When the Greeks used the proverbial saying—τούτος ἄνθρωπος, "the dress shows the man"—they applied the pithy "saw" as much to the social condition as to the moral character of the individual. The "livery" has, accordingly, ever been taken to mark rather than distinguish the menial or the mercenary. The latter, however, resists the term, and claims for his dress the name of "uniform." When Charlemagne clothed his circus troops in green or blue costumes, he did not, as many have asserted, introduce the fashion of livery; he simply decked his mimic warriors in fancy dresses. The custom of livery is really derived from the term liberata or liberatio, a term applied to the delivery or distribution (made by the kings of the Merovingian and Carlovingian races) of particular sets of clothes to the servants throughout the palace, and at the sovereign's expense. In common phrase, this was called a livrée, and it was ordinarily performed in the plenary courts of France.

A term of similar signification was given to the distribution made by the early German emperors, and which consisted of uniform dresses and wages delivered into the hands of the servants of the imperial household.

In the days of chivalry, livery, in the proper sense of the word, often covered noble backs, without bringing disgrace thereon. The duke's son, as page to a prince, wore the prince's livery. The earl's second son, serving a duke, donned his master's coat and colours. The knight's second son was in a similar condition as an earl's servant. The esquire's son joyfully wore the livery of the knight whom he served; and the gentleman's son performed, in a similar dress, the duty of servant to the esquire. More than this, the younger brother of a nobleman has been known to serve his elder brother, and to wear, with all humility, the older kinsman's coat and badge.

This badge was formerly the indispensable accompaniment to the coat. "Livery and badge" are as old as the time of Edward IV. The badge was a cloth or silver circle, borne on the left arm, and carrying the crest of the wearer's master. It is still retained by a few noble families; and, as a fashion, it yet lingers on the coat sleeves of corporation watermen and the fraternity of firemen. At first, however, the mode was so general—the habit itself being blue, and the badge affixed to it—that the proverb arose, applicable to things or persons lacking ordinary appendages—"Like a blue coat without a badge."

The silver badge was probably peculiar to England, as it appears, in the time of Elizabeth at least, to have excited the astonishment of most foreign travellers. Laced cloaks were delivered to servants, in the reign of James I., according to the assertion of the gossiping Fynes Moryson, who further informs us that, sixty or seventy years before he was writing, A.D. 1617, coaches were very rare; but that at the date just mentioned, there was scarcely an elder brother who was without one; and that these cumbrous vehicles, with their liveried coachmen, continually "stopped the way." We get at an additional social trait connected with the wearers of livery, in the remark, that "Londoners say woe to him that taketh a servant from St Paul's church?"—in one of the aisles of which they walked about, waiting to be hired.

During a very considerable period, livery was worn by other common men besides salaried menials. The men alluded to were the "retainers" of noblemen. These retainers served for a year, and wore their hiree's livery. Their service was that of the strong hand, which was ever ready to be raised, and prompt to descend, in their masters' quarrels. They wore a full suit, and were a formidable body; so formidable that, without license, no noble could at last retain such followers. The law ordained, with some singularity, that a master was permitted to give livery only to his own household servants, officers, and counsel learned in the law! The act was evaded, and then the penalty of imprisonment which it awarded was increased by a fine of £5 per month for every retainer kept without license.

Henry VII. was, of all English sovereigns, the one who looked most sharply after the means of increasing his revenues; and, on one occasion, he applied this matter of unlicensed liveried retainers to that particular object. The king had been the guest of his old and faithful servant, the Earl of Oxford, at Henningham. Hospitality to a monarch was a heavy charge to the moderately wealthy earl, who, however, displayed a princely liberality. The king, at parting, told him that, much as his hospitality had been spoken of, his munificence exceeded report; and, as he spoke, Henry pointed to the long double row of liveried servants who lined each side of the way by which he passed. A man who could keep so many menial servants must be of princely means indeed. The earl, however, hastened to reply, that, in that sense, he was not their master. They were, he said, simply retainers of his who attended there to do him service, and partly out of curiosity "to see his grace." "Now, by my faith!" exclaimed Henry, "I may thank you, my lord, for your good cheer; but I may not endure to have my laws broken in my sight. My attorney must speak with you." The threatened colloquy was a costly one, for the poor earl was mulcted in the enormous sum, for the period, of £10,000, only for putting his livery on a few scores of backs, contrary to the statute of Henry's first parliament.

