The ass’s ears further distinguished our ancient and merry friend. The _Vice_ in old English plays wore a fool’s cap with ears, a long jacket, and at his side a wooden sword. Learned men have looked into Greek, and found there the origin of this word _Vice_. But, as far as it signifies this dramatic fool, Flögel’s derivation of it, from the old Frank word _Vis_ (phiz), a face, a mask, may be accepted. _Visdase_, another old word for fool, is derived by Ménage from “_Vis d’âne_” (ass-face), and Vizard is a known term amongst ourselves for the mask or counterfeit representation, usually comic, of a face. This derivation seems more satisfactory than that given by Upton, who tells us that “Old Vice was a droll character in our old plays, accoutred with a long coat, a cap, a pair of ass’s ears, and a dagger of lath. This buffoon character was used _to make fun with the devil_; and he had several trite expressions, as, ‘I’ll be with you in a trice. Ah, hah, boy, are you there?’ etc.; and this was great entertainment to the audience, to see their old enemy so belaboured in effigy. Vice seems to be an abbreviation of Vice-devil,--as Vice-roy, Vice-doge, etc., and therefore called, very properly, ‘The Vice.’ He makes very free with his master, like most other Vice-roys or Prime Ministers, so that he is the devil’s Vice, or Prime Minister. And,” adds Mr. Upton, “this it is which makes him so saucy.” In that dialogue of which Erasmus is the author, called the ‘_Franciscani_,’ Conrad, the monk, asks Pandocheus, “Are not fools dressed otherwise than wise men?” “Well,” says Pandocheus, “I do not know which dress would be most suitable for you; but you only lack long ears and little bells, to look like the fools themselves.” “Ay,” replied Conrad, “we have not those adornments, and we are plainly fools as regards the things of this world; if we are what we profess to be.” “I know nothing about that,” rejoins Pandocheus; “but I do know that there are many fools, with elongated ears and tinkling bells, who are far wiser men than they who wear the whole insignia of a doctor.” He even goes so far as to assert, that there were some who outdid the University philosophers in their lectures, and who, of course, were twenty times as amusing;--the cockscomb outdoing the doctoral hat. The cockscomb which surmounted the headpiece of the fool, is too familiar to require description. Its antiquity however is undoubted, since Lucian describes, in his ‘Lapithæ,’ the appearance of a jester with closely-shorn head, except at the top, where it was left in the form of the “comb” which decorates the head of the cock.