Transcriber’s Note

Illustrations have been placed approximately where they appeared in the original. Two illustrations, on pp. 199 and 204, were labelled No. 127. To resolve this, the second of them, and references to it, was changed to No. 127a.

Footnotes have been gathered at the end of the text, and linked to their anchors for convenient reference.

Incidental punctuation, especially of abbreviated words and in captions, which is missing from the printed original have been silently restored.

Please consult the [notes] at the end of this text for details regarding the resolution of any other textual issues.

A HISTORY
OF
CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.

ARISTOTLE AND PYTHAÏS.

From an Engraving by Burgmair (15th cent.)

A HISTORY
OF
CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE
In Literature and Art.

By THOMAS WRIGHT, M.A., F.S.A.

THE ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN AND ENGRAVED BY

F. W. FAIRHOLT, F.S.A.

London:
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY.
1875.

LONDON:
SAVILL, EDWARDS, AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.

PREFACE.

I have felt some difficulty in selecting a title for the contents of the following pages, in which it was, in fact, my design to give, as far as may be done within such moderate limits, and in as popular a manner as such information can easily be imparted, a general view of the History of Comic Literature and Art. Yet the word comic seems to me hardly to express all the parts of the subject which I have sought to bring together in my book. Moreover, the field of this history is very large, and, though I have only taken as my theme one part of it, it was necessary to circumscribe even that, in some degree; and my plan, therefore, is to follow it chiefly through those branches which have contributed most towards the formation of modern comic and satiric literature and art in our own island.

Thus, as the comic literature of the middle ages to a very great extent, and comic art in a considerable degree also, were founded upon, or rather arose out of, those of the Romans which had preceded them, it seemed desirable to give a comprehensive history of this branch of literature and art as it was cultivated among the peoples of antiquity. Literature and art in the middle ages presented a certain unity of general character, arising, probably, from the uniformity of the influence of the Roman element of society, modified only by its lower degree of intensity at a greater distance from the centre, and by secondary causes attendant upon it. To understand the literature of any one country in Western Europe, especially during what we may term the feudal period—and the remark applies to art equally—it is necessary to make ourselves acquainted with the whole history of literature in Western Europe during that time. The peculiarities in different countries naturally became more marked in the progress of society, and more strongly individualised; but it was not till towards the close of the feudal period that the literature of each of these different countries was becoming more entirely its own. At that period the plan I have formed restricts itself, according to the view stated above. Thus, the satirical literature of the Reformation and pictorial caricature had their cradle in Germany, and, in the earlier half of the sixteenth century, carried their influence largely into France and England; but from that time any influence of German literature on these two countries ceases. Modern satirical literature has its models in France during the sixteenth century, and the direct influence of this literature in France upon English literature continued during that and the succeeding century, but no further. Political caricature rose to importance in France in the sixteenth century, and was transplanted to Holland in the seventeenth century, and until the beginning of the eighteenth century England owed its caricature, indirectly or directly, to the French and the Dutch; but after that time a purely English school of caricature was formed, which was entirely independent of Continental caricaturists.

There are two senses in which the word history may be taken in regard to literature and art. It has been usually employed to signify a chronological account of authors or artists and their works, though this comes more properly under the title of biography and bibliography. But there is another and a very different application of the word, and this is the meaning which I attach to it in the present volume. During the middle ages, and for some period after (in special branches), literature—I mean poetry, satire, and popular literature of all kinds—belonged to society, and not to the individual authors, who were but workmen who gained a living by satisfying society’s wants; and its changes in form or character depended all upon the varying progress, and therefore changing necessities, of society itself. This is the reason why, especially in the earlier periods, nearly the whole mass of the popular—I may, perhaps, be allowed to call it the social literature of the middle ages, is anonymous; and it was only at rare intervals that some individual rose and made himself a great name by the superiority of his talents. A certain number of writers of fabliaux put their names to their compositions, probably because they were names of writers who had gained the reputation of telling better or racier stories than many of their fellows. In some branches of literature—as in the satirical literature of the sixteenth century—society still exercised this kind of influence over it; and although its great monuments owe everything to the peculiar genius of their authors, they were produced under the pressure of social circumstances. To trace all these variations in literature connected with society, to describe the influences of society upon literature and of literature upon society, during the progress of the latter, appears to me to be the true meaning of the word history, and it is in this sense that I take it.

This will explain why my history of the different branches of popular literature and art ends at very different periods. The grotesque and satirical sculpture, which adorned the ecclesiastical buildings, ceased with the middle ages. The story-books, as a part of this social literature, came down to the sixteenth century, and the history of the jest-books which arose out of them cannot be considered to extend further than the beginning of the seventeenth; for, to give a list of jest-books since that time would be to compile a catalogue of books made by booksellers for sale, copied from one another, and, till recently, each more contemptible than its predecessor. The school of satirical literature in France, at all events as far as it had any influence in England, lasted no longer than the earlier part of the seventeenth century. England can hardly be said to have had a school of satirical literature, with the exception of its comedy, which belongs properly to the seventeenth century; and its caricature belongs especially to the last century and to the earlier part of the present, beyond which it is not a part of my plan to carry it.

These few remarks will perhaps serve to explain what some may consider to be defects in my book; and with them I venture to trust it to the indulgence of its readers. It is a subject which will have some novelty for the English reader, for I am not aware that we have any previous book devoted to it. At all events, it is not a mere compilation from other people’s labours.

Thomas Wright.

CONTENTS.

A HISTORY
OF
CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.—SPIRIT OF CARICATURE IN EGYPT.—MONSTERS: PYTHON AND GORGON.—GREECE.—THE DIONYSIAC CEREMONIES, AND ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA.—THE OLD COMEDY.—LOVE OF PARODY.—PARODIES ON SUBJECTS TAKEN FROM GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY: THE VISIT TO THE LOVER: APOLLO AT DELPHI.—THE PARTIALITY FOR PARODY CONTINUED AMONG THE ROMANS: THE FLIGHT OF ÆNEAS.

It is not my intention in the following pages to discuss the question what constitutes the comic or the laughable, or, in other words, to enter into the philosophy of the subject; I design only to trace the history of its outward development, the various forms it has assumed, and its social influence. Laughter appears to be almost a necessity of human nature, in all conditions of man’s existence, however rude or however cultivated; and some of the greatest men of all ages, men of the most refined intellects, such as Cicero in the ages of antiquity, and Erasmus among the moderns, have been celebrated for their indulgence in it. The former was sometimes called by his opponents scurra consularis, the “consular jester;” and the latter, who has been spoken of as the “mocking-bird,” is said to have laughed so immoderately over the well-known “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” that he brought upon himself a serious fit of illness. The greatest of comic writers, Aristophanes, has always been looked upon as a model of literary perfection. An epigram in the Greek Anthology, written by the divine Plato, tells us how, when the Graces sought a temple which would not fall, they found the soul of Aristophanes:—

Ἁι χάριτες τέμενός τι λαβεῖν ὁπερ οὐχὶ πεσεῖται
Ζητοῦσαι, ψυχὴν εὔρον Ἀριστοφάνους.

On the other hand, the men who never laughed, the ἀγέλαστοι, were looked upon as the least respectable of mortals.

A tendency to burlesque and caricature appears, indeed, to be a feeling deeply implanted in human nature, and it is one of the earliest talents displayed by people in a rude state of society. An appreciation of, and sensitiveness to, ridicule, and a love of that which is humorous, are found even among savages, and enter largely into their relations with their fellow men. When, before people cultivated either literature or art, the chieftain sat in his rude hall surrounded by his warriors, they amused themselves by turning their enemies and opponents into mockery, by laughing at their weaknesses, joking on their defects, whether physical or mental, and giving them nicknames in accordance therewith,—in fact, caricaturing them in words, or by telling stories which were calculated to excite laughter. When the agricultural slaves (for the tillers of the land were then slaves) were indulged with a day of relief from their labours, they spent it in unrestrained mirth. And when these same people began to erect permanent buildings, and to ornament them, the favourite subjects of their ornamentation were such as presented ludicrous ideas. The warrior, too, who caricatured his enemy in his speeches over the festive board, soon sought to give a more permanent form to his ridicule, which he endeavoured to do by rude delineations on the bare rock, or on any other convenient surface which presented itself to his hand. Thus originated caricature and the grotesque in art. In fact, art itself, in its earliest forms, is caricature; for it is only by that exaggeration of features which belongs to caricature, that unskilful draughtsmen could make themselves understood.

No. 1. An Egyptian Lady at a Feast.

Although we might, perhaps, find in different countries examples of these principles in different states of development, we cannot in any one country trace the entire course of the development itself: for in all the highly civilised races of mankind, we first become acquainted with their history when they had already reached a considerable degree of refinement; and even at that period of their progress, our knowledge is almost confined to their religious, and to their more severely historical, monuments. Such is especially the case with Egypt, the history of which country, as represented by its monuments of art, carries us back to the remotest ages of antiquity. Egyptian art generally presents itself in a sombre and massive character, with little of gaiety or joviality in its designs or forms. Yet, as Sir Gardner Wilkinson has remarked in his valuable work on the “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,” the early Egyptian artists cannot always conceal their natural tendency to the humorous, which creeps out in a variety of little incidents. Thus, in a series of grave historical pictures on one of the great monuments at Thebes, we find a representation of a wine party, where the company consists of both sexes, and which evidently shows that the ladies were not restricted in the use of the juice of the grape in their entertainments; and, as he adds, “the painters, in illustrating this fact, have sometimes sacrificed their gallantry to a love of caricature.” Among the females, evidently of rank, represented in this scene, “some call the servants to support them as they sit, others with difficulty prevent themselves from falling on those behind them, and the faded flower, which is ready to drop from their heated hands, is intended to be characteristic of their own sensations.” One group, a lady whose excess has been carried too far, and her servant who comes to her assistance, is represented in our cut No. 1. Sir Gardner observes that “many similar instances of a talent for caricature are observable in the compositions of the Egyptian artists, who executed the paintings of the tombs” at Thebes, which belong to a very early period of the Egyptian annals. Nor is the application of this talent restricted always to secular subjects, but we see it at times intruding into the most sacred mysteries of their religion. I give as a curious example, taken from one of Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s engravings, a scene in the representation of a funeral procession crossing the Lake of the Dead (No. 2), that appears in one of these early paintings at Thebes, in which “the love of caricature common to the Egyptians is shown to have been indulged even in this serious subject; and the retrograde movement of the large boat, which has grounded and is pushed off the bank, striking the smaller one with its rudder, has overturned a large table loaded with cakes and other things, upon the rowers seated below, in spite of all the efforts of the prowman, and the earnest vociferations of the alarmed steersman.” The accident which thus overthrows and scatters the provisions intended for the funeral feast, and the confusion attendant upon it, form a ludicrous scene in the midst of a solemn picture, that would be worthy of the imagination of a Rowlandson.

No. 2. Catastrophe in a Funeral Procession.

Another cut (No. 3), taken from one of the same series of paintings, belongs to a class of caricatures which dates from a very remote period. One of the most natural ideas among all people would be to compare men with the animals whose particular qualities they possessed. Thus, one might be as bold as a lion, another as faithful as a dog, or as cunning as a fox, or as swinish as a hog. The name of the animal would thus often be given as a nickname to the man, and in the sequel he would be represented pictorially under the form of the animal. It was partly out of this kind of caricature, no doubt, that the singular class of apologues which have been since distinguished by the name of fables arose. Connected with it was the belief in the metempsychosis, or transmission of the soul into the bodies of animals after death, which formed a part of several of the primitive religions. The earliest examples of this class of caricature of mankind are found on the Egyptian monuments, as in the instance just referred to, which represents “a soul condemned to return to earth under the form of a pig, having been weighed in the scales before Osiris and been found wanting. Being placed in a boat, and accompanied by two monkeys, it is dismissed the sacred precinct.” The latter animals, it may be remarked, as they are here represented, are the cynocephali, or dog-headed monkeys (the simia inuus), which were sacred animals among the Egyptians, and the peculiar characteristic of which—the dog-shaped head—is, as usual, exaggerated by the artist.

No. 3. An Unfortunate Soul.