It has been observed of Queen Mary, that she granted more licenses by half, for permission to maintain liveried retainers, in five years, than her sister Elizabeth did in thirteen. In the briefer time, Mary granted thirty-nine licenses, while in the more extended period, Elizabeth signed only fifteen. Mary, too, sometimes gave permission to one man to maintain two hundred retainers; but Elizabeth never consented to allow more than one hundred to the same individual. Mary's bishop, Gardiner, had not less than two hundred of these liveried soldiers, rather than servants, while Elizabeth's archbishop, Parker, was permitted to raise only forty. The license to the latter, which is printed in the volume of the correspondence of the prelate, edited for the Parker Society by Mr Bruce and the Rev. T. T. Brown, is addressed by Elizabeth: "To all men," to whom it says, "Know ye this, of our special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, and by the advice of our council, we have given and granted full authority, power, and license, unto the most reverend Father in God, Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury, full authority..." Livery.

that he during his life; may lawfully, and without question, loss, damage, forfeiture, or other penalty, retain and keep in his service, from time to time, by way of retainers, over and besides all such persons as daily attend upon him in his household, and to whom he giveth meat, drink, livery, fee, or wages, and also over and besides all such persons as shall be under him in any office, of any stewardship, under-stewardship, bailiffry, keeper of park-houses, warrens, or other games of venere, pheasants, partridges, and other fowls of what kind soever, &c., the number of forty persons, gentlemen, or yeomen, though they be tenants to us, or resident within our honours, &c.; to give, at his pleasure, his livery, badge, or cognisance, &c., to do unto him their service, &c.; the said persons to be reputed, taken, and accepted, by virtue of this our grant and license, to all instructions, constructions, and intents, as of the daily attendants of the said archbishop in his household. Provided that this our grant shall not extend unto him to take or retain into his service any of our servants being named in our cheque roll, nor any other being sworn or retained to serve us as our said servant. And furthermore, we have pardoned and released to the archbishop all and every trespass, or acts of retainer heretofore had, or any contempt, violation, or forfeiture, &c., perpetrated or done since the first of January last past, contrary to any act of retainers, &c. In witness, &c., the 16th day of May, in the 3rd year of our reign."

Licenses and retainers were alike abolished in the reign of Charles II. Since that period, livery has only been worn by the lower class of male household servants. While a servant wears livery, he is addressed by his Christian name, but when he is promoted from the servants' hall to the steward's room company, he drops his baptismal, and is thenceforward distinguished by his surname. The coachman is the recognised chief of the liveried corps; and at meals he presides at the head of the table, by right of his office, in establishments where the liveried gentlemen take their repasts at a separate table. Many of the appendages of livery may be traced to fashions in dress once patronized by nobles. The long waistcoat of the groom is the old undercoat of the esquire, and the three-cornered hat of the coachman once figured at sovereign courts on aristocratic brows. It was driven out of fashion by being stigmatized as "an Egham, Staines, and Windsor," from the triangular direction-post to these places which it was said to resemble. There is one instance of waiters at a tavern wearing livery. It is noticed by Walpole, who describes the "drawers" at the King's Arms as being dressed in brown frocks with blue aprons. This seemed too poor for Sir Ralph Gore, who gave them laced clothes. In France, where the fashion of liveries was occasionally of extravagant splendour, and wealthy men delighted in feeling helpless, and maintaining a crowd of Frontins and Germans to minister to them, the fashion and the word so betokened a menial, that liveries were abolished by the Constituent National Assembly, as incompatible with a republican system founded on the imaginary tripod of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

In France, however, the laced brotherhood may boast of having had Rousseau for a member. It will be remembered that, when waiting at table, he corrected his master's faults in grammar. In England, Dodsley, the once well-known author and publisher in Pall Mall, commenced life in the same menial condition. He was footman in the service of the honourable Mrs Lowther when he published his first poetical work, "The Muse in Livery," with a long list of subscribers. The modest volume bore this epigraph:

"You laugh, and think 'twould be a jest To see a Muse in livery dress; But when I mount behind the coach, And bear aloft a flaming torch, Methinks on Pegazz I fly, With fire poetic blazing through the sky."

"What can be expected," he asks, "from the pen of a poor footman,—a character that expresses want both of friends, fortune, and all the advantages of a liberal education, or a polite converse." The liveried poet speaks of his natural genius as "depressed by the sense of his low condition; a condition," he adds, "from which he never hopes to rise, but by the goodness of Providence influencing some generous mind to support an honest and a grateful heart." His description of a liveried servant's daily life is portrayed with some spirit; and the following lines will serve to show how he made of the dinner hour a time for improving himself:

"This is the only pleasant hour Which I have in the twenty-four; For whilst I unregarded stand, With ready salver in my hand, And seem to understand no more Than just what's call'd for out to pour; I hear, and mark the courtly phrases, And all the elegance that praises; Disputes maintained without digression, With ready wit and fine expression; The laws of true politeness stated, And what good breeding is debated; Wherein am most exact and The main concern, the formal mode, The ceremonious and the rude; The flattering, fawning, praising train; The flattering, empty, noisy, vain; Detraction, smut, and what's profane."

