A people denied the freedom of speech or of writing have usually left
some memorials of their feelings in that silent language which addresses
itself to the eye. Many ingenious inventions have been contrived to give
vent to their suppressed indignation. The voluminous grievance which
they could not trust to the voice or the pen they have carved in wood,
or sculptured on stone; and have sometimes even facetiously concealed
their satire among the playful ornaments designed to amuse those of whom
they so fruitlessly complained! Such monuments of the suppressed
feelings of the multitude are not often inspected by the
historian--their minuteness escapes all eyes but those of the
philosophical antiquary; nor are these satirical appearances always
considered as grave authorities, which unquestionably they will be found
to be by a close observer of human nature. An entertaining history of
the modes of thinking, or the discontents of a people, drawn from such
dispersed efforts in every aera, would cast a new light of secret history
over many dark intervals.
Did we possess a secret history of the Saturnalia, it would doubtless
have afforded some materials for the present article. In those revels of
venerable radicalism, when the senate was closed, and the _Pileus_, or
cap of liberty, was triumphantly worn, all things assumed an appearance
contrary to what they were; and human nature, as well as human laws,
might be said to have been _parodied_. Among so many whimsical
regulations in favour of the licentious rabble, there was one which
forbad the circulation of money; if any one offered the coin of the
state, it was to be condemned as an act of madness, and the man was
brought to his senses by a penitential fast for that day. An ingenious
French antiquary seems to have discovered a class of wretched medals,
cast in lead or copper, which formed the circulating medium of these mob
lords, who, to ridicule the idea of _money_, used the basest metals,
stamping them with grotesque figures, or odd devices--such as a sow; a
chimerical bird; an imperator in his car, with a monkey behind him; or
an old woman's head, _Acca Laurentia_, either the traditional old nurse
of Romulus, or an old courtesan of the same name, who bequeathed the
fruits of her labours to the Roman people! As all things were done in
mockery, this base metal is stamped with S. C., to ridicule the _Senatus
consulto_, which our antiquary happily explains,[89] in the true spirit
of this government of mockery, _Saturnalium consulto_, agreeing with the
legend of the reverse, inscribed in the midst of four _tali_, or bones,
which they used as dice, _Qui ludit arram det, quod satis sit_--"Let
them who play give a pledge, which will be sufficient." This mock-money
served not only as an expression of the native irony of the radical
gentry of Rome during their festival, but, had they spoken their mind
out, meant a ridicule of money itself; for these citizens of equality
have always imagined that society might proceed without this contrivance
of a medium which served to represent property in which they themselves
must so little participate.
A period so glorious for exhibiting the suppressed sentiments of the
populace as were these _Saturnalia_, had been nearly lost for us, had
not some notions been preserved by Lucian; for we glean but sparingly
from the solemn pages of the historian, except in the remarkable
instance which Suetonius has preserved of the arch-mime who followed the
body of the Emperor Vespasian at his funeral. This officer, as well as a
similar one who accompanied the general to whom they granted a triumph,
and who was allowed the unrestrained licentiousness of his tongue, were
both the organs of popular feeling, and studied to gratify the rabble,
who were their real masters. On this occasion the arch-mime,
representing both the exterior personage and the character of Vespasian,
according to custom, inquired the expense of the funeral? He was
answered, "ten millions of sesterces!" In allusion to the love of money
which characterised the emperor, his mock representative exclaimed,
"Give me the money, and, if you will, throw my body into the Tiber!"
