has been said that this method was adopted by different orders of the religions to satirise each other; and some of the carvings I have seen were probably intended as Caricatures of particular persons.'

M. Champfleury quotes a letter from the 'Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum,' in which Saint Nilus, in the fifth century, wrote to Olympiodorus of Alexandria: Was it seemly to represent animals of all sorts on the walls of the sanctuary, so that one could see snares set for them, and hares, goats, and other beasts seeking safety in flight, while, behind, the hunters weary themselves in the chase and without respite follow their hounds . . .? It was, he declared, just childishness to amuse the eyes of the faithful. He also quotes Saint Bernard, then abbé of Clairvaux, writing in the twelfth century to William, abbé of Saint-Thierry, and complaining of the monstrosities used in the decoration of sacred buildings. Saint Nilus' answer is significant, and explains the presence of all caricature or ludicrous art of whatever kind in the cathedrals. Like the Roman pigmies referred to earlier it was done to amuse the children'-grown up or otherwise.

'The policy of that wonderful organisation (the Roman Church) has been in every age,' comments James Parton,* *to make every possible concession to ignorance that is compatible with the continuance of ignorance. It has sought always to amuse, to edify, to moralise, and console ignorance, but never to enlighten it.'

This is not, perhaps, a perfectly fair statement of the case, but-one knows what he means.

At any rate, the crudities and barbarities referred to, no doubt kindled the imagination and brought home to simple folk the horrors following misbehaviour. And the worst of them were harmless, if only because they were frank and not furtive.

The Devil was the personality most often chosen as a subject for caricature, but as we are still a little uncertain of his exact appearance, it is difficult to say what naturalistic merit these caricatures may have. In the British Museum there is a 'Biblia Pauperum' of about

Caricatures and Other Comic Art.' By James Parton (Harper Brothers), 1877.

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1475, which was once the property of George III, and which contains a woodcut representing the Temptation. There are the figures of Christ and Satan, and the high mountain with one tree upon the top of it, and the pinnacles of the Temple. In this drawing the Devil has a man's hands, horns, webbed feet, and a second face da dietro, as the Italians say. His main face is dreadful, with an enormous mouth and huge teeth, and long flapping ears. In his hands he holds the stones which *he tempts Christ to turn into bread.

Down to the 16th century caricature was mainly confined to the presentment of good and evil, of God and the Devil. Then, with the great cleavage brought about by the Reformers, and, later, the Puritans, the art became a weapon of warring sects, and in its true form was most conspicuous in religious enmities. A more general application is to be observed in the satirical drawings by Holbein and others in which the figure of Death predominates. But the Dance of Death series I can hardly be included in the category of true caricature. In the cathedral at Strasburg one carving represents a fox leaning from a pulpit, with outstretched paw, preaching to a flock of geese: in another beasts of somewhat doubtful species form a procession; one carries a mop and a pail, the next a cross, a little rabbit follows with a lighted torch, and so on. At Magdeburg a tiny maiden milks a colossal sow, and on another capital a monkey tucks a huge fiddle under his chin. A basrelief at Autun shows souls being weighed in the scales—a much favoured subject-an archangel superintending the process on one side, a devil on the other. Neither is playing fair, for outstretched hands clutch at the balance, trying to drag it down. In this instance, happily, the archangel has tilted the scales well to his side, and the expression of horror and disgust upon the opponent's face shows that he realises that all his efforts are futile. These instances are but a few from many typifying mediæval stone carvings, and in most of them the caricaturish element (as opposed to unintentional crudity) is manifest. In all forms of art exaggeration of one sort or another is necessary to the comprehension of simple folk.

In the 18th century, during the demolition of the

ancient chateau of Pinon in Picardy, a large seal was found which bears the inscription LE: SCEL: DE: LEVECQUE: DE: LA CYTE: DE: PINON-the seal of the Bishop of Pinon. This seal is of the usual pointed oval shape, and engraved within the bordering legend is a monkey seated with legs crossed on a bishop's throne, wearing vestments and a mitre, and holding a crooked staff. Two attendant monkeys are on either side of him. It has been suggested that this seal was made in order to ridicule the Church; but M. Champfleury shows that the more probable explanation involves no malice of the kind. On the contrary, certain prelates, having a sense of humour, ordered comic seals of this sort to be made for them, and M. Champfleury quotes the instance of Guy de Munois, abbé of Saint-Germain d'Auxerre from 1285-1309; the legend on his seal reading 'Abbé Singe air main d'os serre.' The good man was, in the phraseology of the modern schoolboy, 'trying to be funny'— at his own expense.

