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Transcriber’s Note

Illustrations have been placed approximately where they appeared in the original. Two illustrations, on pp. 199 and 204, were labelled No. 127. To resolve this, the second of them, and references to it, was changed to No. 127a.

Footnotes have been gathered at the end of the text, and linked to their anchors for convenient reference.

Incidental punctuation, especially of abbreviated words and in captions, which is missing from the printed original have been silently restored.

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A HISTORY
OF
CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No. 2. Catastrophe in a Funeral Procession.

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.

No. 3. An Unfortunate Soul.

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.

No. 4. The Cat and the Geese.

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.

No. 6. The Lion and the Unicorn.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

No. 13. A Scene from Terence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No. 19. The Farm-yard in Burlesque.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No. 23. A Popular Caricature.

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) ΘΕΟΝ, “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.

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]

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.[20] 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.[22] 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

No. 28. A Jolly Monk.

No. 29. Satan in Bonds.

No. 30. Satan.

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.

No. 31. The Temptation.

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.

No. 33. The flight into Egypt.

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.

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.

No. 35. The Demon of the Treasure.

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.

No. 36. The Pious Sculptor.

No. 37. The Monk’s Disaster.

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.

No. 39. A Mediæval Death-bed.

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.

No. 41. The Guardians of Hell Mouth.

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.

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.

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

hod to preste,

they thou him to skole sette

salmes to lerne,

hevere bet hise geres

to the grove grene

Though thou the hoary wolf

consecrate to a priest,

though thou put him to school

to learn Psalms,

ever are his ears turned

to the green grove.

No. 45. The Fox in the Pulpit.

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.”

No. 46. Ecclesiastical Sincerity.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No. 55. Justice in the Hands of the Persecuted.

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.

No. 57. Shoeing the Goose.

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.

No. 59. The Industrious Sow.

No. 60. Adulteration.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

No. 64. A Terrible Combat.

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.

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.

No. 67. A Fashionable Beauty.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.”

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.

No. 71. A Mediæval Kitchen Scene.

No. 72. An Old Lady and her Friends.

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.

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.”

No. 74. Scholastic Discipline.

No. 75. A Point in Dispute.

No. 76. Want of Harmony over the Pot.

No. 77. Domestic Strife.

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.

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.

No. 79. The Wife in the Ascendant.

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.

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.

No. 82. The Breeches Won.

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.

No. 83. A Legal Combat.

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.

No. 84. The Witch and the Demon.

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.

No. 86. A Baker of the Fifteenth Century.

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.

No. 88. The Wine Dealer.

No. 89. The Ale-Wife.

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.

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.

No. 92. The Shepherds of the East.

No. 93. The Carpenter.

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.

No. 95. Grotesque Monsters.

No. 96. Diabolical Mirth.

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.

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.

No. 99. Gluttony.

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.

No. 101. Monkish Gluttony.

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.

No. 102. The Monastic Cellarer.

No. 103. Drunkenness.

No. 104. A Strange Monster.

No. 105. Rolling Topsy Turvy.

No. 106. A Continuous Group.

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.

No. 107. Border Ornament.

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.

No. 108. A Triumphal Procession.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.’”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No. 114. A Welsh Archer.

No. 115. A Welshman with his Spear.

No. 116. A Gascon at his Vine.

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.

No. 117. The Wine Manufacturer.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

No. 119. A Crippled Minstrel.

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.

No. 121. A Swinish Minstrel.

No. 122. A Musical Mother.

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.

No. 124. The Tabor, or Drum.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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]

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.

No. 129. Money of the Archbishop of the Innocents.

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.

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.

No. 132. The Knight in the Dance of Death.

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.