All these mock offices and festivals among the ancients I consider as
organs of the suppressed opinions and feelings of the populace, who were
allowed no other, and had not the means of the printing ages to leave
any permanent records. At a later period, before the discovery of the
art which multiplies with such facility libels or panegyrics, when the
people could not speak freely against those rapacious clergy who sheared
the fleece and cared not for the sheep, many a secret of popular
indignation was confided not to books (for they could not read), but to
pictures and sculptures, which are books which the people can always
read. The sculptors and illuminators of those times no doubt shared in
common the popular feelings, and boldly trusted to the paintings or the
carvings which met the eyes of their luxurious and indolent masters
their satirical inventions. As far back as in 1300, we find in
Wolfius[90] the description of a picture of this kind, in a MS. of
AEsop's Fables found in the Abbey of Fulda, among other emblems of the
corrupt lives of the churchmen. The present was a wolf, large as life,
wearing a monkish cowl, with a shaven crown, preaching to a flock of
sheep, with these words of the apostle in a label from his mouth--"God
is my witness how I long for you all in my bowels!" And underneath was
inscribed--"This hooded wolf is the hypocrite of whom is said in the
Gospel, 'Beware of false prophets!'" Such exhibitions were often
introduced into articles of furniture. A cushion was found in an old
abbey, in which was worked a fox preaching to geese, each goose holding
in his bill his praying beads! In the stone wall, and on the columns of
the great church at Strasburg, was once viewed a number of wolves,
bears, foxes, and other mischievous animals, carrying holy water,
crucifixes, and tapers; and others more indelicate. These, probably as
old as the year 1300, were engraven in 1617 by a protestant; and were
not destroyed till 1685, by the pious rage of the catholics, who seemed
at length to have rightly construed these silent lampoons; and in their
turn broke to pieces the protestant images, as the others had done the
papistical dolls. The carved seats and stalls in our own cathedrals
exhibit subjects not only strange and satirical, but even indecent.[91]
At the time they built churches they satirised the ministers; a curious
instance how the feelings of the people struggle to find a vent. It is
conjectured that rival orders satirised each other, and that some of the
carvings are caricatures of certain monks. The margins of illuminated
manuscripts frequently contain ingenious caricatures, or satirical
allegories. In a magnificent chronicle of Froissart I observed several.
A wolf, as usual, in a monk's frock and cowl, stretching his paw to
bless a cock, bending its head submissively to the wolf: or a fox with a
crosier, dropping beads, which a cock is picking up; to satirise the
blind devotion of the bigots; perhaps the figure of the cock alluded to
our Gallic neighbours. A cat in the habit of a nun, holding a platter in
its paws to a mouse approaching to lick it; alluding to the allurements
of the abbesses to draw young women into their convents; while sometimes
I have seen a sow in an abbess's veil, mounted on stilts: the sex marked
by the sow's dugs. A pope sometimes appears to be thrust by devils into
a cauldron; and cardinals are seen roasting on spits! These _ornaments_
must have been generally executed by the monks themselves; but these
more ingenious members of the ecclesiastical order appear to have
sympathised with the people, like the curates in our church, and envied
the pampered abbot and the purple bishop. Churchmen were the usual
objects of the suppressed indignation of the people in those days; but
the knights and feudal lords have not always escaped from the "curses
not loud, but deep," of their satirical pencils.
As the Reformation, or rather the Revolution, was hastening, this custom
became so general, that in one of the dialogues of Erasmus, where two
Franciscans are entertained by their host, it appears that such
satirical exhibitions were hung up as common furniture in the apartments
of inns. The facetious genius of Erasmus either invents or describes one
which he had seen of an ape in the habit of a Franciscan sitting by a
sick man's bed, dispensing ghostly counsel, holding up a crucifix in one
hand, while with the other he is filching a purse out of the sick man's
pocket. Such are "the straws" by which we may always observe from what
corner the wind rises! Mr. Dibdin has recently informed us, that Geyler,
whom he calls "the herald of the Reformation," preceding Luther by
twelve years, had a stone chair or pulpit in the cathedral at Strasburg,
from which he delivered his lectures, or rather rolled the thunders of
his anathemas against the monks. This stone pulpit was constructed under
his own superintendence, and is covered with very indecent figures of
monks and nuns, expressly designed by him to expose their profligate
manners. We see Geyler doing what for centuries had been done!
In the curious folios of Sauval, the Stowe of France, there is a copious
chapter, entitled "_Heretiques, leurs attentats_." In this enumeration
of their attempts to give vent to their suppressed indignation, it is
very remarkable that, _preceding the time of Luther_, the minds of many
were perfectly _Lutheran_ respecting the idolatrous worship of the Roman
Church; and what I now notice would have rightly entered into that
significant _Historia Reformationis ante Reformationem_, which was
formerly projected by continental writers.
