+     more extraordinary promise. The youngest school of English poetry
+     has received an important accession to its ranks in Philip Bourke
+     Marston."--_Examiner._
+
+     "Mr. Marston has fairly established his claim to be heard as a
+     poet.... His present volume is well worthy of careful perusal, as
+     the utterance of a poetic, cultivated mind."--_Standard._
+
+     "We have spoken plainly of some defects in the poetry before
+     us, but we have read much of it with interest, and even
+     admiration."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =All in All=: Poems and Sonnets. By PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. Crown 8vo,
+  cloth extra, 8_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Mayhew's London Characters=: Illustrations of the Humour, Pathos,
+  and Peculiarities of London Life. By HENRY MAYHEW, Author of "London
+  Labour and the London Poor," and other Writers. With nearly 100
+  graphic Illustrations by W. S. GILBERT, and others. Crown 8vo, cloth
+  extra, 6_s._
+
+     "Well fulfils the promise of its title.... The book is an
+     eminently interesting one, and will probably attract many
+     readers."--_Court Circular._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Memorials of Manchester Streets.= By RICHARD WRIGHT PROCTER. With
+  an Appendix, containing "The Chetham Library," by JAMES CROSSLEY,
+  F.S.A.; and "Old Manchester and its Worthies," by JAMES CROSTON,
+  F.S.A. Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Photographic Frontispiece and
+  numerous Illustrations, 15_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Monumental Inscriptions of the West Indies=, from the Earliest
+  Date, with Genealogical and Historical Annotations, &c., from
+  Original, Local, and other Sources. Illustrative of the Histories
+  and Genealogies of the Seventeenth Century, the Calendars of State
+  Papers, Peerages, and Baronetages. With Engravings of the Arms of
+  the principal Families. Chiefly collected on the spot by the Author,
+  Capt. J. H. LAWRENCE-ARCHER. Demy 4to, cloth extra, 42_s._ [_Nearly
+  ready._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Muses of Mayfair=: Vers de Société of the Nineteenth Century,
+  including selections from TENNYSON, BROWNING, SWINBURNE,
+  ROSSETTI, JEAN INGELOW, LOCKER, INGOLDSBY, HOOD, LYTTON, C. S.
+  C., LANDOR, HENRY S. LEIGH, and very many others. Edited by H.
+  CHOLMONDELEY-PENNELL, Author of "Puck on Pegasus." Beautifully
+  printed, cloth extra gilt, gilt edges, uniform with "The Golden
+  Treasury of Thought," 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                       MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY'S POEMS.
+
+  =Music and Moonlight=: Poems and Songs. By ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY,
+  Author of "An Epic of Women." Fcap. 8vo, cloth extra, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "It is difficult to say which is more exquisite, the technical
+     perfection of structure and melody, or the delicate pathos of
+     thought. Mr. O'Shaughnessy will enrich our literature with some of
+     the very best songs written in our generation."--_Academy._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =An Epic of Women=, and other Poems. SECOND EDITION. Fcap. 8vo, cloth
+  extra, 6_s._
+
+     "Of the formal art of poetry he is in many senses quite a master;
+     his metres are not only good,--they are his own, and often of an
+     invention most felicitous as well as careful."--_Academy._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Lays of France.= (Founded on the "Lays of Marie.") SECOND EDITION.
+  Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "As we have before remarked in noticing an earlier volume of
+     his, this modern votary of Marie has, in imaginative power, keen
+     intuition, and ear, a genuine claim to be writing poetry, as
+     things go now.... And Mr. O'S. is also an accomplished master in
+     those peculiar turns of rhythm which are designed to reproduce the
+     manner of the mediæval originals."--_Saturday Review._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Mystery of the Good Old Cause=: Sarcastic Notices of those Members
+  of the Long Parliament that held Places, both Civil and Military,
+  contrary to the Self-denying Ordinance of April 3, 1645; with the
+  Sums of Money and Lands they divided among themselves. Small 4to,
+  half-morocco, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Napoleon III., the Man of His Time=; from Caricatures. PART I. THE
+  STORY OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON III., as told by J. M. HASWELL. PART
+  II. THE SAME STORY, as told by the POPULAR CARICATURES of the past
+  Thirty-five Years. Crown 8vo, with Coloured Frontispiece and over 100
+  Caricatures, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Original Lists of Persons of Quality=; Emigrants; Religious Exiles;
+  Political Rebels; Serving Men Sold for a Term of Years; Apprentices;
+  Children Stolen; Maidens Pressed; and others who went from Great
+  Britain to the American Plantations, 1600-1700. With their Ages, the
+  Localities where they formerly Lived in the Mother Country, Names of
+  the Ships in which they embarked, and other interesting particulars.
+  From MSS. preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's
+  Public Record Office, England. Edited by JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN. A very
+  handsome volume, crown 4to, cloth gilt, 700 pages, 38_s._ A few Large
+  Paper copies have been printed, price 60_s._
+
+     "This volume is an English Family Record, and as such may be
+     commended to English families, and the descendants of English
+     families, wherever they exist."--_Academy._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                          THE OLD DRAMATISTS.
+
+                       MR. SWINBURNE'S NEW ESSAY.
+
+=George Chapman's Poems and Minor
+Translations.= Complete, including some Pieces now first printed.
