CHAPTER XVIII.

No. 155. St. James and his Persecutors.

Such were the suggestions on which the mediæval sculptors and illuminators worked with so much effect, as we have seen repeatedly in the course of our preceding chapters. After the revival of art in western Europein the fifteenth century, this class of legends became great favourites with painters and engravers, and soon gave rise to the peculiar school ofdiableriementioned above. At that time the story of the Temptation of St. Anthony attracted particular attention, and it is the subject of many remarkable prints belonging to the earlier ages of the art of engraving. It employed the pencils of such artists as Martin Schongauer, Israel van Mechen, and Lucas Cranach. Of the latter we have two different engravings on the same subject—St. Anthony carried into the air by the demons, who are represented in a great variety of grotesque and monstrous forms. The most remarkable of the two bears the date of 1506, and was, therefore, one of Cranach’s earlier works. But the great representative of this earlier school ofdiableriewas Peter Breughel, a Flemish painter who flourished in the middle of the sixteenth century. He was born at Breughel, near Breda, and lived some time at Antwerp, but afterwards established himself at Brussels. So celebrated was he for the love of the grotesque displayed in his pictures, that he was known by the name of Peter the Droll. Breughel’s “Temptation of St. Anthony,” like one or two others of his subjects of the same class, was engraved in a reduced form by J. T. de Bry. Breughel’s demons are figures of the most fantastic description—creations of a wildly grotesque imagination; they present incongruous and laughable mixtures of parts of living things which have no relation whatever to one another. Our cut No. 155 represents a group of these grotesque demons, from a plate by Breughel, engraved in 1565, and entitledDivus Jacobus diabolicis præstigiis ante magnum sistitur(St. James is arrested before the magician by diabolical delusions). The engraving is full of similarly grotesque figures. On the right is a spacious chimney, and up it witches, riding on brooms, are making their escape, while in the air are seen other witches riding away upon dragons and a goat. A kettle is boiling over the fire, around which a group of monkeys are seen sitting and warming themselves. Behind these a cat and a toad are holding a very intimate conversation. In the background stands and boils the great witches’ caldron. On the right of the picture themagus, or magician, is seated, reading hisgrimoire; with a frame before him supporting the pot containing his magical ingredients. The saint occupiesthe middle of the picture, surrounded by the demons represented in our cut and by many others; and as he approaches the magician, he is seen raising his right hand in the attitude of pronouncing a benediction, the apparent consequence of which is a frightful explosion of the magician’s pot, which strikes the demons with evident consternation. Nothing can be morebizarrethan the horse’s head upon human legs in armour, the parody upon a crawling spider behind it, the skull (apparently of a horse) supported upon naked human legs, the strangely excited animal behind the latter, and the figure furnished with pilgrim’s hood and staff, which appears to be mocking the saint. Another print—a companion to the foregoing—represents the still more complete discomfiture of themagus. The saint here occupies the right-hand side of the picture, and is raising his hand higher, with apparently a greater show of authority. The demons have all turned against their master the magician, whom they arebeating and hurling headlong from his chair. They seem to be proclaiming their joy at his fall by all sorts of playful attitudes. It is a sort of demon fair. Some of them, to the left of the picture, are dancing and standing upon their heads on a tight-rope. Near them another is playing some game like that which we now call the thimble-rig. The monkeys are dancing to the tune of a great drum. A variety of their mountebank tricks are going on in different parts of the scene. Three of these playful actors are represented in our cut No. 156.

No. 156. Strange Demons.

Breughel also executed a series of similarly grotesque engravings, representing in this same fantastic manner the virtues and vices, such as Pride (superbia), Courage (fortitudo), Sloth (desidia), &c These bear the date of 1558. They are crowded with figures equally grotesque with those just mentioned, but a great part of which it would be almost impossible to describe. I give two examples from the engraving of “Sloth,” in the accompanying cut (No. 157).

No. 157. Imps of Sloth.

No. 158. The Folly of Hunting.

From making up figures from parts of animals, this early school of grotesque proceeded to create animated figures out of inanimate things, such as machines, implements of various kinds, household utensils, and other such articles. A German artist, of about the same time as Breughel,has left us a singular series of etchings of this description, which are intended as an allegorical satire on the follies of mankind. The allegory is here of such a singular character, that we can only guess at the meaning of these strange groups through four lines of German verse which are attached to each of them. In this manner we learn that the group represented in our cut, No. 158, which is the second in this series, isintended as a satire upon those who waste their time in hunting, which, the verses tell us, they will in the sequel lament bitterly; and they are exhorted to cry loud and continually to God, and to let that serve them in the place of hound and hawk.

Die zeit die du verleurst mit jagen,Die wirstu zwar noch schmertzlich klagen;Ruff laut zu Gott gar oft und vil,Das sey dein hund und federspil.

