CHAPTER XIII.

No. 127a. Court Fools.

It is in the fifteenth century that we first meet with the fool in fullcostume 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 theLizard 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 theirsongs 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,Debemusfaire fête.En revenantde Gravinaria,Un gros chardonreperit in via,Il lui coupa la tête.Vir monachus in mense JulioEgressus est e monasterio,C’est dom de la Bucaille;Egressus est sine licentia,Pour aller voir dona Venissia,Et faire la ripaille.

De asino bono nostro,Meliori et optimo,Debemusfaire fête.En revenantde Gravinaria,Un gros chardonreperit in via,Il lui coupa la tête.

De asino bono nostro,

Meliori et optimo,

Debemusfaire fête.

En revenantde Gravinaria,

Un gros chardonreperit in via,

Il lui coupa la tête.

Vir monachus in mense JulioEgressus est e monasterio,C’est dom de la Bucaille;Egressus est sine licentia,Pour aller voir dona Venissia,Et faire la ripaille.

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 JulyWent out of his monastery,It isdom de la Bucaille;He went out without license,To pay a visit to thedame de Venisse,And make jovial cheer.

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.

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 JulyWent out of his monastery,It isdom de la Bucaille;He went out without license,To pay a visit to thedame de Venisse,And make jovial cheer.

A monk in the month of July

Went out of his monastery,

It isdom de la Bucaille;

He went out without license,

To pay a visit to thedame 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 wordsous-diacres, and called themSaouls-diacres(Drunken Deacons), words which had nearly the same sound. The “feast of theass” 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 partibusAdventavit asinus,Pulcher et fortissimus,Sarcinis aptissimus.

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.

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 ofEnfans sans Souci(Careless Boys); it consisted of young men of education, who gave to their president or chieftain the title ofPrince 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 thename 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 thepopeof 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 lastEbeing 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 byMillin. 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.

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,”orDance 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 engravingson 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 wasperformed 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 insimpler 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 repeatingcras, 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 gentlemenà la mode,turgentes genere et natalibus altis, we are told, were the persons who disturbed the churchservice 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.

No. 134. Disturbers of Church Service.

No. 135. Mendicants on their Travels.

We may remark, however, that after Folly had thus run through all the stages of society, until it had reached the lowest of all, the ranks of mendicity, the gods themselves became alarmed, the more so as this great movement was directed especially against Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, and they held a conclave to provide against it. The result is not told, but the course of Folly goes on as vigorously as ever. Ignorant fools who set up for physicians, fools who cannot understand jokes, unwise mathematicians, astrologers, of the latter of which the moraliser says, in his Latin verse—

Siqua voles sortis prænoscere damna futuræ,Et vitare malum, sol tibi signa dabit.Sed tibi, stulte, tui cur non dedit ille furorisSigna? aut, si dederit, cur tanta mala subis?Nondum grammaticæ callis primordia, et audesVim cœli radio supposuisse tuo.

Siqua voles sortis prænoscere damna futuræ,

Et vitare malum, sol tibi signa dabit.

Sed tibi, stulte, tui cur non dedit ille furoris

Signa? aut, si dederit, cur tanta mala subis?

Nondum grammaticæ callis primordia, et audes

Vim cœli radio supposuisse tuo.

The next cut is a very curious one, and appears to represent a dissecting-house of this early period. Among other chapters which afford interesting pictures of that time, and indeed of all times, we may instance those of litigious fools, who are always going to law, and who confound blind justice, or rather try to unbind her eyes; of filthy-tongued fools, who glorify the race of swine; of ignorant scholars; of gamblers; of bad and thievish cooks; of low men who seek to be high, and of high who are despisers of poverty; of men who forget that they will die; of irreligious men and blasphemers; of the ridiculous indulgence of parents to children, and the ungrateful return which was made to them for it; and of women’s pride. Another title describes the ruin of Christianity: the pope, emperor, king, cardinals, &c, are receiving willingly from a suppliant fool the cap of Folly, while two other fools are looking derisively upon them from an adjoining wall. It need hardly be said that this was published on the eve of the Reformation.