+With an Essay on the Dramatic and Poetical Works of GEORGE
+CHAPMAN, by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. Crown 8vo, with Frontispiece,
+cloth extra, 6_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+=George Chapman's Translations of
+Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.= Edited by RICHARD HERNE
+SHEPHERD. In one volume, crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+=George Chapman's Plays=, Complete, from
+the Original Quartos, including the doubtful Plays. Edited by
+R. H. SHEPHERD. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Frontispiece, 6_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+=Ben Jonson's Works.= With Notes, Critical
+and Explanatory, and a Biographical Memoir by WILLIAM
+GIFFORD. Edited by Lieut.-Col. FRANCIS CUNNINGHAM. Complete
+in 3 vols., crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, Portrait, 6_s._ each.
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+=Christopher Marlowe's Works=; Including
+his Translations. Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by
+Lt.-Col. F. CUNNINGHAM. Cr. 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, Portrait, 6_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+=Philip Massinger's Plays.= From the
+Text of WM. GIFFORD. With the addition of the Tragedy of
+"Believe as You List." Edited by Lieut.-Col. FRANCIS CUNNINGHAM.
+Crown 8vo, cloth extra gilt, with Portrait, price 6_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                     OLD BOOKS--FACSIMILE REPRINTS.
+
+  =Musarum Deliciæ=; or, The Muses' Recreation, 1656; Wit Restor'd,
+  1658; and Wit's Recreations, 1640. The whole compared with the
+  originals; with all the Wood Engravings, Plates, Memoirs, and Notes.
+  A New Edition, in 2 vols., post 8vo, printed on antique laid paper,
+  and bound in antique boards, 21_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+  =Rump (The)=; or, An Exact Collection of the choicest POEMS and SONGS
+  relating to the late Times, and continued by the most eminent Wits;
+  from Anno 1639 to 1661. A Facsimile Reprint of the rare Original
+  Edition (London, 1662), with Frontispiece and Engraved Title-page. In
+  2 vols., large fcap. 8vo, printed on antique laid paper, and bound in
+  antique boards, 17_s._ 6_d._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+  =D'Urfey's ("Tom") Wit and Mirth=; or, PILLS TO PURGE MELANCHOLY:
+  Being a Collection of the best Merry Ballads and Songs, Old and New.
+  Fitted to all Humours, having each their proper Tune for either Voice
+  or Instrument: most of the Songs being new set. London: Printed by W.
+  Pearson, for J. Tonson, at Shakespeare's Head, over-against Catherine
+  Street in the Strand, 1719. An exact reprint. In 6 vols., large fcap.
+  8vo, printed on antique laid paper, antique boards, £3 3_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+  =English Rogue (The)=, described in the Life of MERITON LATROON, and
+  other Extravagants, comprehending the most Eminent Cheats of both
+  Sexes. By RICHARD HEAD and FRANCIS KIRKMAN. A Facsimile Reprint of
+  the rare Original Edition (1665-1672), with Frontispiece, Facsimiles
+  of the 12 copper plates, and Portraits of the Authors. In 4 vols.,
+  large fcap. 8vo, printed on antique laid paper, and bound in antique
+  boards, 36_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+  =Westminster Drolleries=: Being a choice Collection of Songs
+  and Poems sung at Court and Theatres. With Additions made by a
+  Person of Quality. Now first reprinted in exact facsimile from the
+  Original Editions of 1671 and 1672. Edited, with an Introduction
+  on the Literature of the Drolleries, a copious Appendix of Notes,
+  Illustrations, and Emendations of Text, Table of Contents, and Index
+  of First Lines, by J. WOODFALL EBSWORTH, M.A. Cantab. Large fcap.
+  8vo, printed on antique paper, and bound in antique boards, 10_s._
+  6_d._; large paper copies, 21_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+  =Ireland Forgeries.--Confessions of= WILLIAM-HENRY IRELAND.
+  Containing the Particulars of his Fabrication of the Shakspeare
+  Manuscripts; together with Anecdotes and Opinions (hitherto
+  unpublished) of many Distinguished Persons in the Literary,
+  Political, and Theatrical World. A Facsimile Reprint from the
+  Original Edition, with several additional Facsimiles. Fcap. 8vo,
+  printed on antique laid paper, and bound in antique boards, 10_s._
+  6_d._; a few Large Paper copies, at 21_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+  =Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.= 1785. An unmutilated
+  Reprint of the First Edition. Quarto, bound in half-Roxburghe, gilt
+  top, price 8_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+  =Joe Miller's Jests=: the politest Repartees, most elegant Bon-Mots,
+  and most pleasing short Stories in the English Language. London:
+  printed by T. Read. 1739. A Facsimile of the Original Edition. 8vo,
+  half-morocco, 9_s._ 6_d._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+  =Old Prose Stories (The)= whence TENNYSON'S "Idylls of the King" were
+  taken. By B. M. RANKING. Royal 16mo, paper cover, 1_s._; cloth extra,
+  1_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                         OLD SHEKARRY'S WORKS.
+
+  =Forest and Field=: Life and Adventure in Wild Africa. By the OLD
+  SHEKARRY. With Eight Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt,
+  6_s._
+
+                        *       *       *
+
+  =Wrinkles=; or, Hints to Sportsmen and Travellers upon Dress,
+  Equipment, Armament, and Camp Life. By the OLD SHEKARRY. A New
+  Edition, with Illustrations. Small crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 6_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                            OUIDA'S NOVELS.
