Chapter II: Part 2

Flögel has been too anxious to increase his list of Fools, by including among them the _planus_, or impostor. He takes for a joker, the cheat denounced by Horace in the 17th of the First Book of his Epistles. That cheat is simply a street vagabond, who deceives the humane by pretending to have broken his leg, and who laughs at them when they have passed on, after giving him relief. Even this sorry joke he cannot often repeat. Then we have, from Athenæus, other comical fellows cited, whose funny things won the admiration of Greece and Rome, the people of which countries must have been easily pleased. Among these are the Alexandrian Matreas, who wrote chapters of a ‘Comic Natural History,’ wherein he discussed such questions as, “Why, when the sun sets at sea, does he not set off swimming?” “Why do the swans never get drunk with what they imbibe?” Then we hear of a Cephisodorus,--neither the tragic poet nor the historian,--whose stock joke consisted in his running breathless, either from or towards the city honoured by his residence, and with an air of frantic terror, informing all whom he passed or encountered, of some awful calamity. It is hardly possible to imagine that people laughed more than once, _if_ once, at a sorry fool like this. Not much more risible was that Pantaleon, who was wont to address strangers in the street in tirades of bombastic nonsense, utterly meaningless and incomprehensible. The joke was for the standers-by, who knew Pantaleon, and enjoyed the astounded look of those whom he addressed. According to Athenæus, the last comicality of Pantaleon was in imposing on his two sons, whom he called separately to his side, when dying, and confidentially told each where he would find a hidden treasure. When they had looked for this in vain, they probably understood why their respectable sire had died laughing. Many of this class of fools can only be considered as “hoaxers.” Such was another Cephisodorus, who disgraced his dignified name by very undignified tricks,--as when he hired a host of hardy day-labourers, and gave them rendezvous in such a narrow street that, when all were assembled, it was impossible to move either backward or forward. The “Berners Street Hoax,” by Theodore Hook, was entirely after the fashion of Cephisodorus, and was not the more excusable on that account.

Forcatulus, a learned writer on law, accepts as true a story, very like one to be found in Rabelais, and which Flögel quotes from another accomplished jurist, Accursius. It is a story in which ignorance is made to pass for wisdom, and is therefore, although common, yet not quite so excellent a joke as it would pretend to be; and is to this effect:--

The Romans sent an ambassador to Greece, in order to procure a copy of the Laws of the twelve Tables. The Greeks would make no such costly gift till they were satisfied that the petitioners had men amongst them who could comprehend the wisdom of the Laws. They despatched an envoy to look into the matter; and when the Romans heard of him and his purpose, they resolved to defeat him by means of a fool. They clothed the latter in purple, surrounded him with a guard of honour, and dismissed him to encounter the accomplished ambassador from Greece, with one single point of instruction,--he was on no account to open his mouth.

The Athenian commissioner, seeing the representative of Roman wisdom standing before him, grave and speechless, observed, with a smile, “I understand. The gentleman is a Pythagorean, and carries on an argument only by signs. With all my heart!” And, thereupon he raised a single finger, to imply that there was only one principle of nature in the universe.

The simpleton sent by Rome, not dreaming that this was the opening of a philosophical argument, but looking upon it rather as a menace, extended two fingers and a thumb towards the Greek, as if about to take him by the nose.

“Good! very good!” murmured the Athenian. “He shows me the Pythagorean Trias,--the triple God in one. I must intimate that I understand him;”--and the philosophical envoy approached the stolid Roman, with the flat of his hand extended towards him. He intended thereby to imply that the divine Trias was the upholder of all things. The Roman, however, thinking it an approximation to a box on the ear, drew back a step, lifted his doubled fist, and awaited the coming of the Greek.

The face of the latter was covered by a radiant smile. He could only exclaim, “Perfect! charming! divine! The silent sage tells me that the divine supporter of all things is in himself All-mighty. Admirably done! a nation with such sages _must_ be worthy of laws enacted by the leaders of civilization.”

Now if this story be, as Forcatulus will have it, historically true, I must add that it has been improved in the hands of the story-tellers. These, of course, have made it a Christian disputation, in which the hired fool has but one eye. The real metaphysician reads in the signs of the simpleton the whole Christian revelation, but the story is improved by the fool’s own description of the matter. “When I saw him raise one finger, I thought he mocked me, as having but one eye; and I held out two fingers, meaning that my single eye was as good as his two. But when he, therefore, held out three fingers, signifying that there were only three eyes between us, I doubled my fist, to knock him down for his insolence.”

Among the old class of jesters some writers rank the _Aretalogi_, who appear to have been improvisers of merry or wonderful stories for the amusement of a company, by whom they were invited, or hired. Juvenal says that when Ulysses, at the table of Alcinous, described the person and deeds of the cannibal Polyphemus, some of the guests turned pale, while the narrator, to others seemed only a jester:

“Risum fortasse quibusdam
Moverat mendax Aretalogus;”

or, as the Jesuit Tarteron translates this passage,--“Les autres pâmoient de rire, et regardoient Ulysse comme un diseur de contes faits à plaisir.” Some of the guests, in fact, laughed at Ulysses as they would have done at a regular romancer.

