the prologue is spoken by a fool who uses these words, the poet's a fool who made the tragedy to tell a story of a king and a court and leave a fool out on't, when in Pacy's and Sommer's and Patche's and Archee's times, my venerable predecessours, a fool was alwaies the principal verb." Shadwell's play of The woman captain, 1680, is perhaps the last in which a regular fool is introduced, and even there his master is made to say that the character was then exploded on the stage.

The following is some additional and necessary explanation of the cuts belonging to this dissertation.

Plate II. fig. 1, is from Catzii emblemata. Fig. 2 is the duke of Suffolk's fool in the time of Henry VIII., copied from a print in Mr. Brydges's Memoirs of the peers of England. Figs. 3 and 4 are from paintings in the author's possession. The centre fig. is from a print by Breughel.

Plate III. All these instruments, excepting fig. 3, before described, are taken from various Dutch and German prints. Plate IV. fig. 1, is from an old German print by an unknown master.

Figs. 1 and 3 below are from A booke of Christian prayers, &c., 1590, 4to, being figures belonging to a dance of Death. Fig. 2 is from the frontispiece to Heywood's comedy of The