In the midst of the popularity which greeted the appearance of thework of Sebastian Brandt, it attracted the special attention of a celebrated preacher of the time named Johann Geiler. Geiler was born at Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, in 1445, but having lost his father when only three years of age, he was educated by his grandfather, who lived at Keysersberg, in Alsace, and hence he was commonly called Geiler of Keysersberg. He studied in Freiburg and Bâle, obtained a great reputation for learning, was esteemed a profound theologian, and was finally settled in Strasburg, where he continued to shine as a preacher until his death in 1510. He was a bold man, too, in the cause of truth, and declaimed with earnest zeal against the corruptions of the church, and especially against the monkish orders, for he compared the black monks to the devil, the white monks to his dam, and the others he said were their chickens. On another occasion he said that the qualities of a good monk were an almighty belly, an ass’s back, and a raven’s mouth. He told his congregation from the pulpit that a great reformation was at hand, that he did not expect to live to see it himself, but that many of those who heard him would live to see it. As may be supposed, the monks hated him, and spoke of him with contempt. They said, that in his sermons he took his texts, not from the Scriptures, but from the “Ship of Fools” of Sebastian Brandt; and, in fact, during the year 1498, Geiler preached at Strasburg a series of sermons on the follies of his time, which were evidently founded upon Brandt’s book, for the various follies were taken in the same order. They were originally compiled in German, but one of Geiler’s scholars, Jacob Other, translated them into Latin, and published them, in 1501, under the title of“Navicula sive Speculum Fatuorum præstantissimi sacrarum literarum doctoris Johannis Geiler.”Within a few years this work went through several editions both in Latin and in German, some of them illustrated by woodcuts. The style of preaching is quaint and curious, full of satirical wit, which is often coarse, according to the manner of the time, sometimes very indelicate. Each sermon is headed by the motto,“Stultorum infinitus est numerus.”Geiler takes for his theme in each sermon one of the titles of Brandt’s “Ship of Fools,” and he separates them into subdivisions, or branches, which he calls the bells (nolas) from the fool’s-cap.

The other scholar who did most to spread the knowledge of Brandt’s work, was Jodocus Badius, who assumed the additional name of Ascensius because he was born at Assen, near Brussels, in 1462. He was a very distinguished scholar, but is best known for having established a celebrated printing establishment in Paris, where he died in 1535. I have already stated that Badius edited the Latin translation of the “Ship of Fools” of Sebastian Brandt, with additional explanations of his own, but he was one of the first of Brandt’s imitators. He seems to have thought that Brandt’s book was not complete—that the weaker sex had not received its fair share of importance; and apparently in 1498, while Geiler was turning the“Stultifera Navis”into sermons, Badius compiled a sort of supplement to it (additamentum), to which he gave the title of“Stultiferæ naviculæ, seu Scaphæ, Fatuarum Mulierum,”the Boats of Foolish Women. As far as can be traced, the first edition appears to have been printed in 1502. The first cut represents the ship carrying Eve alone of the female race, whose folly involved the whole world. The book is divided into five chapters, according to the number of the five senses, each sense represented by a boat carrying its particular class of foolish women to the great ship of foolish women, which lies off at anchor. The text consists of a dissertation on the use and abuse of the particular sense which forms the substance of the chapter, and it ends with Latin verses, which are given as the boatman’sceleusma, or boat song. The first of these boats is thescapha stultæ visionis ad stultiferam navem perveniens—the boat of foolish seeing proceeding to the ship of fools. A party of gay ladies are taking possession of the boat, carrying with them their combs, looking-glasses, and all other implements necessary for making them fair to be looked upon. The second boat is thescapha auditionis fatuæ, the boat of foolish hearing, in which the ladies are playing upon musical instruments. The third is thescapha olfactionis stultæ, the boat of foolish smell, and the pictorial illustration to it is partly copied in our cut No. 136. In the original some of the ladies are gathering sweet-smelling flowers before they enter the boat, while on board a pedlar is vending his perfume. Onefolle femme, with her fool’s cap on her head, is buying a pomander, or, as we should perhaps now say, a scent-ball, from the itinerant dealer. Figures of pomandersare extremely rare, and this is an interesting example; in fact, it is only recently that our Shakspearian critics really understood the meaning of the word. A pomander was a small globular vessel, perforated with holes, and filled with strong perfumes, as it is represented in our woodcut. The fourth of these boats is that of foolish tasting,scapha gustationis fatuæ, and the ladies have their well-furnished table on board the boat, and are largely indulging in eating and drinking. In the last of these boats, thescapha contactionis fatuæ, or boat of foolish feeling, the women have men on board, and are proceeding to great liberties with them; one of the gentle damsels, too, is picking the pocket of her male companion in a very unlady-like manner.