Die zeit die du verleurst mit jagen,

Die wirstu zwar noch schmertzlich klagen;

Ruff laut zu Gott gar oft und vil,

Das sey dein hund und federspil.

No. 159. The Wastefulness of Youth.

The next picture in the series, which is equally difficult to describe, is aimed against those who fail in attaining virtue or honour through sluggishness. Others follow, but I will only give one more example. It forms our cut No. 159, and appears, from the verses accompanying it, to be aimed against those who practice wastefulness in their youth, and thus become objects of pity and scorn in old age. Whatever may be the point of the allegory contained in the engraving, it is certainly far-fetched, and not very apparent.

This German-Flemish school of grotesque does not appear to have outlived the sixteenth century, or at least it had ceased to flourish in the century following. But the taste for thediablerieof the Temptationscenes passed into France and Italy, in which countries it assumed a much more refined character, though at the same time one equally grotesque and imaginative. These artists, too, returned to the original legend, and gave it forms of their own conception. Daniel Rabel, a French artist, who lived at the end of the sixteenth century, published a rather remarkable engraving of the “Temptation of St. Anthony,” in which the saint appears on the right of the picture, kneeling before a mound on which three demons are dancing. On the right hand of the saint stands a naked woman, sheltering herself with a parasol, and tempting the saint with her charms. The rest of the piece is filled with demons in a great variety of forms and postures. Another French artist, Nicholas Cochin, has left us two “Temptations of St. Anthony,” in rather spirited etching, of the earlier part of the seventeenth century. In the first, the saint is represented kneeling before a crucifix, surrounded by demons. The youthful and charming temptress is here dressed in the richest garments, and the highest style of fashion, and displays all her powers of seduction. The body of the picture is, as usual, occupied by multitudes of diabolical figures, in grotesque forms. In Cochin’s other picture of the Temptation of St. Anthony, the saint is represented as a hermit engaged in his prayers; the female figure of voluptuousness (voluptas) occupies the middle of the picture, and behind the saint is seen a witch with her besom.

No. 160. The Demon Tilter (Callot).

No. 161. Uneasy Riding (Callot).

But the artist who excelled in this subject at the period at which we now arrive, was the celebrated Jacques Callot, who was born at Nancy, in Brittany, in 1593, and died at Florence on the 24th of March, 1635, which, according to the old style of calculating, may mean March, 1636. Of Callot we shall have to speak in another chapter. He treated the subject of the Temptation of St. Anthony in two different plates, which are considered as ranking among the most remarkable of his works, and to which, in fact, he appears to have given much thought and attention. He is known, indeed, to have worked diligently at it. They resemble those of the older artists in the number of diabolical figures introduced into the picture, but they display an extraordinary vivid imagination in the forms, postures, physiognomies, and even the equipments, of thechimerical figures, all equally droll and burlesque, but which present an entire contrast to the more coarse and vulgar conceptions of the German-Flemish school. This difference will be understood best by an example. One of Callot’s demons is represented in our cut No. 160. Many of them are mounted on nondescript animals, of the most extraordinary demoniacal character, and such is the case of the demon in our cut, who is running a tilt at the saint with his tilting spear in his hand, and, to make more sure, his eyes well furnished with a pair of spectacles. In our next cut, No. 161, we give a second example of the figures in Callot’s peculiardiablerie. The demon in this case is riding very uneasily, and, in fact, seems in danger of being thrown. The steeds of both are of an anomalous character; the first is a sort of dragon-horse; the second a mixture of a lobster, a spider, and a craw-fish. Mariette, the art-collector and art-writer of the reign of Louis XV. as well as artist, considers this grotesque, or, as he calls it, “fantastic and comic character,” as almost necessary to the pictures of the Temptation of St. Anthony, which he treats as one of Callot’s especiallyserioussubjects. “It was allowable,” he says, “to Callot, to give a flight to his imagination. The more his fictions were of the nature of dreams, the more they were fitted to what he had to express. For the demon intending to torment St. Anthony, it is to be supposed that he must have thought of all the forms most hideous, and most likely to strike terror.”

Callot’s first and larger print of the Temptation of St. Anthony is rare. It is filled with a vast number of figures. Above is a fantastic being who vomits thousands of demons. The saint is seen at the entrance of a cavern, tormented by some of these. Others are scattered about in different occupations. On one side, a demoniacal party are drinking together, and pledging each other in their glasses; here, a devil is playing on the guitar; there, others are occupied in a dance; all such grotesque figures as our two examples would lead the reader to expect. In the second of Callot’s “Temptations,” which is dated in 1635, and must therefore have been one of his latest works, the same figure vomiting the demons occupies the upper part of the plate, and the field is covered with a prodigious number of imps, more hideous in their forms, and more varied in their extraordinary attitudes, than in the same artist’s first design. Below, a host of demons are dragging the saint to a place where new torments are prepared for him. Callot’s prints of the Temptation of St. Anthony gained so great a reputation, that imitations of them were subsequently published, some of which so far approached his style, that they were long supposed to be genuine.

