Chapter XV: Part 15

Both these pontiffs differed from Benedict XIV., who was Pope from 1740 to 1758. Benedict loved a joke, but he loved to make it himself, and he might therefore be set down among those potentates who have been their own fools. When he was yet but Consistorial Advocate--a sufficiently grave and responsible dignitary--the spirit of fun so strongly influenced him, that at carnival-time he would issue into the thronged streets in the burlesqued costume of a doctor of divinity, and, mounting on a stool, would hold forth to the other gay masquers, denouncing their sins so pleasantly that their only regret was, that they were not fathoms deeper in iniquity, that they might laugh the more at the comic recapitulation of their offences. When Benedict became Pope, he endeavoured to suppress the carnival orgies; but the popular voice expressed itself so menacingly that he was content to leave others to enjoy what he could no longer participate in himself. He then confined himself to playing tricks on the Cardinals. His chief butt was Cardinal Passionei, a patient, orthodox man, who equally hated heresy and the Jesuits. The papal jokes were practical; as when the Pope, hearing that his Eminence had ordered a chest of books to be sent to him, contrived that a chest should reach him full of the most famous heretical and condemned volumes. The papal enjoyment here consisted in beholding the horror of the Cardinal on opening the case, and in seeing the delicate disgust with which he seized each work with a pair of tongs, and tossed it into the fire.

The spiritual prince-electors followed the fashion, and retained fools who seem to have been pretty plainly spoken. Thus, when the Elector Brendal of Mayence asked his jester what he thought of the newly-gilded chancel of the cathedral, Sir Motley replied, “I think it is very like the golden goblet in which the Hessians drink sour beer. Your newly-gilded chancel will be filled by dirty thieves of monks.”

Far bolder, however, was the reply of the electoral buffoon, Witzel, to Wolfgang, another Elector of Mayence, who asked him of what gender the word _Mater_ was. “Well,” answered the fool, “mine is _generis feminini_; but your Electoral Highness’s _mater_ is _generis communis_.” The fools of the Mayence Electors, it may be added, were not all remarkable only for wit; one at least, Pastore, fool to Albert of Mayence, was a kindly and brave-hearted man. When he knew there was a design on foot to make away with a Reforming preacher named Winkel, who, in 1527, had been summoned to Mayence to render account of his stewardship, Pastore aided him to escape. Poor Winkel was ultimately murdered; but the good deed of Pastore was not forgotten by the Reformers in their indignation against the more wicked agents of his unscrupulous master.

The electors of Cologne kept so princely a court that the uniform of the jesters rubbed against that of the body-guard. Such samples, however, as I can find of their wit do not say much for their humour or delicacy. That wit appears to have been exercised chiefly against their ghostly masters’ vices, and in this respect they had no sinecure. Or it was exhibited in rather uncleanly practical jokes, or as uncleanly repartees, and a record of the fact may well take place of a sample from the measure.

In treating of the jesters of foreign countries, there is some difficulty in conveying a fair idea of their wit, as by mere translation the point is ordinarily lost. The jests of Crafulla, a clever buffoon, yet not an official fool, who was constantly in the society of the Cardinal de’ Medici, are exactly in this condition. It is not much better with Barciacca, the house fool of Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici. Such wit as he had will not bear, and is hardly worthy, translation; while his practical jokes are really not worth narrating. One can only wonder how any of the Medici, refined and learned men, could laugh at such sorry amusement. Barciacca once compared himself with the Cardinal, on the ground that he daily fed as many as his Eminence; and when the latter expressed doubt of the fact, the fool stripped himself to the drawers, to exhibit the marks of the thousands that began feeding on him as soon as he lay down to sleep in the bed assigned him in the Cardinal’s palace. Ippolito laughed at this till he nearly lost breath. The joke only shows that the _palazzo Cardinale_ was not of the cleanest, and that in point of humour his Eminence was easily pleased.

Again, if we look to the fools of Cardinals in England, we shall not find them particularly distinguished for happiness of wit. The best thing uttered by Cardinal Wolsey’s jester, Saxton, was his wish that Wolsey might become Pope. “For you see,” said he, “Peter’s father being a fisherman, he ordered all men to eat fish in Lent, for the sake of his father’s trade; now, your Eminence’s father having been a butcher, we should hope, for a similar reason, to be ordered to eat meat all the year round.” This is at least as good as anything that is told of foreign fools in the palaces of Cardinals; and I may add, that Wolsey’s fool was prophet also, if we may credit the story in which we are told, that, once, as the Cardinal was contemplating the design for a tomb intended for himself, the fool remarked, “The tomb is well enough, but your Eminence’s bones will never lie in it,” which proved to be true.