No. 136. The Boat of Pleasant Odours.

Two ideas combined in this peculiar field of satiric literature, that of the ship and that of the fools, now became popular, and gave rise to a host of imitators. There appeared ships of health, ships of penitence, ships of all sorts of things, on the one hand; and on the other, folly was a favourite theme of satire from many quarters. One of the most remarkable of the personages involved in this latter warfare, was the great scholar Desiderius Erasmus, of Rotterdam, who was born in that city in 1467. Like most of these satirists, Erasmus was strongly imbued with the spirit of theReformation, and he was the acquaintance and friend of those to whom the Reformation owed a great part of its success. In 1497, when the “Ship of Fools” of Sebastian Brandt was in the first full flush of its popularity, Erasmus came to England, and was so well received, that from that time forward his literary life seemed more identified with our island than with any other country. His name is still a sort of household word in our universities, especially in that of Cambridge. He made here the friendly acquaintance of the great Sir Thomas More, himself a lover of mirth, and one of those whose names are celebrated for having kept a court fool. In the earlier years of the sixteenth century, Erasmus visited Italy, and passed two or three years there. He returned thence to England, as appears, early in the year 1508. It is not easy to decide whether his experience of society in Italy had convinced him more than ever that folly was the presiding genius of mankind, or what other feeling influenced him, but one of the first results of his voyage was theΜωρίας Ἐγκώμιον(Moriæ Encomium), or “Praise of Folly.” Erasmus dedicated this little jocular treatise to Sir Thomas More as a sort of pun upon his name, although he protests that there was a great contrast between the two characters. Erasmus takes much the same view of folly as Brandt, Geiler, Badius, and the others, and under this name he writes a bold satire on the whole frame of contemporary society. The satire is placed in the mouth of Folly herself (the Mère Folie of the jocular clubs), who delivers from her pulpit a declamation in which she sets forth her qualities and praises. She boasts of the greatness of her origin, claims as her kindred the sophists, rhetoricians, and many of the pretentious scholars and wise men, and describes her birth and education. She claims divine affinity, and boasts of her influence over the world, and of the beneficent manner in which it was exercised. All the world, she pretends, was ruled under her auspices, and it was only in her presence that mankind was really happy. Hence the happiest ages of man are infancy, before wisdom has come to interfere, and old age, when it has passed away. Therefore, she says, if men would remain faithful to her, and avoid wisdom altogether, they would pass a life of perpetual youth. In this long discourse of the influence of folly, written by a man of the knownsentiments of Erasmus, it would be strange if the Romish church, with its monks and ignorant priesthood, its saints, and relics, and miracles, did not find a place. Erasmus intimates that the superstitious follies had become permanent, because they were profitable. There are some, he tells us, who cherished the foolish yet pleasant persuasion, that if they fixed their eyes devoutly on a figure of St. Christopher, carved in wood or painted on the wall, they would be safe from death on that day; with many other examples of equal credulity. Then there are your pardons, your measures of purgatory, which may be bought off at so much the hour, or the day, or the month, and a multitude of other absurdities. Ecclesiastics, scholars, mathematicians, philosophers, all come in for their share of the refined satire of this book, which, like the “Ship of Fools,” has gone through innumerable editions, and has been translated into many languages.

No. 137. Superstition.