Luther did not consign the pope's decretals to the flames till
1520--this was the first open act of reformation and insurrection, for
hitherto he had submitted to the court of Rome. Yet in 1490, thirty
years preceding this great event, I find a priest burnt for having
snatched the host in derision from the hands of another celebrating
mass. Twelve years afterwards, 1502, a student repeated the same deed,
trampling on it; and in 1523, the resolute death of Anne de Bourg, a
counsellor in the parliament of Paris, to use the expression of Sauval,
"corrupted the world." It is evident that the Huguenots were fast on the
increase. From that period I find continued accounts which prove that
the Huguenots of France, like the Puritans of England, were most
resolute iconoclasts. They struck off the heads of Virgins and little
Jesuses, or blunted their daggers by chipping the wooden saints, which
were then fixed at the corners of streets. Every morning discovered the
scandalous treatment they had undergone in the night. Then their images
were painted on the walls, but these were heretically scratched and
disfigured: and, since the saints could not defend themselves, a royal
edict was published in their favour, commanding that all holy paintings
in the streets should not be allowed short of ten feet from the ground!
They entered churches at night, tearing up or breaking down the
_prians_, the _benitoires_, the crucifixes, the colossal _ecce-homos_,
which they did not always succeed in dislodging for want of time or
tools. Amidst these battles with wooden adversaries, we may smile at
the frequent solemn processions instituted to ward off the vengeance of
the parish saint; the wooden was expiated by a silver image, secured by
iron bars and attended by the king and the nobility, carrying the new
saint, with prayers that he would protect himself from the heretics!
In an early period of the Reformation, an instance occurs of the art of
concealing what we wish only the few should comprehend, at the same time
that we are addressing the public. Curious collectors are acquainted
with "The Olivetan Bible;" this was the first translation published by
the protestants, and there seems no doubt that Calvin was the chief, if
not the only translator; but at that moment not choosing to become
responsible for this new version, he made use of the name of an obscure
relative, Robert Pierre Olivetan. Calvin, however, prefixed a Latin
preface, remarkable for delivering positions very opposite to those
tremendous doctrines of absolute predestination which, in his
theological despotism, he afterwards assumed. De Bure describes this
first protestant Bible not only as rare, but, when found, as usually
imperfect, much soiled and dog-eared, as the well-read first edition of
Shakspeare, by the perpetual use of the multitude. But a curious fact
has escaped the detection both of De Bure and Beloe; at the end of the
volume are found _ten verses_, which, in a concealed manner,
authenticate the translation; and which no one, unless initiated into
the secret, could possibly suspect. The verses are not poetical, but I
give the first sentence:--
Lecteur entends, si verite adresse
Viens donc ouyr instament sa promesse
Et vif parler----&c.
_The first letters of every word_ of these _ten verses_ form a perfect
distich, containing information important to those to whom the Olivetan
Bible was addressed.
Les Vaudois, peuple evangelique,
Ont mis ce thresor en publique.
An anagram would have been too inartificial a contrivance to have
answered the purpose of concealing from the world at large this secret.
There is an adroitness in the invention of the initial letters of all
the words through these ten verses. They contained a communication
necessary to authenticate the version, but which, at the same time,
could not be suspected by any person not intrusted with the secret.