Callot, though a Frenchman, studied and flourished in Italy, and his style is founded upon Italian art. The last great artist whose treatment of the Temptation I shall quote, is Salvator Rosa, an Italian by birth,who flourished in the middle of the seventeenth century. His style, according to some opinions, is refined from that of Callot; at all events, it is bolder in design. Our cut No. 162 represents St. Anthony protecting himself with the cross against the assaults of the demon, as represented by Salvator Rosa. With this artist the school ofdiablerieof the sixteenth century may be considered to have come to its end.

No. 162. St. Anthony and his Persecutor.

CALLOT AND HIS SCHOOL.—CALLOT’S ROMANTIC HISTORY.—HIS “CAPRICI,” AND OTHER BURLESQUE WORKS.—THE “BALLI” AND THE BEGGARS.—IMITATORS OF CALLOT; DELLA BELLA.—EXAMPLES OF DELLA BELLA.—ROMAIN DE HOOGHE.

The art of engraving on copper, although it had made rapid advances during the sixteenth century, was still very far from perfection; but the close of that century witnessed the birth of a man who was destined not only to give a new character to this art, but also to bring in a new style of caricature and burlesque. This was the celebrated Jacques Callot, a native of Lorraine, and descended from a noble Burgundian family. His father, Jean Callot, held the office of herald of Lorraine. Jacques was born in the year 1592,[91]at Nancy, and appears to have been destined for the church, with a view to which his early education was regulated. But the early life of Jacques Callot presents a romantic episode in the history of art aspirations. While yet hardly more than an infant, he seized every opportunity of neglecting more serious studies to practise drawing, and he displayed especially a very precocious taste for satire, for his artistic talent was shown principally in caricaturing all the people he knew. His father, and apparently all his relatives, disapproved of his love for drawing, and did what they could to discourage it; but in vain, for he still found means of indulging it. Claude Henriet, the painter to the court of Lorraine, gave him lessons, and his son, Israel Henriet, formed for him a boy’s friendship. He also learnt the elementsof the art of engraving of Demange Crocq, the engraver to the duke of Lorraine.

About this time, the painter Bellange, who had been a pupil of Claude Henriet, returned from Italy, and gave young Callot an exciting account of the wonders of art to be seen in that country; and soon afterwards Claude Henriet dying, his son Israel went to Rome, and his letters from thence had no less effect on the mind of the young artist at Nancy, than the conversation of Bellange. Indeed the passion of the boy for art was so strong, that, finding his parents obstinately opposed to all his longings in this direction, he left his father’s house secretly, and, in the spring of 1604, when he had only just entered his thirteenth year, he set out for Italy on foot, without introductions and almost without money. He was even unacquainted with the road, but after proceeding a short distance, he fell in with a band of gipsies, and, as they were going to Florence, he joined their company. His life among the gipsies, which lasted seven or eight weeks, appears to have furnished food to his love of burlesque and caricature, and he has handed down to us his impressions, in a series of four engravings of scenes in gipsy life, admirably executed at a rather later period of his life, which are full of comic humour. When they arrived at Florence, Jacques Callot parted company with the gipsies, and was fortunate enough to meet with an officer of the grand duke’s household, who listened to his story, and took so much interest in him, that he obtained him admission to the studio of Remigio Canta Gallina. This artist gave him instructions in drawing and engraving, and sought to correct him of his taste for the grotesque by keeping him employed upon serious subjects.

After studying for some months under Canta Gallina, Jacques Callot left Florence, and proceeded to Rome, to seek his old friend Israel Henriet; but he had hardly arrived, when he was recognised in the streets by some merchants from Nancy, who took him, and in spite of his tears and resistance, carried him home to his parents. He was now kept to his studies more strictly than ever, but nothing could overcome his passion for art, and, having contrived to lay by some money, after a short interval he again ran away from home. This time he took the roadto Lyons, and crossed Mont Cenis, and he had reached Turin when he met in the street of that city his elder brother Jean, who again carried him home to Nancy. Nothing could now repress young Callot’s ardour, and soon after this second escapade, he engraved a copy of a portrait of Charles III., duke of Lorraine, to which he put his name and the date 1607, and which, though it displays little skill in engraving, excited considerable interest at the time. His parents were now persuaded that it was useless to thwart any longer his natural inclinations, and they not only allowed him to follow them, but they yielded to his wish to return to Italy. The circumstances of the moment were especially favourable. Charles III., duke of Lorraine, was dead, and his successor, Henry II., was preparing to send an embassy to Rome to announce his accession. Jean Callot, by his position of herald, had sufficient interest to obtain for his son an appointment in the ambassador’s retinue, and Jacques Callot started for Rome on the 1st of December, 1608, under more favourable auspices than those which had attended his former visits to Italy.