In an early French translation, the text of this work of Erasmus is embellished with some of the woodcuts belonging to Brandt’s “Ship ofFools,” which, it need hardly be remarked, are altogether inappropriate, but the “Praise of Folly” was detained to receive illustrations from a more distinguished pencil. A copy of the book came into the hands of Hans Holbein—it may possibly have been presented to him by the author—and Holbein took so much interest in it, that he amused himself with drawing illustrative sketches with a pen in the margins. This book afterwards passed into the library of the University of Bâle, where it was found in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and these drawings have since been engraved and added to most of the subsequent editions. Many of these sketches are very slight, and some have not a very close connection with the text of Erasmus, but they are all characteristic, and show the spirit—the spirit of the age—in which Holbein read his author. I give two examples of them, taken almost haphazard, for it would require a longer analysis of the book than can be given here to make many of them understood. The first of these, our cut No. 137, represents the foolish warrior, who has a sword long enough to trust to it for defence, bowing with trembling superstition before a painting of St. Christopher crossing the water with the infant Christ on his shoulder, as a more certain security for his safety during that day. The other, our cut No. 138, represents the preacher, Lady Folly, descending from her pulpit, after she has concluded her sermon.

No. 138. Preacher Folly ending her Sermon.

POPULAR LITERATURE AND ITS HEROES; BROTHER RUSH, TYLL EULENSPIEGEL, THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM.—STORIES AND JEST-BOOKS.—SKELTON, SCOGIN, TARLTON, PEELE.

The people in the middle ages, as well as its superiors, had its comic literature and legend. Legend was the literature especially of the peasant, and in it the spirit of burlesque and satire manifested itself in many ways. Simplicity, combined with vulgar cunning, and the circumstances arising out of the exercise of these qualities, presented the greatest stimulants to popular mirth. They produced their popular heroes, who, at first, were much more than half legendary, such as the familiar spirit, Robin Goodfellow, whose pranks were a source of continual amusement rather than of terror to the simple minds which listened to those who told them. These stories excited with still greater interest as their spiritual heroes became incarnate, and the auditors were persuaded that the perpetrators of so many artful acts of cunning and of so many mischievous practical jokes, were but ordinary men like themselves. It was but a sign or symbol of the change from the mythic age to that of practical life. One of the earliest of these stories of mythic comedy transformed into, or at least presented under the guise of, humanity, is that of Brother Ruth. Although the earliest version of this story with which we are acquainted dates only from the beginning of the sixteenth century,[73]there is no reason for doubt that the story itself was in existence at a much more remote period.

Rush was, in truth, a spirit of darkness, whose mission it was to wander on the earth tempting and impelling people to do evil. Perceiving that the internal condition of a certain abbey was well suited to his purpose, he presented himself at its gates in the disguise of a youth who wanted employment, and was received as an assistant in the kitchen, but he pleased the monks best by the skill with which he furnished them all with fair companions. At length he quarrelled with the cook, and threw him into the boiling caldron, and the monks, assuming that his death was accidental, appointed Rush to be cook in his place. After a service of seven years in the kitchen—which appears to have been considered a fair apprenticeship for the new honour which was to be conferred upon him—the abbot and convent rewarded him by making him a monk. He now followed still more earnestly his design for the ruin of his brethren, both soul and body, and began by raising a quarrel about a woman, which led, through his contrivance, to a fight, in which the monks all suffered grievous bodily injuries, and in which Brother Rush was especially active. He went on in this way until at last his true character was accidentally discovered. A neighbouring farmer, overtaken by night, took shelter in a hollow tree. It happened to be the night appointed by Lucifer to meet his agents on earth, and hear from them the report of their several proceedings, and he had selected this very oak as the place of rendezvous. There Brother Rush appeared, and the farmer, in his hiding-place, heard his confession from his own lips, and told it to the abbot, who, being as it would appear a magician, conjured him into the form of a horse, and banished him. Rush hurried away to England, where he laid aside his equine form, and entered the body of the king’s daughter, who suffered great torments from his possession. At length some of the great doctors from Paris came and obliged the spirit to confess that nobody but the abbot of the distant monastery had any power over him. The abbot came, called him out of the maiden, and conjured him more forcibly than ever into the form of a horse.