Cardinal Richelieu possessed a better taste in jesters than Wolsey. His buffoons were men of wit and learning, and the latter were admirably combined in the Abbé de Boisrobert, who brought to the Cardinal his daily dish of city scandal, amused him by his imitations of the peculiarities of Richelieu’s friends, wrote half his tragedies for him, knew more of the drama than of divinity, was so constantly present at the theatre that it came to be called the “Cathedral of Boisrobert,” and finally, who founded the French Academy. The Abbé was no ordinary fool, but an incomparable wit; and when he was out of favour with Richelieu, and the latter was ill, his physician wrote the simple but indispensable prescription, “Recipe Boisrobert!”

If Cardinals had their jesters, we must not be surprised to find them in episcopal houses. In Germany, in the 16th and 17th centuries, some of them exhibited the usual bent of the class for practical joking; some were famous for their feats of strength; others for their blasphemy; one or two were remarkable for their simplicity; but none of them can be said to have been distinguished for wit. I have already mentioned Klaus Narr in a ducal household; he was subsequently jester to Ernst, Archbishop of Magdeburg. In this service, if he did nothing else, he at least gave rise to a proverbial saying. He had covered the floor of the Archbishop’s room with feathers from a bed which he had ripped open. The prelate, on entering the apartment, angrily inquired who had done this; and as, at the moment, the Archbishop’s dog Lepsch, which had been in the chamber the whole time of Klaus Narr’s freak, rose from his couchant position, and opened his mouth, Klaus called to him angrily, “Lepsch, boy, don’t let out the secret!” The prelate laughed; and the expression became a proverb, to be applied in cases where silence was recommended.

The Bishop of Bamberg was less choice in his fool than his brother of Magdeburg. He kept a jester whose chief wit consisted in passing himself off as the brother of our Saviour. This poor wretch prattled incessantly of incidents in the household of his supposed family, and drew laughter from his reverend master by chatting with fearful familiarity of the events of a life, death, and resurrection which no Christian can ever think of without emotions of sympathy, love, and gratitude. This sorry fool, once seeing his godly patron treating with immense demonstration of friendship a deputation of Nurembergers whom he intended to fleece, imprison, and hang, the jester exclaimed, “Ay, ay! I remember how my good brother Jesus was superbly treated when he entered Jerusalem in triumph; but those rascally Jews plundered and executed him nevertheless!” The blasphemy certainly served the purpose of putting the Nurembergers on their guard; and the Bishop was only annoyed at it because it frustrated a cherished purpose.

The bad taste of the Bamberg bishops with respect to their jesters, is illustrated in another diocesan, who lived in part of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. This exemplary divine maintained a coarse, strong, active, semi-savage peasant, who amused the episcopal court and guests by going about on all-fours, and often with a dwarf on his back, like a young knight on a huge steed. The fun consisted in the steed trying to unhorse the cavalier. Sometimes this huge fellow would leap on to the table without upsetting a goblet; at other times he was baited in the Bishop’s dining-room by dogs, and they generally had the worst of it. Springing at them in his wild attire, and uttering unearthly howls, he would pull down with his teeth even the fiercest bull-dogs, and so terribly maul them that they would not try a second attack. As for dogs of less ferocious breed, they flew at once from his terrific bellowing, seldom waiting to try the effect of his teeth. The agility of this savage was equal to his strength, and he would run along the uppermost parapet of the episcopal palace, and throw somersaults upon it as carelessly as if he had been on the ground, to the wild delight of the Bambergers, who were not very superior in moral qualities to the people of Munster. The latter had more regard for the fool of their Bishop than the fool had for them. One morning, the prelate’s jester was seen in a field belonging to his master, sowing pebbles. “It would be more profitable,” remarked a spectator, “if you could sow seed that should bring a crop of honest men.” “Ah,” answered the joker, “that’s a crop that the land of Munster is of too bad a quality to produce.”