Again, Suetonius, in the 74th chapter of his Life of Augustus, after describing the pleasant social customs of the emperor, his agreeable company, and his courteous and affable manner with them, adds that, to encourage their mirth and their freedom, “aut acroamata et histriones, aut etiam triviales ex circo ludios interponebat, ac frequentius aretalogos.” To show the value of this last word, according to English writers, I turn to an old translation of Suetonius, published in 1692, and there I find that, “for mirth’s sake, Augustus would often have at his table either some to tell stories, or players, or common Merry Andrews out of the Circus, but more frequently _boasting pedagogues and maintainers of paradoxes_.”

It might easily be concluded that the Aretalogus was really of the number of professional jesters, were it not that I find Lampridius quoted by Flögel as including Ulpian in this class, because he sat at the table of Alexander Severus, “ut haberet fabulas literales.” But it is almost impossible to admit of this, for the wise Ulpian was the solemn president of the Imperial Council of State, a great lawyer, a great reformer, a moral and a religious man, according to the light possessed by him. He was, as it seems to me, rather the Mentor than the Jester of Severus, who was, for a time, the bright example of men,--of any and every rank. The imperial virtues were held to be the result of the teaching and practices of Ulpian. To his frugal table the Emperor invited men of learning and virtue, and Ulpian was invariably of the number. So far, however, was the profound jurisconsult from being a mere jester, that, as we are told, the pauses in the pleasing and instructive conversation of himself and fellow-guests “were occasionally enlivened by the recital of some pleasing composition, which,” says Gibbon, “supplied the place of the dancers, comedians, and even gladiators, so frequently summoned to the tables of the rich and luxurious Romans.” That there was little or nothing of the conceited Aretalogus in Ulpian, may be seen in the fact that his virtue was of too stern a quality, and that he was slain by the Prætorian guards because he was more wise than merry.

We next come to the _Scurra_, a jester, of whom we find an illustration in ancient comedy. When the witnesses called by Agorastocles (in the ‘Pœnulus’ of Plautus) pompously order Collybiscus to walk in their rear, that personage remarks,

“Faciunt scurræ quod consuerunt; pone sese homines locant.”

“They act exactly like buffoons, who put every man behind them;” in which we see something of the ordinarily insolent character of these individuals.

Yet they are themselves said to have been originally the “followers” in the retinue of great men, and their name, Scurra, or _Sequura_, is derived by some lexicographers from ‘sequi,’ to follow. Their wit was sharp but polished, and to be scurrilous, in the olden time, was rather a credit than a disgrace; and if the enemies of Cicero called him the _scurra consularis_, it was not that they found his sarcasms coarse, but that they felt them penetrating and fatal.

The _Scurræ_, however, seem to have sunk to a level with the common buffoons, as we collect from the letter of Pliny to Genitor (l. ix. ep. 17). Pliny’s friend had written to him to express his disgust at a splendid entertainment where he had been a guest, being marred by the jokes, antics, and wiles of the professional _scurræ_, _cinædi_, and _moriones_. The difference between the first and the last who belonged to the profession of fools, consisted in this,--the Scurra professed the art of exciting his hearers to risibility by extravagant yet sparkling wit. The Morio worked more quietly, and as if he joked licentiously by natural disposition thereto. It is worthy of observation that Pliny rather chides his friend. He writes, substantially, in reply, “Pray smooth your brow. I do not hire such fellows myself, but I do not turn up my nose at those who follow a contrary fashion. There is nothing novel or grateful to me in the hackneyed gestures of the wanton, the pleasantry of the jester, or the nonsense of the fool.” And the philosopher adds, with great fairness, “You see it is not so much my judgment as my taste that is against them;” and, he says further, “When I have reading, music, or the company of an actor at my own house, there are some guests who leave directly, or who, if they stay, look as ‘glumpy’ at the diversions I provide, as you did at those which lately marred your entertainment. The truth is,” thus concludes the philosopher, and it is advice as valuable now as ever, “we should accept, as well-meant, the diversions provided for us by others, that they, in their turn, may be indulgent towards those we provide for them.” One thing noteworthy here is, that the sensible people in Rome did not really care for the “fool.” If the conquest of Scipio Asiaticus over Antiochus brought in that sort of entertainment, the _best_ philosophers (for some stooped to folly) protested against it by both precept and example.

The Scurra, as I have said, was not in every age a polished fool. The buffoon at the fair who obtained the applause of his audience for grunting like a pig, and, as the audience thought, more like a pig than the animal itself, is called by Phædrus a “Scurra.” He probably sank lower in his practice than any of his class, for he announced that the entertainment he was about to exhibit had never before been known on any stage. But even the best of the Scurræ seem to me to justify rather the censure of Genitor than the praise of Horace. The latter, it will be remembered, on the famous journey to Brundusium, was present at the cudgelling of brains between Sarmentus (who had run away from slavery to set up as a Scurra) and Cicerrus, who was a well-to-do parasite of his day. Horace asserts that the wit of these two induced them all to merrily prolong their supper; and yet all the fun perpetrated was of a dreary cast. The Scurra joked coarsely on the deformity and infirmity of the parasite, and the latter retorted by reproaching the Scurra with his condition of slave, and the puny insignificance of his body. If Sarmentus was the “delight” of Cæsar Augustus, that monarch was very easily pleased.

Perhaps there was no greater patron of the Scurræ, and all similar and many more degraded persons, than Sylla. He wasted his colossal fortune on fools of every description,--some of them monsters of uncleanness. Flögel, when noticing the criminal liberality of Sylla towards the crowds of debauched followers who occupied his table and house, and accompanied him abroad, says that for their sakes and under their influences, he neglected public business. But the fact is, that Sylla did not lead this disreputable life until after he had abdicated the dictatorship, and had gone into his sensual and unhappy retirement at Puteoli.