Such is, in mere outline, the story of Brother Rush, which was gradually enlarged by the addition of new incidents. But the people wanted a hero who presented more of the character of reality, who, infact, might be recognised as one of themselves; and such heroes appear to have existed at all times. They usually represented a class in society, and especially that class which consisted of idle sharpers, who lived by their wits, and which was more numerous and more familiarly known in the middle ages than at the present day. Folly and cunning combined presented a never-failing subject of mirth. This class of adventurers first came into print in Germany, and it is there that we find its first popular hero, to whom they gave the name of Eulenspiegel, which means literally “the owl’s mirror,” and has been since used in German in the sense of a merry fool. Tyll Eulenspiegel, and his story, are supposed to have belonged to the fourteenth century, though we first know them in the printed book of the commencement of the sixteenth, which is believed to have come from the pen of the well-known popular writer, Thomas Murner, of whom I shall have to speak more at length in another chapter. The popularity of this work was very great, and it was quickly translated into French, English, Latin, and almost every other language of Western Europe. In the English version the name also was translated, and appears under the form of Owleglass, or, as it often occurs with the superfluous aspirate, Howleglass.[74]According to the story, Tyll Eulenspiegel was the son of a peasant, and was born at a village called Kneitlingen, in the land of Brunswick. The story of his birth may be given in the words of the early English version, as a specimen of its quaint and antiquated language:—

“Yn the lande of Sassen, in the vyllage of Ruelnige, there dwelleth a man that was named Nicholas Howleglas, that had a wife named Wypeke, that lay a childbed in the same wyllage, and that chylde was borne to christening; and named Tyell Howleglass. And than the chyld was brought into a taverne, where the father was wyth his gosseppes and made good chere. Whan the mydwife had weldronke, she toke the childe to bere it home, and in the wai was a litle bridg over a muddy water. And as the mydwife would have gone over the lytle brydge, she fel into the mudde with the chylde, for she had a lytel dronk to much wyne, for had not helpe come quickly, the had both be drowned in the mudde. And whan she came home with the childe, the made a kettle of warm water to be made redi, and therin they washed the child clen of the mudde. And thus was Howleglas thre tymes in one dai cristened, once at the churche, once in the mudde, and once in the warm water.”

It will be seen that the English translator was not very correct in his geography or in his names. The child, having thus escaped destruction, grew rapidly, and displayed an extraordinary love of mischief, with various other evil propensities, as well as a cunning beyond his age, in escaping the risks to which these exposed him. At a very early age, he displayed a remarkable talent for setting the other children by the ears, and this was his favourite amusement during life. His mother, who was now a widow, contemplating the extraordinary cunning of her child, which, as she thought, must necessarily ensure his advancement in the world, resolved that he should no longer remain idle, and put him apprentice to a baker; but his wicked and restless disposition defeated all the good intentions of his parent, and Eulenspiegel was obliged to leave his master in consequence of his mal-practices. One day his mother took him to a church-dedication, and the child drank so much at the feast on that occasion, that he crept into an empty beehive and fell asleep, while his mother, thinking he had gone home, returned without him. In the night-time two thieves came into the garden to steal the bees, and they agreed to take first the hive which was heaviest. This, as may be supposed, proved to be the hive in which Eulenspiegel was hidden, and they fixed it on a pole which they carried on their shoulders, one before and one behind, the hive hanging between them. Eulenspiegel, awakened by the movement, soon discovered the position in which he was placed, and hit upon a plan for escaping. Gently lifting the lid of the hive, he put out his arm and plucked the hair of the man before, who turned about and accused his companion of insulting him. The other asserted that he had not touched him, and the first, only half satisfied, continued to bear his share of the burthen, but he had not advanced many steps when a still sharper pull at his hair excitedhis great anger, and from wrathful words the two thieves proceeded to blows. While they were fighting, Eulenspiegel crept out of the hive and ran away.

After leaving the baker, Eulenspiegel became a wanderer in the world, gaining his living by his trickery and deception, and engaging himself in all sorts of strange and ludicrous adventures. He ended everywhere by creating discord and strife. He became at different times a blacksmith, a shoemaker, a tailor, a cook, a drawer of teeth, and assumed a variety of other characters, but remained in each situation only long enough to make it too hot for him, and to be obliged to secure his retreat. He intruded himself into all classes of society, and invariably came to similar results. Many of his adventures, indeed, are so droll that we can easily understand the great popularity they once enjoyed. But they are not merely amusing—they present a continuous satire upon contemporary society, upon a social condition in which every pretender, every reckless impostor, every private plunderer or public depredator, saw the world exposed to him in its folly and credulity as an easy prey.