Julius, Bishop of Wurtzburg, had as witty a fool as his brother of Munster. This jester was very much petted; but like spoiled favourites, he sometimes offended grievously by his impertinence, and the Bishop once ordered him to prison. While the gaoler was strewing some straw on the ground of the cell for the condemned jester to lie upon, the latter slipped out, locked the keeper in, and carried the key to the Bishop, with the remark that it was “all right.” “All right?” exclaimed the prelate. “It is all wrong, since you are not in prison, sirrah, and the gaoler is.” “There may be some mistake,” answered the joker; “but I can hardly think so. You ordered a fool to prison, and I am sure you will find one there, if you will only look for him.”

The prelates who kept fools about their hearth, had not unfrequently a taste of their office which was more likely to excite anger than merriment. These prelates occasionally even slept with their jesters. The former could not have been much given to meditation, since they depended on the latter to laugh them into sleep, or to solace them by merriment when they were wakeful. One of the princely Archbishops of Cologne followed this very indifferent fashion.

Were not my space becoming so limited, I might here fittingly notice those “Festivals of Fools” in which whole cities once took part, and of which the church was the principal scene. I allude especially to those _Fêtes des Fous_, Saturnalia established or continued to conciliate semi-converted pagans, and which were not entirely abolished till the end of the sixteenth century. This subject, however, would require a volume, and in some countries has had _volumes_ devoted to it. The chief characteristic of a _Fête des Fous_ was, insult to the Church, and it is astonishing that a powerful Church bore with the nuisance for so long a period. A boy was, generally at the Epiphany, elected as Bishop, mounted on an ass, and escorted to church, where the people would interrupt the priest at his office, by unseemly songs, jeers, and profane and filthy conversation. Some would play at dice upon the altar, while others would feign to denounce them, or pretend to assist the priest, by mock exhortations or obscene lectures. The procession of fools, on leaving the church, greeted the open-mouthed starers by flinging bran in their faces, as they passed; and amused others by jumping over brooms, and chanting so-called hymns,--that were not for edification. This abomination lasted so long that many conservatively-minded persons saw a mystery in it, and when the church authorities aided the secular government to suppress the iniquity, there were not wanting individuals who maintained that this festival of fools was as pleasing to God, as the holiest festival of the year! Among these objectors to the suppression of this custom, were many clerics, who either enjoyed the uproarious holiday or made profit by being actors on the occasion.

In connection with jests and jesters near the Church, I could not well avoid mentioning this festival, where the buffoons exceeded any license assumed by official fools in royal and imperial courts. There are, however, so many well-known works or essays devoted to this matter, that I gladly leave the subject, trusting that if there be a reader who has gone with me thus far, he will accompany me through one more chapter before we finally part.

PRINCES WHO HAVE BEEN THEIR OWN FOOLS.

Although I have made almost an encyclopædia of notes touching exalted personages who, since the decline or the suppression of official fools, have shown a disposition to perform the office on their own account, neither my space nor my sympathy for the persevering reader who has thus far accompanied me, will admit of my placing a hundredth part of them before the public. A few instances, however, I will at once proceed to give, only premising, that it was lucky for a people when the Prince, in playing the Fool, enacted his part without inflicting anything very detrimental upon his subjects. Among those whose follies may be said to have been comparatively harmless, is to be reckoned that Prince who was called the Fool of his Health, namely, Ferdinand II., Grand Duke of Tuscany, who died in 1670, and was remarkable for the anxiety with which he attended to his health. “I have frequently seen him,” says the Abbé Arnauld, “pacing up and down his chamber between two large thermometers, upon which he would keep his eyes constantly fixed, unceasingly employed in taking off and putting on a variety of skull-caps of different degrees of warmth, of which he had always five or six in his hand, according to the degree of heat or cold registered by the instruments. This, I can assure you, was a mighty pleasant sight to behold, for there was not a conjuror in all his dominions more dexterous in handling his cups and balls than was this prince in shifting his caps.”

If this was silly, it at least was in better taste than characterized the proceeding of the Princess of the Asturias, at Madrid, when Saint-Simon took ceremonious leave of her before he returned to France, in 1722. In full court, and to all his formal compliments and speeches, her Royal Highness only replied by a loud rattling noise in the trachea, which she repeated as he concluded each of his addresses to her. The poor Duke was stupefied, but the court was in fits of laughter, and hilariously admired the jest.

The great Condé furnishes us with another example of this class of fools. A village schoolmaster once came to him with an address. As the speaker bowed low, on commencing his speech, Condé, quick as thought, vaulted over his back. With equal rapidity, the orator turned and continued his speech, but Condé’s folly was uppermost, and laying a light hand upon the pedagogue’s shoulder, over he bounded again, lightly as an equestrian in a “daring act” of the harmless arena. The baffled speaker then gave up the attempt, and left the princely fool to the enjoyment of the recollection of his folly.

