Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/252

238 to copy drawings, which were so excellent and curious as to be preserved in the palace. He had seen neither sea nor river nor ship, and had only a representation of a vessel in the middle of his handkerchief as a guide.

Sollier describes an imbecile girl of six years, unable to read or write or understand anything, yet gifted with the power to draw anything she saw. She copied perfectly all the letters of the alphabet without knowing their names or signification. She reproduced thus objects and also scenes of which she was witness, though she comprehended nothing about them.

Gottfried Mind was an imbecile who died in 1814. He was so skillful in the drawing and painting of cats that he achieved distinction and became known as the cat's Raphael. Many examples of his work are to be seen in European art galleries.

—Seguin cites the case of an idiot with extraordinary ability to play draughts, and there are one or two other instances of a similar kind on record. It is probable that such talent depends upon an unusual power of visualization, by which the necessary positions and moves are foreseen.

—It is not uncommon to meet among idiots, imbeciles, and feeble-minded cases with an aptitude for drollery, and for witty or humorous remarks and actions. Not infrequently it amounts to a true talent, and thus justifies including them among the idiots savants. At the present day the sayings and pranks of this class of defectives are seldom heard outside of institutions for their care, but there was a time in history when the quips and antics of the fools took the place of our comic papers of to-day. The dramas of Shakespeare have kept alive our knowledge of the fools of his day, for there are more than thirty of them who flaunt their weaknesses, folly, wisdom, and license through his plays. He depicts both natural and artificial fools, for these were the two classes of buffoons employed to amuse mediæval society. The origin of the custom, in England at least, seems to have been in the legal disposition of the persons and estates of idiots. They were given into the custody of the nobility and gentry, who profited sometimes by their estates, and, clothing them in the familiar livery, made them the butt of ridicule and practical jokes for the amusement of themselves and their guests and retainers. It is instructive and interesting to read in this connection Doran's History of Court Fools and Arnim's Nest of Ninnies. The latter book in particular throws light upon the nature of the custom of keeping domestic fools, and incidentally illuminates the civilization of the time. Here is Arnim's description of a court fool in the palace of the King of Scotland. He was a fat fool, a trifle over three feet high, two yards in circumference, at the age of forty years: