That the ancients carried their idea of “fooling” too far, may be seen in the fact that, as Sir Thomas Brown observes, “some drew provocatives of mirth from anatomies, and jugglers showed tricks with skeletons.” It was not any reverend gentleman or philosopher who improved the occasion of Egyptian feasts, by showing a model mummy, but a light-hearted slave who exhibited the ivory effigy to the garlanded guests with, “Behold what we must all come to!” Antiquity went further than this in its patronage of the fool. In the funeral train, followed the arch-mime lately retained by the deceased patrician; and it was this good fellow’s business to keep the mourners merry, by imitations of the speech, gesture, and manners of the deceased himself. Of this custom, the author last-named rightly says, that “it was too light for such solemnities, contradicting their funeral orations and doleful rites of the grave.” The mourners must have been sadly in want of the extract of _Cachunde_ or Liberans, which was once a famous and highly magnified composition, used in the East Indies, to drive away melancholy. How highly mirth was accounted of, even in grave sport, is proved by one fact,--that Lycurgus raised an image of Laughter, and caused it to be worshipped as a God. He loved, he said, to see people merry at feasts and assemblies. Of the professional wit, we find a trace in a curious custom of Roman gentlemen. When these discovered that learning and wit began to be in more general estimation than arms or wealth, the clever fellows among them got on well enough, and setting their minds to discipline, became the favoured guests at the most brilliant parties. The dull millionaires were rather nettled at this, but they fell upon an exquisite plan to be on an equality with their sparkling rivals. They had neither wit nor learning themselves, but they purchased slaves, and especially Greek slaves, who possessed both. Had they to attend an assembly where philosophy was most in fashion, they took with them their more learned bondsmen; but was the evening expected to be mirthful, then the stolid owners ordered the slaves with comic dispositions and merry turns of thought and expression, to accompany them. These delightful fellows were ever welcome, and when their sallies produced explosions of laughter and applause, their masters stroked their beards complacently, and assumed a modest composure, as if _they_ had said all the good things uttered by their serfs. Like the fools of later ages, these jesters were the more acceptable, because they helped mortal man to kill Time. When society was without books, it learned what it could, and amused itself as it might, by the help of philosophers, minstrels, or jesters. Printing, indeed, killed neither mirth, music, nor philosophy; but the decline of the profession of the hired fool certainly began at the period of the discovery of printing.