Antony was not more choice than Sylla in his “jolly companions,” nor in his own conduct. He was often indeed his own fool, and few great men ever played that character so thoroughly, but all were not fools and jesters and jugglers, whom historians have placed round the table and at the hearth of Antony. Flögel especially errs in classing among the jugglers retained by the Triumvir the beautiful Cytheris, or Lycoris, that slave whom the gentle and gallant Gallus loved, but whose desertion of him for Antony gained for us the tender eclogue of Virgil.

Juvenal cites with Sarmentus, the name of Galba as a buffoon or parasite of Augustus, and he does this (Sat. v.) in order to shame a dissolute friend who saw no harm in allowing his “loins to grow fat by others’ meat.” “What!” exclaims the Satirist, “are you not yet ashamed of your course of life? Can you still believe that sovereign happiness consists in living at another man’s table,--where you support more insults than were ever heaped on Sarmentus and Galba at the table of Cæsar?”

Galba was an aristocratic Demonax. He was, moreover, a short hump-backed fellow, and he seems rather to have been the cause of wit in others than witty himself. It was in allusion to his deformity that Augustus remarked, after Galba had maintained some absurd proposition, “I can tell you what is right, yet I can’t put you straight.” It is of Galba that is told the story of his feigning to go to sleep at his own table while Mæcenas was saying very polite things to the host’s wife; but when another of the guests attempted to filch something from the board, “Hold there!” cried Galba, “I am asleep for him, but not for you!”

Martial complains that he himself was less known to his contemporaries, all witty poet as he was, than Caballus, the buffoon of Tiberius. This individual is supposed to be the same with the Claudius Gallus of Suetonius. But Gallus seems to have been as much of a friend as a man could be, of an Emperor who was accustomed to behead such of his acquaintances as got the better of him in argument. That Gallus was hardly a professional fool may be gathered from the words of Suetonius, according to the quaint translation of the edition of 1692. “Claudius Gallus, a most notorious old Sir Jolly, who had been formerly branded for his debauches by Augustus, and severely reprimanded by himself (Tiberius) in the Senate, inviting him (Tiberius) to supper, he promised to come, on the terms that nothing were omitted of his usual way of entertainment,”--which, according to the context, seems to have been of a terribly licentious character.

Flögel refers, for an example of the impunity of Court Fools, in the bold wagging of their tongue at the Courts of the Roman Emperors, to the remark of a jester to Vespasian. The former had been saying sharp things to all around him, but, observed the Emperor, “you have addressed no observation to me.” Now Vespasian, whom we are accustomed to picture to ourselves as a towering personage of heroic carriage, was a poorly built fellow who went about in a half-sitting posture, like Mr. Wright in the part of the retired coachman, whose limbs have stiffened into the posture which he had preserved through a long course of years, on the box. The jester joked very indecently on this weakness of the monarch, but I do not think the sorry humourist was a wit by profession. “Quidam urbanorum,” is the way in which he is described, but this may mean “one of the men about town,” and the old translation from which I have already made an extract, renders it “one of the wits of the time.” Whichever it be, it seems to show that the jokers could take great liberties with some emperors. Other instances prove that some emperors took deadly vengeance on the jokers.

Commodus Antoninus may be reckoned among those princes who have been their own fools, and he played the part rarely; but it was more in the spirit of insane than witty folly. His fun, like the club of Hercules, which he for ever carried on his shoulder, was crushing rather than exhilarating. Gallienus, who resembled him in many respects, and was as cruel, licentious, depraved, and cold-hearted, kept a second table for his buffoons; which they occupied like regular gentlemen of the Imperial household. When this potentate played the fool for his own amusement, he could be, by caprice at least, less bloodthirsty in his frolicsomeness than Commodus; as, for instance, when he ordered a knave of a jeweller to be flung into the arena, and let loose upon him--not a roaring lion, but a poor capon. The joke, as poor as the bird, was, of course, received with universal applause.

We have some insight afforded us with regard to the position occupied by the retained jester, in the account of the strange supper given by Nasidienus to Mæcenas and others. The guest just named took with him his two “shadows” uninvited. They were expected to contribute to the hilarity of the feast, and they occupied the same couch with their patron, the latter reclining between them. Nasidienus was in the same way supported by his two parasites, one of whom excited the mirth of the company by swallowing whole cheesecakes at once, like a clown in a pantomime; and the other extolled the dishes generally. These two, however, drank little or nothing; they appear to have been trained to spare their master’s wine. The guests and _their_ parasites observed no such temperance, but tippled freely, and one of the latter especially kept up the laughter of the visitors by mock compliments on the feast, and mock sentiment on things, generally.

The _Morio_, as I have previously observed, was usually a mis-shapen creature, a sort of monstrous imbecile, heavy and hideous in body, and childish in mind; a simpleton, whose naturally foolish remarks contrasted with his strength and rude shape of body. Ladies in the olden time kept them, as ladies of a later period kept monkeys, for their amusement in their own chambers. There was even a market for them, and at the _Forum Morionum_, a thoroughly frightful and foolish animal of this species would fetch about eighty pounds sterling.

