Part 4

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.