Callot reached Rome at the beginning of the year 1609, and now at length he joined the friend of his childhood, Israel Henriet, and began to throw all his energy into his art-labours. It is more than probable that he studied under Tempesta, with Henriet, who was a pupil of that painter, and another Lorrainer, Claude Dervet. After a time, Callot began to feel the want of money, and obtained employment of a French engraver, then residing in Rome, named Philippe Thomassin, with whom he worked nearly three years, and became perfect in handling the graver. Towards the end of the year 1611, Callot went to Florence, to place himself under Julio Parigi, who then flourished there as a painter and engraver. Tuscany was at this time ruled by its duke Cosmo de’ Medicis, a great lover of the arts, who took Callot under his patronage, giving him the means to advance himself. Hitherto his occupation had been principally copying the works of others, but under Parigi he began to practise more in original design, and his taste for the grotesque came upon him stronger than ever. Although Parigi blamed it, he could not help admiring the talent it betrayed. In 1615, the grand duke gave a great entertainment to the prince of Urbino, and Callot was employed to makeengravings of the festivities; it was his first commencement in a class of designs by which he afterwards attained great celebrity. In the year following, his engagement with Parigi ended, and he became his own master. He now came out unfettered in his own originality. The first fruits were seen in a new kind of designs, to which he gave the name of “Caprices,” a series of which appeared about the year 1617, under the title of“Caprici di varie Figure.”Callot re-engraved them at Nancy in later years, and in the new title they were stated to have been originally engraved in 1616. In a short preface, he speaks of these as the first of his works on which he set any value. They now strike us as singular examples of the fanciful creations of a most grotesque imagination, but they no doubt preserve many traits of the festivals, ceremonies, and manners of that land of masquerade, which must have been then familiar to the Florentines; and these engravings would, doubtless, be received by them with absolute delight. One is copied in our cut No. 163; it represents a cripple supporting himself on a short crutch, with his right arm in a sling. Our cut No. 164 is another example from the same set, and represents a masked clown, with his left hand on the hilt of his dagger, or perhaps of a wooden sword. From this time, although he was very industrious and produced much, Callot engraved only his own designs.

No. 163. A Cripple.

No. 164. A Grotesque Masker.

While employed for others, Callot had worked chiefly with the graver, but now that he was his own master, he laid aside that implement, and devoted himself almost entirely to etching, in which he attained the highest proficiency. His work is remarkable for the cleanness and ease of his lines, and for the life and spirit he gave to his figures. His talent lay especially in the extraordinary skill with which he grouped together great numbers of diminutive figures, each of which preserved its proper and full action and effect. The great annual fair of the Impruneta was held with extraordinary festivities, and attended by an immense concourse of people of all classes on St. Luke’s Day, the 18th of October, in the outskirts of Florence. Callot engraved a large picture of this fair, which is absolutely wonderful. The picture embraces an extensive space of ground, which is covered with hundreds of figures, all occupied, singly or in groups, in different manners, conversing, masquerading, buying and selling, playing games, and performing in various ways; each group orfigure is a picture in itself. This engraving produced quite a sensation, and it was followed by other pictures of fairs, and, after his final return to Nancy, Callot engraved it anew. It was this talent for grouping large masses of persons which caused the artist to be so often employed in drawing great public ceremonies, sieges, and other warlike operations.

No. 165. Smaraolo Cornuto.—Ratsa di Boio.

No. 166. A Caprice.

By the duke of Florence, Cosmo II., Callot was liberally patronised and loaded with benefits, but on his death the government had to be placed in the hands of a regency, and art and literature no longer met with the same encouragement. In this state of things, Callot was found by Charles of Lorraine, afterwards duke Charles IV., and persuaded to return to his native country. He arrived at Nancy in 1622, and began to work there with greater activity even than he had displayed before. It was not long after this that he produced his sets of grotesques, the Balli (or dancers), the Gobbi (or hunchbacks), and the Beggars. The first of these sets, called in the titleBalli, orCucurucu,[92]consists of twenty-four small plates, each of them containing two comic characters in grotesque attitudes, with groups of smaller figures in the distance. Beneath the two prominent figures are their names, now unintelligible, but at that time no doubt well known on the comic stage at Florence. Thus, in the couple given in our cut No. 165, which is taken from the fourth plate of the series, the personage to the left is named Smaraolo Cornuto, which means simply Smaraolo the cuckold; and the one on the right is called Ratsa di Boio. In the original the background is occupied by a street, full of spectators, looking on at a dance of pantaloons, round one who is mounted on stilts and playing on the tabour. The couple in our cutNo. 166, represents another of Callot’s “Caprices,” from a set differing from the first “Caprices,” or the Balli. The Gobbi, or hunchbacks, form a set of twenty-one engravings; and the set of the Gipsies, already alluded to, which was also executed at Nancy, was included in four plates, the subjects of which were severally—1, the gipsies travelling; 2, the avant-guard; 3, the halt; and 4, the preparations for the feast. Nothing couldbe more truthful, and at the same time more comic, than this last set of subjects. We give, as an example of the set of the Baroni, or beggars, Callot’s figure of one of that particular class—for beggars and rogues of all kinds were classified in those days—whose part it was to appeal to charity by wounds and sores artificially represented. In the English slang of the seventeenth century, these artificial sores were calledclymes, and a curious account of the manner in which they were made will be found in that singular picture of the vicious classes of society in this country at that period, the “English Rogue,” by Head and Kirkman. The false cripple in our cut is holding up his leg to make a display of his pretended infirmity.