Many Emperors, too, bought specimens of these monstrosities, a fashion which was only less hideous than the mania of a later time for china monsters, who exonerated their stomachs of the liquor required by their mistresses. Heliogabalus was a prodigal amateur of the former kind of property; and it has been suggested that an imbecile Morio was kept by a dull owner, that his own stupidity might seem wit by comparison.

That a noble Roman maintained slaves whose wit should entertain himself and his friends, we know from several instances. The same slaves were also employed to lighten the last hours, and to render death easy to their masters,--if they could. Nay, it must be confessed that it seems they sometimes succeeded. Witness the case of Petronius Arbiter, that magnificent Consul, who almost renders vice attractive, like Boccaccio, by writing of it in choice and elegant (yet mournful) phraseology. When that very superb gentleman was stretched on his death-couch, he might have remarked, with the Irish squire, that he died in perfect ease of mind, for he had never denied himself anything. But Petronius could not die easily without a little stimulant. He felt himself _ennuyé_, and he sent for his wittiest friends and his choicest slaves. Of the latter he freed some and whipped others, and he found a mild pleasure in both. But the dearest solace of this dying Roman noble was in the amusing stories and ridiculous epigrams recited to him. With these he amused his fancy till his jaws suddenly fixed in a fit of laughter, and the jesters around look down upon a corpse. Thus died an accomplished Roman gentleman A.D. 66.

But we are departing from the official fool, of whom it is said, that, with his place and privileges properly marked in a household, he was not known in Europe till the period of the Lower Empire. It is certain that the stern Attila brought professional jesters, as well as irresistible warriors, with him across the Roman frontiers. When the ambassadors of Theodosius the Younger were entertained at a banquet by the Hun, the pomp, gravity, and tremendous drinking were accompanied by an immoderate amount of foolery. “A Moorish and a Scythian buffoon,” says Gibbon, “successively excited the mirth of the rude spectators, by their deformed figure, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd speeches, and the strange unintelligible confusion of the Latin, the Gothic, and the Hunnic languages; and the hall resounded with loud and licentious peals of laughter. In the midst of this intemperate riot, Attila alone, without a change of countenance, maintained his stern and inflexible gravity.” We hear, too, of the presence of a Harlequin at the state ceremonies of the great barbarian and dignified chief. It is, however, indisputable that the professional, though perhaps not exactly the court fool, was known in Rome nearly two hundred years before the period of Attila. To do honour to the accession of Gallienus (when Valerian was alive, but a captive in Persia), numbers of Persian prisoners were paraded at the festival in Rome. At this festival, certain buffoons, we are told, committed an act of audacity for which the common crowd of spectators had not courage. They crossed over among the prisoners, and curiously and deliberately scanned the features of every man there. “Gallienus,” as I have noticed in ‘Monarchs Retired from Business,’ “expected some mirth, but seeing nothing come of it, and that the buffoons were retiring with a disconsolate look, he asked the meaning of the episode. ‘Well,’ said they, with a little hesitation, ‘we went over to these Persians to see if we might discover among them the great Valerian, your gracious divinity’s father.’ Gallienus thought this a very sorry joke indeed. He ordered the buffoons to be bound together, and to be burnt alive in one batch. It was a very serious matter to joke with, and it was a mortal matter to joke against, this Emperor of Rome.”

We come to a later illustration in the Baron de Reiffenburg’s book (‘Le Lundi,’ p. 251), where it is stated that Theophilus, Emperor of Constantinople, found pleasure in witnessing the follies of a jester, Danderi, whose spirit of curiosity led him to the discovery that the Empress Theodora had little images in her oratory to which she prayed. The fool was not cunning in betraying the secret to the Iconoclast husband of Theodora. The Empress, more crafty, persuaded Theophilus that the images were only dolls, for the amusement of their children. So, at least, says the legend, which does discredit to the most accomplished of Eastern Emperors, though he had a hatred for trade, and a love for gaudy toys and jewellery.

Before leaving this part of my subject, let me notice another Court appendage from which ancient monarchs drew incentives to mirth,--namely, the Dwarfs. These sometimes rank among the _Moriones_, and as they formed a portion of the Court household, parents often made dwarfs of their children, by stunting their growth, in order to obtain profit by them. The most clever exhibited their little prowess, in full armour, in mimic fights which sometimes terminated seriously to the combatants, in wounds of certain gravity. Augustus did not disdain either to converse, or gossip rather, and play at various games with them;--or to listen to them chattering and see them playing with each other. By some writers, this taste of Augustus is denied, but it may be believed, since of one dwarf, Lucius, he had a statue sculptured, the eyes of which were of precious stones. That these little personages sometimes exercised great influence may be seen in a passage of the sixty-first chapter of the Tiberius (in Suetonius’s “Lives”), wherein it is said:--“A person of Consular dignity, in his Annals, has this passage, that at a great feast, where he himself was also present, the question was put suddenly and loudly to Tiberius by a dwarf, who was standing in waiting near the table among the dirty buffoons (‘_inter copreas_’), ‘Why Paconius, who had been condemned for treason, was still living?’” Suetonius adds indeed that the dwarf was sent to prison for being impertinent, but also that Tiberius, thus reminded of the existence of an enemy, sent orders to the Senate, that speedy care might be taken for his execution. Domitian was the Emperor who especially delighted in putting arms into the hands of his dwarfs, and setting them to pink out each other’s little lives. From the Court the fashion reached wealthy people generally, and Dio, in his ‘History of Rome,’ tells us of these small personages being kept by Roman ladies, in whose rooms they ran about all day long, and perfectly naked. The fashion did not cease till after the accession of Alexander Severus, who drove from his Court the whole tribe of dwarfs, male and female, and indeed other equally unseemly appendages to the household of a grave and dignified prince. They became matters of attraction to the mob, and being vulgar, are no more heard of in the palaces of kings and the mansions of nobles, till a later period and in highly civilized Christian courts. Let us do with them as Alexander Severus did, and consider now the condition of the more modern Court Fool, though in doing so we may have to look occasionally to a more remote antiquity than that at which I close this Chapter. It will perhaps be found that kings and their fools must, for a time, have had a rather pleasant time of it. “He,” so ran an old proverb quoted by Seneca, “he who thinks to achieve every object that enters his head, must either be a born king or a born fool.” Herein, it is supposed, is intimated the proximity in degrees of happiness of the respective individuals, who could neither be called to account for things done nor for words uttered.