The father of the last Duke of Mantua, Charles III., was another of those illustrious personages who preferred being his own fool, and after a singular fashion too. He loved to go abroad in the dirtiest of disguises, and accompanied by an escort of equally ill clad bullies for his defence. It was his sport to assail all he met in the coarsest terms, and when some persons thus assaulted, more impatient than others, fell upon him in return, with tongue or cudgel, he would laugh till he was sore, and then his escort came to the rescue. On other occasions, he would enter the shops of vendors of very breakable materials, and taking up mirrors or drinking glass, or any other fragile matter that came to hand, he would let it fall to the ground, and find double provocation to laughter in the ruin he had committed and in the expressions of unrestrained abuse which were showered on him in consequence.

Something of madness must have lurked under this; but in the next buffoon we shall only see a development of natural disposition.

The dexterity of a quack doctor at a fair made of Peter the Great his own fool, when the humour took him to play the character. The Czar had seen the fellow, on a platform, skilfully pushing out teeth with the end of a ladle, or picking them out with the point of a dagger. Peter paid for instruction in the art, and forthwith began to practise it on his courtiers, whose teeth were never safe within their lips. It happened on one occasion that a Russian officer had exposed himself to the Czar’s wrath, by being absent from a post at which Peter had especially placed him. It was necessary that the offender should meet his enraged sovereign, and his friends gave him up for lost, when he entered the audience chamber. But the officer, as he crossed the threshold, pulled out his handkerchief, pressed it to his cheek, and advanced towards the Czar with a growl of agony. Peter, delighted at the prospect of a patient, pushed him into a chair; the officer opened wide his jaws, and the Czar tugged at his gums with a fury that made the sufferer roar as if he had been under the knout, but which was attended by the extraction of two useful and stupendous grinders. Peter looked at the teeth, and then at his patient, whose lips were still open with pain and discoloured by blood. The Imperial surgeon laughed and danced with delight; but looking in the face of the officer, his own darkened with rage, on recognizing the offender. The latter, shuddering at the look, sank back in his chair and opened his jaws wider, indicative of another offering from the same source. What could the amateur dentist do? He laughed louder, danced more wildly with ecstasy, pulled out another tooth, and dismissed the crafty but clever patient, with full pardon.

The Czarina Elizabeth, in a milder form it is true, suffered also under this malady of folly. This lady’s delight was, never to sign any document brought to her by her ministers, till she had worn them out by her refusals. When the Grand Chancellor Besterfchef laid before her a paper which required her name at the bottom of it in order to give it validity, she would toss the pen across the room, begin dancing round the minister, who turned upon his knees to meet her face and to implore her, with tears in his eyes, to cease from such folly. The Czarina only danced on, laughing the more immoderately as she observed the embarrassment and the tears of the Chancellor. The latter however seldom left her till he had made her ashamed of playing the fool, and of interrupting public business by refusing to scrawl her name to a state paper.

At a semi-barbarous court like that of Russia, the above traits are not very surprising. At that of Spain, which boasted so loudly of its solemn grandeur, dignity, and refinement, we find a more surprising instance, but quite different from that I have mentioned of the Princess of the Asturias.

The Spanish royal family of the last century affords us an instance of the Heir to the Throne not only being his own fool, but of his raising his friends to the dignity of folly, by conferring on them its insignia. Lord Ligonier, the husband of one of Alfieri’s worthless idols, was English Ambassador at the court of Madrid during a portion of the reign of Charles III., which lasted from 1759 to 1788. After Lord Ligonier’s introduction to the King, he was conducted to the apartments of the Heir to the Crown, the Prince of the Asturias. The latter was, subsequently, that Charles IV. who was his own Queen’s especial fool throughout the term of their married lives. As Lord Ligonier approached the Prince’s chamber, he saw issuing therefrom a number of grandees, each wearing, with proud gravity, a fantastic fool’s cap. On inquiring the meaning of such a pageant, he was informed that his Royal Highness possessed the fancy of distinguishing his most cherished friends as his “fools.” The Prince, too, was often pleased to confer this mark of his favour on celebrated foreigners. Lord Ligonier was alarmed.