No. 167. The False Cripple.

Callot remained at Nancy, with merely temporary absences, during the remainder of his life. In 1628, he was employed at Brussels in drawing and engraving the “Siege of Breda,” one of the most finished of his works, and he there made the personal acquaintance of Vandyck. Earlyin 1629, he was called to Paris to execute engravings of the siege of La Rochelle, and of the defence of the Isle of Rhé, but he returned to Nancy in 1630. Three years afterwards his native country was invaded by the armies of Louis XIII., and Nancy surrendered to the French on the 25th of September, 1633. Callot was required to make engravings to celebrate the fall of his native town; but, although he is said to have been threatened with violence, he refused; and afterwards he commemorated the evils brought upon his country by the French invasion in those two immortal sets of prints, the lesser and greater“Misères de la Guerre.”About two years after this, Callot died, in the prime of life, on the 24th of March, 1635.

The fame of Callot was great among his contemporaries, and his name is justly respected as one of the most illustrious in the history of French art. He had, as might be expected, many imitators, and the Caprices, the Balli, and the Gobbi, became very favourite subjects. Among these imitators, the most successful and the most distinguished was Stephano Della Bella; and, indeed, the only one deserving of particular notice. Della Bella was born at Florence, on the 18th of May, 1610;[93]his father, dying two years afterwards, left him an orphan, and his mother in great poverty. As he grew up, he showed, like Callot himself, precocious talents in art, and of the same kind. He eagerly attended all public festivals, games, &c, and on his return from them made them the subject of grotesque sketches. It was remarked of him, especially, that he had a curious habit of always beginning to draw a human figure from the feet, and proceeding upwards to the head. He was struck at a very early period of his pursuit of art by the style of Callot, of which, at first, he was a servile imitator, but he afterwards abandoned some of its peculiarities, and adopted a style which was more his own, though still founded upon that of Callot. He almost rivalled Callot in his success in grouping multitudes of figures together, and hence he also was much employed inproducing engravings of sieges, festive entertainments, and such elaborate subjects. As Callot’s aspirations had been directed towards Italy, those of Della Bella were turned towards France, and when in the latter days of the ministry of Cardinal Richelieu, the grand duke of Florence sent Alexandro del Nero as his resident ambassador in Paris, Della Bella was permitted to accompany him. Richelieu was occupied in the siege of Arras, and the engraving of that event was the foundation of Della Bella’s fame in France, where he remained about ten years, frequently employed on similar subjects. He subsequently visited Flanders and Holland, and at Amsterdam made the acquaintance of Rembrandt. He returned to Florence in 1650, and died there on the 23rd of July, 1664.

No. 168. A Witch Mounted.

While still in Florence, Della Bella executed four prints of dwarfs quite in the grotesque style of Callot. In 1637, on the occasion of the marriage of the grand duke Ferdinand II., Della Bella published engravings of the different scenes represented, or performed, on that occasion. These were effected by very elaborate machinery, and were represented in six engravings, the fifth of which (scena quinta) represents hell (d’ Inferno), and is filled with furies, demons, and witches, which might have found a place in Callot’s “Temptation of St. Anthony.”

A specimen of these is given in our cut No. 168—a naked witch seated upon a skeleton of an animal that might have been borrowed from some far distant geological period. In 1642, Della Bella executed a set of small “Caprices,” consisting of thirteen plates, from the eighth of which we take our cut No. 169. It represents a beggar-woman, carrying one child on her back, while another is stretched on the ground. In this class of subjects Della Bella imitated Callot, but the copyist never succeeded in equalling the original. His best style, as an original artist of burlesque and caricature, is shown in a set of five plates of Death carryingaway people of different ages, which he executed in 1648. The fourth of this set is copied in our cut No. 170, and represents Death carrying off, on his shoulder, a young woman, in spite of her struggles to escape from him.

No. 169. Beggary.

