232 
0f Caricature 
Grotzwue 
and 
his great anger, and from wrathful words the two thieves proceeded to 
blows. While they were fighting, Eulenfpiegel crept out of the hive and 
ran away. 
After leaving the baker, Eulenfpiegel became a wanderer in the 
world, gaining his living by his trickery and deception, and engaging 
himfelf in all forts of {irange and ludicrous adventures. He ended every- 
where by creating difcord and itrife. He became at different times a 
blackfmith, a ihoemaker, a tailor, a cook, a drawer of teeth, and aifumed 
a variety of other charariters, but remained in each fituation only long 
enough to make it too hot for him, and to be obliged to fecure his retreat. 
He intruded himfelf into all cla{Tes of fociety, and invariably came to 
Iimilar refults. Many of his adventures, indeed, are fo droll that we can 
eahly underiiand the great popularity they once enjoyed. But they are 
not merely amuiing-they prefent a continuous fatire upon contemporary 
fociety, upon a focial condition in which every pretender, every recklefs 
impoflor, every private plunderer or public depredator, faw the world 
expofed to him in its folly and credulity as an eafy prey. 
The middle ages pofleifed another clafs of thefe popular fatirical 
hiitories, which were attached to places rather than to perfons. There were 
few countries which did not poffefs a town or a difiri-it, the inhabitants of 
which were celebrated for fiupidity, or for roguery, or for fome other 
ridiculous or contemptible quality. We have feen, in a former chapter, 
the people of Norfolk enjoying this peculiarity, and, at a later period, the 
inhabitants of Pevenfey in Sulfex, and more efpecially thofe of Gotham in 
Nottingharnihire, were Iimilarly dillinguiihed. The inhabitants of many 
places in Germany bore this charaeter, but their grand reprefentatives among 
the Germans were the Schildburgers, a name which appears to belong 
entirely to the domain of fable. Schildburg, we are told, was a town 
"in Mifnopotamia, beyond Utopia, in the kingdom of Calecut." The 
Schildburgers were originally fo renowned for their wifdom, that they were 
continually invited into foreign countries to give their advice, until at 
length not a man was left at home, and their wives were obliged to 
affume the charge of the duties of their huibands. This became at length 
fo onerous, that the wives held a council, and refolved on defpatching a 
folemn