THE FOOL BY RIGHT OF OFFICE.

When Erasmus praised Folly, it was only by making Folly advocate her own cause. After all, her pleading neither recommends her cause, nor says much for the wit of the pleader. Folly, in the abstract, has been denounced alike by Scripture and ancient heathen sages. “All men are fools,” was once a received text. Over the text, some have laughed, some have cried, and upon it, or its equivalent, divines have preached sermons now mirthful now melancholy. “If I wish to look at a fool,” says Seneca modestly, “I have not far to go. I have only to look in a mirror.” A sharper saying still was once uttered by Rhodius, a physician of Marburg, who had adorned the front of his house with full-length portraits of all the lawyers and doctors in the city, himself in the centre, and all in the dress of the professional buffoon. “You have a large number of thorough fools painted on your walls,” once remarked a passer-by. “Ay, ay,” rejoined Rhodius, “but there are still more who pass this way and look at them.” He was something of the opinion of Schuppius of Hamburg, who used to remark that in this world, the fools outnumbered the men; and the Emperor Maximilian II. delicately expressed a similar sentiment when he observed that every young fellow must be pulled by fools’ strings, for seven years, and that if, during that time, he forgot himself for an instant, he had to re-commence his seven years’ service. This potentate distinguished the dullest of his counsellors by the title of the King of Fools. On once addressing a prosy adviser by this title, the gentleman neatly enough replied, “I wish, with all my heart, I _were_ King of Fools; I should have a glorious kingdom of it, and your Imperial Majesty would be among my subjects.”

The “Fool” was not the exclusive possession of a Sovereign King. In course of time, wealthy individuals prided themselves in their own jesters, as ladies of the last century did in their black foot-boys and monkeys. Counts, Cardinals, Barons, and even Bishops had their professional makers of mirth. In France the _Fou du Roi_ was an official title, and Champagne is thought by some to have enjoyed the monopoly of furnishing his Gallic Majesty with a new _Fou du Roi en titre d’office_, when the old one died. The profession, in most Courts, survived the name; and the office has been exercised by many gentlemen who, perhaps, little thought of the duty they were performing. The office has not seldom been filled, as I have before remarked, by the Court poet; and the well-known epigram on Cibber, the above fact being considered, has a happy application.

The term itself however has often been mis-applied. Thus Charles the _Simple_ was no fool, but a man of extraordinary simplicity of mind and feeling. So Homer, when he called Telemachus, Νἡπιος, a _fool_, or “silly,” did not employ it as a term of reproach, but one of endearment.

The term “fool,” “fol,” “fou,” is said to be of Northern origin. Every language, however, or nearly so, has an original word expressive of the office.

Some French writers deduce the term Fool,--that is their own word _Fol_ or _Fou_,--from the Game of Chess. In the French game, the pieces which we call _Bishops_, are called “Fous;” and in anciently carved sets are represented in the fool’s dress;--hence the saying of Regnier in his 14th Satire:--

“Les Fous sont aux échecs les plus proches des Rois.”

Thomas Hyde, in his ‘De Ludis Orientalibus,’ lib. i. 4, does away with this derivation by remarking that the chess term _Fou_ or _Fol_ is derived from the eastern word _Phil_, an “Elephant;”--he adds that two figures of this animal were always to be seen on the old boards; and that they had the oblique move of our “bishops.” This is no doubt true. The line of Regnier, however, indicates the place of the “Fou,” not only at chess, but at Court--namely, always near the King. The dignity of the latter, however, was preserved by a simple arrangement, namely, the ranking as “fool” or of deranged wit, every one who ventured to utter to his superior a disagreeable truth. As for a closer connection between kings and fools, it is marked by Rabelais, who observes that wearers of crown and sceptre are born under the same constellation as the wearers of cap and bells.

And this office, it is to be observed, was partly in fashion as being a good sanitary system; “Laugh and grow fat” is a popular saying, with much philosophy therein. “Laughter,” says the Prussian Professor, Hufeland, “is one of the most important helps to digestion with which we are acquainted; and the custom in vogue among our ancestors, of exciting it by jesters and buffoons, was founded on true medical principles. Cheerful and joyous companions are invaluable at meals; obtain such, if possible, for the nourishment received amid mirth and jollity, is productive of light and healthy blood.”