+
+      Uniform Edition, each Complete in One Volume, crown 8vo, red
+                     cloth extra, price 5_s._ each.
+
+     =Folle Farine.=
+
+     =Idalia=: A Romance.
+
+     =Chandos=: A Novel.
+
+     =Under Two Flags.=
+
+     =Cecil Castlemaine's Gage.=
+
+     =Tricotrin=: The Story of a Waif and Stray.
+
+     =Pascarèl=: Only a Story.
+
+     =Held In Bondage=; or, Granville de Vigne.
+
+     =Puck=: His Vicissitudes, Adventures, &c.
+
+     =A Dog of Flanders=, and other Stories.
+
+     =Strathmore=; or, Wrought by his Own Hand.
+
+     =Two Little Wooden Shoes.=
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Parochial History of the County of Cornwall.= Compiled from the best
+  Authorities, and corrected and improved from actual Survey. 4 vols.
+  4to, cloth extra, £3 3_s._ the set; or, separately, the first three
+  volumes, 16_s._ each; the fourth volume, 18_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Plain English.= By JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD. One vol., crown 8vo.
+  [_Preparing._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Private Book of Useful Alloys and Memoranda for Goldsmiths and
+  Jewellers.= By JAMES E. COLLINS, C.E. Royal 16mo, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                           SEVENTH EDITION OF
+             =Puck on Pegasus.= By H. CHOLMONDELEY-PENNELL.
+
+  Profusely illustrated by the late JOHN LEECH, H. K. BROWNE, Sir NOEL
+  PATON, JOHN MILLAIS, JOHN TENNIEL, RICHARD DOYLE, Miss ELLEN EDWARDS,
+  and other artists. A New Edition (the SEVENTH), crown 8vo, cloth
+  extra, gilt, price 5_s._; or gilt edges, 6_s._
+
+     "The book is clever and amusing, vigorous and healthy."--_Saturday
+     Review._
+
+     "The epigrammatic drollery of Mr. Cholmondeley-Pennell's 'Puck
+     on Pegasus' is well known to many of our readers.... The present
+     (_the sixth_) is a superb and handsomely printed and illustrated
+     edition of the book."--_Times._
+
+     "Specially fit for reading in the family circle."--_Observer._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                  "AN AWFULLY JOLLY BOOK FOR PARTIES."
+
+  =Puniana=: Thoughts Wise and Otherwise. By the Hon. HUGH ROWLEY. Best
+  Book of Riddles and Puns ever formed. With nearly 100 exquisitely
+  Fanciful Drawings. Contains nearly 3000 of the best Riddles, and
+  10,000 most outrageous Puns, and is one of the most Popular Books
+  ever issued. New Edition, small quarto, green and gold, gilt edges,
+  price 6_s._
+
+     "Enormous burlesque--unapproachable and pre-eminent. We think this
+     very queer volume will be a favourite. We should suggest that,
+     to a dull person desirous to get credit with the young holiday
+     people, it would be good policy to invest in the book, and dole it
+     out by instalments."--_Saturday Review._
+
+                                 Also,
+
+                            =More Puniana.=
+
+     By the Hon. HUGH ROWLEY. Containing nearly 100 beautifully
+     executed Drawings, and a splendid Collection of Riddles and Puns,
+     rivalling those in the First Volume. Small 4to, green and gold,
+     gilt edges, uniform with the First Series, 6_s._
+
+
+ [Illustration: _When are persons entitled to speak like a
+                book? Only when they are a tome on the subject._]
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+  =Pursuivant of Arms (The)=; or, Heraldry founded upon Facts. A
+  Popular Guide to the Science of Heraldry. By J. R. PLANCHÉ, Esq.,
+  F.S.A., Somerset Herald. To which are added, Essays on the BADGES OF
+  THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK. A New Edition, enlarged and revised
+  by the Author, illustrated with Coloured Frontispiece, Five full-page
+  Plates, and about 200 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, bound in cloth extra,
+  gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Practical Assayer=: A Guide to Miners and Explorers. By OLIVER
+  NORTH. With Tables and Illustrative Woodcuts. Crown 8vo, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     *** _This book gives directions, in the simplest form, for
+     assaying bullion and the baser metals by the cheapest, quickest,
+     and best methods. Those interested in mining property will be
+     enabled, by following its instructions, to form a tolerably
+     correct idea of the value of ores, without previous knowledge of
+     assaying; while to the young man seeking his fortune in mining
+     countries it is indispensable._
+
+     "Likely to prove extremely useful. The instructions are clear and
+     precise."--_Chemist and Druggist._
+
+     "An admirable little volume."--_Mining Journal._
+
+     "We cordially recommend this compact little volume to all engaged
+     in mining enterprize, and especially to explorers."--_Monetary and
+     Mining Review._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                        GUSTAVE DORÉ'S DESIGNS.
+
+  =Rabelais' Works.= Faithfully translated from the French, with
+  variorum Notes, and numerous characteristic Illustrations by GUSTAVE
+  DORÉ. Cr. 8vo, cl. extra, 700 pp. 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                  UNIFORM WITH "WONDERFUL CHARACTERS."
+
+  =Remarkable Trials and Notorious Characters.= From "Half-Hanged
+  Smith," 1700, to Oxford, who shot at the Queen, 1840. By Captain L.
