Andrew Borde and Tabarin were both charlatans and both famous, but here all resemblance between them ceases. The former was a witty and eccentric quack, who travelled about from place to place and country to country selling drugs and practising medicine in fairs and marketplaces, where his glib tongue readily gathered crowds and earned him the nickname which has since passed current in English as a generic term for buffoons of all sorts and conditions. The tenth volume of the Extra Series of the Early English Text Society is wholly devoted to Borde, and well repays perusal, although probably few who read it will agree with Mr. Furnivall, the editor, that "any one who would make him more of a merry-andrew than anything else is a bigger fool than he would make Borde."
Tabarin, however, was a veritable and inimitable clown, and his name has figured in French literature both as a proper and a common noun almost from the day that he and his partner, Mondor, set up their booth on the Pont Neuf. They began their sale of ointments and liniments in Paris about the year 1618, attracting custom by their absurd dialogues in the vein of the circus-clown and ring-master of to-day. Occasionally they left the city to try their luck in the provinces, but during most of their career they were to be found on the bridge near the entrance to the Place Dauphine. Tabarin retired from the business about 1630, but his partner continued at the old stand with a new clown, who must have been either less witty or more obscene than Tabarin, for in 1634 Mondor was abated as a nuisance by the authorities.
Tabarin was blessed with a wife and daughter: his wife's name was Francisquine; his daughter married the celebrated buffoon Gaultier Garguille. The story goes that when he left Mondor he bought a small country-place near Paris, where he passed his latter days comfortably on his earnings. There are two traditions current as to the manner of his death: according to one, he was killed by some noblemen in a hunting quarrel; according to the other, he died from the effects of heavy drinking for a wager. He is said to have styled himself Tabarin because he usually appeared in a little tabard, called in Italian tabarrino, but his true name and his nationality are alike unknown.
Tabarin's pleasantries, as jotted down by members of his audiences, have been given to the world at divers times in various forms, and have latterly been collected and published in a body with those of his less successful rival Grattelard; but very few of them are suited to nineteenth-century taste, and most of them are gross to the last degree. Some of the presentable ones are here given, and may serve as specimens of his manner, though they will scarcely account for his reputation:
Tab. Who are the politest people in the world, master?
Mon. I've travelled in Spain, Italy and Germany, and I assure you that the French nation is by all odds the most courteous. They are the only people in the world that kiss and compliment, and above all take off hats.
Tab. Take off hats! If that's courtesy I don't want any of it.
Mon. Taking off hats, Tabarin, is an ancient custom originating among the Romans. It is done in token of good-will.
Tab. So you say taking off hats is the pink of politeness? Now, if that's so, do you want to know who I think are the politest people?
Mon. Yes: who?