Walter Scott, when discussing, in a note to ‘Ivanhoe,’ the question whether Negroes were known in England at the period of that romantic story, cites an instance, whereby he not only establishes an affirmative, but proves that the professional jesters were of value to their patrons in other ways besides exciting their laughter and improving their digestion. “John of Rampayne,” he tells us, “an excellent juggler and minstrel” (words implying the professional jester), “undertook to effect the escape of one Andulf de Bracy by presenting himself in disguise at the Court of the King where he was confined.” For this purpose “he stained his hair and his whole body entirely as black as jet, so that nothing was white but his teeth. And succeeded in imposing himself on the King, as some Ethiopian minstrel. He effected by stratagem the escape of the prisoner. Negroes therefore must have been known in England in the dark ages.” When the joyous brotherhood could perform services of this nature we need not be surprised that prelates as well as princes entertained them, and that the Council of Paris, in 1212, in vain denounced churchmen who were worldly enough to maintain fools in their households.

The idea that fools were instituted in order to supply the wants of a free society is, perhaps, not so strictly true as that they were gradually allowed to go out of fashion because their licensed freedom of expression was calculated to lead to social liberty. At first, a sarcasm from an equal may have only been considered as an insult; “yet conversation,” says Southey, “wanted its pepper and vinegar and mustard,” and so Fools were allowed to make the seasoning. When freedom of speech became vulgar (that is, popular or general), the Fool, as such, began to disappear. The term is sometimes applied in a singular sense. Thus “Fools’ Pence” was the name given to a tax once levied on the astrologers of Alexandria, because of the gain of their own ingenious folly derived from fools.

It is to be observed too that people themselves have been as sovereigns who possessed their witty fools to teach them lessons of wisdom. Such servants of the public are to be recognised in Menenius Agrippa, when he taught the rebellious commons the respective duties of governors and governed, by repeating to them the apt allegory of “The Belly and the Members;” and in Themistocles, when, to the over-taxed citizens who wished to introduce a new element into the government, he wittily told, how once a fox entangled in a bog, was soon covered by flies who sucked nearly half the blood out of his body. A hedgehog who came near, politely offered to drive the flies away. “No, no,” said the sly yet suffering fox, “if these be driven away who are well-nigh glutted, there will come a new, hungry set, ten times more greedy and devouring.” Another sample we have in the case of Sertorius, who showed how much wit was better than strength, by citing the case of two men who were set to see who could get off the tail of a horse in the shortest time. One pulled at the whole tail, and pulled in vain. The other easily conquered by taking the tail of _his_ horse and plucking out the hairs, one at a time. There was very much of this sort of instruction imparted by “fools” to princes, and by enlightened men to people, when prince and people equally objected to have their prejudices bruised by the bitter balsam of advice.

In the courts of princes and the houses of wealthy men were to be found fools of various sorts, according to the taste of the lord. Some were coarse, rude, licentious fellows. Others were refined of speech, acute of observation, quick at repartee, of much learning, and of great memory. Others again were monstrous deformities, or beasts of stupendous appetite, to contemplate whom was very good mirth to melancholy lords of evil digestions and twisted minds.

Some princes chose not to be in the fashion at all, and to keep no retained fool at their Court. Charles Louis, Electoral Prince of the Rhine, was one of these. “How is it,” asked a friend, “that your serene greatness does not keep a court fool?” “Well, it’s easily accounted for,” answered the Prince; “when I am inclined to laugh, I send for a couple of professors from college, set them at an argument, and laugh at their folly.”

More than one German prince either feared or despised the “learned fool.” Flögel tells us of one, near whose castle lived a reverend pastor who, because he knew a little of the Hebrew grammar, of which no one in the vicinity knew Aleph from Gimmel, thought himself a prodigy, and all the rest of the world, asses. He never preached a sermon without impressing on the bumpkins the advantages of being acquainted with the Hebrew grammar; and half the lords in the country went to hear him as fool-general of the district. It happened that, on one occasion, the chief lord went to the church, to stand godfather to the schoolmaster’s child; and as the noble gentleman was a bachelor, it became the duty of the pastor, according to custom, to examine him as to his religious principles. We have all heard of the too-polite English vicar, who, churching a countess, said, “Lord, save this _lady_, thy servant;” and of his equally civil clerk, who, not to be outdone in politeness, responded, “Who putteth her ladyship’s trust in thee!” It was some such courtesy that was paid by the pastor to his lord. He would not, as with common peasants, try him in the Catechism, but inquired, with a sort of dignified familiarity, “Young Sir, may I ask you, what you are?”

“Certainly,” said the noble godfather; “I am a fool!”

“Oh fie!” whispered the pastor; adding aloud, “I mean, what is your belief?”

“Well, my belief is that you are as great a fool as I am.”

“Oh, nonsense!” exclaimed the pastor, who remembered his knowledge of the Hebrew grammar; “that cannot be.”

“Ay, but it is so,” said the noble catechumen. “The biggest fools are always the last to acknowledge the fact.”

And thereat, all the grand and the common people present burst into a loud laugh; and the courteous godfather shook them again by the observation, that no fool at Court was ever half so pleasant a fool, as a fool in a cassock!

The Court, however, would seem to have had the advantage, for there, it was popularly said, were always to be found two fools,--of whom, the Prince treated one just as he pleased; and the other treated the Prince just as it pleased him.

