IIO 
and 
of Caricature 
Granjgue 
perfectly fynonymous with joculator, and, as the Word is certainly of Latin 
derivation, it is clear that it was from it the middle ages derived the 
French word menqfirel (the modern manetrier), and the Englilh mirgjirel. 
The mimi or jougleurs were perhaps confidered as the petty minifters to 
the amufements of their lord, or of him who for the time employed them. 
Until the clofe of the middle ages, the minftrel and the jougleur were 
ablblutely identical. Polhbly the former may have been confidered the 
more courtly of the two names. But in England, as the middle ages 
dilappeared, and loft their influence on fociety fooner than in France, the 
word minitrel remained attached only to the muflcal part of the functions 
of the old mimus, while, as juli obferved, the juggler took the Height of 
hand and the mountebank tricks. In modern French, except where 
employed technically by the antiquary, the word mefneftrier means 
a fiddler. 
The jougleurs, or minftrels, formed a very numerous and important, 
though a low and defpifed, clafs of mediaeval fociety. The dulneis of 
every-day life in a feudal cattle or rnanfion required fomething more than 
Ordinary excitement in the way of amufement, and the old family bard, 
who continually repeated to the Teutonic chief the praifes of himfelf and 
his ancetlors, was foon felt to be a wearifome companion. The mediaeval 
knights and their ladies wanted to laugh, and to make them laugh 
fufliciently it required that the jokes, or tales, or comic performances, 
{hould be broad, coarfe, and racy, with a good fpicing of violence and of 
the wonderful. Hence the jougleur was always welcome to the feudal 
manfion, and he feldom went away diffatisned. But the fubject of the 
prefent chapter is rather the literature of the jougleur than his perfonal 
hiftory, and, having traced his origin to the Roman mimus, we will now 
proceed to one clafs of his performances. 
It has been Hated that the mimus and the jougleurs told Ptories. Of 
thofe of the former, unfortunately, none are preferved, except, perhaps, in 
21 few anecdotes fcattered in the pages of fuch writers as Apuleius and 
Lucian, and we are obliged to guefs at their chara6ter, but of the Itories 
of the jougleurs a confiderable number has been preferved. It becomes 
an intereiiing queftion how far thefe Frories have been derived from the 
mimi,