[278] See for one among many instances Travels in West Africa, chap. ix. (“The Rapids of the Ogowe”).
[279] The story of Hans von Bülow’s almost superhuman behaviour under these circumstances is told in the National Observer of 17th Feb., 1894.
[280] See, for example, a letter from a titled lady in The Times of the 1st June, 1894, in which this claim of “society” to the services of “the pick of blood and brains” is prettily assumed.
[281] On the employment of buffoons and dwarfs in the palace of the Egyptian king see Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation, pp. 278, 279. On the Greek and Roman jesters (γελωτοποιοί, ἀρεταλόγοι, mimi, scurræ) see P. Gardner, Greek Antiquities, p. 835; [cf. Doran, Court Fools]. On the mediæval jester or fool see Wright, op. cit., chap. vii.; Lacroix, Middle Ages, p. 238 ff.; and Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life, p. 187.
[282] P. Gardner, Greek Antiquities, p. 666.
[283] Bergk, Griech. Literaturgesch., iv., pp. 9, 10.
[284] See Wright, op. cit., chaps. xii. and xiv.
[285] Essay on Comedy, pp. 24–5 (on Molière’s audience); pp. 8, 47 and following (on the recognition of woman).
[286] Examples will be found in Le Médecin malgré lui, L’Avare and others. A delightful introduction of the all-round beating of the circus is that of the Professors in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.
[287] M. Bergson, who gives a delightful account of these mechanical aids to the effect of comedy, seeks to connect them with his theory that the laughable consists in the substitution of the monotony of the machine for the variety of the organism (op. cit., p. 72 ff.). I suspect, however, that they owe much of the spell they cast over our laughing muscles to suggestions of child’s play.