n upon a skull. His
fools are his best characters, so far as strength and originality go.
Here is a snatch from the wise conversation of two of these worthies in
_Death's Jest-Book_:

"_Isbrand._ Good-morrow, Brother Vanity! How? soul of a pickle-herring,
body of a spagirical tosspot, doublet of motley, and mantle of pilgrim,
how art thou transmuted! Wilt thou desert our brotherhood, fool
sublimate? Shall the motley chapter no longer boast thee? Wilt thou
forswear the order of the bell, and break thy vows to Momus? Have mercy
on Wisdom and relent.

"_Mandrake._ Respect the grave and sober, I pray thee. To-morrow I know
thee not. In truth, I mark that our noble faculty is in its last leaf.
The dry rot of prudence hath eaten the ship of fools to dust: she is no
more seaworthy. The world will see its ears in a glass no longer. So we
are laid aside and shall soon be forgotten; for why should the feast of
asses come but once a year, when all the days are foaled of one mother?
O world! world! The gods and fairies left thee, for thou wert too wise;
and now, thou Socratic star, thy demon, the great Pan, Folly, is parting
from thee. The oracles still talked in their sleep, shall our
grandchildren say, till Master Merriman's kingdom was broken up: now is
every man his own fool, and the world's sign is taken down.

"_Isbrand._ Farewell, thou great-eared mind! I mark, by thy talk, that
thou commencest philosopher, and then thou art only a fellow-servant out
of livery."

Isbrand is the brother of the slain knight Wolfram: his foolery is but
the disguise of his revenge, and thus he rails over the body of his
brother: "Dead and gone! a scurvy burden to this ballad of life. There
lies he, Siegfried--my brother, mark you--and I weep not, nor gnash the
teeth, nor curse: and why not, Siegfried? Do you see this? So should
every honest man be--cold, dead, and leaden-coffined. This was one who
would be constant in friendship, and the pole wanders; one who would be
immortal, and the light that shines upon his pale forehead now, through
yonder gewgaw window, undulated from its star hundreds of years ago.
That is constancy, that is life. O moral Nature!"

It is unnecessary to try to describe the plot of this strange drama, if
plot it may be called. The poem rather resembles the old bridge at
Lucerne with the gloomy figures of the Dance of Death painted along its
wormeaten sides, while over its old timbers rolls the current of busy
life, a