The middle ages possessed another class of these popular satirical histories, which were attached to places rather than to persons. There were few countries which did not possess a town or a district, the inhabitants of which were celebrated for stupidity, or for roguery, or for some other ridiculous or contemptible quality. We have seen, in a former chapter, the people of Norfolk enjoying this peculiarity, and, at a later period, the inhabitants of Pevensey in Sussex, and more especially those of Gotham in Nottinghamshire, were similarly distinguished. The inhabitants of many places in Germany bore this character, but their grand representatives among the Germans were the Schildburgers, a name which appears to belong entirely to the domain of fable. Schildburg, we are told, was a town “in Misnopotamia, beyond Utopia, in the kingdom of Calecut.” The Schildburgers were originally so renowned for their wisdom, that they were continually invited into foreign countries to give their advice, until at length not a man was left at home, and their wives were obliged to assume the charge of the duties of their husbands. This became at length so onerous, that the wives held a council, and resolved on despatching asolemn message in writing to call the men home. This had the desired effect; all the Schildburgers returned to their own town, and were so joyfully received by their wives that they resolved upon leaving it no more. They accordingly held a council, and it was decided that, having experienced the great inconvenience of a reputation of wisdom, they would avoid it in future by assuming the character of fools. One of the first evil results of their long neglect of home affairs was the want of a council-hall, and this want they now resolved to supply without delay. They accordingly went to the hills and woods, cut down the timber, dragged it with great labour to the town, and in due time completed the erection of a handsome and substantial building. But, when they entered their new council-hall, what was their consternation to find themselves in perfect darkness! In fact, they had forgotten to make any windows. Another council was held, and one who had been among the wisest in the days of their wisdom, gave his opinion very oracularly; the result of which was that they should experiment on every possible expedient for introducing light into the hall, and that they should first try that which seemed most likely to succeed. They had observed that the light of day was caused by sunshine, and the plan proposed was to meet at mid-day when the sun was brightest, and fill sacks, hampers, jugs, and vessels of all kinds, with sunshine and daylight, which they proposed afterwards to empty into the unfortunate council-hall. Next day, as the clock struck one, you might see a crowd of Schildburgers before the council-house door, busily employed, some holding the sacks open, and others throwing the light into them with shovels and any other appropriate implements which came to hand. While they were thus labouring, a stranger came into the town of Schildburg, and, hearing what they were about, told them they were labouring to no purpose, and offered to show them how to get the daylight into the hall. It is unnecessary to say more than that this new plan was to make an opening in the roof, and that the Schildburgers witnessed the effect with astonishment, and were loud in their gratitude to their new comer.

The Schildburgers met with further difficulties before they completed their council-hall. They sowed a field with salt, and when the salt-plantgrew up next year, after a meeting of the council, at which it was stiffly disputed whether it ought to be reaped, or mowed, or gathered in in some other manner, it was finally discovered that the crop consisted of nothing but nettles. After many accidents of this kind, the Schildburgers are noticed by the emperor, and obtain a charter of incorporation and freedom, but they profit little by it. In trying some experiments to catch mice, they set fire to their houses, and the whole town is burnt to the ground, upon which, in their sorrow, they abandon it altogether, and become, like the Jews of old, scattered over the world, carrying their own folly into every country they visit.

The earliest known edition of the history of the Schildburgers was printed in 1597,[75]but the story itself is no doubt older. It will be seen at once that it involves a satire upon the municipal towns of the middle ages. A similar series of adventures, only a little more clerical, bore the title of“Der Pfarrherrn vom Kalenberg,”or the Parson of Kalenberg, and was first, as far as we know, published in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The first known edition, printed in 1582, is in prose. Von der Hagen, who reprinted a subsequent edition in verse, in a volume already quoted, seems to think that in its first form the story belongs to the fourteenth century.