+  BENSON. With spirited full-page Engravings by PHIZ. 8vo, 550 pages,
+  7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Rochefoucauld's Reflections and Moral Maxims.= With Introductory
+  Essay by SAINTE-BEUVE, and Explanatory Notes. Cloth extra, 1_s._
+  6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Reminiscences of the late Thomas Assheton Smith, Esq.=; or, The
+  Pursuits of an English Country Gentleman. By Sir J. E. EARDLEY
+  WILMOT, Bart. A New and Revised Edition, with Steel-plate Portrait,
+  and plain and coloured Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 7_s._
+  6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Roll of Battle Abbey=; or, A List of the Principal Warriors who came
+  over from Normandy with William the Conqueror, and Settled in this
+  Country, A.D. 1066-7. Carefully drawn, and printed on fine plate
+  paper, nearly three feet by two feet, with the Arms of the principal
+  Barons elaborately emblazoned in Gold and Colours. Price 5_s._; or,
+  handsomely framed in carved oak of an antique pattern, 22_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Roll of Caerlaverock=, the Oldest Heraldic Roll; including the
+  Original Anglo-Norman Poem, and an English Translation of the MS. in
+  the British Museum. By THOMAS WRIGHT, M.A. The Arms emblazoned in
+  Gold and Colours. In 4to, very handsomely printed, extra gold cloth,
+  12_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Roman Catholics in the County of York in 1604.= Transcribed from the
+  Original MS. in the Bodleian Library, and Edited, with Genealogical
+  Notes, by EDWARD PEACOCK, F.S.A., Editor of "Army Lists of the
+  Roundheads and Cavaliers, 1642." Small 4to, handsomely printed and
+  bound, 15_s._
+
+     *** _Genealogists and Antiquaries will find much new and curious
+     matter in this work. An elaborate Index refers to every name in
+     the volume, among which will be found many of the highest local
+     interest._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Ross's (Chas. H.) Story of a Honeymoon.= A New Edition of this
+  charmingly humorous book, with numerous Illustrations by the Author.
+  Fcap. 8vo, illustrated boards, 2_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =School Life at Winchester College=; or, The Reminiscences of a
+  Winchester Junior. By the Author of "The Log of the Water Lily;" and
+  "The Water Lily on the Danube." Second Edition, Revised, COLOURED
+  PLATES, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Schopenhauer's The World Considered as Will and Imagination.=
+  Translated by Dr. FRANZ HUEFFER, Author of "Richard Wagner and the
+  Music of the Future." [_In preparation._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                        THE "SECRET OUT" SERIES.
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth extra, profusely Illustrated, price 4_s._ 6_d._ each.
+
+  =Art of Amusing.= A Collection of Graceful Arts, Games, Tricks,
+  Puzzles, and Charades, intended to Amuse Everybody. By FRANK BELLEW.
+  With nearly 300 Illustrations.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Hanky-Panky.= A Wonderful Book of Very Easy Tricks, Very Difficult
+  Tricks, White Magic, Sleight of Hand; in fact, all those startling
+  Deceptions which the Great Wizards call "Hanky-Panky." Edited by W.
+  H. CREMER. With nearly 200 Illustrations.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Magician's Own Book.= Ample Instruction for Performances with Cups
+  and Balls, Eggs, Hats, Handkerchiefs, &c. All from Actual Experience.
+  Edited by W. H. CREMER. With 200 Illustrations.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Magic No Mystery.= A Splendid Collection of Tricks with Cards, Dice,
+  Balls, &c., with fully descriptive working Directions. With very
+  numerous Illustrations. [_Nearly ready._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Merry Circle (The)=, and How the Visitors were entertained during
+  Twelve Pleasant Evenings. A Book of New Intellectual Games and
+  Amusements. Edited by Mrs. CLARA BELLEW. With numerous Illustrations.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Secret Out=; or, One Thousand Tricks with Cards, and other
+  Recreations; with Entertaining Experiments in Drawing Room or "White
+  Magic." Edited by W. H. CREMER. With 300 Engravings.
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Shelley's Early Life.= From Original Sources. With Curious
+  Incidents, Letters, and Writings, now First Published or Collected.
+  By DENIS FLORENCE MAC-CARTHY. Crown 8vo, with Illustrations, 440
+  pages, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Sheridan's Complete Works=, with Life and Anecdotes. Including his
+  Dramatic Writings, printed from the Original Editions, his Works
+  in Prose and Poetry, Translations, Speeches, Jokes, Puns, &c.;
+  with a Collection of Sheridaniana. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, with 10
+  beautifully executed Portraits and Scenes from his Plays, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Signboards=: Their History. With Anecdotes of Famous Taverns and
+  Remarkable Characters. By JACOB LARWOOD and JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN.
+  SEVENTH EDITION. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "It is not fair on the part of a reviewer to pick out the plums of
+     an author's book, thus filching away his cream, and leaving little
+     but skim-milk remaining; but, even if we were ever so maliciously
+     inclined, we could not in the present instance pick out all
+     Messrs. Larwood and Hotten's plums, because the good things are so
+     numerous as to defy the most wholesale depredation."--_The Times._
+
+[Illustration: HELP ME THROUGH THIS WORLD!]
