On once addressing a prosy adviser by this title, the gentleman neatly enough replied, “I wish, with all my heart, I _were_ King of Fools; I should have a glorious kingdom of it, and your Imperial Majesty would be among my subjects.” The “Fool” was not the exclusive possession of a Sovereign King. In course of time, wealthy individuals prided themselves in their own jesters, as ladies of the last century did in their black foot-boys and monkeys. Counts, Cardinals, Barons, and even Bishops had their professional makers of mirth. In France the _Fou du Roi_ was an official title, and Champagne is thought by some to have enjoyed the monopoly of furnishing his Gallic Majesty with a new _Fou du Roi en titre d’office_, when the old one died. The profession, in most Courts, survived the name; and the office has been exercised by many gentlemen who, perhaps, little thought of the duty they were performing. The office has not seldom been filled, as I have before remarked, by the Court poet; and the well-known epigram on Cibber, the above fact being considered, has a happy application. The term itself however has often been mis-applied. Thus Charles the _Simple_ was no fool, but a man of extraordinary simplicity of mind and feeling. So Homer, when he called Telemachus, Νἡπιος, a _fool_, or “silly,” did not employ it as a term of reproach, but one of endearment. The term “fool,” “fol,” “fou,” is said to be of Northern origin. Every language, however, or nearly so, has an original word expressive of the office. Some French writers deduce the term Fool,--that is their own word _Fol_ or _Fou_,--from the Game of Chess. In the French game, the pieces which we call _Bishops_, are called “Fous;” and in anciently carved sets are represented in the fool’s dress;--hence the saying of Regnier in his 14th Satire:-- “Les Fous sont aux échecs les plus proches des Rois.” Thomas Hyde, in his ‘De Ludis Orientalibus,’ lib. i. 4, does away with this derivation by remarking that the chess term _Fou_ or _Fol_ is derived from the eastern word _Phil_, an “Elephant;”--he adds that two figures of this animal were always to be seen on the old boards; and that they had the oblique move of our “bishops.” This is no doubt true. The line of Regnier, however, indicates the place of the “Fou,” not only at chess, but at Court--namely, always near the King. The dignity of the latter, however, was preserved by a simple arrangement, namely, the ranking as “fool” or of deranged wit, every one who ventured to utter to his superior a disagreeable truth. As for a closer connection between kings and fools, it is marked by Rabelais, who observes that wearers of crown and sceptre are born under the same constellation as the wearers of cap and bells.