The representation of this return of a condemned soul under the repulsive form of a pig, is painted on the left side wall of the long entrance-gallery to the tomb of King Rameses V., in the valley of royal catacombs known as the Biban-el-Molook, at Thebes. Wilkinson gives the date of the accession of this monarch to the throne as 1185 B.C. In the original picture, Osiris is seated on his throne at some distance from the stern of the boat, and is dismissing it from his presence by a wave of the hand. This tomb was open in the time of the Romans, and termed by them the “Tomb of Memnon;” it was greatly admired, and is covered with laudatory inscriptions by Greek and Roman visitors. One of the most interesting is placed beneath this picture, recording the name of a daduchus, or torch-bearer in the Eleusinian mysteries, who visited this tomb in the reign of Constantine.

No. 4. The Cat and the Geese.

No. 5. The Fox turned Piper.

The practice having been once introduced of representing men under the character of animals, was soon developed into other applications of the same idea—such as that of figuring animals employed in the various occupations of mankind, and that of reversing the position of man and the inferior animals, and representing the latter as treating their human tyrant in the same manner as they are usually treated by him. The latter idea became a very favourite one at a later period, but the other is met with not unfrequently among the works of art which have been saved from the wrecks of antiquity. Among the treasures of the British Museum, there is a long Egyptian picture on papyrus, originally forming a roll, consisting of representations of this description, from which I give three curious examples. The first (see cut No. 4) represents a cat in charge of a drove of geese. It will be observed that the cat holds in her hand the same sort of rod, with a hook at the end, with which the monkeys are furnished in the preceding picture. The second (No. 5) represents a fox carrying a basket by means of a pole supported on his shoulder (a method of carrying burthens frequently represented on the monuments of ancient art), and playing on the well-known double flute, or pipe. The fox soon became a favourite personage in this class of caricatures, and we know what a prominent part he afterwards played in mediæval satire. Perhaps, however, the most popular of all animals in this class of drolleries was the monkey, which appears natural enough when we consider its singular aptitude to mimic the actions of man. The ancient naturalists tell us some curious, though not very credible, stories of the manner in which this characteristic of the monkey tribes was taken advantage of to entrap them, and Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. viii. c. 80) quotes an older writer, who asserted that they had even been taught to play at draughts. Our third subject from the Egyptian papyrus of the British Museum (No. 6) represents a scene in which the game of draughts—or, more properly speaking, the game which the Romans called the ludus latrunculorum, and which is believed to have resembled our draughts—is played by two animals well known to modern heraldry, the lion and the unicorn. The lion has evidently gained the victory, and is fingering the money; and his bold air of swaggering superiority, as well as the look of surprise and disappointment of his vanquished opponent, are by no means ill pictured. This series of caricatures, though Egyptian, belongs to the Roman period.

No. 6. The Lion and the Unicorn.

No. 7. Typhon.

The monstrous is closely allied to the grotesque, and both come within the province of caricature, when we take this term in its widest sense. The Greeks, especially, were partial to representations of monsters, and monstrous forms are continually met with among their ornaments and works of art. The type of the Egyptian monster is represented in the accompanying cut (No. 7), taken from the work of Sir Gardner Wilkinson before quoted, and is said to be the figure of the god Typhon. It occurs frequently on Egyptian monuments, with some variation in its forms, but always characterised by the broad, coarse, and frightful face, and by the large tongue lolling out. It is interesting to us, because it is the apparent origin of a long series of faces, or masks, of this form and character, which are continually recurring in the grotesque ornamentation, not only of the Greeks and Romans, but of the middle ages. It appears to have been sometimes given by the Romans to the representations of people whom they hated or despised; and Pliny, in a curious passage of his “Natural History,”[1] informs us that at one time, among the pictures exhibited in the Forum at Rome, there was one in which a Gaul was represented, “thrusting out his tongue in a very unbecoming manner.” The Egyptian Typhons had their exact representations in ancient Greece in a figure of frequent occurrence, to which antiquaries have, I know not why, given the name of Gorgon. The example in our cut No. 8, is a figure in terra-cotta, now in the collection of the Royal Museum at Berlin.[2]

No. 8. Gorgon.

In Greece, however, the spirit of caricature and burlesque representation had assumed a more regular form than in other countries, for it was inherent in the spirit of Grecian society. Among the population of Greece, the worship of Dionysus, or Bacchus, had taken deep root from a very early period—earlier than we can trace back—and it formed the nucleus of the popular religion and superstitions, the cradle of poetry and the drama. The most popular celebrations of the people of Greece, were the Dionysiac festivals, and the phallic rites and processions which accompanied them, in which the chief actors assumed the disguise of satyrs and fawns, covering themselves with goat-skins, and disfiguring their faces by rubbing them over with the lees of wine. Thus, in the guise of noisy bacchanals, they displayed an unrestrained licentiousness of gesture and language, uttering indecent jests and abusive speeches, in which they spared nobody. This portion of the ceremony was the especial attribute of a part of the performers, who accompanied the procession in waggons, and acted something like dramatic performances, in which they uttered an abundance of loose extempore satire on those who passed or who accompanied the procession, a little in the style of the modern carnivals. It became thus the occasion for an unrestrained publication of coarse pasquinades. In the time of Pisistratus, these performances are assumed to have been reduced to a little more order by an individual named Thespis, who is said to have invented masks as a better disguise than dirty faces, and is looked upon as the father of the Grecian drama. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the drama arose out of these popular ceremonies, and it long bore the unmistakable marks of its origin. Even the name of tragedy has nothing tragic in its derivation, for it is formed from the Greek word tragos (τράγος), a goat, in the skins of which animal the satyrs clothed themselves, and hence the name was given also to those who personated the satyrs in the processions. A tragodus (τραγῳδὸς) was the singer, whose words accompanied the movements of a chorus of satyrs, and the term tragodia was applied to his performance. In the same manner, a comodus (κωμωδὸς) was one who accompanied similarly, with chants of an abusive or satirical character, a comus (κῶμος), or band of revellers, in the more riotous and licentious portion of the performances in the Bacchic festivals. The Greek drama always betrayed its origin by the circumstance that the performances took place annually, only at the yearly festivals in honour of Bacchus, of which in fact they constituted a part. Moreover, as the Greek drama became perfected, it still retained from its origin a triple division, into tragedy, comedy, and the satiric drama; and, being still performed at the Dionysiac festival in Athens, each dramatic author was expected to produce what was called a trilogy, that is, a tragedy, a satirical play, and a comedy. So completely was all this identified in the popular mind with the worship of Bacchus, that, long afterwards, when even a tragedy did not please the audience by its subject, the common form of disapproval was, τί ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον—“What has this to do with Bacchus?” and, οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον—“This has nothing to do with Bacchus.”

We have no perfect remains of the Greek satiric drama, which was, perhaps, of a temporary character, and less frequently preserved; but the early Greek comedy is preserved in a certain number of the plays of Aristophanes, in which we can contemplate it in all its freedom of character. It represented the waggon-jesting, of the age of Thespis, in its full development. In its form it was burlesque to a wanton degree of extravagance, and its essence was personal vilification, as well as general satire. Individuals were not only attacked by the application to them of abusive epithets, but they were represented personally on the stage as performing every kind of contemptible action, and as suffering all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful treatment. The drama thus bore marks of its origin in its extraordinary licentiousness of language and costume, and in the constant use of the mask. One of its most favourite instruments of satire was parody, which was employed unsparingly on everything which society in its solemn moments respected—against everything that the satirist considered worthy of being held up to public derision or scorn. Religion itself, philosophy, social manners and institutions—even poetry—were all parodied in their turn. The comedies of Aristophanes are full of parodies on the poetry of the tragic and other writers of his age. He is especially happy in parodying the poetry of the tragic dramatist Euripides. The old comedy of Greece has thus been correctly described as the comedy of caricature; and the spirit, and even the scenes, of this comedy, being transferred to pictorial representations, became entirely identical with that branch of art to which we give the name of caricature in modern times. Under the cover of bacchanalian buffoonery, a serious purpose, it is true, was aimed at; but the general satire was chiefly implied in the violent personal attacks on individuals, and this became so offensive that when such persons obtained greater power in Athens than the populace the old comedy was abolished.

Aristophanes was the greatest and most perfect poet of the Old Comedy, and his remaining comedies are as strongly marked representations of the hostility of political and social parties in his time, as the caricatures of Gillray are of party in the reign of our George III., and, we may add, even more minute. They range through the memorable period of the Peloponnesian war, and the earlier ones give us the regular annual series of these performances, as far as Aristophanes contributed them, during several years. The first of them, “The Acharnians,” was performed at the Lenæan feast of Bacchus in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war, the year 425 B.C., when it gained the first prize. It is a bold attack on the factious prolongation of the war through the influence of the Athenian demagogues. The next, “The Knights,” brought out in B.C. 424, is a direct attack upon Cleon, the chief of these demagogues, although he is not mentioned by name; and it is recorded that, finding nobody who had courage enough to make a mask representing Cleon, or to play the character, Aristophanes was obliged to perform it himself, and that he smeared his face with lees of wine, in order to represent the flushed and bloated countenance of the great demagogue, thus returning to the original mode of acting of the predecessors of Thespis. This, too, was the first of the comedies of Aristophanes which he published in his own name. “The Clouds,” published in 423, is aimed at Socrates and the philosophers. The fourth, “The Wasps,” published in B.C. 422, presents a satire on the litigious spirit of the Athenians. The fifth, entitled “Peace” (Ἔιρηνη), appeared in the year following, at the time of the peace of Nicias, and is another satire on the bellicose spirit of the Athenian democracy. The next in the list of extant plays comes after an interval of several years, having been published in B.C. 414, the first year of the Sicilian war, and relates to an irreligious movement in Athens, which had caused a great sensation. Two Athenians are represented as leaving Athens, in disgust at the vices and follies of their fellow citizens, and seeking the kingdom of the birds, where they form a new state, by which the communication between the mortals and the immortals is cut off, and is only opened again by an arrangement between all the parties. In the “Lysistrata,” believed to have been brought out in 411, when the war was still at its height, the women of Athens are represented as engaging in a cunning and successful plot, by which they gain possession of the government of the state, and compel their husbands to make peace. “The Thesmophoriazusæ,” appears to have been published in B.C. 410; it is a satire upon Euripides, whose writings were remarkable for their bitter attacks on the character of the female sex, who, in this comedy, conspire against him to secure his punishment. The comedy of “The Frogs” was brought out in the year 405 B.C., and is a satire on the literature of the day; it is aimed especially at Euripides, and was perhaps written soon after his death, its real subject being the decline of the tragic drama, which Euripides was accused of having promoted. It is perhaps the most witty of the plays of Aristophanes which have been preserved. “The Ecclesiazusæ,” published in 392, is a burlesque upon the theories of republican government, which were then started among the philosophers, some of which differed little from our modern communism. The ladies again, by a clever conspiracy, gain the mastery in the estate, and they decree a community of goods and women, with some laws very peculiar to that state of things. The humour of the piece, which is extremely broad, turns upon the disputes and embarrassments resulting from this state of things. The last of his comedies extant, “Plutus,” appears to be a work of the concluding years of the active life of Aristophanes; it is the least striking of them all, and is rather a moral than a political satire.

In a comedy brought out in 426, the year before “The Archarnians,” under the title of “The Babylonians,” Aristophanes appears to have given great offence to the democratic party, a circumstance to which he alludes more than once in the former play. However, his talents and popularity seem to have carried him over the danger, and certainly nothing can have exceeded the bitterness of satire employed in his subsequent comedies. Those who followed him were less fortunate.

One of the latest writers of the Old Comedy was Anaximandrides, who cast a reflection on the state of Athens in parodying a line of Euripides. This poet had said,—

ἡ φύσις ἐβούλεθ’ ἦ νόμων οὐδεν μέλει
(Nature has commanded, which cares nothing for the laws);

which Anaximandrides changed to—

ἡ πόλις ἐβούλεθ’ ἦ νόμων οὐδεν μέλει
(The state has commanded, which cares nothing for the laws).

Nowhere is oppression exercised with greater harshness than under democratic governments; and Anaximandrides was prosecuted for this joke as a crime against the state, and condemned to death. As may be supposed, liberty of speech ceased to exist in Athens. We are well acquainted with the character of the Old Comedy, in its greatest freedom, through the writings of Aristophanes. What was called the Middle Comedy, in which political satire was prohibited, lasted from this time until the age of Philip of Macedon, when the old liberty of Greece was finally crushed. The last form of Greek comedy followed, which is known as the New Comedy, and was represented by such names as Epicharmus and Menander. In the New Comedy all caricature and parody, and all personal allusions, were entirely proscribed; it was changed entirely into a comedy of manners and domestic life, a picture of contemporary society under conventional names and characters. From this New Comedy was taken the Roman comedy, such as we now have it in the plays of Plautus and Terence, who were professed imitators of Menander and the other writers of the new comedy of the Greeks.