Such was the footman who shared with Stephen Duck the patronage of the great; who wrote the Cleone, which gave immortality to the glittering beauty, Bellamy; who was the author of the once famous Economy of Human Life, which had the honour of being attributed to the pen of Chesterfield; and whose book-shop in Pall Mall was the resort of wits, statesmen, poets, philosophers, and fine gentlemen.

Dodsley lived and died in a century when footmen especially claimed and enjoyed a certain distinction. It was a century in which Lady Harriet Wentworth married Sturgeon, the favourite footman of her father, the Marquis of Rockingham. It was these favourite footmen who at the theatre occupied the seats retained in the boxes till the arrival of their mistresses. Their very crimes but took the guise of foibles; and Lady Mary Wortley Montague made a hero of a liveried Tarquin, named Arthur Gray. If they were esteemed living, they were sometimes honoured after death; and Walpole informs us how the old Duchess of Douglas, having lost her favourite footman in Paris, had his body embalmed, packed up in the front part of her own travelling carriage, and brought to England, under her personal escort, for interment! The dignity of the office was signified on one occasion by the state coachman of George II., who left a fortune to a son in plush,—a portion of which he was to forfeit, in the event of his condescending to marry a maid of honour. So puffed up, indeed, was this class of retainers by their fancied importance, that when the Rev. Mr Townley's farce of High Life Below Stairs was first represented, the exposure of these mock pretensions of the brotherhood was met, in the London and Edinburgh theatres, by such serious riots on the part of the "gentlemen's gentlemen," as to cause the abolition of their free admission to the gallery, and to bring upon them a hurricane of ridicule, beneath which their dignity and pretensions were wrecked for ever. The latter did not even revive when the late eccentric Lord Harrington "cut out" those shapeless livery coats for his own men, which, for a time, elicited more surprise than admiration on the part of all beholders. Many instances might be cited from the histories of the South Sea and Mississippi schemes, of footmen speculating into large fortunes, and occasionally, through forgetfulness, getting up behind, instead of into, the carriages which fortune had enabled them to set up. But the most striking example of the two extremes is in the case of "Baron Ward," who commenced life as a livery servant, and who ended his public career as prime minister of the late Duke of Parma.

The poets have made ample use of the menial word, and with poetic power have conferred on it a real dignity of application. One speaks of wearing the "virtuous livery" of his mistress; another puts "April's livery" on spring; Milton makes of twilight the "sober livery" of evening; and of a tropical complexion the "shadowed livery of the burnished sun." Hood has, with his usual happy facetiousness, described the livery of earth as a "grass-green turned up with brown;" and a French moralist places two parties on the same level by stating that "les ambitieux et les laquais portent indifféremment toutes les livrées."

The word "livery" is further applied to the 91 companies of the city of London. The members of these companies originally wore habiliments in form and colour resembling those of the lord mayor and sheriffs. The wardens of companies were accustomed annually to deliver to the Lord Mayor certain sums, twenty shillings of which were given to individuals who petitioned for the money, to enable them to procure sufficient cloth for a suit. When the companies thus wore their liveries, the splendour of the civic train was the pride of all good citizens.

There remains only to notice the word "livery" as a legal term. In this sense it implies to give and take possession. It also signifies a release from wardship; and, before written deeds were common, it was applied to that form of conveyance of copyhold estates, when the seller delivered a rod or wand to the lord, which the latter placed in the hands of the purchaser, in the presence of tenants, who were called upon to witness this act of "livery."

Finally, and to return to the earlier division of our subject, the reader is referred to Fielding's Joseph Andrews for a brief sketch of what the liveried footman of the last century was. He aped all the fashionable vices of the day; wore his hair in papers in the morning, and curled in the afternoon; criticised new operas, was riotous at the play, rather rollicking at church, and gave accommodation money to the steward for paying his wages half a year before they were usually payable, which was "perhaps half a year after they were due." It was a period when society was generally corrupted, and when masters were as proud of their vices as their servants were of their liveries.

