The bad repute into which jugglers had fallen did not prevent the kings of France from attaching buffoons, or fools, as they were generally called, to their households, who were often more or less deformed dwarfs, and who, to all intents and purposes, were jugglers.

On Potosi, who meets a buffoon?

Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire, perhaps, thinks decency violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard.

Here he continued his exhibition, now moralizing in the quaint and often in the pithy manner, which renders the southern buffoon so much superior to his duller competitor of the north, and uttering a wild jumble of wholesome truths, loose morality, and witty inuendoes, the latter of which never failed to extort roars of laughter from all but those who happened to be their luckless subjects.

"If it were possible to treat such a buffoon as you seriously, she wouldn't.

This byplay is also a reminiscence of the habits of the early comédiens italiens, who indulged to excess in lazzi, which originally meant, not witticisms, but tricks more or less buffoon in their nature, such as circus clowns still indulge in.

He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of all dispositions; and, wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have afforded him.