No. 9. A Greek Parody.

Pictorial caricature was, of course, rarely to be seen on the public monuments of Greece or Rome, but must have been consigned to objects of a more popular character and to articles of common use; and, accordingly, modern antiquarian research has brought it to light somewhat abundantly on the pottery of Greece and Etruria, and on the wall-paintings of domestic buildings in Herculaneum and Pompeii. The former contains comic scenes, especially parodies, which are evidently transferred to them from the stage, and which preserve the marks and other attributes—some of which I have necessarily omitted—proving the model from which they were taken. The Greeks, as we know from many sources, were extremely fond of parodies of every description, whether literary or pictorial. The subject of our cut No. 9 is a good example of the parodies found on the Greek pottery; it is taken from a fine Etruscan vase,[3] and has been supposed to be a parody on the visit of Jupiter to Alcmena. This appears rather doubtful, but there can be no doubt that it is a burlesque representation of the visit of a lover to the object of his aspirations. The lover, in the comic mask and costume, mounts by a ladder to the window at which the lady presents herself, who, it must be confessed, presents the appearance of giving her admirer a very cold reception. He tries to conciliate her by a present of what seem to be apples, instead of gold, but without much effect. He is attended by his servant with a torch, to give him light on the way, which shows that it is a night adventure. Both master and servant have wreaths round their heads, and the latter carries a third in his hand, which, with the contents of his basket, are also probably intended as presents to the lady.

A more unmistakable burlesque on the visit of Jupiter to Alcmena is published by Winckelmann from a vase, formerly in the library of the Vatican, and now at St. Petersburg. The treatment of the subject is not unlike the picture just described. Alcmena appears just in the same posture at her chamber window, and Jupiter is carrying his ladder to mount up to her, but has not yet placed it against the wall. His companion is identified with Mercury by the well-known caduceus he carries in his left hand, while with his right hand he holds a lamp up to the window, in order to enable Jupiter to see the object of his amour.

It is astonishing with how much boldness the Greeks parodied and ridiculed sacred subjects. The Christian father, Arnobius, in writing against his heathen opponents, reproached them with this circumstance. The laws, he says, were made to protect the characters of men from slander and libel, but there was no such protection for the characters of the gods, which were treated with the greatest disrespect.[4] This was especially the case in their pictorial representations.

Pliny informs us that Ctesilochus, a pupil of the celebrated Apelles, painted a burlesque picture of Jupiter giving birth to Bacchus, in which the god was represented in a very ridiculous posture.[5] Ancient writers intimate that similar examples were not uncommon, and mention the names of several comic painters, whose works of this class were in repute. Some of these were bitter personal caricatures, like a celebrated work of a painter named Ctesicles, described also by Pliny. It appears that Stratonice, the queen of Seleucus Nicator, had received this painter ill when he visited her court, and in revenge he executed a picture in which she was represented, according to a current scandal, as engaged in an amour with a common fisherman, which he exhibited in the harbour of Ephesus, and then made his escape on ship-board. Pliny adds that the queen admired the beauty and accuracy of the painting more than she felt the insult, and that she forbade the removal of the picture.[6]

No. 10. Apollo at Delphi.

The subject of our second example of the Greek caricature is better known. It is taken from an oxybaphon which was brought from the Continent to England, where it passed into the collection of Mr. William Hope.[7] The oxybaphon (ὀξύβαφον), or, as it was called by the Romans, acetabulum, was a large vessel for holding vinegar, which formed one of the important ornaments of the table, and was therefore very susceptible of pictorial embellishment of this description. It is one of the most remarkable Greek caricatures of this kind yet known, and represents a parody on one of the most interesting stories of the Grecian mythology, that of the arrival of Apollo at Delphi. The artist, in his love of burlesque, has spared none of the personages who belonged to the story. The Hyperborean Apollo himself appears in the character of a quack doctor, on his temporary stage, covered by a sort of roof, and approached by wooden steps. On the stage lies Apollo’s luggage, consisting of a bag, a bow, and his Scythian cap. Chiron (ΧΙΡΩΝ) is represented as labouring under the effects of age and blindness, and supporting himself by the aid of a crooked staff, as he repairs to the Delphian quack-doctor for relief. The figure of the centaur is made to ascend by the aid of a companion, both being furnished with the masks and other attributes of the comic performers. Above are the mountains, and on them the nymphs of Parnassus (ΝΥΜΦΑΙ), who, like all the other actors in the scene, are disguised with masks, and those of a very grotesque character. On the right-hand side stands a figure which is considered as representing the epoptes, the inspector or overseer of the performance, who alone wears no mask. Even a pun is employed to heighten the drollery of the scene, for instead of ΠΥΘΙΑΣ, the Pythian, placed over the head of the burlesque Apollo, it seems evident that the artist had written ΠΕΙΘΙΑΣ, the consoler, in allusion, perhaps, to the consolation which the quack-doctor is administering to his blind and aged visitor.

No. 11. The Flight of Æneas from Troy.

The Greek spirit of parody, applied even to the most sacred subjects, however it may have declined in Greece, was revived at Rome, and we find examples of it on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. They show the same readiness to turn into burlesque the most sacred and popular legends of the Roman mythology. The example given (cut No. 11), from one of the wall-paintings, is peculiarly interesting, both from circumstances in the drawing itself, and because it is a parody on one of the favourite national legends of the Roman people, who prided themselves on their descent from Æneas. Virgil has told, with great effect, the story of his hero’s escape from the destruction of Troy—or rather has put the story into his hero’s mouth. When the devoted city was already in flames, Æneas took his father, Anchises, on his shoulder, and his boy, Iulus, or, as he was otherwise called, Ascanius, by the hand, and thus fled from his home, followed by his wife—

Ergo age, care pater, cervici imponere nostræ;

Ipse subibo humeris, nec me labor iste gravabit.

Quo res cumque cadent, unum et commune periclum,

Una salus ambobus erit. Mihi parvus Iulus

Sit comes, et longe servat vestigia conjux.

—Virg. Æn., lib. ii. l. 707.

Thus they hurried on, the child holding by his father’s right hand, and dragging after with “unequal steps,”—

dextræ se parvus Iulus

Implicuit sequiturque patrem non passibus æquis.

—Virg. Æn., lib. ii. 1. 723.

And thus Æneas bore away both father and son, and the penates, or household gods, of his family, which were to be transferred to another country, and become the future guardians of Rome—

Ascanium, Anchisemque patrem, Tencrosque penates.—Ib., 1. 747.

No. 12. The Flight of Æneas.

In this case we know that the design is intended to be a parody, or burlesque, upon a picture which appears to have been celebrated at the time, and of which at least two different copies are found upon ancient intaglios. It is the only case I know in which both the original and the parody have been preserved from this remote period, and this is so curious a circumstance, that I give in the cut on the preceding page a copy of one of the intaglios.[8] It represented literally Virgil’s account of the story, and the only difference between the design on the intaglios and the one given in our first cut is, that in the latter the personages are represented under the forms of monkeys. Æneas, personified by the strong and vigorous animal, carrying the old monkey, Anchises, on his left shoulder, hurries forward, and at the same time looks back on the burning city. With his right hand he drags along the boy Iulus, or Ascanius, who is evidently proceeding non passibus æquis, and with difficulty keeps up with his father’s pace. The boy wears a Phrygian bonnet, and holds in his right hand the instrument of play which we should now call a “bandy”—the pedun. Anchises has charge of the box, which contains the sacred penates. It is a curious circumstance that the monkeys in this picture are the same dog-headed animals, or cynocephali, which are found on the Egyptian monuments.

When this chapter was already given for press, I first became acquainted with an interesting paper, by Panofka, on the “Parodieen und Karikaturen auf Werken der Klassischen Kunst,” in the “Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin,” for the year 1854, and I can only now refer my readers to it.

CHAPTER II.

ORIGIN OF THE STAGE IN ROME.—USES OF THE MASK AMONG THE ROMANS.—SCENES FROM ROMAN COMEDY.—THE SANNIO AND MIMUS.—THE ROMAN DRAMA.—THE ROMAN SATIRISTS.—CARICATURE.—ANIMALS INTRODUCED IN THE CHARACTERS OF MEN.—THE PIGMIES, AND THEIR INTRODUCTION INTO CARICATURE; THE FARM-YARD; THE PAINTER’S STUDIO; THE PROCESSION.—POLITICAL CARICATURE IN POMPEII; THE GRAFFITI.

The Romans appear to have never had any real taste for the regular drama, which they merely copied from the Greeks, and from the earliest period of their history we find them borrowing all their arts of this description from their neighbours. In Italy, as in Greece, the first germs of comic literature may be traced in the religious festivals, which presented a mixture of religious worship and riotous festivity, where the feasters danced and sung, and, as they became excited with wine and enthusiasm, indulged in mutual reproaches and abuse. The oldest poetry of the Romans, which was composed in irregular measure, was represented by the versus saturnini, said to have been so called from their antiquity (for things of remote antiquity were believed to belong to the age of Saturn). Nævius, one of the oldest of Latin poets, is said to have written in this verse. Next in order of time came the Fescennine verses, which appear to have been distinguished chiefly by their license, and received their name because they were brought from Fescennia, in Etruria, where they were employed originally in the festivals of Ceres and Bacchus. In the year 391 of Rome, or 361 B.C., the city was visited by a dreadful plague, and the citizens hit upon what will appear to us the rather strange expedient of sending for performers (ludiones) from Etruria, hoping, by employing them, to appease the anger of the gods. Any performer of this kind appears to have been so little known to the Romans before this, that there was not even a name for him in the language, and they were obliged to adopt the Tuscan word, and call him a histrio, because hister in that language meant a player or pantomimist. This word, we know, remained in the Latin language. These first Etrurian performers appear indeed to have been mere pantomimists, who accompanied the flute with all sorts of mountebank tricks, gestures, dances, gesticulations, and the like, mixed with satirical songs, and sometimes with the performance of coarse farces. The Romans had also a class of performances rather more dramatic in character, consisting of stories which were named Fabulæ Atellanæ, because these performers were brought from Atella, a city of the Osci.

A considerable advance was made in dramatic Art in Rome about the middle of the third century before Christ. It is ascribed to a freedman named Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth, who is said to have brought out, in the year 240 B.C., the first regular comedy ever performed in Rome. Thus we trace not only the Roman comedy, but the very rudiments of dramatic art in Rome, either direct to the Greeks, or to the Grecian colonies in Italy. With the Romans, as well as with the Greeks, the theatre was a popular institution, open to the public, and the state or a wealthy individual paid for the performance; and therefore the building itself was necessarily of very great extent, and, in both countries open to the sky, except that the Romans provided for throwing an awning over it. As the Roman comedy was copied from the new comedy of the Greeks, and therefore did not admit of the introduction of caricature and burlesque on the stage, these were left especially to the province of the pantomime and farce, which the Romans, as just stated, had received from a still earlier period.

No. 13. A Scene from Terence.

No. 14. Geta and Demea.

Whether the Romans borrowed the mask from the Greeks, or not, is rather uncertain, but it was used as generally in the Roman theatres, whether in comedy or tragedy, as among the Greeks. The Greek actors performed upon stilts, in order to magnify their figures, as the area of the theatre was very large and uncovered, and without this help they were not so well seen at a distance; and one object of utility aimed at by the mask is said to have been to make the head appear proportionate in size to the artificial height of the body. It may be remarked that the mask seems generally to have been made to cover the whole head, representing the hair as well as the face, so that the character of age or complexion might be given complete. Among the Romans the stilts were certainly not in general use, but still the mask, besides its comic or tragic character, is supposed to have served useful purposes. The first improvement upon its original structure is said to have been the making it of brass, or some other sonorous metal, or at least lining the mouth with it, so as to reverberate, and give force to the voice, and also to the mouth of the mask something of the character of a speaking-trumpet.[9] All these accessories could not fail to detract much from the effect of the acting, which must in general have been very measured and formal, and have received most of its importance from the excellence of the poetry, and the declamatory talents of the actors. We have pictures in which scenes from the Roman stage are accurately represented. Several rather early manuscripts of Terence have been preserved, illustrated with drawings of the scenes as represented on the stage, and these, though belonging to a period long subsequent to the age in which the Roman stage existed in its original character, are, no doubt, copied from drawings of an earlier date. A German antiquary of the last century, Henry Berger, published in a quarto volume a series of such illustrations from a manuscript of Terence in the library of the Vatican at Rome, from which two examples are selected, as showing the usual style of Roman comic acting, and the use of the mask. The first (No. 13) is the opening scene in the Andria. On the right, two servants have brought provisions, and on the left appear Simo, the master of the household, and his freedman, Sosia, who seems to be entrusted with the charge of his domestic affairs. Simo tells his servants to go away with the provisions, while he beckons Sosia to confer with him in private:—

Si. Vos istæc intro auferte; abite. Sosia,

Adesdum; paucis te volo. So. Dictum puta

Nempe ut curentur recte hæc. Si. Imo aliud.

