Burlesque tournaments, in the same taste, often figure in the prayer-books among representations of the Madonna, the crucifixion, and scenes in the lives of the patriarchs. The gallant hare tilts at the fierce cock of the barn-yard, or sly Reynard parries the thrust of the clumsy bear.
From a Manuscript Mass-book of the Fourteenth Century.
One of the most curious relics of those religious centuries is a French prayer-book preserved in the British Museum, where it was discovered and described by Mr. Malcolm, one of the first persons who ever attempted to elucidate the subject of caricature. Besides the "Hours of the Blessed Virgin," it contains various prayers and collects, the office for the dead, and some psalms, all in Latin. It is illustrated by several brilliantly colored, well-drawn, but most grotesque and incomprehensible figures, designed, as has been conjectured, to "expose the wicked and inordinate lives of the clergy, who were hated by the manuscript writers as taking away much of their business." This was the explanation given of these remarkable pictures to the trustees of the Museum by the collector of whom they bought the volume. Several of them are submitted to the reader's ingenuity on the following page.
Besides the specimens given, there is a wolf growling at a snake twisting itself round its hind-leg; there is "a grinning-match" between a human head on an animal's body and a boar's head on a monkey's body; there is a creature like a pea-hen, with two bodies, one neck, and two dogs' heads; there is an animal with four bodies and one head; there is a bearded man's face and a woman's on one neck, and the body has no limbs, but an enormous tail; there is a turret, on the top of which a monkey sits, and a savage below is aiming an arrow at him. In the British Museum—that unequaled repository of all that is curious and rare—there is the famous and splendid psalter of Richard II., containing many strange pictures in the taste of the period. On the second page, for example, along with two pictures of the kind usual in Catholic works of devotion, there is a third which represents an absurd combat within lists between the court-fool and the court-giant. The fool, who is also a dwarf, is belaboring the giant with an instrument like those hollow clubs used in our pantomimes when the clown is to be whacked with great violence. The giant shrinks from the blows, and the king, pointing at the dwarf, seems to say, "Go it, little one; I bet upon you."
From a French Prayer-book of the Thirteenth Century, in the British Museum.
Mr. Malcolm, who copied this picture from the original, where, he says, it is most superbly finished, interprets it to be a caricature of the famous combat between David and Goliath in the presence of King Saul and his court. In the same mass-book there is a highly ridiculous representation of Jonah on board ship, with a blue Boreas with cheeks puffed out raising the tempest, and a black devil clawing the sail from the yard. In selecting a few of the more innocent pictures from the prayer-book of Queen Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. of England, Mr. Malcolm gives expression to his amazement at the character of the drawings, which he dared not exhibit to a British public! Was this book, he asks, made on purpose for the queen? Was it a gift or a purchase? But whether she bought or whether she accepted it, he thinks she must have "delighted in ludicrous and improper ideas," or else "her inclination for absurdity and caricature conquered even her religion, in defense of which she spread ruin and desolation through her kingdom."