“I represent,” he said, “a great sovereign; and am myself a foreigner not altogether unknown. I must add, that my gracious master would be seriously offended, if the Prince of the Asturias were to think proper to cover the representative of the King of England with this decoration. You had better go in, Sir,” said he to his introducer, “and say as much to his Royal Highness.”

The reluctant official undertook the mission; but he presently returned, with the intimation that the Prince could not give up an old-established custom. Upon which, Lord Ligonier turned on his heel, declaring that he would not visit a Prince who thus exposed an Ambassador to insult. The court officials were thrown into a state of amusing terror by this declaration; they maintained, that if the Ambassador retired, it would be a flagrant insult on the Prince. Ultimately, and after many messages and countermessages had passed between the Prince in his room, and the English Envoy in the antechamber, announcement was made that the Prince of the Asturias would not attempt to clap the fool’s-cap on the head of Lord Ligonier. His lordship consequently entered the apartment, but not without being more than usually vigilant against surprise. He found the sage Prince with his back to the hearth, and with his hands behind him. The Prince remained in that position, and invited the Ambassador to approach. The English lord obeyed; but as he advanced, he perceived that the Prince held a paper object, and the Ambassador stopped short to converse with his Royal Highness at a very respectful distance. At the conclusion of the interview, he had to bow low; but, as a sailor might say, his weather eye was open, and he watched the Prince narrowly. The latter was resolved upon effecting his object, and as narrowly watched the Ambassador. The bow was almost at its lowest, when the Prince, seizing the most favourable opportunity, suddenly brought the fool’s cap from behind him, and endeavoured to fix it on the head of Lord Ligonier; but the old soldier who, by one glorious action at Laffeldt, had disconcerted all the projects of Marshal Saxe, was not to be foiled by a foolish prince. As soon as his eye caught sight of the cap, his hand was upon it, and almost as soon it lay crumpled up beneath his feet. His sudden action nearly threw the Prince out of his equilibrium; and leaving that illustrious fool’s-cap maker to recover himself as he best might, the old warrior quitted the apartment with a smile of scorn upon his lip.

Turning now from the Envoy from, to the King of, England, I may observe that the greatest opportunity for court fools to exhibit their wit or slyness, occurred when great political events were passing before them. They were then the merry scholiasts of living history. At no period in England, since the foundation of the monarchy, could a professional fool have found more incentives to fun or satire, than during the eventful reign of George III. And of all that reign, the time of “the Coalition,” in 1783, was that on which a witty court fool, in the secret of what was passing and what was about to pass, would have had most to say, hint, or laugh at. The Shelburne Administration had gone to pieces, and that fatal “Coalition” had been forced on George III., who indignantly saw himself compelled to accept a union of men who had for years been denouncing each other as void of principle, and worthy of the hangman. Lord North and Charles Fox, antipodes in everything but wit and good temper, came together, with other bitter foes, who had salved over their old sores, but wounded their reputation, for ever. When the new ministers first appeared at court before that good and obstinate old sovereign whom they and other ministers helped or harassed into madness, George III. had made up his mind to rid himself of them at the very earliest opportunity. Had there been a court fool present who knew the royal intention, he would have revelled in jokes, gibes, and inuendoes. As it was, the King was his own fool, and could not avoid showing a sign of his resolve. How he did it, is whimsically and authentically told in the second volume, page 28, of Russell’s Memoirs of Fox. Lord Holland is speaking, and in these words:--“I cannot help relating a saying of that lively and humorous old man” (the Marquis of Townshend) “on this occasion. He said he had always foreseen the Coalition Ministry could not last, for he was at court when Mr. Fox kissed hands; and he observed George III. _turn back his ears and eyes_ just like the horse at Astley’s, when the tailor he had determined to throw was getting on him.” This was the very action of a court fool, and not one of the fraternity could have performed it more felicitously than the King, who, on this occasion, was his own.