Terent. Andr., Actus i., Scena 1.

When we compare these words with the picture, we cannot but feel that in the latter there is an unnecessary degree of energy put into the pose of the figures; which is perhaps less the case in the other (No. 14), an illustration of the sixth scene of the fifth act of the Adelphi of Terence. It represents the meeting of Geta, a rather talkative and conceited servant, and Demea, a countryfied and churlish old man, his acquaintance, and of course superior. To Geta’s salutation, Demea asks churlishly, as not at first knowing him, “Who are you?” but when he finds that it is Geta, he changes suddenly to an almost fawning tone:—

G. ... Sed eccum Demeam. Salvus fies.

D. Oh, qui vocare? G. Geta. D. Geta, hominem maximi

Pretii esse te hodie judicavi animo mei.

No. 15. Comic Scene from Pompeii.

That these representations are truthful, the scenes in the wall-paintings of Pompeii leave us no room to doubt. One of these is produced in our cut No. 15, which is no doubt taken from a comedy now lost, and we are ignorant whom the characters are intended to represent. The pose given to the two comic figures, compared with the example given from Berger, would lead us to suppose that this over-energetic action was considered as part of the character of comic acting.

No. 16. Cupids at Play.

The subject of the Roman masks is the more interesting, because they were probably the origin of many of the grotesque faces so often met with in mediæval sculpture. The comic mask was, indeed, a very popular object among the Romans, and appears to have been taken as symbolical of everything that was droll and burlesque. From the comic scenes of the theatre, to which it was first appropriated, it passed to the popular festivals of a public character, such as the Lupercalia, with which, no doubt, it was carried into the carnival of the middle ages, and to our masquerades. Among the Romans, also, the use of the mask soon passed from the public festivals to private supper parties. Its use was so common that it became a plaything among children, and was sometimes used as a bugbear to frighten them. Our cut No. 16, taken from a painting at Resina, represents two cupids playing with a mask, and using it for this latter purpose, that is, to frighten one another; and it is curious that the mediæval gloss of Ugutio explains larva, a mask, as being an image, “which was put over the face to frighten children.”[10] The mask thus became a favourite ornament, especially on lamps, and on the antefixa and gargoyls of Roman buildings, to which were often given the form of grotesque masks, monstrous faces, with great mouths wide open, and other figures, like those of the gargoyls of the mediæval architects.

No. 17. The Roman Sannio, or Buffoon.

While the comic mask was used generally in the burlesque entertainments, it also became distinctive of particular characters. One of these was the sannio, or buffoon, whose name was derived from the Greek word σάννος, “a fool,” and who was employed in performing burlesque dances, making grimaces, and in other acts calculated to excite the mirth of the spectator. A representation of the sannio is given in our cut No. 17, copied from one of the engravings in the “Dissertatio de Larvis Scenicis,” by the Italian antiquary Ficoroni, who took it from an engraved gem. The sannio holds in his hand what is supposed to be a brass rod, and he has probably another in the other hand, so that he could strike them together. He wears the soccus, or low shoe peculiar to the comic actors. This buffoon was a favourite character among the Romans, who introduced him constantly into their feasts and supper parties. The manducus was another character of this description, represented with a grotesque mask, presenting a wide mouth and tongue lolling out, and said to have been peculiar to the Atellane plays. A character in Plautus (Rud., ii. 6, 51) talks of hiring himself as a manducus in the plays.

“Quid si aliquo ad ludos me pro manduco locem?”

The mediæval glosses interpret manducus by joculator, “a jogelor,” and add that the characteristic from which he took his name was the practice of making grimaces like a man gobbling up his food in a vulgar and gluttonous manner.

No. 18. Roman Tom Fool.

Ficoroni gives, from an engraved onyx, a figure of another burlesque performer, copied in our cut No. 18, and which he compares to the Catanian dancer of his time (his book was published in 1754), who was called a giangurgolo. This is considered to represent the Roman mimus, a class of performers who told with mimicry and action scenes taken from common life, and more especially scandalous and indecent anecdotes, like the jogelors and performers of farces in the middle ages. The Romans were very much attached to these performances, so much so, that they even had them at their funeral processions and at their funeral feasts. In our figure, the mimus is represented naked, masked (with an exaggerated nose), and wearing what is perhaps intended as a caricature of the Phrygian bonnet. In his right hand he holds a bag, or purse, full of objects which rattle and make a noise when shaken, while the other holds the crotalum, or castanets, an instrument in common use among the ancients. One of the statues in the Barberini Palace represents a youth in a Phrygian cap playing on the crotalum. We learn, from an early authority, that it was an instrument especially used in the satirical and burlesque dances which were so popular among the Romans.

As I have remarked before, the Romans had no taste for the regular drama, but they retained to the last their love for the performances of the popular mimi, or comædi (as they were often called), the players of farces, and the dancers. These performed on the stage, in the public festivals, in the streets, and were usually introduced at private parties.[11] Suetonius tells us that on one occasion, the emperor Caligula ordered a poet who composed the Atellanes (Attellanæ poetam) to be burnt in the middle of the amphitheatre, for a pun. A more regular comedy, however, did flourish, to a certain degree, at the same time with these more popular compositions. Of the works of the earliest of the Roman comic writers, Livius Andronicus and Nævius, we know only one or two titles, and a few fragments quoted in the works of the later Roman writers. They were followed by Plautus, who died B.C. 184, and nineteen of whose comedies are preserved and well known; by several other writers, whose names are almost forgotten, and whose comedies are all lost; and by Terence, six of whose comedies are preserved. Terence died about the year 159 B.C. About the same time with Terence lived Lucius Afranius and Quinctius Atta, who appear to close the list of the Roman writers of comedy.

But another branch of comic literature had sprung out of the satire of the religious festivities. A year after Livius Andronicus produced the first drama at Rome, in the year 239 B.C., the poet Ennius was born at Rudiæ, in Magna Græcia. The satirical verse, whether Saturnine or Fescennine, had been gradually improving in its form, although still very rude, but Ennius is said to have given at least a new polish, and perhaps a new metrical shape, to it. The verse was still irregular, but it appears to have been no longer intended for recitation, accompanied by the flute. The Romans looked upon Ennius not only as their earliest epic poet, but as the father of satire, a class of literary composition which appears to have originated with them, and which they claimed as their own.[12] Ennius had an imitator in M. Terentius Varro. The satires of these first writers are said to have been very irregular compositions, mixing prose with verse, and sometimes even Greek with Latin; and to have been rather general in their aim than personal. But soon after this period, and rather more than a century before Christ, came Caius Lucilius, who raised Roman satirical literature to its perfection. Lucilius, we are told, was the first who wrote satires in heroic verse, or hexameters, mixing with them now and then, though rarely, an iambic or trochaic line. He was more refined, more pointed, and more personal, than his predecessors, and he had rescued satire from the street performer to make it a class of literature which was to be read by the educated, and not merely listened to by the vulgar. Lucilius is said to have written thirty books of satires, of which, unfortunately, only some scattered lines remain.

Lucilius had imitators, the very names of most of whom are now forgotten, but about forty years after his death, and sixty-five years before the birth of Christ, was born Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the oldest of the satirists whose works we now possess, and the most polished of Roman poets. In the time of Horace, the satire of the Romans had reached its highest degree of perfection. Of the two other great satirists whose works are preserved, Juvenal was born about the year 40 of the Christian era, and Persius in 43. During the period through which these writers flourished, Rome saw a considerable number of other satirists of the same class, whose works have perished.

In the time of Juvenal another variety of the same class of literature had already sprung up, more artificial and somewhat more indirect than the other, the prose satiric romance. Three celebrated writers represent this school. Petronius, who, born about the commencement of our era, died in A.D. 65, is the earliest and most remarkable of them. He compiled a romance, designed as a satire on the vices of the age of Nero, in which real persons are supposed to be aimed at under fictitious names, and which rivals in license, at least, anything that could have been uttered in the Atellanes or other farces of the mimi. Lucian, of Samosata, who died an old man in the year 200, and who, though he wrote in Greek, may be considered as belonging to the Roman school, composed several satires of this kind, in one of the most remarkable of which, entitled “Lucius, or the Ass,” the author describes himself as changed by sorcery into the form of that animal, under which he passes through a number of adventures which illustrate the vices and weaknesses of contemporary society. Apuleius, who was considerably the junior of Lucian, made this novel the groundwork of his “Golden Ass,” a much larger and more elaborate work, written in Latin. This work of Apuleius was very popular through subsequent ages.

No. 19. The Farm-yard in Burlesque.

No. 20. An Asilla-Bearer.

Let us return to Roman caricature, one form of which seems to have been especially a favourite among the people. It is difficult to imagine how the story of the pigmies and of their wars with the cranes originated, but it is certainly of great antiquity, as it is spoken of in Homer, and it was a very popular legend among the Romans, who eagerly sought and purchased dwarfs to make domestic pets of them. The pigmies and cranes occur frequently among the pictorial ornamentations of the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum; and the painters of Pompeii not only represented them in their proper character, but they made use of them for the purpose of caricaturing the various occupations of life—domestic and social scenes, grave conferences, and many other subjects, and even personal character. In this class of caricatures they gave to the pigmies, or dwarfs, very large heads, and very small legs and arms. I need hardly remark that this is a class of caricature which is very common in modern times. Our first group of these pigmy caricatures (No. 19) is taken from a painting on the walls of the Temple of Venus, at Pompeii, and represents the interior of a farm-yard in burlesque. The structure in the background is perhaps intended for a hayrick. In front of it, one of the farm servants is attending on the poultry. The more important-looking personage with the pastoral staff is possibly the overseer of the farm, who is visiting the labourers, and this probably is the cause why their movements have assumed so much activity. The labourer on the right is using the asilla, a wooden yoke or pole, which was carried over the shoulder, with the corbis, or basket, suspended at each end. This was a common method of carrying, and is not unfrequently represented on Roman works of art. Several examples might be quoted from the antiquities of Pompeii. Our cut No. 20, from a gem in the Florentine Museum, and illustrating another class of caricature, that of introducing animals performing the actions and duties of men, represents a grasshopper carrying the asilla and the corbes.

No. 21. A Painter’s Studio.

A private house in Pompeii furnished another example of this style of caricature, which is given in our cut No. 21. It represents the interior of a painter’s studio, and is extremely curious on account of the numerous details of his method of operation with which it furnishes us. The painter, who is, like most of the figures in these pigmy caricatures, very scantily clothed, is occupied with the portrait of another, who, by the rather exaggerated fulness of the gathering of his toga, is evidently intended for a dashing and fashionable patrician, though he is seated as bare-legged and bare-breeched as the artist himself. Both are distinguished by a large allowance of nose. The easel here employed resembles greatly the same article now in use, and might belong to the studio of a modern painter. Before it is a small table, probably formed of a slab of stone, which serves for a palette, on which the painter spreads and mixes his colours. To the right a servant, who fills the office of colour-grinder, is seated by the side of a vessel placed over hot coals, and appears to be preparing colours, mixed, according to the directions given in old writers, with punic wax and oil. In the background is seated a student, whose attention is taken from his drawing by what is going on at the other side of the room, where two small personages are entering, who look as if they were amateurs, and who appear to be talking about the portrait. Behind them stands a bird, and when the painting was first uncovered there were two. Mazois, who made the drawing from which our cut is taken, before the original had perished—for it was found in a state of decay—imagined that the birds typified some well-known singers or musicians, but they are, perhaps, merely intended for cranes, birds so generally associated with the pigmies.

No. 22. Part of a Triumphal Procession.