The Schildburgers of Germany were represented in England by the wise men of Gotham. Gotham is a village and parish about seven miles to the south-west of Nottingham, and, curiously enough, a story is told according to which the folly of the men of Gotham, like that of the Schildburgers, was at first assumed. It is pretended that one day king John, on his way to Nottingham, intended to pass through the village of Gotham, and that the Gothamites, under the influence of some vague notion that his presence would be injurious to them, raised difficulties in his way which prevented his visit. The men of Gotham were now apprehensive of the king’s vengeance, and they resolved to try and evade it by assuming the character of simpletons. When the king’s officers came to Gothamto inquire into the conduct of the inhabitants, they found them engaged in the most extraordinary pursuits, some of them seeking to drown an eel in a pond of water, others making a hedge round a tree to confine a cuckoo which had settled in it, and others employing themselves in similar futile pursuits. The commissioners reported the people of Gotham to be no better than fools, and by this stratagem they escaped any further persecution, but the character they assumed remained attached to them.

This explanation is, of course, very late and very apocryphal; but there can be little doubt that the character of the wise men of Gotham is one of considerable antiquity. The story is believed to have been drawn up in its present form by Andrew Borde, an English writer of the reign of Henry VIII. It was reprinted a great number of times under the form of those popular books called chap-books, because they were hawked about the country by itinerant booksellers or chap-men. The acts of the Gothamites displayed a greater degree of simplicity even than those of the Schildburgers, but they are less connected. Here is one anecdote told in the unadorned language of the chap-books, in explanation of which it is only necessary to state that the men of Gotham admired greatly the note of the cuckoo. “On a time the men of Gotham fain would have pinn’d in the cuckow, that she might sing all the year; and, in the midst of the town, they had a hedge made round in compass, and got a cuckow and put her into it, and said, ‘Sing here, and you shall lack neither meat nor drink all the year.’ The cuckow, when she perceived herself encompassed with the hedge, flew away. ‘A vengeance on her,’ said these wise men, ‘we did not make our hedge high enough.’” On another occasion, having caught a large eel which offended them by its voracity, they assembled in council to deliberate on an appropriate punishment, which ended in a resolution that it should be drowned, and the criminal was ceremoniously thrown into a great pond. One day twelve men of Gotham went a-fishing, and on their way home they suddenly discovered that they had lost one of their number, and each counted in his turn, and could find only eleven. In fact, each forgot to count himself. In the midst of their distress—for they believed their companion to be drowned—a stranger approached, and learnt the cause of their sorrow.Finding they were not to be convinced of their mistake by mere argument, he offered, on certain conditions, to find the lost Gothamite, and he proceeded as follows. He took one by one each of the twelve Gothamites, struck him a hard blow on the shoulder, which made him scream, and at each cry counted one, two, three, &c When it came to twelve, they were all satisfied that the lost Gothamite had returned, and paid the man for the service he had rendered them.

As a chap-book, this history of the men of Gotham became so popular, that it gave rise to a host of other books of similar character, which were compiled at a later period under such titles—formerly well known to children—as, “The Merry Frolicks, or the Comical Cheats of Swalpo;” “The Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, commonly called the King’s Fool;” “Simple Simon’s Misfortunes;” and the like. Nor must it be forgotten that the history of Eulenspiegel was the prototype of a class of popular histories of larger dimensions, represented in our own literature by “The English Rogue,” the work of Richard Head and Francis Kirkman, in the reign of Charles II., and various other “rogues” belonging to different countries, which appeared about that time, or not long afterwards. The earliest of these books was “The Spanish Rogue, or Life of Guzman de Alfarache,” written in Spanish by Mateo Aleman in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Curiously enough, some Englishman, not knowing apparently that the history of Eulenspiegel had appeared in English under the name of Owlglass, took it into his head to introduce him among the family of rogues which had thus come into fashion, and, in 1720, published as “Made English from the High Dutch,” what he called “The German Rogue, or the Life and Merry Adventures, Cheats, Stratagems, and Contrivances of Tiel Eulespiegle.”