The eldest son of George III. had his comic aspect too, and was an excellent mimic. If we may believe the very respectable authority of Mr. Raikes, whose journals show him to have been a visitor at the Pavilion, and the intimate friend of many who visited there more frequently than himself, George IV., in playing the fool, was not at all scrupulous as to sacrificing his own ministers, for the sake of effect. Indeed, they were very good objects for the ridicule of a monarch who was his own jester. The “best wigged Prince in Christendom” had in perfection one of the chief qualities of the professional fool,--the power of imitation. Mr. Raikes affords an illustration of this in a story told him by the Duke of Wellington. “When the King sent for me,” said the Duke, “to form a new administration, in 1828, he was then seriously ill, though he would never allow it. I found him in bed, dressed in a dirty silk jacket and a turban night-cap, one as greasy as the other; for, notwithstanding his coquetry about dress in public, he was extremely slovenly and dirty in private. The first words he said to me were, ‘Arthur, the Cabinet is defunct;’ and then he began to describe the manner in which the late ministers had taken leave of him, in giving in their resignations. This was accompanied by the most ludicrous mimicry of the voice and manner of each individual, so strikingly like, that it was quite impossible to refrain from fits of laughter.”

If George IV. was strong in the fool’s quality of mimicry, Louis Philippe was not less so in coarser mockery; but then the latter King was too grave an actor to allow of his playing the fool in presence even of a friend or minister. He, however, could indulge in a brief private performance of the character, and he was once unwittingly caught in the fact by one of his private secretaries, who had concealed himself behind a door, in order to escape the observation of the King. His Majesty was approaching in deep conversation with the old republican, Dupont de l’Eure. The monarch at the head of “the best of republics,” treated the aged confederate, of whom he wished to be well rid, with an excess of warmth and courtesy. Louis Philippe professed ideas liberal enough to gratify a republican so advanced as M. Dupont, of whom he finally took leave in the most condescending and friendly manner. “No sooner, however,” says Mr. Raikes, who was the confidant of the secretary, “had the other turned his back to go out, and before he quitted the room, than Louis Philippe began to hold up his finger at him, with a face of mockery, and made a movement with his foot, as if he could hardly prevent himself from kicking him.” This bit of pantomimic incivility was often the manner of the most comic of court fools, and probably Triboulet himself could not have enacted it in superior style.

But I must draw my instances to a close, and perhaps I cannot do so more appropriately than by showing the merits, as a jester, of a sovereign whose country has since been the scene where martyrs have died, and heroes have avenged them. I refer to Oude, and I will add, that perhaps few monarchs ever so perfectly played the fool for his own satisfaction and that of his court, as Nassir-u-Deen, the late King of that country. His great delight was in puppet-shows, and it was on the occasion of one being exhibited before him that the following occurrence took place, as recorded in the ‘Private Life of an Eastern King.’

“His Majesty laughed heartily at the performances of the little burlesques of men and women.... At length he gave a whispered order to his barber,” (who, it may be mentioned, began life as a hair-dresser in London, and rose to the combined offices of barber and prime-minister to a King,) “who went out, brought something in his hand, and gave it to the King. The royal chair was pushed back, and his Majesty condescended to advance to the front of the puppet-show, going round the table, as if to inspect it more closely. The owners exerted themselves to give still more satisfaction, regarding their fortunes as made. The King watched for a little; his hand was advanced suddenly, and as suddenly drawn back, and one of the innocent marionettes fell motionless upon the stage. It was very plain that his Majesty had a pair of scissors in his hand, and had cut the string. The performers must have been as well aware of this as we were, but they gazed in affected, wonder at the catastrophe.... The King turned round, his face beaming with fun, and looked at us knowingly, as much as to say, ‘Did I not do that well?’ The barber laughed loudly in reply, and other courtiers joined in the chorus. But this was not the whole of the royal wit. The hand was pushed forward and drawn back again and again, and again and again did one after another of the puppets fall dead and immovable upon the stage, every successive fall eliciting a shout of laughter from the table and a blank look of astonishment from the general manager of the show, who was visible directing and superintending. When nearly all had fallen, the royal wit was satisfied, returned to his chair, ordered a handsome present to be given to the owner of the show, and it was withdrawn.”

With this court jest, I too will withdraw, leaving my puppets to be dealt with according as my readers may have found them more or less awkwardly handled by their showman. If the latter has amused or instructed the public audience, whose generous indulgence he has so often had to gratefully acknowledge, his aim has been accomplished. He has not pretended to instruct, but has simply brought together materials for instructors, and for _con_structors of future histories of a class which, in some shape or other, has existed from the legendary days of Momus down to those of contemporary Christian patriarchs in Asia, of whose households the buffoon is still sometimes a member. To effect this, demanded only a little industry;--small merit in a country where industry is the recognized duty of every citizen, and the only merit claimed by the author of these essays towards the History of Court and Household Fools.