Though gargoyles and certain faces carved on the stalls of churches and beneath miserere seats were almost certainly personal caricatures, the more familiar medium of drawing brings satire home to our modern minds with greater facility, A manuscript illustrated with a pen-and-ink drawing or an early woodcut is more readily comparable with, say, an etching by Dighton or design by Gulbransson. Very early drawings of the kind are rare, and are peculiarly interesting when their subjects are the same as those exploited in a similar manner to-day. The Jews, for example, have been a source of inspiration to caricaturists from the very earliest times until the present day. They were foreigners by race and religion, and foreigners have usually been the subject of jokes. That is a shortcoming, not solely English, seldom but sometimes excused by the quality of the satire. Down to the last 150 years, the Jews were chiefly associated with usury in one form or another, and this occupation together with the Jewish (or rather, as it is often said, Hittite) nose is a natural subject for pictorial exaggeration-not infrequently at the hands of Jewish artists. And so we find it exaggerated so long ago as the year 1233, in a drawing on a vellum roll which is to be seen at the Record Office.

This caricature is the unofficial but relevant illustration at the head of a 'Rotulus Judeorum,' and is presumably the work of a clerk in the exchequer.

At the period in question Isaac of Norwich, an exceedingly wealthy Jew, was the principal creditor of the Abbot and monks of Westminster, who were supported by the especial sympathy of Pandolf, Bishop elect of Norwich and Papal Legate. Isaac was a moneylender and merchant. He owned a quay at Norwich where his ships could load and unload, and whole districts were mortgaged to him. The caricature, which is drawn with pen and ink, represents Isaac standing in the midst of a group of Jews. Near by and below him stands Mosse Mokke with Avegay a female moneylender (Mosse Mokke was subsequently hanged for clipping coin); between these two stands a devil pointing to the nose of each. There are various subsidiary figures carrying bags of coin, and Dagon, god of Philistia, watches the proceedings from a small turret. Isaac himself is given three faces, one full, and two in profile, a fourth is to be understood' as the grammarians say: showing that he looks out upon his possessions North, South, East, and West. The drawing fills an apex at the head of the Roll, the parchment having been cut to a point at some time and pasted on to another piece of parchment behind it. The ink used is of a reddishbrown, and though rather crumpled the whole document is in a good state of preservation.

At the beginning of the 16th century caricature became a trusted weapon of religious bigotry. Luther and Melanchthon, especially, issued many pamphlets illustrated with woodcuts, which were hawked from village to village throughout Germany. Many of the drawings sanctioned by Luther, a number of which are bound in a volume in the British Museum, were of an indescribable grossness. We are to conclude that humour of that kind was still considered to be the only secure means of pointing a moral to untutored minds. Apart from indecencies the volume of woodcuts referred to contains more decorous but equally childish images, which can be described without apology. There is, for example, a symbolic creature called the Papst-Esel of Rome, with the head of a donkey, the scales of a dragon,

and the breasts of a woman: his right hand is an elephant's foot, which is to typify the weight of oppression exercised by the Pope, and a subsidiary face of fiendish aspect looks out behind. This is described as 'Monstrum Romæ inventum mortuum in Tiberi: Anno 1496.' Another drawing represents Pope Alexander VI with his ordinary robes and staff; but a second glance shows that a strip of paper has been folded down from the top of the print to about the level of his knees. This when lifted reveals a devilish face with horrible sabre teeth, with flames arising from the triple crown, and horns protruding from its sides; the pastoral staff becomes a pitch-fork with a hangman's noose attached to it, the bare arms end in hideous claws. Yet another engraving is labelled is labelled 'Papa Doctor Theologiæ et Magister Fidei,' and shows the Pope as an ass playing the bagpipes.

The caricatures issued from the opposing camp were, as far as can be discovered, less infected with grossness. There is one which represents the Devil with a bird-like face blowing into Luther's ear, using his tonsured head as the bag, and manipulating his nose, which is elongated, to form the chanter. This is intended to draw attention to the nasal drawl with which the Reformers, and later the Puritans and their spiritual descendants, were always said to preach. Luther married a nun, Catherine von Bora, and such an opportunity as this was unlikely to be neglected by his enemies. We find, therefore, a widely issued caricature of the ex-monk followed by his wife, and represented as so extremely corpulent that he has to wheel his stomach on a barrow before him. This convention for a fat man was much favoured. There is a German caricature of 1510 of a toper drawn in this manner, and in 1635 a French artist repeated the joke in satirising the Austrian General Galas who had won a victory in the Netherlands. Amongst the many amusing illustrations to the 'Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel,' some of which are intended as personal caricatures, we likewise find a man whose belly runs before him on a wheel. The Songes Drolatiques' are attributed to François Rabelais, and M. Paul Lacroix brings internal evidence to show the likelihood of his authorship of the drawings as well.