According to an ancient writer, combats of pigmies were favourite representations on the walls of taverns and shops;[13] and, curiously enough, the walls of a shop in Pompeii have furnished the picture represented in our cut No. 22, which has evidently been intended for a caricature, probably a parody. All the pigmies in this picture are crowned with laurel, as though the painter intended to turn to ridicule some over-pompous triumph, or some public, perhaps religious, ceremony. The two figures to the left, who are clothed in yellow and green garments, appear to be disputing the possession of a bowl containing a liquid. One of these, like the two figures on the right, has a hoop thrown over his shoulder. The first of the latter personages wears a violet dress, and holds in his right hand a rod, and in his left a statuette, apparently of a deity, but its attributes are not distinguishable. The last figure to the right has a robe, or mantle, of two colours, red and green, and holds in his hand a branch of a lily, or some similar plant; the rest of the picture is lost. Behind the other figure stands a fifth, who appears younger and more refined in character than the others, and seems to be ordering or directing them. His dress is red.

We can have no doubt that political and personal caricature flourished among the Romans, as we have some examples of it on their works of art, chiefly on engraved stones, though these are mostly of a character we could not here conveniently introduce; but the same rich mine of Roman art and antiquities, Pompeii, has furnished us with one sample of what may be properly considered as a political caricature. In the year 59 of the Christian era, at a gladiatorial exhibition in the amphitheatre of Pompeii, where the people of Nuceria were present, the latter expressed themselves in such scornful terms towards the Pompeians, as led to a violent quarrel, which was followed by a pitched battle between the inhabitants of the two towns, and the Nucerians, being defeated, carried their complaints before the reigning emperor, Nero, who gave judgment in their favour, and condemned the people of Pompeii to suspension from all theatrical amusements for ten years. The feelings of the Pompeians on this occasion are displayed in the rude drawing represented in our cut No. 23, which is scratched on the plaster of the external wall of a house in the street to which the Italian antiquarians have given the name of the street of Mercury. A figure, completely armed, his head covered with what might be taken for a mediæval helmet, is descending what appear to be intended for the steps of the amphitheatre. He carries in his hand a palm-branch, the emblem of victory. Another palm-branch stands erect by his side, and underneath is the inscription, in rather rustic Latin, “CAMPANI VICTORIA VNA CVM NVCERINIS PERISTIS”—“O Campanians, you perished in the victory together with the Nucerians.” The other side of the picture is more rudely and hastily drawn. It has been supposed to represent one of the victors dragging a prisoner, with his arms bound, up a ladder to a stage or platform, on which he was perhaps to be exhibited to the jeers of the populace. Four years after this event, Pompeii was greatly damaged by an earthquake, and sixteen years later came the eruption of Vesuvius, which buried the town, and left it in the condition in which it is now found.

No. 23. A Popular Caricature.

No. 24. Early Caricature upon a Christian.

This curious caricature belongs to a class of monuments to which archæologists have given technically the Italian name of graffiti, scratches or scrawls, of which a great number, consisting chiefly of writing, have been found on the walls of Pompeii. They also occur among the remains on other Roman sites, and one found in Rome itself is especially interesting. During the alterations and extensions which were made from time to time in the palace of the Cæsars, it had been found necessary to build across a narrow street which intersected the Palatine, and, in order to give support to the structure above, a portion of the street was walled off, and remained thus hermetically sealed until about the year 1857, when some excavations on the spot brought it to view. The walls of the street were found to be covered with these graffiti, among which one attracted especial attention, and, having been carefully removed, is now preserved in the museum of the Collegio Romano. It is a caricature upon a Christian named Alexamenos, by some pagan who despised Christianity. The Saviour is represented under the form of a man with the head of an ass, extended upon a cross, the Christian, Alexamenos, standing on one side in the attitude of worship of that period. Underneath we read the inscription, ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ CΕΒΕΤΕ (for σεβεται) ΘΕΟΝ, “Alexamenos worships God.” This curious figure, which may be placed among the most interesting as well as early evidences of the truth of Gospel history, is copied in our cut No. 24. It was drawn when the prevailing religion at Rome was still pagan, and a Christian was an object of contempt.

CHAPTER III.

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE AGES.—THE ROMAN MIMI CONTINUED TO EXIST.—THE TEUTONIC AFTER-DINNER ENTERTAINMENTS.—CLERICAL SATIRES; ARCHBISHOP HERIGER AND THE DREAMER; THE SUPPER OF THE SAINTS.—TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TO MEDIÆVAL ART.—TASTE FOR MONSTROUS ANIMALS, DRAGONS, ETC.; CHURCH OF SAN FEDELE, AT COMO.—SPIRIT OF CARICATURE AND LOVE OF GROTESQUE AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—GROTESQUE FIGURES OF DEMONS.—NATURAL TENDENCY OF THE EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS TO DRAW IN CARICATURE.—EXAMPLES FROM EARLY MANUSCRIPTS AND SCULPTURES.

The transition from antiquity to what we usually understand by the name of the middle ages was long and slow; it was a period during which much of the texture of the old society was destroyed, while at the same time a new life was gradually given to that which remained. We know very little of the comic literature of this period of transition; its literary remains consist chiefly of a mass of heavy theology and of lives of saints. The stage in its perfectly dramatic form—theatre and amphitheatre—had disappeared. The pure drama, indeed, appears never to have had great vitality among the Romans, whose tastes lay far more among the vulgar performances of the mimics and jesters, and among the savage scenes of the amphitheatre. While probably the performance of comedies, such as those of Plautus and Terence, soon went out of fashion, and tragedies, like those of Seneca, were only written as literary compositions, imitations of the similar works which formed so remarkable a feature in the literature of Greece, the Romans of all ranks loved to witness the loose attitudes of their mimi, or listen to their equally loose songs and stories. The theatre and the amphitheatre were state institutions, kept up at the national expense, and, as just stated, they perished with the overthrow of the western empire; and the sanguinary performances of the amphitheatre, if the amphitheatre itself continued to be used (which was perhaps the case in some parts of western Europe), and they gave place to the more harmless exhibitions of dancing bears and other tamed animals,[14] for deliberate cruelty was not a characteristic of the Teutonic race. But the mimi, the performers who sung songs and told stories, accompanied with dancing and music, survived the fall of the empire, and continued to be as popular as ever. St. Augustine, in the fourth century, calls these things nefaria, detestable things, and says that they were performed at night.[15] We trace in the capitularies the continuous existence of these performances during the ages which followed the empire, and, as in the time of St. Augustine, they still formed the amusement of nocturnal assemblies. The capitulary of Childebert proscribes those who passed their nights with drunkenness, jesting, and songs.[16] The council of Narbonne, in the year 589, forbade people to spend their nights “with dancings and filthy songs.”[17] The council of Mayence, in 813, calls these songs “filthy and licentious” (turpia atque luxuriosa); and that of Paris speaks of them as “obscene and filthy” (obscæna et turpia); while in another they are called “frivolous and diabolic.” From the bitterness with which the ecclesiastical ordinances are expressed, it is probable that these performances continued to preserve much of their old paganism; yet it is curious that they are spoken of in these capitularies and acts of the councils as being still practised in the religious festivals, and even in the churches, so tenaciously did the old sentiments of the race keep their possession of the minds of the populace, long after they had embraced Christianity. These “songs,” as they are called, continued also to consist not only of general, but of personal satire, and contained scandalous stories of persons living, and well known to those who heard them. A capitulary of the Frankish king Childeric III., published in the year 744, is directed against those who compose and sing songs in defamation of others (in blasphemiam alterius, to use the rather energetic language of the original); and it is evident that this offence was a very common one, for it is not unfrequently repeated in later records of this character in the same words or in words to the same purpose. Thus one result of the overthrow of the Roman empire was to leave comic literature almost in the same condition in which it was found by Thespis in Greece and by Livius Andronicus in Rome. There was nothing in it which would be contrary to the feelings of the new races who had now planted themselves in the Roman provinces.

The Teutonic and Scandinavian nations had no doubt their popular festivals, in which mirth and frolic bore sway, though we know little about them; but there were circumstances in their domestic manners which implied a necessity for amusement. After the comparatively early meal, the hall of the primitive Teuton was the scene—especially in the darker months of winter—of long sittings over the festive board, in which there was much drinking and much talking, and, as we all know, such talking could not preserve long a very serious tone. From Bede’s account of the poet Cædmon, we learn that it was the practice of the Anglo-Saxons in the seventh century, at their entertainments, for all those present to sing in their turns, each accompanying himself with a musical instrument. From the sequel of the story we are led to suppose that these songs were extemporary effusions, probably mythic legends, stories of personal adventure, praise of themselves, or vituperation of their enemies. In the chieftain’s household there appears to have been usually some individual who acted the part of the satirist, or, as we should perhaps now say, the comedian. Hunferth appears as holding some such position in Beowulf; in the later romances, Sir Kay held a similar position at the court of king Arthur. At a still later period, the place of these heroes was occupied by the court fool. The Roman mimus must have been a welcome addition to the entertainments of the Teutonic hall, and there is every reason to think that he was cordially received. The performances of the hall were soon delegated from the guests to such hired actors, and we have representations of them in the illuminations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.[18] Among the earliest amusements of the Anglo-Saxon table were riddles, which in every form present some of the features of the comic, and are capable of being made the source of much laughter. The saintly Aldhelm condescended to write such riddles in Latin verse, which were, of course, intended for the tables of the clergy. In primitive society, verse was the ordinary form of conveying ideas. A large portion of the celebrated collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry known as the “Exeter Book,” consists of riddles, and this taste for riddles has continued to exist down to our own times. But other forms of entertainment, if they did not already exist, were soon introduced. In a curious Latin poem, older than the twelfth century, of which fragments only are preserved, and have been published under the title of “Ruodlieb,” and which appears to have been a translation of a much earlier German romance, we have a curious description of the post-prandial entertainments after the dinner of a great Teutonic chieftain, or king. In the first place there was a grand distribution of rich presents, and then were shown strange animals, and among the rest tame bears. These bears stood upon their hind legs, and performed some of the offices of a man; and when the minstrels (mimi) came in, and played upon their musical instruments, these animals danced to the music, and performed all sorts of strange tricks.

Et pariles ursi....

Qui vas tollebant, ut homo, bipedesque gerebant.

Mimi quando fides digitis tangunt modulantes,

Illi saltabant, neumas pedibus variabant.

Interdum saliunt, seseque super jaciebant.

Alterutrum dorso se portabant residendo,

Amplexando se, luctando deficiunt se.

Then followed dancing-girls, and exhibitions of other kinds.[19]

Although these performances were proscribed by the ecclesiastical laws, they were not discountenanced by the ecclesiastics themselves, who, on the contrary, indulged as much in after-dinner amusements as anybody. The laws against the profane songs are often directed especially at the clergy; and it is evident that among the Anglo-Saxons, as well as on the Continent, not only the priests and monks, but the nuns also, in their love of such amusements, far transgressed the bounds of decency.[20] These entertainments were the cradle of comic literature, but, as this literature in the early ages of its history was rarely committed to writing, it has almost entirely perished. But, at the tables of the ecclesiastics, these stories were sometimes told in Latin verse, and as Latin was not so easily carried in the memory as the vernacular tongue, in this language they were sometimes committed to writing, and thus a few examples of early comic literature have fortunately been preserved. These consist chiefly of popular stories, which were among the favourite amusements of mediæval society—stories many of which are derived from the earliest period of the history of our race, and are still cherished among our peasantry. Such are the stories of the Child of Snow, and of the Mendacious Hunter, preserved in a manuscript of the eleventh century.[21] The first of these was a very popular story in the middle ages. According to this early version, a merchant of Constance, in Switzerland, was detained abroad for several years, during which time his wife made other acquaintance, and bore a child. On his return, she excused her fault by telling him that on a cold wintry day she had swallowed snow, by which she had conceived; and, in revenge, the husband carried away the child, and sold it into slavery, and returning, told its mother, that the infant which had originated in snow, had melted away under a hotter sun. Some of these stories originated in the different collections of fables, which were part of the favourite literature of the later Roman period. Another is rather a ridiculous story of an ass belonging to two sisters in a nunnery, which was devoured by a wolf.[22] curious how soon the mediæval clergy began to imitate their pagan predecessors in parodying religious subjects and forms, of which we have one or two very curious examples. Visits to purgatory, hell, and paradise, in body or spirit, were greatly in fashion during the earlier part of the middle ages, and afforded extremely good material for satire. In a metrical Latin story, preserved in a manuscript of the eleventh century, we are told how a “prophet,” or visionary, went to Heriger, archbishop of Mayence from 912 to 926, and told him that he had been carried in a vision to the regions below, and described them as a place surrounded by thick woods. It was the Teutonic notion of hell, and indeed of all settlements of peoples; and Heriger replied with a sneer that he would send his herdsmen there with his lean swine to fatten them. Each “mark,” or land of a family or clan, in the early Teutonic settlements, was surrounded by woodland, which was common to all members of the clan for fattening their swine and hunting. The false dreamer added, that he was afterwards carried to heaven, where he saw Christ sitting at the table and eating. John the Baptist was butler, and served excellent wine round to the saints, who were the Lord’s guests. St. Peter was the chief cook. After some remarks on the appointments to these two offices, archbishop Heriger asked the informant how he was received in the heavenly hall, where he sat, and what he eat. He replied that he sat in a corner, and stole from the cooks a piece of liver, which he eat, and then departed. Instead of rewarding him for his information, Heriger took him on his own confession for the theft, and ordered him to be bound to a stake and flogged, which, for the offence, was rather a light punishment.

