Fool. Why, for taking one’s part that’s out of favour: nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt catch cold shortly: there, take my coxcomb: why, this fellow hath banished two on’s daughters, and done the third a blessing against his will; if thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb.”
Drant’s translations[[185]] from Horace, published in 1567, convey to us a pretty accurate idea of the fool’s attire,—
“Well geue him cloth and let the fool
Goe like a cockescome still.”
Perchance we know the lines in the “Faerie Queene” (vi. c. 7, 49, 1. 6),—
“And other whiles with bitter mockes and mowes
He would him scorne, that to his gentle mynd
Was much more grievous then the others blowes:
Words sharpely wound, but greatest griefe of scorning growes.”
But probably we are not prepared to trace some of the expressions in these lines to an Emblem-book origin. The graphic “mockes and mowes,” indeed, no Latin nor French can express; but our old friend Paradin, in the “Devises Heroiqves” (leaf 174), names an occasion on which very amusing “mockes and mowes” were exhibited; it was, moreover, an example that,—