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FOOTNOTES

[A] ‘_Geschichte der Hof-Narren._’

[B] A similar story is told of Triboulet.

[C] See Somner’s ‘Canterbury,’ edited by Batteley, p. 39, where the donation is thus recorded:--“Anno Domini MII., Villæ de Chertham et Walworth concessa et confirmata fuerunt per sanctum Edwardum, cum maneriis jam habitis et multis libertatibus concessis. Predictam villam Walworth Edmundus Rex dedit cuidam joculatori suo, nomine Hitardo. Tempore tandem Regis Edwardi idem Hitardus, volens limina Apostolorum Romæ visitare, venit ad Ecclesiam Christi in Dorobernia, et per consensum et concessionem Regis Edwardi, dedit eandem villam eidem Ecclesiæ Christi, chartam quoque ejusdem terræ posuit super altare Christi,” etc.

[D] See also Dugdale, Mon. Ang. vol. ii. p. 166.

[E] Father of Harry Jermyn, first Earl of St. Alban’s.

[F] “_Trunchman._” In ‘Revels at Court,’ p. 126, in an account of a “Maske of Amasones” (A.D. 1577), appears a “Troocheman” among the characters represented. At p. 140 we read of a payment made “To Patrochius Ubaldinus, by the Commandment of the Lord Chamberlain, for the translating of certain speeches into Italian, to be used in the mask.” I therefore take the “_trunchman_” of Archie, to mean Dragoman, or Interpreter. In Pepys’s time the word was written “Druggerman.”

[G] There can be no doubt, I think, that the Danish writer alludes to our old friend, Tom Derry.

[H] In the ‘Scout’s Discovery’ it is said that Archie himself pleaded before the Star Chamber his privileges of coat. “For,” said he, “if neither fool nor wise man may escape this court, I will be neither.”

[I] Dr. Binder, ‘Allgemeine Realencyclopädie,’ vol. v.

[J] The above is related on the authority of Flögel, who follows Fugger. The Flemish Chroniclers give an entirely opposite version, as far as regards Maximilian, declaring that he repeatedly attempted to escape. In the third volume of the Chronicles, page 74, the Flemish writer says:--“Soo dat Maximiliaen, op verscheyde tyden, sig selven begonde te verkleeden in verscheyde verworpe kleedern, nu als eene vrouw, dan als een godsgewyde, weederom als een heerenknecht, om behendelyk zyne langdurige gevangenis te ontloopen; maer alles was te vergeefs. Hy was te well bekent, ende syne bewaerders hadden grooter sorge als hy meynde.” Literally,--“So that Maximilian, at different times, began to disguise himself in different cast-off suits,--now as a woman, then as a fool, again as a nobleman’s follower, that at last he might escape from his tedious captivity; but all was in vain. He was too well known, and his guards had greater care of him than he thought for.”

* * * * * *

Transcriber’s note:

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Several periods in unexpected places have not been changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected silently; unpaired quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unpaired. Ambiguous situations are documented below.

Unpaired quotation marks on pages 87, 174, 187, 196, 202, 206, 208, 213 and 355 were not changed.

Archaic placement of quotation marks in poetry on page 132 and 157 was changed to meet current conventions.

Footnotes have been collected, resequenced, and moved to the end of the book, following the advertisements.

Page 79: “sleeping-off” was printed with the hyphen.

Page 108: “who sang as well as Fayditt himself,” originally ended with a period. In context, that seemed to be a misprint, and the Transcriber changed it to a comma.

Page 117: “Bolingbroke” and page 118: “Bonligbroke”, appear to refer to the same person.

Page 136: “gard and gentlewomen” was printed that way; may be a misprint for “garb”.

Page 140: Missing closing quotation mark added after “both dead and rotten.”

Page 164: “her maidenly qualities. the subjoined paragraphs” was printed that way; at least one word, perhaps “In”, seems to be missing after the period.

Page 193: “His middle thick. as I have said before;” was printed that way. Either the period should be a comma or “as” should be capitalized.

The X’s on pages 200 and 217 represent signature marks.

Page 203: “If I can obtain this, I rest” ended without a period. This may have been intentional.

Page 224: “3lbs.” was printed without a space.

Page 279: “an odd man” was printed that way, but perhaps was intended to be “an old man”.

Page 289: Both “Angoulevent” and “Angoulement” are used to refer to the same person.

Page 319: Both “Perettus” and “Perretus” are used to refer to the same person.