Heriger illum

jussit ad palum

loris ligari,

scopisque cedi,

sermone duro

hunc arguendo.

These lines will serve as a specimen of the popular Latin verse in which these monkish after-dinner stories were written; but the most remarkable of these early parodies on religious subjects, is one which may be described as the supper of the saints; its title is simply Cœna. It is falsely ascribed to St. Cyprian, who lived in the third century; but it is as old as the tenth century, as a copy was printed by professor Endlicher from a manuscript of that period at Vienna. It was so popular, that it is found and known to have existed in different forms in verse and in prose. It is a sort of drollery, founded upon the wedding feast at which the Saviour changed water into wine, though that miracle is not at all introduced into it. It was a great king of the East, named Zoel, who held his nuptial feast at Cana of Galilee. The personages invited are all scriptural, beginning with Adam. Before the feast, they wash in the river Jordan, and the number of the guests was so great, that seats could not be provided for them, and they took their places as they could. Adam took the first place, and seated himself in the middle of the assembly, and next to him Eve sat upon leaves (super folia),—fig-leaves, we may suppose. Cain sat on a plough, Abel on a milk-pail, Noah on an ark, Japhet on tiles, Abraham on a tree, Isaac on an altar, Lot near the door, and so with a long list of others. Two were obliged to stand—Paul, who bore it patiently, and Esau, who grumbled—while Job lamented bitterly because he was obliged to sit on a dunghill. Moses, and others, who came late, were obliged to find seats out of doors. When the king saw that all his guests had arrived, he took them into his wardrobe, and there, in the spirit of mediæval generosity, distributed to them dresses, which had all some burlesque allusion to their particular characters. Before they were allowed to sit down to the feast, they were obliged to go through other ceremonies, which, as well as the eating, are described in the same style of caricature. The wines, of which there was great variety, were served to the guests with the same allusions to their individual characters; but some of them complained that they were badly mixed, although Jonah was the butler. In the same manner are described the proceedings which followed the dinner, the washing of hands, and the dessert, to the latter of which Adam contributed apples, Samson honey; while David played on the harp and Mary on the tabor; Judith led the round dance; Jubal played on the psalter; Asael sung songs, and Herodias acted the part of the dancing-girl:—

Tunc Adam poma ministrat, Samson favi dulcia.

David cytharum percussit, et Maria tympana.

Judith choreas ducebat, et Jubal psalteria.

Asael metra canebat, saltabat Herodias.

Mambres entertained the company with his magical performances; and the other incidents of a mediæval festival followed, throughout which the same tone of burlesque is continued; and so the story continues, to the end.[23] We shall find these incipient forms of mediæval comic literature largely developed as we go on.

No. 25. Saturn Devouring his Child.

The period between antiquity and the middle ages was one of such great and general destruction, that the gulf between ancient and mediæval art seems to us greater and more abrupt than it really was. The want of monuments, no doubt, prevents our seeing the gradual change of one into the other, but nevertheless enough of facts remain to convince us that it was not a sudden change. It is now indeed generally understood that the knowledge and practice of the arts and manufactures of the Romans were handed onward from master to pupil after the empire had fallen; and this took place especially in the towns, so that the workmanship which had been declining in character during the later periods of the empire, only continued in the course of degradation afterwards. Thus, in the first Christian edifices, the builders who were employed, or at least many of them, must have been pagans, and they would follow their old models of ornamentation, introducing the same grotesque figures, the same masks and monstrous faces, and even sometimes the same subjects from the old mythology, to which they had been accustomed. It is to be observed, too, that this kind of iconographical ornamentation had been encroaching more and more upon the old architectural purity during the latter ages of the empire, and that it was employed more profusely in the later works, from which this taste was transferred to the ecclesiastical and to the domestic architecture of the middle ages. After the workmen themselves had become Christians, they still found pagan emblems and figures in their models, and still went on imitating them, sometimes merely copying, and at others turning them to caricature or burlesque. And this tendency continued so long, that, at a much later date, where there still existed remains of Roman buildings, the mediæval architects adopted them as models, and did not hesitate to copy the sculpture, although it might be evidently pagan in character. The accompanying cut (No. 25) represents a bracket in the church of Mont Majour, near Nismes, built in the tenth century. The subject is a monstrous head eating a child, and we can hardly doubt that it was really intended for a caricature on Saturn devouring one of his children.

Sometimes the mediæval sculptors mistook the emblematical designs of the Romans, and misapplied them, and gave an allegorical meaning to that which was not intended to be emblematical or allegorical, until the subjects themselves became extremely confused. They readily employed that class of parody of the ancients in which animals were represented performing the actions of men, and they had a great taste for monsters of every description, especially those which were made up of portions of incongruous animals joined together, in contradiction to the precept of Horace:—

Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam

Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas,

Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum

Desinet in piscem mulier formosa superne;

Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?

No. 26. Sculpture from San Fedele, at Como.

The mediæval architects loved such representations, always and in all parts, and examples are abundant. At Como, in Italy, there is a very ancient and remarkable church dedicated to San Fedele (Saint Fidelis); it has been considered to be of so early a date as the fifth century. The sculptures that adorn the doorway, which is triangular-headed, are especially interesting. On one of these, represented in our cut No. 26, in a compartment to the left, appears a figure of an angel, holding in one hand a dwarf figure, probably intended for a child, by a lock of his hair, and with the other hand directing his attention to a seated figure in the compartment below. This latter figure has apparently the head of a sheep, and as the head is surrounded with a large nimbus, and the right hand is held out in the attitude of benediction, it may be intended to represent the Lamb. This personage is seated on something which is difficult to make out, but which looks somewhat like a crab-fish. The boy in the compartment above carries a large basin in his arms. The adjoining compartment to the right contains the representation of a conflict between a dragon, a winged serpent, and a winged fox. On the opposite side of the door, two winged monsters are represented devouring a lamb’s head. I owe the drawing from which this and the preceding engraving were made to my friend Mr. John Robinson, the architect, who made the sketches while travelling with the medal of the Royal Academy. Figures of dragons, as ornaments, were great favourites with the peoples of the Teutonic race; they were creatures intimately wrapped up in their national mythology and romance, and they are found on all their artistic monuments mingled together in grotesque forms and groups. When the Anglo-Saxons began to ornament their books, the dragon was continually introduced for ornamental borders and in forming initial letters. One of the latter, from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth century (the well-known manuscript of Cædmon, where it is given as an initial V), is represented in our cut on the next page, No. 27.

No. 27. Anglo-Saxon Dragons.

Caricature and burlesque are naturally intended to be heard and seen publicly, and would therefore be figured on such monuments as were most exposed to popular gaze. Such was the case, in the earlier periods of the middle ages, chiefly with ecclesiastical buildings, which explains how they became the grand receptacles of this class of Art. We have few traces of what may be termed comic literature among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, but this is fully explained by the circumstance that very little of the popular Anglo-Saxon literature has been preserved. In their festive hours the Anglo-Saxons seem to have especially amused themselves in boasting of what they had done, and what they could do; and these boasts were perhaps often of a burlesque character, like the gabs of the French and Anglo-Norman romancers of a later date, or so extravagant as to produce laughter. The chieftains appear also to have encouraged men who could make jokes, and satirise and caricature others; for the company of such men seems to have been cherished, and they are not unfrequently introduced in the stories. Such a personage, as I have remarked before, is Hunferth in Beowulf; such was the Sir Kay of the later Arthurian romances; and such too was the Norman minstrel in the history of Hereward, who amused the Norman soldiers at their feasts by mimicry of the manners of their Anglo-Saxon opponents. The too personal satire of these wits often led to quarrels, which ended in sanguinary brawls. The Anglo-Saxon love of caricature is shown largely in their proper names, which were mostly significant of personal qualities their parents hoped they would possess; and in these we remark the proneness of the Teutonic race, as well as the peoples of antiquity, to represent these qualities by the animals supposed to possess them, the animals most popular being the wolf and the bear. But it is not to be expected that the hopes of the parents in giving the name would always be fulfilled, and it is not an uncommon thing to find individuals losing their original names to receive in their place nicknames, or names which probably expressed qualities they did possess, and which were given to them by their acquaintances. These names, though often not very complimentary, and even sometimes very much the contrary, completely superseded the original name, and were even accepted by the individuals to whom they applied. The second names were indeed so generally acknowledged, that they were used in signing legal documents. An Anglo-Saxon abbess of rank, whose real name was Hrodwaru, but who was known universally by the name Bugga, the Bug, wrote this latter name in signing charters. We can hardly doubt that such a name was intended to ascribe to her qualities of a not agreeable character, and very different to those implied by the original name, which perhaps meant, a dweller in heaven. Another lady gained the name of the Crow. It is well known that surnames did not come into use till long after the Anglo-Saxon period, but appellatives, like these nicknames, were often added to the name for the purpose of distinction, or at pleasure, and these, too, being given by other people, were frequently satirical. Thus, one Harold, for his swiftness, was called Hare-foot; a well-known Edith, for the elegant form of her neck, was called Swan-neck; and a Thurcyl, for a form of his head, which can hardly have been called beautiful, was named Mare’s-head. Among many other names, quite as satirical as the last-mentioned, we find Flat-nose, the Ugly Squint-eye, Hawk-nose, &c.

Of Anglo-Saxon sculpture we have little left, but we have a few illuminated manuscripts which present here and there an attempt at caricature, though they are rare. It would seem, however, that the two favourite subjects of caricature among the Anglo-Saxons were the clergy and the evil one. We have abundant evidence that, from the eighth century downwards, neither the Anglo-Saxon clergy nor the Anglo-Saxon nuns were generally objects of much respect among the people; and their character and the manner of their lives sufficiently account for it. Perhaps, also, it was increased by the hostility between the old clergy and the new reformers of Dunstan’s party, who would no doubt caricature each other. A manuscript psalter, in the University Library, Cambridge (Ff. 1, 23), of the Anglo-Saxon period, and apparently of the tenth century, illustrated with rather grotesque initial letters, furnishes us with the figure of a jolly Anglo-Saxon monk, given in our cut No. 28, and which it is hardly necessary to state represents the letter Q. As we proceed, we shall see the clergy continuing to furnish a butt for the shafts of satire through all the middle ages.

No. 28. A Jolly Monk.

No. 29. Satan in Bonds.

No. 30. Satan.