Some writer, since Epictetus, who was among the first to call man the solitary laughing animal, has remarked that “brutes never make themselves ridiculous; that is the peculiar prerogative of man. The former, in their strangest vagaries, act according to nature; while the latter, in trying to go beyond her, render themselves contemptible in the eyes of others, just in proportion as they excel in their own.” Notwithstanding this, the practice of Wit and Jesting was once no unprofitable profession. The profession changed, and the practice was modified. Professor Miller, in his ‘Historical View of the English Government,’ comes to the conclusion that jesters and the ludicrous pastimes of former ages were exploded “by the higher advances of civilization and refinement,” which contributed also, he thinks, “to weaken the propensity to every species of humorous exhibition.” But, he adds, “though the circumstances and manners of a polished nation are _adverse_ to the cultivation of humour, they are peculiarly calculated to promote the circulation and improvement of wit.” The full passage may be found quoted in Sydney Smith’s ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy,’ in one of which he combats the Professor’s assertion, by maintaining that as civilization improves the mind, true humour is better appreciated under a high than under a low degree of civilization. Idle and illiterate nobles under the latter, could enjoy the coarse jokes and tumbles of the professional jester, but idle people who are also intellectual people “must either be amused or expire with gaping.” The humour that will be acceptable to these civilized yawners must be, we are told, “of a different complexion from what would pass current in more barbarous times; it must be the humour of the mind, not the humour of the body. It must be devoid of every shade of buffoonery and grimace, and managed with a great degree of delicacy and skill. Civilization improves the humour, but I can hardly allow that it diminishes it. I am strongly inclined to think there will be more humour, more agreeable raillery, and more facetious remark displayed between seven and ten o’clock this evening, in the innumerable dinners which are to be eaten by civilized people in this vast city, than ten months could have produced in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth or Henry VII.” This is very high authority, and even to express a doubt of it may seem justly to expose him who entertains the doubt, to a charge of presumption. Let the great men of the respective periods be reckoned, and it could hardly be proved that the “Table Talk” of the age of Elizabeth was not as brilliant as that of her cherished successor, Victoria. Take, for instance, the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when “Fools” had not yet disappeared from Court, and I think it will be conceded that at the Cabinet or general dinners of such Prime Ministers as Bacon, Burleigh, or Sackville, the company was likely to be as good, the wit as genial, and the humour as genuine, as at any of the banquets,--Cabinet, general, or “fish dinner” at Greenwich,--which have been presided over by the Victoria Premiers, Melbourne, Peel, or Russell, Derby, Aberdeen, or Palmerston. Then, as for the better taste of our higher civilization, it is not favourably illustrated in the national love for Christmas pantomimes, the Fool’s portion of which has neither wit nor decency, but is dull, dreary, and disgusting; but which seems, nevertheless, to be as generally venerated by this highly polished nation, as the horrid Bel and the hideous Dragon were by the elegant Babylonians.

About the middle of the sixteenth century, the favour which official jesters enjoyed at Court and in noble houses,--far beyond that granted to more worthy men,--excited the disapprobation of many observant commentators. There was then no better way of amusing an aristocratic company on a dull evening, in a dreary castle, than by having the fool into the hall, and allowing him full license to attack old and young, married and single, lovers and enemies. Sir Cockscomb delighted in scandal, and he sometimes, nay very often, told stories which made the matrons look down at the keys hanging from their girdles, the maidens hide their faces as best they could, and the noble gentlemen laugh loudly and fling commendations at the jester.

Some of this gentry, on whom their uncultivated betters depended for amusement, appear to have been a species of mountebanks, often performing tricks which are only now accomplished by parti-coloured “artists” in equestrian circles. The fool who could most wonderfully distort his body, squint most horribly, turn his face to his back, and bend himself as if he were made of nothing but one wonderful series of joints,--such a fool was accounted next in merit to his witty cousin.

And, if the fool pleased everybody,--on the other hand, it was necessary that everybody should please the fool, at least if he had business that he wished should prosper with the fool’s master. Access to the latter was chiefly to be had through Sir Knave, a word from whom was often most effective in bringing about conclusions. The fool often sat near his patron at table when philosophers stood humbly in the background, and courtiers laughed servilely at the jokes, good or bad, made by “Cap-and-bells” at their expense.

At Courts where several fools were retained, the master of his company felt as much above his followers as an old Drury tragedian above a Dunstable actor. He strutted like a peacock, and thought himself an elephant, when he was only an ass. There was great diversity, however, among them. Ordinarily, a clever lord preferred a clever fool, and the dull lord, who could neither read nor write, found the same sort of retainer a necessity. Thus the fool of merit, according to his profession, was the ablest man at Court; and his superiors in rank were his inferiors in intellect. As Swift remarks, “In Comedy, the best actor plays the part of the droll, while some second rogue is made the hero or fine gentleman. So, in this farce of life, wise men pass their time in mirth, while fools only are serious.”

Greatly respected as was the privilege of the fool to speak the truth on all occasions, whoever might wince under it, the unrestrained use of such a privilege often brought the merry speaker in danger of cudgel or dagger. There is a story of a fool at a continental Court, in early days, who stirred up all the wrath that could be contained in the heart of the Lord Chamberlain, by so exact an imitation of his voice, and so sarcastic a description of his character, as to excite roars of laughter in every soul in the banqueting room, from the sovereign beneath the daïs to the scullion at the door, waiting for the dirty plates. The angry Chamberlain encountered Sir Fool an hour afterwards, when he communicated to the latter his intention, at fitting opportunity, to see if a few inches of his poniard could not stop the loquacious folly of the other for ever. The merry-andrew flew to his princely master, and sought protection for his life.