+
+     *** _Nearly 100 most curious illustrations on wood are given,
+     showing the signs which were formerly hung from taverns, &c._
+
+HANDBOOK OF COLLOQUIALISMS.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+ [Illustration: THE WEDGE AND THE WOODEN SPOON.]
+
+  =The Slang Dictionary=: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal. An
+  ENTIRELY NEW EDITION, revised throughout, and considerably Enlarged,
+  containing upwards of a thousand more words than the last edition.
+  Crown 8vo, with Curious Illustrations, cloth extra, 6_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "Peculiarly a book which 'no gentleman's library should be
+     without,' while to costermongers and thieves it is absolutely
+     indispensable."--_Dispatch._
+
+     "Interesting and curious. Contains as many as it was possible to
+     collect of all the words and phrases of modern slang in use at the
+     present time."--_Public Opinion._
+
+     "In every way a great improvement on the edition of 1864. Its uses
+     as a dictionary of the very vulgar tongue do not require to be
+     explained."--_Notes and Queries._
+
+     "Compiled with most exacting care, and based on the best
+     authorities."--_Standard._
+
+     "In 'The Slang Dictionary' we have not only a book that reflects
+     credit upon the philologist; it is also a volume that will repay,
+     at any time, a dip into its humorous pages."--_Figaro._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                       WEST-END LIFE AND DOINGS.
+
+  =Story of the London Parks.= By JACOB LARWOOD. With numerous
+  Illustrations, Coloured and Plain. In One thick Volume, crown 8vo,
+  cloth extra, gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     *** _A most interesting work, giving a complete History of these
+     favourite out-of-door resorts, from the earliest period to the
+     present time._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                        A KEEPSAKE FOR SMOKERS.
+
+  =Smoker's Text-Book.= By J. HAMER, F.R.S.L. Exquisitely printed from
+  "silver-faced" type, cloth, very neat, gilt edges, 2_s._ 6_d._, post
+  free.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                       CHARMING NEW TRAVEL-BOOK.
+
+ [Illustration: "It may be we shall touch the happy isles."]
+
+  =Summer Cruising in the South Seas.= By CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. With
+  Twenty-five Engravings on Wood, drawn by WALLIS MACKAY. Crown 8vo,
+  cloth, extra gilt, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "This is a very amusing book, and full of that quiet humour for
+     which the Americans are so famous. We have not space to enumerate
+     all the picturesque descriptions, the poetical thoughts, which
+     have so charmed us in this volume; but we recommend our readers to
+     go to the South Seas with Mr. Stoddard in his prettily illustrated
+     and amusingly written little book."--_Vanity Fair._
+
+     "Mr. Stoddard's book is delightful reading, and in Mr.
+     Wallis Mackay he has found a most congenial and poetical
+     illustrator."--_Bookseller._
+
+     "A remarkable book, which has a certain wild
+     picturesqueness."--_Standard._
+
+     "The author's experiences are very amusingly related, and, in
+     parts, with much freshness and originality."--_Judy._
+
+     "Mr. Stoddard is a humourist; 'Summer Cruising' has a good deal of
+     undeniable amusement."--_Nation._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Syntax's (Dr.) Three Tours.= With the whole of ROWLANDSON'S very
+  droll full-page Illustrations, in Colours, after the Original
+  Drawings. Comprising the well-known TOURS--1. IN SEARCH OF THE
+  PICTURESQUE. 2. IN SEARCH OF CONSOLATION. 3. IN SEARCH OF A WIFE.
+  The Three Series Complete, with a Life of the Author by JOHN CAMDEN
+  HOTTEN. Medium 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, price 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Theseus: A Greek Fairy Legend.= Illustrated, in a series of Designs
+  in Gold and Sepia, by JOHN MOYR SMITH. With descriptive text. Oblong
+  folio, price 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  [Illustration: THEODORE HOOK'S HOUSE, NEAR PUTNEY.]
+
+  =Theodore Hook's Choice Humorous Works=, with his Ludicrous
+  Adventures, Bons-mots, Puns, and Hoaxes. With a new Life of the
+  Author, PORTRAITS, FACSIMILES, and ILLUSTRATIONS. Crown 8vo, 600
+  pages, cloth extra, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+     *** "As a wit and humourist of the highest order his name will
+     be preserved. His political songs and _jeux d'esprit_, when the
+     hour comes for collecting them, _will form a volume of sterling
+     and lasting attraction_!"--J. G. LOCKHART.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                         MR. SWINBURNE'S WORKS.