With the close of the seventeenth century these “Caprices” and masquerade scenes began to be no longer in vogue, and caricature and burlesque assumed new forms; but Callot and Della Bella had many followers, and their examples had a lasting influence upon art.

We must not forget that a celebrated artist, in another country, at the end of the same century, the well-known Romain de Hooghe, was produced from the school of Callot, in which he had learnt, not the arts of burlesque and caricature, but that of skilfully grouping multitudes of figures, especially in subjects representing episodes of war, tumults, massacres, and public processions.

Of Romain de Hooghe we shall have to speak again in a subsequent chapter. In his time the art of engraving had made great advance on the Continent, and especially in France, where it met with more encouragement than elsewhere. In England this art had, on the whole, made much less progress, and was in rather a low condition, one branch only excepted, that of portraits. Of the two distinguished engravers in England during the seventeenth century, Hollar was a Bohemian, and Faithorne, thoughan Englishman, learnt his art in France. We only began to have an English school when Dutch and French engravers came in with King William to lay the groundwork.

No. 170. Death carrying off his Prey.

THE SATIRICAL LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.—PASQUIL.—MACARONIC POETRY.—THE EPISTOLÆ OBSURORUM VIRORUM.—RABELAIS.—COURT OF THE QUEEN OF NAVARRE, AND ITS LITERARY CIRCLE; BONAVENTURE DES PERIERS.—HENRI ETIENNE.—THE LIGUE, AND ITS SATIRE: THE“SATYRE MÉNIPPÉE.”

The sixteenth century, especially on the Continent, was a period of that sort of violent agitation which is most favourable to the growth of satire. Society was breaking up, and going through a course of decomposition, and it presented to the view on every side spectacles which provoked the mockery, perhaps more than the indignation, of lookers-on. Even the clergy had learnt to laugh at themselves, and almost at their own religion; and people who thought or reflected were gradually separating into two classes—those who cast all religion from them, and rushed into a jeering scepticism, and those who entered seriously and with resolution into the work of reformation. The latter found most encouragement among the Teutonic nations, while the sceptical element appears to have had its birth in Italy, and even in Rome itself, where, among popes and cardinals, religion had degenerated into empty forms.

At some period towards the close of the fifteenth century, a mutilated ancient statue was accidentally dug up in Rome, and it was erected on a pedestal in a place not far from the Ursini Palace. Opposite it stood the shop of a shoemaker, named Pasquillo, or Pasquino, the latter being the form most commonly adopted at a later period. This Pasquillo was notorious as a facetious fellow, and his shop was usually crowded by people who went there to tell tales and hear news; and, as no other name had beeninvented for the statue, people agreed to give it the name of the shoemaker, and they called it Pasquillo. It became a custom, at certain seasons, to write on pieces of paper satirical epigrams, sonnets, and other short compositions in Latin or Italian, mostly of a personal character, in which the writer declared whatever he had seen or heard to the discredit of somebody, and these were published by depositing them with the statue, whence they were taken and read. One of the Latin epigrams which pleads against committing these short personal satires to print, calls the time at which it was usual to compose them Pasquil’s festival:—

Jam redit illa dies in qua Romana juventusPasquilli festum concelebrabit ovans.Sed versus impressos obsecro ut edere omittas,Ne noceant iterum quæ nocuere semel.

Jam redit illa dies in qua Romana juventus

Pasquilli festum concelebrabit ovans.

Sed versus impressos obsecro ut edere omittas,

Ne noceant iterum quæ nocuere semel.

The festival was evidently a favourite one, and well celebrated. “The soldiers of Xerxes,” says another epigram, placed in Pasquil’s mouth, “were not so plentiful as the paper bestowed upon me; I shall soon become a bookseller”—

Armigerûm Xerxi non copia tanta papyriQuanta mihi: fiam bibliopola statim.

Armigerûm Xerxi non copia tanta papyri

Quanta mihi: fiam bibliopola statim.

The name of Pasquil was soon given to the papers which were deposited with the statue, and eventually apasquil, orpasquin, was only another name for a lampoon or libel. Not far from this statue stood another, which was found in the forum of Mars (Martis forum), and was thence popularly called Marforio. Some of these satirical writings were composed in the form of dialogues between Pasquil and Marforio, or of messages from one to the other.

A collection of these pasquils was published in 1544 in two small volumes.[94]Many of them are extremely clever, and they are sharply pointed. The popes are frequent objects of bitterest satire. Thus we are reminded in two lines upon pope Alexander VI. (sextus), the infamous Borgia, that Tarquin had been a Sextus, and Nero also, and now another Sextus wasat the head of the Romans, and told that Rome was always ruined under a Sextus—

De Alexandro VI. Pont.Sextus Tarquinius, Sextus Nero, Sextus et iste:Semper sub Sextis perdita Roma fuit.