The inclination to give to the demons (the middle ages always looked upon them as innumerable) monstrous forms, which easily ran into the grotesque, was natural, and the painter, indeed, prided himself on drawing them ugly; but he was no doubt influenced in so generally caricaturing them, by mixing up this idea with those furnished by the popular superstitions of the Teutonic race, who believed in multitudes of spirits, representatives of the ancient satyrs, who were of a playfully malicious description, and went about plaguing mankind in a very droll manner, and sometimes appeared to them in equally droll forms. They were the Pucks and Robin Goodfellows of later times; but the Christian missionaries to the west taught their converts to believe, and probably believed themselves, that all these imaginary beings were real demons, who wandered over the earth for people’s ruin and destruction. Thus the grotesque imagination of the converted people was introduced into the Christian system of demonology. It is a part of the subject to which we shall return in our next chapter; but I will here introduce two examples of the Anglo-Saxon demons. To explain the first of these, it will be necessary to state that, according to the mediæval notions, Satan, the arch demon, who had fallen from heaven for his rebellion against the Almighty, was not a free agent who went about tempting mankind, but he was himself plunged in the abyss, where he was held in bonds, and tormented by the demons who peopled the infernal regions, and also issued thence to seek their prey upon God’s newest creation, the earth. The history of Satan’s fall, and the description of his position (No. 29), form the subject of the earlier part of the Anglo-Saxon poetry ascribed to Cædmon, and it is one of the illuminations to the manuscript of Cædmon (which is now preserved at Oxford), which has furnished us with our cut, representing Satan in his bonds. The fiend is here pictured bound to stakes, over what appears to be a gridiron, while one of the demons, rising out of a fiery furnace, and holding in his hand an instrument of punishment, seems to be exulting over him, and at the same time urging on the troop of grotesque imps who are swarming round and tormenting their victim. The next cut, No. 30, is also taken from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, preserved in the British Museum (MS. Cotton., Tiberius, C. vi.), which belongs to the earlier half of the eleventh century, and contains a copy of the psalter. It gives us the Anglo-Saxon notion of the demon under another form, equally characteristic, wearing only a girdle of flames, but in this case the especial singularity of the design consists in the eyes in the fiend’s wings.

No. 31. The Temptation.

No. 32. David and the Lion.

Another circumstance had no doubt an influence on the mediæval taste for grotesque and caricature—the natural rudeness of early mediæval art. The writers of antiquity tell us of a remote period of Grecian art when it was necessary to write under each figure of a picture the name of what it was intended to represent, in order to make the whole intelligible—“this is a horse,” “this is a man,” “this is a tree.” Without being quite so rude as this, the early mediæval artists, through ignorance of perspective, want of knowledge of proportion, and of skill in drawing, found great difficulty in representing a scene in which there was more than one figure, and in which it was necessary to distinguish them from each other; and they were continually trying to help themselves by adopting conventional forms or conventional positions, and by sometimes adding symbols that did not exactly represent what they meant. The exaggeration in form consisted chiefly in giving an undue prominence to some characteristic feature, which answered the same purpose as the Anglo-Saxon nickname and distinctive name, and which is, in fact, one of the first principles of all caricature. Conventional positions partook much of the character of conventional forms, but gave still greater room for grotesque. Thus the very first characteristics of mediæval art implied the existence of caricature, and no doubt led to the taste for the grotesque. The effect of this influence is apparent everywhere, and in innumerable cases serious pictures of the gravest and most important subjects are simply and absolutely caricatures. Anglo-Saxon art ran much into this style, and is often very grotesque in character. The first example we give (cut No. 31) is taken from one of the illustrations to Alfric’s Anglo-Saxon version of the Pentateuch, in the profusely illuminated manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton., Claudius B iv.), which was written at the end of the tenth, or beginning of the eleventh, century. It represents the temptation and fall of man; and the subject is treated, as will be seen, in a rather grotesque manner. Eve is evidently dictating to her husband, who, in obeying her, shows a mixture of eagerness and trepidation. Adam is no less evidently going to swallow the apple whole, which is, perhaps, in accordance with the mediæval legend, according to which the fruit stuck in his throat. It is hardly necessary to remark that the tree is entirely a conventional one; and it would be difficult to imagine how it came to bear apples at all. The mediæval artists were extremely unskilful in drawing trees; to these they usually gave the forms of cabbages, or some such plants, of which the form was simple, or often of a mere bunch of leaves. Our next example (cut No. 32) is also Anglo-Saxon, and is furnished by the manuscript in the British Museum already mentioned (MS. Cotton., Tiberius C vi.) It probably represents young David killing the lion, and is remarkable not only for the strange posture and bad proportions of the man, but for the tranquillity of the animal and the exaggerated and violent action of its slayer. This is very commonly the case in the mediæval drawings and sculptures, the artists apparently possessing far less skill in representing action in an animal than in man, and therefore more rarely attempting it. These illustrations are both taken from illuminated manuscripts. The two which follow are furnished by sculptures, and are of a rather later date than the preceding. The abbey of St. George of Boscherville, in the diocese of Auxerre (in Normandy), was founded by Ralph de Tancarville, one of the ministers of William the Conqueror, and therefore in the latter half of the eleventh century. A history of this religious house was published by a clever local antiquary—M. Achille Deville—from whose work we take our cut No. 33, one of a few rude sculptures on the abbey church, which no doubt belonged to the original fabric. It is not difficult to recognise the subject as Joseph taking the Virgin Mary with her Child into Egypt; but there is something exceedingly droll in the unintentional caricature of the faces, as well as in the whole design. The Virgin Mary appears without a nimbus, while the nimbus of the Infant Jesus is made to look very like a bonnet. It may be remarked that this subject of the flight into Egypt is by no means an uncommon one in mediæval art; and a drawing of the same subject, copied in my “History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments” (p. 115), presents a remarkable illustration of the contrast of the skill of a Norman sculptor and of an almost contemporary Anglo-Norman illuminator. Our cut also furnishes us with evidence of the error of the old opinion that ladies rode astride in the middle ages. Even one, who by his style of art must have been an obscure local carver on stone, when he represented a female on horseback, placed her in the position which has always been considered suitable to the sex.

No. 33. The flight into Egypt.

No. 34. David and Goliah.

For the drawing of the other sculpture to which I allude, I am indebted to Mr. Robinson. It is one of the subjects carved on the façade of the church of St. Gilles, near Nismes, and is a work of the twelfth century. It appears to represent the young David slaying the giant Goliah, the latter fully armed in scale armour, and with shield and spear, like a Norman knight; while to David the artist has given a figure which is feminine in its forms. What we might take at first sight for a basket of apples, appears to be meant for a supply of stones for the sling which the young hero carries suspended from his neck. He has slain the giant with one of these, and is cutting off his head with his own sword.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DIABOLICAL IN CARICATURE.—MEDIÆVAL LOVE OF THE LUDICROUS.—CAUSES WHICH MADE IT INFLUENCE THE NOTIONS OF DEMONS.—STORIES OF THE PIOUS PAINTER AND THE ERRING MONK.—DARKNESS AND UGLINESS CARICATURED.—THE DEMONS IN THE MIRACLE PLAYS.—THE DEMON OF NOTRE DAME.

As I have already stated in the last chapter, there can be no doubt that the whole system of the demonology of the middle ages was derived from the older pagan mythology. The demons of the monkish legends were simply the elves and hobgoblins of our forefathers, who haunted woods, and fields, and waters, and delighted in misleading or plaguing mankind, though their mischief was usually of a rather mirthful character. They were represented in classical mythology by the fauns and satyrs who had, as we have seen, much to do with the birth of comic literature among the Greeks and Romans; but these Teutonic elves were more ubiquitous than the satyrs, as they even haunted men’s houses, and played tricks, not only of a mischievous, but of a very familiar character. The Christian clergy did not look upon the personages of the popular superstitions as fabulous beings, but they taught that they were all diabolical, and that they were so many agents of the evil one, constantly employed in enticing and entrapping mankind. Hence, in the mediæval legends, we frequently find demons presenting themselves under ludicrous forms or in ludicrous situations; or performing acts, such as eating and drinking, which are not in accordance with their real character; or at times even letting themselves be outwitted or entrapped by mortals in a very undignified manner. Although they assumed any form they pleased, their natural form was remarkable chiefly for being extremely ugly; one of them, which appeared in a wild wood, is described by Giraldus Cambrensis, who wrote at the end of the twelfth century, as being hairy, shaggy, and rough, and monstrously deformed.[24] According to a mediæval story, which was told in different forms, a great man’s cellar was once haunted by these demons, who drank all his wine, while the owner was totally at a loss to account for its rapid disappearance. After many unsuccessful attempts to discover the depredators, some one, probably suspecting the truth, suggested that he should mark one of the barrels with holy water, and next morning a demon, much resembling the description given by Giraldus, was found stuck fast to the barrel. It is told also of Edward the Confessor, that he once went to see the tribute called the Danegeld, and it was shown to him all packed up in great barrels ready to be sent away—for this appears to have been the usual mode of transporting large quantities of money. The saintly king had the faculty of being able to see spiritual beings—a sort of spiritual second-sight—and he beheld seated on the largest barrel, a devil, who was “black and hideous.”

Vit un déable saer desus

Le tresor, noir et hidus.—Life of S. Edward, l. 944.

An early illuminator, in a manuscript preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (MS. Trin. Col., B x. 2), has left us a pictorial representation of this scene, from which I copy his notion of the form of the demon in cut No. 35. The general idea is evidently taken from the figure of the goat, and the relationship between the demon and the classical satyr is very evident.

No. 35. The Demon of the Treasure.

Ugliness was an essential characteristic of the demons, and, moreover, their features have usually a mirthful cast, as though they greatly enjoyed their occupation. There is a mediæval story of a young monk, who was sacristan to an abbey, and had the directions of the building and ornamentation. The carvers of stone were making admirable representations of hell and paradise, in the former of which the demons “seemed to take great delight in well tormenting their victims”—

Qui par semblant se delitoit

En ce que bien les tormentoit.

The sacristan, who watched the sculptors every day, was at last moved by pious zeal to try and imitate them, and he set to work to make a devil himself, with such success, that his fiend was so black and ugly that nobody could look at it without terror.

Tant qu’un déable à fere emprist;

Si i mist sa poine et sa cure,

Que la forme fu si oscure

Et si laide, que cil doutast

Que entre deus oilz l’esgardast.

The sacristan, encouraged by his success—for it must be understood that his art was a sudden inspiration (as he had not been an artist before)—continued his work till it was completed, and then “it was so horrible and so ugly, that all who saw it affirmed upon their oaths that they had never seen so ugly a figure either in sculpture or in painting, or one which had so repulsive an appearance, or a devil which was a better likeness than the one this monk had made for them”—

Si horribles fu et si lez,

Que trestouz cels que le véoient

Seur leur serement afermoient

C’onques mès si laide figure,

Ne en taille ne en peinture,

N’avoient à nul jor véue,

Qui si éust laide véue,

Ne déable miex contrefet

Que cil moines leur avoit fet.

—Meon’s Fabliaux, tom. ii. p. 414.

The demon himself now took offence at the affront which had been put upon him, and appearing the night following to the sacristan, reproached him with having made him so ugly, and enjoined him to break the sculpture, and execute another representing him better looking, on pain of very severe punishment; but, although this visit was repeated thrice, the pious monk refused to comply. The evil one now began to work in another way, and, by his cunning, he drew the sacristan into a disgraceful amour with a lady of the neighbourhood, and they plotted not only to elope together by night, but to rob the monastery of its treasure, which was of course in the keeping of the sacristan. They were discovered, and caught in their flight, laden with the treasure, and the unfaithful sacristan was thrown into prison. The fiend now appeared to him, and promised to clear him out of all his trouble on the mere condition that he should break his ugly statue, and make another representing him as looking handsome—a bargain to which the sacristan acceded without further hesitation. It would thus appear that the demons did not like to be represented ugly. In this case, the fiend immediately took the form and place of the sacristan, while the latter went to his bed as if nothing had happened. When the other monks found him there next morning, and heard him disclaim all knowledge of the robbery or of the prison, they hurried to the latter place, and found the devil in chains, who, when they attempted to exorcise him, behaved in a very turbulent manner, and disappeared from their sight. The monks believed that it was all a deception of the evil one, while the sacristan, who was not inclined to brave his displeasure a second time, performed faithfully his part of the contract, and made a devil who did not look ugly. In another version of the story, however, it ends differently. After the third warning, the monk went in defiance of the devil, and made his picture uglier than ever; in revenge for which the demon came unexpectedly and broke the ladder on which he was mounted at his work, whereby the monk would undoubtedly have been killed. But the Virgin, to whom he was much devoted, came to his assistance, and, seizing him with her hand, and holding him in the air, disappointed the devil of his purpose. It is this latter dénouement which is represented in the cut No. 36, taken from the celebrated manuscript in the British Museum known as “Queen Mary’s Psalter” (MS. Reg. 2 B vii.). The two demons employed here present, well defined, the air of mirthful jollity which was evidently derived from the popular hobgoblins.

No. 36. The Pious Sculptor.

No. 37. The Monk’s Disaster.

No. 38. The Demons Disappointed.