+
+                      SECOND EDITION NOW READY OF
+
+  =Bothwell=: A Tragedy. By ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. Crown 8vo,
+  cloth extra, pp. 540, 12_s._ 6_d._
+
+     "Mr. Swinburne's most prejudiced critic cannot, we think, deny
+     that 'Bothwell' is a poem of a very high character. Every line
+     bears traces of power, individuality, and vivid imagination. The
+     versification, while characteristically supple and melodious, also
+     attains, in spite of some affectations, to a sustained strength
+     and dignity of a remarkable kind. Mr. Swinburne is not only a
+     master of the music of language, but he has that indescribable
+     touch which discloses the true poet--the touch that lifts from off
+     the ground."--_Saturday Review._
+
+     "It is not too much to say that, should he never write anything
+     more, the poet has by this work firmly established his position,
+     and given us a poem upon which his fame may safely rest. He no
+     longer indulges in that frequent alliteration, or that oppressive
+     wealth of imagery and colour, which gave rhythm and splendour to
+     some of his works, but would have been out of place in a grand
+     historical poem; we have now a fair opportunity of judging what
+     the poet can do when deprived of such adventitious aid,--and the
+     verdict is, that he must henceforth rank amongst the first of
+     British authors."--_Graphic._
+
+     "The whole drama flames and rings with high passions and
+     great deeds. The imagination is splendid; the style large and
+     imperial; the insight into character keen; the blank verse
+     varied, sensitive, flexible, alive. Mr. Swinburne has once more
+     proved his right to occupy a seat among the lofty singers of our
+     land."--_Daily News._
+
+     "A really grand, statuesque dramatic work.... The reader will
+     here find Mr. Swinburne at his very best; if manliness, dignity,
+     and fulness of style are superior to mere pleasant singing and
+     alliterative lyrics."--_Standard._
+
+     "Splendid pictures, subtle analyses of passion, and wonderful
+     studies of character will repay him who attains the end.... In
+     this huge volume are many fine and some unsurpassable things.
+     Subtlest traits of character abound, and descriptive passages of
+     singular delicacy."--_Athenæum._
+
+     "There can be no doubt of the dramatic force of the poem. It
+     is severely simple in its diction, and never dull; there are
+     innumerable fine touches on almost every page."--_Scotsman._
+
+     "'Bothwell' shows us Mr. Swinburne at a point immeasurably
+     superior to any that he has yet achieved. It will confirm and
+     increase the reputation which his daring genius has already won.
+     He has handled a difficult subject with a mastery of art which is
+     a true intellectual triumph."--_Hour._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Chastelard=: A Tragedy. Foolscap 8vo, 7_s._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Poems and Ballads.= Foolscap 8vo, 9_s._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Notes on "Poems and Ballads,"= and on the Reviews of them. Demy 8vo,
+  1_s._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Songs before Sunrise.= Post 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Atalanta in Calydon.= Fcap. 8vo, 6_s._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =The Queen Mother and Rosamond.= Foolscap 8vo, 5_s._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =A Song of Italy.= Foolscap 8vo, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic.= Demy 8vo, 1_s._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Under the Microscope.= Post 8vo, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =William Blake=: A Critical Essay. With facsimile Paintings, Coloured
+  by Hand, after the Drawings by Blake and his Wife. Demy 8vo, 16_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+                       THE THACKERAY SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  =THACKERAYANA=: Notes and Anecdotes, Illustrated by about Six Hundred
+  Sketches by WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, depicting Humorous Incidents
+  in his School-life, and Favourite Scenes and Characters in the books
+  of his every-day reading, NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME PUBLISHED, from the
+  Original Drawings made on the margins of his books, &c. Large post
+  8vo, clth. extra gilt, gilt top, price 12_s._ 6_d._
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+     "It is Thackeray's aim to represent life as it is actually and
+     historically--men and women as they are, in those situations in
+     which they are usually placed, with that mixture of good and
+     evil, of strength and foible, which is to be found in their
+     characters, and liable only to those incidents which are of
+     ordinary occurrence. He will have no faultless characters, no
+     demi-gods,--nothing but men and brethren."--DAVID MASSON.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Timbs' English Eccentrics and Eccentricities.= Stories of Wealth
+  and Fashion, Delusions, Impostures and Fanatic Missions, Strange
+  Sights and Sporting Scenes, Eccentric Artists, Theatrical Folks, Men
+  of Letters, &c. By JOHN TIMES, F.S.A. An entirely New Edition, with
+  about 50 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 600 pages, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+  [Illustration: _Sir Lumley Skeffington at the Birthday Ball._]
+
+  =Timbs' Clubs and Club Life in London.= With ANECDOTES of its FAMOUS
+  COFFEE HOUSES, HOSTELRIES, and TAVERNS. By JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A. New
+  Edition, with NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS drawn expressly. Crown 8vo,
+  cloth extra, 600 pages, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     *** _A Companion to "The History of Sign-Boards."_ _It abounds in
+     quaint stories of the_ Blue Stocking, Kit-Kat, Beef Steak, Robin
+     Hood, Mohocks, Scriblerus, One o'Clock, the Civil, _and hundreds
+     of other Clubs; together with_ Tom's, Dick's, Button's, Ned's,
+     Will's, _and the famous Coffee Houses of the last century_.
+
+     "The book supplies a much-felt want. The club is the avenue to
+     general society at the present day, and Mr. Timbs gives the
+     _entrée_ to the club. The scholar and antiquary will also find
+     the work a repertory of information on many disputed points of
+     literary interest, and especially respecting various well-known
+     anecdotes, the value of which only increases with the lapse of
+     time."--_Morning Post._
+
+     =Blake's Works.= Messrs. CHATTO & WINDUS have in preparation a
+     series of Reproductions in Facsimile of the Works of WILLIAM
+     BLAKE, including the "Songs of Innocence and Experience," "The
+     Book of Thel," "America," "The Vision of the Daughters of
+     Albion," "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," "Europe, a Prophecy,"
+     "Jerusalem," "Milton," "Urizen," "The Song of Los," &c. These
+     Works will be issued both coloured and plain.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Taylor's History of Playing Cards.= With Sixty curious
+  Illustrations. 550 pp., crown 8vo, cloth, extra gilt, price 7_s._
+  6_d._
+
+     *** _Ancient and Modern Games, Conjuring, Fortune-Telling,
+     and Card Sharping, Gambling and Calculation, Cartomancy, Old
+     Gaming-Houses, Card Revels and Blind Hookey, Picquet and
+     Vingt-et-un, Whist and Cribbage, Tricks, &c._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Vagabondiana=; or, Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the
+  Streets of London; with Portraits of the most remarkable, drawn from
+  the Life by JOHN THOMAS SMITH, late Keeper of the Prints in the
+  British Museum. With Introduction by FRANCIS DOUCE, and descriptive
+  text. Reprinted from the original, with the Woodcuts, and the 32
+  Plates, from the original Coppers, in crown 4to, half Roxburghe,
+  price 12_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+               "LES MISÉRABLES." Complete in Three Parts.
