m the literary institutions above
them. It was not for guilds of mechanics to give the tone to literature,
nor were their efforts in more execrable taste than the emanations from
the pedants of Louvain. The "Rhetoricians" are not responsible for all
the bad taste of their generation. The gravest historians of the
Netherlands often relieved their elephantine labors by the most asinine
gambols, and it was not to be expected that these bustling weavers and
cutlers should excel their literary superiors in taste or elegance.

Philip the Fair enrolled himself as a member in one of these societies.
It may easily be inferred, therefore, that they had already become bodies
of recognized importance. The rhetorical chambers existed in the most
obscure villages. The number of yards of Flemish poetry annually
manufactured and consumed throughout the provinces almost exceed belief.
The societies had regular constitutions. Their presiding officers were
called kings, princes, captains, archdeacons, or rejoiced in similar
high-sounding names. Each chamber had its treasurer, its buffoon, and its
standard-bearer for public processions. Each had its peculiar title or
blazon, as the Lily, the Marigold, or the Violet, with an appropriate
motto. By the year 1493, the associations had become so important, that
Philip the Fair summoned them all to a general assembly at Mechlin. Here
they were organized, and formally incorporated under the general
supervision of an upper or mother-society of Rhetoric, consisting of
fifteen members, and called by the title of "Jesus with the balsam
flower."

The sovereigns were always anxious to conciliate these influential guilds
by becoming members of them in person. Like the players, the Rhetoricians
were the brief abstract and chronicle of the time, and neither prince nor
private person desired their ill report. It had, indeed, been Philip's
intention to convert them into engines for the arbitrary purposes of his
house, but fortunately the publicly organized societies were not the only
chambers. On the contrary, the unchartered guilds were the moat numerous
and influential. They exercised a vast influence upon the progress of the
religious reformation, and the subsequent revolt of the Netherlands. They
ridiculed, with their farces and their satires, the vices of the clergy.
They dramatized tyranny for public execration. It was also not
surprising, that among the leaders of the wild anabaptists who disgraced