There was another popular story, which also was told under several forms. The old Norman historians tell it of their duke Richard Sans-Peur. There was a monk of the abbey of St. Ouen, who also held the office of sacristan, but, neglecting the duties of his position, entered into an intrigue with a lady who dwelt in the neighbourhood, and was accustomed at night to leave the abbey secretly, and repair to her. His place as sacristan enabled him thus to leave the house unknown to the other brethren. On his way, he had to pass the little river Robec, by means of a plank or wooden bridge, and one night the demons, who had been watching him on his errand of sin, caught him on the bridge, and threw him over into the water, where he was drowned. One devil seized his soul, and would have carried it away, but an angel came to claim him on account of his good actions, and the dispute ran so high, that duke Richard, whose piety was as great as his courage, was called in to decide it. The same manuscript from which our last cut was taken has furnished our cut No. 37, which represents two demons tripping up the monk, and throwing him very unceremoniously into the river. The body of one of the demons here assumes the form of an animal, instead of taking, like the other, that of a man, and he is, moreover, furnished with a dragon’s wings. There was one version of this story, in which it found its place among the legends of the Virgin Mary, instead of those of duke Richard. The monk, in spite of his failings, had been a constant worshipper of the Virgin, and, as he was falling from the bridge into the river, she stepped forward to protect him from his persecutors, and taking hold of him with her hand, saved him from death. One of the compartments of the rather early wall-paintings in Winchester Cathedral represents the scene according to this version of the story, and is copied in our cut No. 38. The fiends here take more fantastic shapes than we have previously seen given to them. They remind us already of the infinitely varied grotesque forms which the painters of the age of the Renaissance crowded together in such subjects as “The Temptation of St. Anthony.” In fact these strange notions of the forms of the demons were not only preserved through the whole period of the middle ages, but are still hardly extinct. They appear in almost exaggerated forms in the illustrations to books of a popular religious character which appeared in the first ages of printing. I may quote, as an example, one of the cuts of an early and very rare block-book, entitled the Ars Moriendi, or “Art of Dying,” or, in a second title, De Tentationibus Morientium, on the temptations to which dying men are exposed. The scene, of which a part is given in the annexed cut (No. 39), is in the room of the dying man, whose bed is surrounded by three demons, who are come to tempt him, while his relatives of both sexes are looking on quite unconscious of their presence. The figures of these demons are particularly grotesque, and their ugly features betray a degree of vulgar cunning which adds not a little to this effect. The one leaning over the dying man suggests to him the words expressed in the label issuing from his mouth, Provideas amicis, “provide for your friends;” while the one whose head appears to the left whispers to him, Yntende thesauro, “think of your treasure.” The dying man seems grievously perplexed with the various thoughts thus suggested to him.

No. 39. A Mediæval Death-bed.

No. 40. Condemned Souls carried to their Place of Punishment.

Why did the mediæval Christians think it necessary to make the devils black and ugly? The first reply to this question which presents itself is, that the characteristics intended to be represented were the blackness and ugliness of sin. This, however, is only partially the explanation of the fact; for there can be no doubt that the notion was a popular one, and that it had previously existed in the popular mythology; and, as has been already remarked, the ugliness exhibited by them is a vulgar, mirthful ugliness, which makes you laugh instead of shudder. Another scene, from the interesting drawings at the foot of the pages in “Queen Mary’s Psalter,” is given in our cut No. 40. It represents that most popular of mediæval pictures, and, at the same time, most remarkable of literal interpretations, hell mouth. The entrance to the infernal regions was always represented pictorially as the mouth of a monstrous animal, where the demons appeared leaving and returning. Here they are seen bringing the sinful souls to their last destination, and it cannot be denied that they are doing the work right merrily and jovially. In our cut No. 41, from the manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, which furnished a former subject, three demons, who appear to be the guardians of the entrance to the regions below—for it is upon the brow above the monstrous mouth that they are standing—present varieties of the diabolical form. The one in the middle is the most remarkable, for he has wings not only on his shoulders, but also on his knees and heels. All three have horns; in fact, the three special characteristics of mediæval demons were horns, hoofs—or, at least, the feet of beasts,—and tails, which sufficiently indicate the source from which the popular notions of these beings were derived. In the cathedral of Treves, there is a mural painting by William of Cologne, a painter of the fifteenth century, which represents the entrance to the shades, the monstrous mouth, with its keepers, in still more grotesque forms. Our cut No. 42 gives but a small portion of this picture, in which the porter of the regions of punishment is sitting astride the snout of the monstrous mouth, and is sounding with a trumpet what may be supposed to be the call for those who are condemned. Another minstrel of the same stamp, spurred, though not booted, sits astride the tube of the trumpet, playing on the bagpipes; and the sound which issues from the former instrument is represented by a host of smaller imps who are scattering themselves about.

No. 41. The Guardians of Hell Mouth.

No. 42. The Trumpeter of Evil.

It must not be supposed that, in subjects like these, the drollery of the scene was accidental; but, on the contrary, the mediæval artists and popular writers gave them this character purposely. The demons and the executioners—the latter of whom were called in Latin tortores, and in popular old English phraseology the “tormentours”—were the comic characters of the time, and the scenes in the old mysteries or religious plays in which they were introduced were the comic scenes, or farce, of the piece. The love of burlesque and caricature was, indeed, so deeply planted in the popular mind, that it was found necessary to introduce them even in pious works, in which such scenes as the slaughter of the innocents, where the “knights” and the women abused each other in vulgar language, the treatment of Christ at the time of His trial, some parts of the scene of the crucifixion, and the day of judgment, were essentially comic. The last of these subjects, especially, was a scene of mirth, because it often consisted throughout of a coarse satire on the vices of the age, especially on those which were most obnoxious to the populace, such as the pride and vanity of the higher ranks, and the extortions and frauds of usurers, bakers, taverners, and others. In the play of “Juditium,” or the day of doom, in the “Towneley Mysteries,” one of the earliest collections of mysteries in the English language, the whole conversation among the demons is exactly of that joking kind which we might expect from their countenances in the pictures. When one of them appears carrying a bag full of different offences, another, his companion, is so joyful at this circumstance, that he says it makes him laugh till he is out of breath, or, in other words, till he is ready to burst; and, while asking if anger be not among the sins he had collected, proposes to treat him with something to drink—

Primus dæmon. Peasze, I pray the, be stille; I laghe that I kynke.

Is oghte ire in thi bille? and then salle thou drynke.

—Towneley Mysteries, p. 309.

And in the continuation of the conversation, one telling of the events which had preceded the announcement of Doomsday says, rather jeeringly, and somewhat exultingly, “Souls came so thick now of late to hell, that our porter at hell gate is ever held so close at work, up early and down late, that he never rests”—

Saules cam so thyk now late unto helle,

As ever

Oure porter at helle gate

Is halden so strate,

Up erly and downe late,

He rystys never.—Ib., p. 314.

With such popular notions on the subject, we have no reason to be surprised that the artists of the middle ages frequently chose the figures of demons as objects on which to exercise their skill in burlesque and caricature, that they often introduced grotesque figures of their heads and bodies in the sculptured ornamentation of building, and that they presented them in ludicrous situations and attitudes in their pictures. They are often brought in as secondary actors in a picture in a very singular manner, of which an excellent example is furnished by the beautifully illuminated manuscript known as “Queen Mary’s Psalter,” which is copied in our cut No. 43. Nothing is more certain than that in this instance the intention of the artist was perfectly serious. Eve, under the influence of a rather singularly formed serpent, having the head of a beautiful woman and the body of a dragon, is plucking the apples and offering them to Adam, who is preparing to eat one, with evident hesitation and reluctance. But three demons, downright hobgoblins, appear as secondary actors in the scene, who exercise an influence upon the principals. One is patting Eve on the shoulder, with an air of approval and encouragement, while a second, with wings, is urging on Adam, and apparently laughing at his apprehensions; and a third, in a very ludicrous manner, is preventing him from drawing back from the trial.

No. 43. The Fall of Man.

In all the delineations of demons we have yet seen, the ludicrous is the spirit which chiefly predominates, and in no one instance have we had a figure which is really demoniacal. The devils are droll but not frightful; they provoke laughter, or at least excite a smile, but they create no horror. Indeed, they torment their victims so good-humouredly, that we hardly feel for them. There is, however, one well-known instance in which the mediæval artist has shown himself fully successful in representing the features of the spirit of evil. On the parapet of the external gallery of the cathedral church of Notre Dame in Paris, there is a figure in stone, of the ordinary stature of a man, representing the demon, apparently looking with satisfaction upon the inhabitants of the city as they were everywhere indulging in sin and wickedness. We give a sketch of this figure in our cut No. 44. The unmixed evil—horrible in its expression in this countenance—is marvellously portrayed. It is an absolute Mephistophiles, carrying in his features a strange mixture of hateful qualities—malice, pride, envy—in fact, all the deadly sins combined in one diabolical whole.

No. 44. The Spirit of Evil.

CHAPTER V.

EMPLOYMENT OF ANIMALS IN MEDIÆVAL SATIRE.—POPULARITY OF FABLES; ODO DE CIRINGTON.—REYNARD THE FOX.—BURNELLUS AND FAUVEL.—THE CHARIVARI.—LE MONDE BESTORNÉ.—ENCAUSTIC TILES.—SHOEING THE GOOSE, AND FEEDING PIGS WITH ROSES.—SATIRICAL SIGNS; THE MUSTARD MAKER.

The people of the middle ages appear to have been great admirers of animals, to have observed closely their various characters and peculiarities, and to have been fond of domesticating them. They soon began to employ their peculiarities as means of satirising and caricaturing mankind; and among the literature bequeathed to them by the Romans, they received no book more eagerly than the “Fables of Æsop,” and the other collections of fables which were published under the empire. We find no traces of fables among the original literature of the German race; but the tribes who took possession of the Roman provinces no sooner became acquainted with the fables of the ancients, than they began to imitate them, and stories in which animals acted the part of men were multiplied immensely, and became a very important branch of mediæval fiction.

Among the Teutonic peoples especially, these fables often assumed very grotesque forms, and the satire they convey is very amusing. One of the earliest of these collections of original fables was composed by an English ecclesiastic named Odo de Cirington, who lived in the time of Henry II. and Richard I. In Odo’s fables, we find the animals figuring under the same popular names by which they were afterwards so well known, such as Reynard for the Fox, Isengrin for the wolf, Teburg for the cat, and the like. Thus the subject of one of them is “Isengrin made Monk” (de Isengrino monacho). “Once,” we are told, “Isengrin desired to be a monk. By dint of fervent supplications, he obtained the consent of the chapter, and received the tonsure, the cowl, and the other insignia of monachism. At length they put him to school, and he was to learn the ‘Paternoster,’ but he always replied, ‘lamb’ (agnus) or ‘ram’ (aries). The monks taught him that he ought to look upon the crucifix and upon the sacrament, but he ever directed his eyes to the lambs and rams.” The fable is droll enough, but the moral, or application is still more grotesque. “Such is the conduct of many of the monks, whose only cry is ‘aries,’ that is, good wine, and who have their eyes always fixed on fat flesh and their platter;” whence the saying in English—

They thou the vulf hore

hod to preste,

they thou him to skole sette

salmes to lerne,

hevere bet hise geres

to the grove grene

Though thou the hoary wolf

consecrate to a priest,

though thou put him to school

to learn Psalms,

ever are his ears turned

to the green grove.

No. 45. The Fox in the Pulpit.

These lines are in the alliterative verse of the Anglo-Saxons, and show that such fables had already found their place in the popular poetry of the English people. Another of these fables is entitled “Of the Beetle (serabo) and his Wife.” “A beetle, flying through the land, passed among most beautiful blooming trees, through orchards and among roses and lilies, in the most lovely places, and at length threw himself upon a dunghill among the dung of horses, and found there his wife, who asked him whence he came. And the beetle said, ‘I have flown all round the earth and through it; I have seen the flowers of almonds, and lilies, and roses, but I have seen no place so pleasant as this,’ pointing to the dunghill.” The application is equally droll with the former and equally uncomplimentary to the religious part of the community. Odo de Cirington tells us that, “Thus many of the clergy, monks, and laymen listen to the lives of the fathers, pass among the lilies of the virgins, among the roses of the martyrs, and among the violets of the confessors, yet nothing ever appears so pleasant and agreeable as a strumpet, or the tavern, or a singing party, though it is but a stinking dunghill and congregation of sinners.”

No. 46. Ecclesiastical Sincerity.