The following is given for an epitaph on Lucretia Borgia, pope Alexander’s profligate daughter:—

Hoc tumulo dormit Lucretia nomine, sed reThais, Alexandri filia, sponsa, nurus.

Hoc tumulo dormit Lucretia nomine, sed re

Thais, Alexandri filia, sponsa, nurus.

In another of a rather later date, Rome, addressing herself to Pasquil, is made to complain of two successive popes, Clement VII. (Julio de Medicis, 1523–-1534) and Paul III. (Alexandro Farnese, 1534–1549), and also of Leo X. (1513–1521). “I am,” Rome says, “sick enough with the physician (Medicus, as a pun on the Medicis), I was also the prey of the lion (Leo), now, Paul, you tear my vitals like a wolf. You, Paul, are not a god to me, as I thought in my folly, but you are a wolf, since you tear the food from my mouth”—

Sum Medico satis ægra, fui quoque præda Leonis,Nunc mea dilaceras viscera, Paule, lupus.Non es, Paule, mihi numen, ceu stulta putabam,Sed lupus es, quoniam subtrahis ore cibum.

Sum Medico satis ægra, fui quoque præda Leonis,

Nunc mea dilaceras viscera, Paule, lupus.

Non es, Paule, mihi numen, ceu stulta putabam,

Sed lupus es, quoniam subtrahis ore cibum.

Another epigram, addressed to Rome herself, involves a pun in Greek (in the wordsPaulos, Paul, andPhaulos, wicked). “Once, Rome,” it says, “lords of lords were thy subjects, now thou in thy wretchedness art subject to the serfs of serfs; once you listened to the oracles of St. Paul, but now you perform the abominable commands of the wicked”—

Quondam, Roma, tibi suberant domini dominorum,Servorum servis nunc miseranda subes;Audisti quondam divini oraculaΠαύλου,At nuncτων φαύλωνjussa nefanda facis.

Quondam, Roma, tibi suberant domini dominorum,

Servorum servis nunc miseranda subes;

Audisti quondam divini oraculaΠαύλου,

At nuncτων φαύλωνjussa nefanda facis.

The idea, of course, is the contrast of Rome in her Pagan glory, with Rome in her Christian debasement, very much the same as that whichstruck Gibbon, and gave birth to his great history of Rome’s “decline and fall.”[95]

The pasquils formed a body of satire which struck indiscriminately at everybody within its range, but satirists were now rising who took for their subjects special cases of the general disorder. Rotten at the heart, society presented an external glossiness, a mixture of pedantry and affectation, which offered subjects enough for ridicule in whatever point of view it was taken. The ecclesiastical body was in a state of fermentation, out of which new feelings and new doctrines were about to rise. The old learning and literature of the middle ages remained in form after their spirit had passed away, and they were now contending clumsily and unsuccessfully against new learning and literature of a more refined and healthier character. Feudalism itself had fallen, or it was struggling vainly against new political principles, yet the aristocracy clung to feudal forms and feudal assumptions, with an exaggeration which was meant for an appearance of strength. Among the literary affectations of this false feudalism, was the fashion for reading the long, dry, old romances of chivalry; while the churchmen and schoolmen were corrupting the language in which mediæval learning had been expressed, into a form the most barbarous, or introducing words compounded from the later into the vernacular tongue. These peculiarities were among the first to provoke literary satire. Italy, where this class of satire originated, gave it its name also, though it appears still to be a matter of doubt why it was calledmacaronic, or in its Italian formmaccharonea. Some have considered this name to have been taken from the article of food calledmacaroni, to which the Italians were, and still are, so much attached; while others pretend that it was derived from an old Italian wordmacarone, which meant a lubberly fellow. Be this, however, as it may, what is called macaronic composition, which consists in giving aLatin form to words taken from the vulgar tongue, and mixing them with words which are purely Latin, was introduced in Italy at the close of the fifteenth century.

Four Italian writers in macaronic verse are known to have lived before the year 1500.[96]The first of these was named Fossa, and he tells us that he composed his poem entitled “Vigonce,” on the second day of May, 1494. It was printed in 1502. Bassano, a native of Mantua, and the author of a macaronic which bears no title, was dead in 1499; and another, a Paduan named Fifi degli Odassi, was born about the year 1450. Giovan Georgio Allione, of Asti, who is believed also to have written during the last ten years of the fifteenth century, is a name better known through the edition of his French works, published by Monsieur J. C. Brunet in 1836. All these present the same coarseness and vulgarity of sentiment, and the same licence in language and description, which appear to have been taken as necessary characteristics of macaronic composition. Odassi appears to give support to the derivation of the name from macaroni, by making the principal character of his poem a fabricator of that article in Padua—

Est unus in Padua natus speciale cusinus,In maccharonea princeps bonus atque magister.

Est unus in Padua natus speciale cusinus,

In maccharonea princeps bonus atque magister.

