Diccon has still the spirit of mischief in him, and instead of laying his hand quietly on Hodge's breech, he gives him a sharp blow, which is responded to by an unexpected scream. The needle, indeed, which has never quitted the breeches, is driven rather deep into the fleshy part of Hodge's body, and the general joy at having found it again overruling all other considerations, they all agree to be friends over a jug of "drink." We cannot but feel astonished at the short period which it required to develop rude attempts at dramatic composition like this into the wonderful creations of a Shakespeare; and it can only be explained by the fact that it was an age remarkable for producing men of extraordinary genius in every branch of intellectual development. Hitherto, the literature of the stage had represented the intelligence of the mass; it became individualised in Shakespeare, and this fact marks an entirely new era in the history of the drama. In the writings of our great bard, nearly all the peculiarities of the older national drama are preserved, even some which may be perhaps considered as its defects, but carried to a degree of perfection which they had never attained before. The drollery, which, as we have seen, could not be dispensed with even in the religious mysteries and miracle-plays, had become so necessary, that it could not be dispensed with in tragedy. Its omission belonged to a later period, when the foreign dramatists became objects of imitation in England. But in the earlier drama, these scenes of drollery seem frequently to have no connection whatever with the general plot, while Shakespeare always interweaves them skilfully with it, and they seem to form an integral and necessary part of it. CHAPTER XVII. DIABLERIE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.--EARLY TYPES OF THE DIABOLICAL FORMS.--ST. ANTHONY.--ST. GUTHLAC.--REVIVAL OF THE TASTE FOR SUCH SUBJECTS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.--THE FLEMISH SCHOOL OF BREUGHEL.--THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN SCHOOLS, CALLOT, SALVATOR ROSA. We have seen how the popular demonology furnished materials for the earliest exercise of comic art in the middle ages, and how the taste for this particular class of grotesque lasted until the close of the mediæval period. After the "renaissance" of art and literature, this taste took a still more remarkable form, and the school of grotesque _diablerie_ which flourished during the sixteenth century, and the first half of the seventeenth, justly claims a chapter to itself.