There is more matter for astonishment in the subject in which great men could find amusement. Vincentius, Duke of Mantua, when he received Frederick, Duke of Wirtemberg, at his castle, in the year 1600, could think of nothing better wherewith to amuse his princely guest, after a day’s hard hunting, than to make sport with his jester. On the latter, armed with sword and stick, and placed within improvised lists, was let loose a young wild boar, deprived of his tusks and upper teeth, but still a dangerous adversary to encounter. The illustrious spectators roared with delight at seeing first the fool, then the boar, down. Now the jester was uppermost, now his savage enemy was on the top of him; anon they were rolling over and over; and it was impossible to say which had the best of it. The boar, all deprived as he was of his chief weapons, would probably have overcome the fool; but the latter was carried off with bloody cockscomb, for which sorry plaister was provided in the laughter, applause, and pistoles awarded him by his refined patrons. The Wirtembergian Duke had a fool of his own, named Jeronimo, a Spaniard, who was not so careful of his pistoles as Feo. He was an inveterate gambler, and at one sitting lost 4000 crowns, a sufficient proof that his profession was not always an unprofitable one. The rage for play was so strong upon him, that he once agreed, in case of his being a loser, that his adversary should take aim at him with a crossbow, and discharge a certain number of little pointed darts at his head. He came off a little injured, but he was used to rough treatment, and when the weather was too inclement for hunting, his master would turn him into his court-yard, and there he formed an object of chase and assault for august princes and lofty nobles, who pelted him with unsavoury eggs and fruit, while the jester, in a paper helmet, and with a wooden sword, excited general shouts of laughter by his vapouring, screaming, and mock airs of defiance. After all these practical jokes, we are glad to come upon that rare thing in an Italian jester, namely, wit. The sample of it which I have now to furnish is well known, indeed, but it is said to have originally belonged to a Pavian jester, who, when the surgeons and the doctors of law were at loggerheads on a question of precedents, suggested to the Duke of Milan, who asked his counsel, that the matter was easy enough of settlement. “When a murderer,” said he, “goes to execution, he always walks before the hangman; so here, the surgeons ought to precede the doctors of law.” The slyest hint made against the want of wit in an Italian jester, was that of Cardinal Perron to the Duke of Mantua. “Your Highness’s fool,” said he, “has the most stupendous wit I ever heard of; for he gains a livelihood by a profession he does not understand.”