When the art of medal-engraving was revived in Europe, the spirit we are
now noticing took possession of those less perishable and more
circulating vehicles. Satiric medals were almost unknown to the ancient
mint, notwithstanding those of the Saturnalia, and a few which bear
miserable puns on the unlucky names of some consuls. Medals illustrate
history, and history reflects light on medals; but we should not place
such unreserved confidence on medals as their advocates, who are warm in
their favourite study. It has been asserted that medals are more
authentic memorials than history itself; but a medal is not less
susceptible of the bad passions than a pamphlet or an epigram. Ambition
has its vanity, and engraves a dubious victory; and Flattery will
practise its art, and deceive us in gold! A calumny or a fiction on
metal may be more durable than on a fugitive page; and a libel has a
better chance of being preserved when the artist is skilful, than simple
truths when miserably executed. Medals of this class are numerous, and
were the precursors of those political satires exhibited in caricature
prints.[92] There is a large collection of wooden cuts about the time of
Calvin, where the Romish religion is represented by the most grotesque
forms which the ridicule of the early Reformers could invent. More than
a thousand figures attest the exuberant satire of the designers. This
work is equally rare and costly.[93]
Satires of this species commenced in the freedom of the Reformation; for
we find a medal of Luther in a monk's habit, satirically bearing for its
reverse Catherine de Bora, the nun whom this monk married; the first
step of his personal reformation! Nor can we be certain that Catherine
was not more concerned in that great revolution than appears in the
voluminous Lives we have of the great reformer. However, the reformers
were as great sticklers for medals as the "papelins." Of Pope John
VIII., an effeminate voluptuary, we have a medal with his portrait,
inscribed _Pope Joan!_ and another of Innocent X., dressed as a woman
holding a spindle; the reverse, his famous mistress, Donna Olympia,
dressed as a Pope, with the tiara on her head, and the keys of St.
Peter in her hands![94]
When, in the reign of Mary, England was groaning under Spanish
influence, and no remonstrance could reach the throne, the queen's
person and government were made ridiculous to the people's eyes by
prints or pictures "representing her majesty naked, meagre, withered,
and wrinkled, with every aggravated circumstance of deformity that could
disgrace a female figure, seated in a regal chair; a crown on her head,
surrounded with M. R. and A. in capitals, accompanied by small letters;
_Maria Regina Angliae!_ a number of Spaniards were sucking her to skin
and bone, and a specification was added of the money, rings, jewels, and
other presents with which she had secretly gratified her husband
Philip."[95] It is said that the queen suspected some of her own council
of this invention, who alone were privy to these transactions. It is,
however, in this manner that the voice which is suppressed by authority
comes at length in another shape to the eye.
The age of Elizabeth, when the Roman pontiff and all his adherents were
odious to the people, produced a remarkable caricature, and ingenious
invention--a gorgon's head! A church bell forms the helmet; the
ornaments, instead of the feathers, are a wolf's head in a mitre
devouring a lamb, an ass's head with spectacles reading, a goose holding
a rosary: the face is made out with a fish for the nose, a chalice and
water for the eye, and other priestly ornaments for the shoulder and
breast, on which rolls of parchment pardons hang.[96]
A famous bishop of Munster, Bernard de Galen, who, in his charitable
violence for converting protestants, got himself into such celebrity
that he appears to have served as an excellent _sign-post_ to the inns
in Germany, was the true church militant: and his figure was exhibited
according to the popular fancy. His head was half mitre and half helmet;
a crosier in one hand and a sabre in the other; half a rochet and half a
cuirass: he was made performing mass as a dragoon on horseback, and
giving out the charge when he ought the _Ite, missa est!_ He was called
the _converter!_ and the "Bishop of Munster" became popular as a
sign-post in German towns; for the people like fighting men, though they
should even fight against themselves.
It is rather curious to observe of this new species of satire, so easily
distributed among the people, and so directly addressed to their
understandings, that it was made the vehicle of national feeling.