+
+  =Victor Hugo's Fantine.= Now first published in an English
+  Translation, complete and unabridged, with the exception of a few
+  advisable omissions. Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2_s._
+
+     "This work has something more than the beauties of an exquisite
+     style or the word-compelling power of a literary Zeus to recommend
+     it to the tender care of a distant posterity: in dealing with all
+     the emotions, passions, doubts, fears, which go to make up our
+     common humanity, M. Victor Hugo has stamped upon every page the
+     Hall-mark of genius and the loving patience and conscientious
+     labour of a true artist. But the merits of 'Les Misérables' do not
+     merely consist in the conception of it as a whole; it abounds,
+     page after page, with details of unequalled beauty."--_Quarterly
+     Review._
+                         *       *       *
+  =Victor Hugo's Cosette and Marius.= Translated into English,
+  complete, uniform with "Fantine." Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2_s._
+
+                         *       *       *
+
+  =Victor Hugo's Saint Denis and Jean Valjean.= Translated into
+  English, complete, uniform with the above. Post 8vo, illustrated
+  boards, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Vyner's Notitia Venatica=: A Treatise on Fox-Hunting, the General
+  Management of Hounds, and the Diseases of Dogs; Distemper and Rabies;
+  Kennel Lameness, &c. Sixth Edition, Enlarged. By ROBERT C. VYNER.
+  WITH SPIRITED ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOURS, BY ALKEN, OF MEMORABLE
+  FOX-HUNTING SCENES. Royal 8vo, cloth extra, 21_s._
+
+    *** _An entirely new edition of the best work on Fox-Hunting._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.= The Complete Work, precisely as
+  issued by the Author in Washington. A thick volume, 8vo, green cloth,
+  price 9_s._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  =Walton and Cotton, Illustrated.=--=The Complete Angler=; or,
+  the Contemplative Man's Recreation; being a Discourse of Rivers,
+  Fish-ponds, Fish and Fishing, written by IZAAK WALTON; and
+  Instructions how to Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a clear Stream,
+  by CHARLES COTTON. With Original Memoirs and Notes by Sir HARRIS
+  NICOLAS, K.C.M.G. With the whole 61 Illustrations, precisely as in
+  the royal 8vo two-volume Edition issued by Pickering. A New Edition,
+  complete in One Volume, large crown 8vo, with the Illustrations from
+  the original plates, printed on full pages, separately from the text,
+  7_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Warrant to Execute Charles I.= An exact Facsimile of this important
+  Document, with the Fifty-nine Signatures of the Regicides, and
+  corresponding Seals, admirably executed on paper made to imitate
+  the original document, 22 in. by 14 in. Price 2_s._; or, handsomely
+  framed and glazed in carved oak of antique pattern, 14_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Warrant to Execute Mary Queen of Scots.= The Exact Facsimile of this
+  important Document, including the Signature of Queen Elizabeth and
+  Facsimile of the Great Seal, on tinted paper, to imitate the Original
+  MS. Price 2_s._; or, handsomely framed and glazed in carved oak,
+  antique pattern, 14_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Waterford Roll (The).=--Illuminated Charter-Roll of Waterford, Temp.
+  Richard II.