But the great matter of macaronic poetry was Teofilo Folengo, of whose life we know just sufficient to give us a notion of the personal character of these old literary caricaturists. Folengo was descended from a noble family, which had its seat at the village of Cipada, near Mantua, where he was born on the 8th of November, 1491, and baptised by the name of Girolamo. He pursued his studies, first in the university of Ferrara, under the professor Visago Cocaio, and afterwards in that of Bologna, under Pietro Pomponiazzo; or rather, he ought to have pursuedthem, for his love of poetry, and his gaiety of character, led him to neglect them, and at length his irregularities became so great, that he was obliged to make a hasty flight from Bologna. He was ill received at home, and he left it also, and appears to have subsequently led a wild life, during part of which he adopted the profession of a soldier, until at length he took refuge in a Benedictine convent near Brescia, in 1507, and became a monk. The discipline of this house had become entirely relaxed, and the monks appear to have lived very licentiously; and Folengo, who, on his admission to the order, had exchanged his former baptismal name for Teofilo, readily conformed to their example. Eventually he abandoned the convent and the habit, ran away with a lady named Girolama Dedia, and for some years he led a wandering, and, it would seem, very irregular life. Finally, in 1527, he returned to his old profession of a monk, and remained in it until his death, in the December of 1544. He is said to have been extremely vain of his poetical talents, and a story is told of him which, even if it were invented, illustrates well the character which was popularly given to him. It is said that when young, he aspired to excel in Latin poetry, and that he wrote an epic which he himself believed to besuperiorto the Æneid. When, however, he had communicated the work to his friend the bishop of Mantua, and that prelate, intending to compliment him, told him that he had equalled Virgil, he was so mortified, that he threw the manuscript on the fire, and from that time devoted his talents entirely to the composition of macaronic verse.

Such was the man who has justly earned the reputation of being the first of macaronic poets. When he adopted this branch of literature, while he was in the university of Bologna, he assumed in writing it the name of Merlinus Cocaius, or Coccaius, probably from the name of his professor at Ferrara. Folengo’s printed poems consist of—1. The Zanitonella, a pastoral in seven eclogues, describing the love of Tonellus for Zanina; 2, the macaronic romance of Baldus, Folengo’s principal and most remarkable work; 3, the Moschæa, or dreadful battle between the flies and the ants; and 4, a book of Epistles and Epigrams.

The first edition of the Baldus appeared in 1517. It is a sort ofparody on the romances of chivalry, and combines a jovial satire upon everything, which, as has been remarked, spares neither religion nor politics, science nor literature, popes, kings, clergy, nobility, or people. It consists of twenty-five cantos, or, as they are termed in the original,phantasiæ, fantasies. In the first we are told of the origin of Baldus. There was at the court of France a famous knight named Guy, descended from that memorable paladin Renaud of Montauban. The king, who showed a particular esteem for Guy, had also a daughter of surpassing beauty, named Balduine, who had fallen in love with Guy, and he was equally amorous of the princess. In the sequel of a grand tournament, at which Guy has distinguished himself greatly, he carries off Balduine, and the two lovers fly on foot, in the disguise of beggars, reach the Alps in safety, and cross them into Italy. At Cipada, in the territory of Brescia, they are hospitably entertained by a generous peasant named Berte Panade, with whom the princess Balduine, who approaches her time of confinement, is left; while her lover goes forth to conquer at least a marquisate for her. After his departure she gives birth to a fine boy, which is named Baldus. Such, as told in the second canto, is the origin of Folengo’s hero, who is destined to perform marvellous acts of chivalry. The peasant Berte Panade has also a son named Zambellus, by a mother who had died in childbirth of him. Baldus passes for the son of Berte also, so that the two are supposed to be brothers. Baldus is successively led through a series of extraordinary adventures, some low and vulgar, others more chivalrous, and some of them exhibiting a wild fertility of imagination, which are too long to enable me to take my readers through them, until at length he is left by the poet in the country of Falsehood and Charlatanism, which is inhabited by astrologers, necromancers, and poets. Thus is the hero Baldus dragged through a great number of marvellous accidents, some of them vulgar, many of them ridiculous, and some, again, wildly poetical, but all of them presenting, in one form or other, an opportunity for satire upon some of the follies, or vices, or corruptions of his age. The hybrid language in which the whole is written, gives it a singularly grotesque appearance; yet from time to time we have passages which show that the author was capable of writing true poetry,although it is mixed with a great amount of coarse and licentious ideas, expressed no less coarsely and licentiously. What we may term the filth, indeed, forms a large proportion of the Italian macaronic poetry. The pastoral of Zanitonella presents, as might be expected, more poetic beauty than the romance of Balbus. As an example of the language of the latter, and indeed of that of the Italian macaronics in general, I give a few lines of a description of a storm at sea, from the twelfth canto, with a literal translation:—

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