The fifteenth century was the period during which mediæval forms generally were changing into forms adapted to another state of society, and in which much of the popular literature which has been in vogue during modern times took its rise. In the fourteenth century, the fabliaux of the jougleurs were already taking what we may perhaps term a more literary form, and were reduced into prose narratives. This took place especially in Italy, where these prose tales were callednovelle, implyingsome novelty in their character, a word which was transferred into the French language under the form ofnouvelles, and was the origin of our modern Englishnovel, applied to a work of fiction. The Italian novelists adopted the Eastern plan of stringing these stories together on the slight framework of one general plot, in which are introduced causes for telling them and persons who tell them. Thus the Decameron of Boccaccio holds towards the fabliaux exactly the same position as that of the “Arabian Nights” to the older Arabian tales. The Italian novelists became numerous and celebrated throughout Europe, from the time of Boccaccio to that of Straparola, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, and later. The taste for this class of literature appears to have been introduced into France at the court of Burgundy, where, under duke Philippe le Bon, a well-known courtier and man of letters named Antoine de La Sale, who had, during a sojourn in Italy, become acquainted with one of the most celebrated of the earlier Italian collections, the“Cento Novello,”or the Hundred Novels, compiled a collection in French in imitation of them, under the title of“Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,”or the Hundred new Novels, one of the purest examples of the French language in the fifteenth century.[76]The later French story-books, such as the Heptameron of the queen of Navarre, and others, belong chiefly to the sixteenth century. These collections of stories can hardly be said to have ever taken root in this island as a part of English literature.

But there arose partly out of these stories a class of books which became greatly multiplied, and were, during a long period, extremely popular. With the household fool, or jester, instead of the old jougleur, the stories had been shorn of their detail, and sank into the shape of mere witty anecdotes, and at the same time a taste arose for what we now class under the general term of jests, clever sayings, what the French callbons mots, and what the English of the sixteenth century termed “quickanswers.” The wordjestitself arose from the circumstance that the things designated by it arose out of the older stories, for it is a mere corruption of gestes, the Latingesta, in the sense of narratives of acts or deeds, or tales. The Latin writers, who first began to collect them into books, included them under the general name offacetiæ. The earlier of these collections of facetiæ were written in Latin, and of the origin of the first with which we are acquainted, that by the celebrated scholar Poggio of Florence, a curious anecdote is told. Some wits of the court of pope Martin V., elected to the papacy in 1417, among whom were the pope’s two secretaries, Poggio and Antonio Lusco, Cincio of Rome, and Ruzello of Bologna, appropriated to themselves a private corner in the Vatican, where they assembled to chat freely among themselves. They called it theirbuggiale, a word which signifies in Italian, a place of recreation, where they tell stories, make jests, and amuse themselves with discussing satirically the doings and characters of everybody. This was the way in which Poggio and his friends entertained themselves in their buggiale, and we are assured that in their talk they neither spared the church nor the pope himself or his government. The facetiæ of Poggio, in fact, which are said to be a selection of the good things said in these meetings, show neither reverence for the church of Rome nor respect for decency, but they are mostly stories which had been told over and over again, long before Poggio came into the world. It was perhaps this satire upon the church and upon the ecclesiastics which gave much of their popularity to these facetiæ at a time when a universal agitation of men’s minds on religious affairs prevailed, which was the great harbinger of the Reformation; and the next Latin books of facetiæ came from men such as Henry Bebelius, who were zealous reformers themselves.

Many of the jests in these Latin collections are put into the mouths of jesters, or domestic fools,fatui, ormoriones, as they are called in the Latin; and in England, where these jest-books in the vernacular tongue became more popular perhaps than in any other country, many of them were published under the names of celebrated jesters, as the “Merie Tales of Skelton,” “The Jests of Scogin,” “Tarlton’s Jests,” and “The Jests of George Peele.”

John Skelton, poet-laureat of his time, appears to have been known in the courts of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. quite as much in the character of a jester as in that of a poet. Poet-laureat was then a title or degree given in the university of Oxford. His “Merye Tales” are all personal of himself, and we should be inclined to say that his jests and his poetry are equally bad. The former picture him as holding a place somewhere between Eulenspiegel and the ordinary court-fool. We may give as a sample of the best of them the tale No. 1.—

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