“Be of good heart, merry cock!” said the prince; “if the Chamberlain dares run his dagger into your throat, _his_ throat shall be in a halter the day after. I will hang him as high as Haman.”

“Ah, father!” cried the jester, “_the day after_ has but promise of sorry consolation in it. He may thrust his knife between my ribs tomorrow;--and couldn’t you hang him the day before?”[B]

Some describers of old court manners assure us that there was often more wise and profitable counsel to be found under the cap and bells of the jester, than under many a mantle which hung from the neck of venerable statesmen. Flögel, on the authority of Don Sylvio di Rosalva, says this was especially the case in Spain. It appears to have been also the case in other places, for when a Venetian ambassador, endeavouring to dissuade Louis XII. from making war against Venice, spoke of the wisdom of the Republic, Louis replied, “J’opposerai un si grand nombre de fous à vos sages, que toute leur sagesse sera incapable de les résister.”

Under another method of expression, Erasmus utters a similar sentiment. He points out that the wisest men have been the worst governors of states; that the greatest orators were the most easily put out of countenance; and that the most able statesmen had fools for their sons. Tully’s son, Marcus, we are told, was a fool, although he was bred at Athens; and the children of Socrates had more of their mother than of their father. Pericles was a great man, but his two sons were known by the unpleasant appellation of Βλιτομἁμαι, or “Boobies.” A similar name, indeed, used to be applied to the whole people of Brabant, of whom it was said, “The older they are, the greater fools they are.”

As every fashion has its detractors, so the fashion of fools could not escape the censure of those who did not care to be in the mode. The Emperor Henry III., surnamed the Black, could never comprehend the use of a court fool,--a licensed scoundrel, his Majesty said, who often obtained for his nonsense rewards that had never properly been showered on the benefactors of mankind. Frederick Barbarossa had an insurmountable dislike for court fools and proud courtiers. Nevertheless he had both about him; and one of the former, on one occasion, did not hesitate to risk his own life, in order to save that of his imperial and not over-grateful master. Several other Teutonic potentates shared in this distaste for the cockscomb wearers,--perhaps, because they could not tolerate unpalatable truths; and Christian I. of Denmark once sharply remarked, on a presentation to him of several court fools, that he was not in want of such things, and if he were, he had only to give license to his courtiers, who, to his certain knowledge, were capable of exhibiting themselves as the greatest fools in Europe.

Fools were free to speak before there was a liberty of the press, or even a press at all. But it was Frederick William I., King of Prussia, who placed his fools under censorship. They dared not speak without thinking, which, time out of mind, has been the privilege of your fool; and if their wit offended against good manners, they ran good chance of a whipping. It was probably to hold the freedom of the sprightly corporation in check that Philander von Sittewald invented and described the Hell of Fools, which he is supposed to have visited. The locality, we are told, was like the cellar of a palace, which was crowded with Zanies, condemned to hear for ever, and to burst with envy at, each other’s jokes. The retribution and the sarcasm are equally severe. The severity of the former is only inferior to that developed in another German idea, whereby, in the next world, all inefficient clergymen are condemned to read all the bad sermons ever printed in this.

We are not without instances in which the offices of preacher and fool have been exercised by the same individual. In the seventeenth century there was a preacher, named Schwab, at one of the German Courts, who was as much skilled in laying a cloth for dinner as in the construction of his sermons. These were never serious, but they were sometimes long. When the latter was the case, the not too pious Prince would interrupt the preacher in full career, and without waiting for the blessing, would roar aloud, “John, John, get ye down and lay the cloth!”--a command which met with a joke, by way of benediction, and instant obedience.

John evidently had not the fool’s license of speech, or he might have improved the occasion. And this reminds me of a passage and an illustration in Osborn’s Letters to his Son, which have reference to this very subject, and are well worthy of being quoted. “’Tis not dutiful,” says Osborn, “nor safe, to drive your prince by a witty answer beyond all possibility of reply; it being more excusable to appear rich than wise at the prejudice of one in superlative power, who have their ears so continually softened by flattery, as they easier bear diminutions in their treasure, which they look upon as below and without them, than in wit, handsomeness, horsemanship, etc., which their parasites have long made them believe are inherent in them. This, a carver at court, formerly in good esteem with King James (I.), found to his prejudice, who being laughed at by him for saying the _Wing of the Rabbit_, maintained it as congruous as the _Fore Leg of the Capon_, a phrase used in Scotland, and by himself here, which put the King so out of patience as he never looked on the gentleman more. The like I have been told of a bishop who, being reproved for preaching against the papists, during the treaty with Spain, replied, he could never say more than his Majesty had writ. ‘Go thy way,’ quoth the King, ‘and expect thy new translation in Heaven, not from me’--meaning he would never better his see. This humour makes these terrestrial gods more auspicious to fools than those Solomon saith are able to render a reason.”

There are instances, too, where the remark of the wit, or the professional jester, has enlightened while it amused the monarch. We have such an instance in the case of one of the Kings of Persia who wished his people to enjoy the benefits of instruction. Schools were established, and amongst others, the court fool commenced to learn spelling. But we are told that at the very commencement of his progress, at the first junction of syllables and vowels, he opened the Koran, and pointed out to his Sovereign the passage in which Mahomet forbids the payment of impost to the kings of the earth. The fool’s vigilance kept the people _in_ ignorance and under taxation.