Ministers of state condescended to invent the devices. Lord Orford says
that _caricatures on cards_ were the invention of George Townshend in
the affair of Byng, which was soon followed by a pack. I am informed of
an ancient pack of cards which has caricatures of all the
Parliamentarian Generals, which might be not unusefully shuffled by a
writer of secret history.[97] We may be surprised to find the grave
Sully practising this artifice on several occasions. In the civil wars
of France the Duke of Savoy had taken by surprise Saluces, and struck a
medal; on the reverse a centaur appears shooting with a bow and arrow,
with the legend _Opportune!_ But when Henry the Fourth had reconquered
the town, he published another, on which Hercules appears killing the
centaur, with the word _Opportunius_. The great minister was the author
of this retort![98] A medal of the Dutch ambassador at the court of
France, Van Beuninghen, whom the French represent as a haughty
burgomaster, but who had the vivacity of a Frenchman and the haughtiness
of a Spaniard, as Voltaire characterises him, is said to have been the
occasion of the Dutch war in 1672; but wars will be hardly made for an
idle medal. Medals may, however, indicate a preparatory war. Louis the
Fourteenth was so often compared to the sun at its meridian, that some
of his creatures may have imagined that, like the sun, he could dart
into any part of Europe as he willed, and be as cheerfully received.[99]
The Dutch minister, whose Christian name was _Joshua_, however, had a
medal struck of Joshua stopping the sun in his course, inferring that
this miracle was operated by his little republic. The medal itself is
engraven in Van Loon's voluminous _Histoire Medallique du Pays Bas_, and
in Marchand's _Dictionnaire Historique_, who labours to prove against
twenty authors that the Dutch ambassador was not the inventor; it was
not, however, unworthy of him, and it conveyed to the world the high
feeling of her power which Holland had then assumed. Two years after the
noise about this medal the republic paid dear for the device; but thirty
years afterwards this very burgomaster concluded a glorious peace, and
France and Spain were compelled to receive the mediation of the Dutch
Joshua with the French Sun.[100] In these vehicles of national satire,
it is odd that the phlegmatic Dutch, more than any other nation, and
from the earliest period of their republic, should have indulged freely,
if not licentiously. It was a republican humour. Their taste was usually
gross. We owe to them, even in the reign of Elizabeth, a severe medal on
Leicester, who, having retired in disgust from the government of their
provinces, struck a medal with his bust, reverse a dog and sheep,
_Non gregem, sed ingratos invitus desero_;
on which the angry juvenile states struck another, representing an ape
and young ones; reverse, Leicester near a fire,
_Fugiens fumum, incidit in ignem._
Another medal, with an excellent portrait of Cromwell, was struck by the
Dutch. The Protector, crowned with laurels, is on his knees, laying his
head in the lap of the commonwealth, but loosely exhibiting himself to
the French and Spanish ambassadors with gross indecency: the Frenchman,
covered with _fleur de lis_, is pushing aside the grave Don, and
disputes with him the precedence--_Retire-toy; l'honneur appartient
au roy mon maitre, Louis le Grand_. Van Loon is very right in denouncing
this same medal, so grossly flattering to the English, as most
detestable and indelicate! But why does Van Loon envy us this lumpish
invention? why does the Dutchman quarrel with his own cheese? The honour
of the medal we claim, but the invention belongs to his country. The
Dutch went on commenting in this manner on English affairs from reign to
reign. Charles the Second declared war against them in 1672 for a
malicious medal, though the States-General offered to break the die, by
purchasing it of the workman for one thousand ducats; but it served for
a pretext for a Dutch war, which Charles cared more about than the _mala
bestia_ of his exergue. Charles also complained of a scandalous picture
which the brothers de Witt had in their house, representing a naval
battle with the English. Charles the Second seems to have been more
sensible to this sort of national satire than we might have expected in
a professed wit; a race, however, who are not the most patient in having
their own sauce returned to their lips. The king employed Evelyn to
write a history of the Dutch war, and "enjoined him _to make it a little
keen_, for the Hollanders had very unhandsomely abused him in their
pictures, books, and libels." The Dutch continued their career of
conveying their national feeling on English affairs more triumphantly
when their Stadtholder ascended an English throne. The birth of the
Pretender is represented by the chest which Minerva gave to the
daughters of Cecrops to keep, and which, opened, discovered an infant
with a serpent's tail: _Infantemque vident apporrectumque draconem_; the
chest perhaps alluding to the removes of the warming-pan; and, in
another, James and a Jesuit flying in terror, the king throwing away a
crown and sceptre, and the Jesuit carrying a child; _Ite missa est_, the
words applied from the mass.[101] But in these contests of national
feeling, while the grandeur of Louis the Fourteenth did not allow of
these ludicrous and satirical exhibitions, and while the political
idolatry which his forty Academicians paid to him exhausted itself in
the splendid fictions of a series of famous medals, amounting to nearly
four hundred, it appears that we were not without our reprisals; for I
find Prosper Marchand, who writes as a Hollander, censuring his own
country for having at length adulated the grand monarque by a
complimentary medal. He says--"The English cannot be reproached with a
similar _debonairete_." After the famous victories of Marlborough, they
indeed inserted in a medal the head of the French monarch and the
English queen, with this inscription, _Ludovicus Magnus, Anna Major_.