+
+     *** _Amongst the Corporation Muniments of the City of Waterford
+     is preserved an ancient Illuminated Roll, of great interest
+     and beauty, comprising all the early Charters and Grants to
+     the City of Waterford, from the time of Henry II. to Richard
+     II. A full-length Portrait of each King, whose Charter is
+     given--including Edward III., when young, and again at an advanced
+     age--adorns the margin. These Portraits, with the exception of
+     four which are smaller, and on one sheet of vellum, vary from
+     eight to nine inches in length--some in armour, and some in robes
+     of state. In addition to these are Portraits of an Archbishop
+     in full canonicals, of a Chancellor, and of many of the chief
+     Burgesses of the City of Waterford, as well as singularly curious
+     Portraits of the Mayors of Dublin, Waterford, Limerick, and
+     Cork, figured for the most part in the quaint bipartite costume
+     of the Second Richard's reign, though partaking of many of the
+     peculiarities of that of Edward III. Altogether this ancient
+     work of art is unique of its kind in Ireland, and deserves to
+     be rescued from oblivion, by the publication of the unedited
+     Charters, and of fac-similes of all the Illuminations. The
+     production of such a work would throw much light on the question
+     of the art and social habits of the Anglo-Norman settlers in
+     Ireland at the close of the fourteenth century. The Charters are,
+     many of them, highly important from an historic point of view._
+
+     _The Illuminations have been accurately traced and coloured for
+     the work from a copy carefully made, by permission of the Mayor
+     and Corporation of Waterford, by the late George V. Du Noyer,
+     Esq., M.R.I.A.; and those Charters which have not already appeared
+     in print will be edited by the Rev. James Graves, A.B., M.R.I.A.,
+     Hon. Secretary Kilkenny and South-East of Ireland Archæological
+     Society._
+
+     _The Work will be brought out in the best manner, with embossed
+     cover and characteristic title-page; and it will be put to press
+     as soon as 250 subscribers are obtained. The price, in imperial
+     4to, is 20s. to subscribers, or 30s. to non-subscribers._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Wonderful Characters=: Memoirs and Anecdotes of Remarkable and
+  Eccentric Persons of Every Age and Nation. From the text of HENRY
+  WILSON and JAMES CAULFIELD. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Sixty-one
+  full-page Engravings of Extraordinary Persons, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     *** _There are so many curious matters discussed in this volume,
+     that any person who takes it up will not readily lay it down
+     until he has read it through. The Introduction is almost entirety
+     devoted to a consideration of Pig-Faced Ladies, and the various
+     stories concerning them._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Wright's (Andrew) Court-Hand Restored=; or, Student's Assistant
+  in Reading Old Deeds, Charters, Records, &c. Half Morocco, a New
+  Edition, 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+     *** _The best guide to the reading of old Records, &c._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Wright's Caricature History of the Georges= (House of Hanover). With
+  400 Pictures, Caricatures, Squibs, Broadsides, Window Pictures, &c.
+  By THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq., M.A., F.S.A. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 7_s._
+  6_d._
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+     "A set of caricatures such as we have in Mr. Wright's volume
+     brings the surface of the age before us with a vividness that no
+     prose writer, even of the highest power, could emulate. Macaulay's
+     most brilliant sentence is weak by the side of the little woodcut
+     from Gillray, which gives us Burke and Fox."--_Saturday Review._
+
+     "A more amusing work of its kind was never issued."--_Art Journal._
+
+     "It is emphatically one of the liveliest of books, as also one of
+     the most interesting. It has the twofold merit of being at once
+     amusing and edifying."--_Morning Post._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =Yankee Drolleries=, Edited by G. A. SALA. Containing ARTEMUS WARD'S
+  BOOK; BIGLOW PAPERS; ORPHEUS C. KERR; JACK DOWNING; and NASBY PAPERS.
+  700 pp., 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =More Yankee Drolleries.= Containing ARTEMUS WARD'S TRAVELS; HANS
+  BREITMANN; PROFESSOR AT BREAKFAST TABLE; BIGLOW PAPERS, Part II.; and
+  JOSH BILLINGS; with Introduction by G. A. SALA. 700 pp., cloth, 3_s._
+  6_d._
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+  =A Third Supply of Yankee Drolleries.= Containing ARTEMUS WARD'S
+  FENIANS; AUTOCRAT OF BREAKFAST TABLE; BRET HARTE'S STORIES; INNOCENTS
+  ABROAD; and NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS; with an Introduction by G. A.
+  SALA. 700 pp., cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber's Notes
+
+In general, spelling is retained as printed. On occasion, apparent
+printer's errors, however, are corrected, where the author uses a more
+standard spelling elsewhere (e.g., 'acknowleges' on p. 283). Where the
+printer simply missed a word (e.g.,'hand' on p. 151), it is added.
+
+Incidental punctuation, especially of abbreviated words and in captions,
+which is missing from the printed original, has been silently restored.
+
+In the advertisement section at the end of the text, an asterism (three
+asterisks arranged in an inverted triangle) are used as a 'bullet'.
+In this text, these will be retained as "***".
+
+This table summarizes the various issues detected, and their resolution.
+
+  p. xii LE MONDE BESTORN[E/É]                              Corrected.
+  p.   6 as 1185[,] B.C.                                    Removed.
+  p.  57 and trepidation[.]                                 Added.
+  p.  76  fat flesh and their platter;["]                   Probable
+                                                             placement
+  p. 107 i[t] is evident from many allusions                Added.
+  p. 151 luxury went hand in [hand]                         Added.
+  p. 153 a playful character[./,] or sometimes              Added.
+  p. 155 N[u/ü]remberg                                      Corrected.
+  p. 160 and [meats] with a courteous reception             _sic._
+  p. 162 ["]should not be jougleurs, goliards,              Probable
+           or buffoons;"                                     placement.
+  p. 163 de [famila] Goliæ                                  _sic._
+  p. 173 ["/']Adam, Adam ...                                Corrected.
+  p. 201 received by the [the ]emperor Hugo                 Removed.
+  p. 230 Here [beginneht] a merye jest                      _sic._
+   n. 74
+  p. 243 "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," ["]Poggio,"
+            "Straparola,"                                   Added.
+         seventee[n]th                                      Added.
+  p. 254 the early book-hawkers[,/.]                        Corrected.
+  p. 289 acknowle[d]ged                                     Added.
+  p. 335 aspired to be P[l]antagruelists                    Removed.
+  p. 344 Florent Chr[e]stien                                Added.
+  p. 396 who jilts her husband that way, a very ----[.]"    Added.
+  p. 445 were [two/too] numerous                            Corrected.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Caricature and Grotesque, by 
+Thomas Wright
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44566 ***