of C arimture 
H07] 
and 
Groiefque 
CHAPTER 
III. 
THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE AGES. 
--THE ROMAN MIMI CONTINUED TO EXIST.-_THE TEUTONIC AFTER- 
DINNER ENTERTAINMENTS.--CLERICAL SATIRES; ARCHBISHOP HE- 
RIGER AND THE DREAMER; THE SUPPER OF THE SAINTS.i'l'RANSI- 
TION FROM ANCIENT TO MEDIIEVAL ART.-_TASTE FOR MONSTROUS 
ANIMALS, DRAGONS, E'TC.; CHURCH OF SAN FEDELE, AT COMO.-Q 
SPIRIT O1" CARICATURE AND LOVE OF GROTESQUE AMONG THE 
ANGLO-SAXONS.-GROTESQUE FIGURES OF DEMONS.-_NATURAL TEN- 
DENCY OF THE EARLY MEDIEVAL ARTISTS TO DRAW IN CARICATURE. 
--EXAMPLES FROM EARLY MANUSCRIPTS AND SCULPTURES. 
THE tranfition from antiquity to what we ufually underftand by the 
name of the middle ages was long and flow; it was a period during 
which much of the texture ofthe old fociety was deitroyed,while at the fame 
time a new life was gradually given to that which remained. We know very 
little of the comic literature of this period of traniition; its literary remains 
confift chiefly of a mafs of heavy theology and of lives of faints. The 
{lage in its perfeelly dramatic form-theatre and amphitheatre_had dis- 
appeared. The pure drama, indeed, appears never to have had great 
vitality among the Romans, whofe taites lay far more among the vulgar 
performances of the mimics and jelters, and among the favage fcenes of 
the amphitheatre. While probably the performance of comedies, fuch 
as thofe of Plautus and Terence, foon Went out of fafhion, and tragedies, 
like thofe of Seneca, were only written as literary compofltions, imitations 
of the flmilar works which formed fo remarkable a feature in the litera- 
ture of Greece, the Romans of all ranks loved to witneis the loofe atti- 
tudes of their mimi, or liiten to their equally loofe fongs and Ptories. The 
theatre and the amphitheatre were {late inltitutions, kept up at the 
national expenfe, and, as jult ftated, they perilhed with the overthrow of 
the weilern empire ; and the fanguinary performances of the amphitheatre, 
if