Long ere this one of our queens had been exhibited by ourselves with
considerable energy. On the defeat of the Armada, Elizabeth, Pinkerton
tells us, struck a medal representing the English and Spanish fleets,
_Hesperidum regem devicit virgo_. Philip had medals dispersed in England
of the same impression, with this addition, _Negatur. Est meretrix
vulgi._ These the queen suppressed, but published another medal, with
this legend:--
Hesperidum regem devicit virgo; negatur,
Est meretrix vulgi; res eo deterior.
An age fertile in satirical prints was the eventful aera of Charles the
First: they were showered from all parties, and a large collection of
them would admit of a critical historical commentary, which might become
a vehicle of the most curious secret history. Most of them are in a bad
style, for they are allegorical; yet that these satirical exhibitions
influenced the eyes and minds of the people is evident from an
extraordinary circumstance. Two grave collections of historical
documents adopted them. We are surprised to find prefixed to Rushworth's
and Nalson's historical collections two such political prints! Nalson's
was an act of retributive justice; but he seems to have been aware that
satire in the shape of pictures is a language very attractive to the
multitude, for he has introduced a caricature print in the solemn folio
of the Trial of Charles the First.[102] Of the happiest of these
political prints is one by Taylor the Water-poet, not included in his
folio, but prefixed to his "Mad Fashions, Odd Fashions, or the Emblems
of these Distracted Times." It is the figure of a man whose eyes have
left their sockets, and whose legs have usurped the place of his arms; a
horse on his hind legs is drawing a cart; a church is inverted; fish
fly in the air; a candle burns with the flame downwards; and the mouse
and rabbit are pursuing the cat and the fox!
The animosities of national hatred have been a fertile source of these
vehicles of popular feeling--which discover themselves in severe or
grotesque caricatures. The French and the Spaniards mutually exhibit one
another under the most extravagant figures. The political caricatures of
the French in the seventeenth century are numerous. The _badauds_ of
Paris amused themselves for their losses by giving an emetic to a
Spaniard, to make him render up all the towns his victories had
obtained: seven or eight Spaniards are seen seated around a large
turnip, with their frizzled mustachios, their hats _en pot-a-beurre_;
their long rapiers, with their pummels down to their feet, and their
points up to their shoulders; their ruffs stiffened by many rows, and
pieces of garlick stuck in their girdles. The Dutch were exhibited in as
great variety as the uniformity of frogs would allow. We have largely
participated in the vindictive spirit which these grotesque emblems keep
up among the people; they mark the secret feelings of national pride.
The Greeks despised foreigners, and considered them only as fit to be
slaves;[103] the ancient Jews, inflated with a false idea of their small
territory, would be masters of the world: the Italians placed a line of
demarcation for genius and taste, and marked it by their mountains. The
Spaniards once imagined that the conferences of God with Moses on Mount
Sinai were in the Spanish language. If a Japanese become the friend of a
foreigner, he is considered as committing treason to his emperor, and
rejected as a false brother in a country which, we are told, is
figuratively called _Tenka_, or the Kingdom under the Heavens. John
Bullism is not peculiar to Englishmen; and patriotism is a noble virtue
when it secures our independence without depriving us of our humanity.
The civil wars of the League in France, and those in England under
Charles the First, bear the most striking resemblance; and in examining
the revolutionary scenes exhibited by the graver in the famous _Satire
Menippee_, we discover the foreign artist revelling in the _caricature_
of his ludicrous and severe exhibition; and in that other revolutionary
period of _La Fronde_, there was a mania for _political songs_; the
curious have formed them into collections; and we not only have "the
Rump Songs" of Charles the First's times, but have repeated this kind of
evidence of the public feeling at many subsequent periods.[104]
_Caricatures_ and _political songs_ might with us furnish a new sort of
history; and perhaps would preserve some truths, and describe some
particular events not to be found in more grave authorities.