(Livius, Titus, the most celebrated of the Roman historians, was descended from an illustrious family which had given several consuls to Rome. Only a few particulars of his life have been transmitted to us. He was born at Patavium, now Padua, in the N. of Italy, B.C. 59, the year before Cicero was driven into banishment; and died at the advanced age of seventy-six, A.D. 17, the same year as Ovid. He resided during the greater part of his life at Rome; and, if we may credit a statement of Suetonius (in Claud. 41), became the instructor of the Emperor Claudius. His history was written partly at Rome and partly at Naples, and it is said that his reputation was so widely diffused, that a native of Gades, now Cadiz, in Spain, actually visited Rome for no other purpose than to have the pleasure of forming an acquaintance with the historian. (Plin. Ep. ii. 3.) From some inscriptions found at Padua (in 1413), it has been asserted that Livy was twice married, and had two sons and four daughters; but this must rest merely on conjecture, as there were no doubt many of the same name in Padua. Seneca (Proem. v. Contr.), indeed, states that one of his daughters was married to L. Magius, the rhetorician.

Besides his history, we are acquainted with the titles of three other works of which he was the author; but not a fragment of them has been preserved. These were,—Epistolae ad Filium scripta, mentioned by Quintilian (i. 10); Dialogi, which Seneca (Epist. c.) hesitates whether he ought to class amongst historical or philosophical works; and Libri ex professo Philosophiae continentur. The loss, however, of these works is less a subject of regret than that of the greater part of his Roman History, or, as he himself modestly entitles it, Annals of the Roman People. This work extends from the building of the city to the year 744 (B.C. 9), when Drusus was carrying on war in Germany, and in which he died. Livy undertook this work probably at the suggestion of Augustus, when he was already far advanced in years. It consisted of 142 books, of which only thirty-five remain; and some of these (lib. xlii. xliii. xliv. xlv.) are in a very imperfect state. The first ten contain the history of Rome from its foundation to B.C. 294; the others (xxi.-xlv.) from B.C. 219 to B.C. 167, or from the beginning of the second Punic war to the end of the wars with Perseus and Gentius. Of the remaining books we possess only considerable fragments, with short epitomes, which have been supposed, though without any sufficient reason, to have been composed by the writer Florus. The whole were not discovered at one time, but were supplied partly from MS. belonging to the cathedral church of St Martin at Mayence, partly from one found in the convent of Lorsch, near Worms, and partly from a palimpsest in the Vatican, of which Niebuhr published a full copy at Berlin in 1820. No MS. has yet been discovered containing all the books now extant. There is, indeed, no loss that has befallen us in Roman literature at all to be compared to that which has left this history imperfect.

Livy follows a chronological arrangement in his history, and, like Dionysius of Halicarnassus, has adopted the Catoian era for his basis. He therefore supposed the city of Rome to have been founded B.C. 751, whereas Varro placed it two years earlier, B.C. 753. The sources from which he derived his information, more particularly for the earlier parts of his history, seem less worthy of belief, though he probably had recourse to the best within his reach. All the more ancient historical records had no doubt disappeared, and he could therefore only be acquainted with their statements through the medium of later annalists. For this early period he had recourse to the works of no Greek historian, unless we include amongst them that of L. Cincius Alimentus, who, though a Roman, wrote in the Greek language. This author served in the second Punic war, and is called by Livy (vii. 3) a most diligent investigator of ancient monuments. In the early part of the war he fell into the hands of Hannibal, and from him he received an account of his passage through Gaul and across the Alps, which he incorporated in his history. To the works of this writer Livy acknowledges himself much indebted. As to the sources from which he drew his materials for the second decade (xi.-xx.), which is lost, all that can be said is only matter of conjecture; but we know that Polybius was the principal writer whom he consulted, and that he followed that writer generally both in the arrangement of his materials and in the development of the story. It is not a sufficient answer to this that Livy seldom alludes to Polybius as his authority, since he does not think it necessary to cite the writer upon whom he depends for his information, unless on occasions where there is a difference of opinion. There is no doubt, that wherever he has adopted the statements of Polybius, we may place perfect confidence in the account; and yet, where they differ, we must not condemn Livy, who evidently consulted Roman authorities of undoubted credibi- Livy has been accused of a wilful perversion of the truth, of an undue partiality for his own country, and a desire to recommend himself to the favour of the nobility, by flattering their pride by the manner in which he records the deeds of their ancestors. But if he represents the characters of his countrymen in a different light from other writers, might he not suppose himself better able to appreciate their conduct? and if his love of country led him to conceal whatever might be prejudicial to them in the eyes of posterity, it was a fault for which he may be forgiven, though it certainly must be allowed to detract considerably from the value of his work. He has been accused also of superstition, because he has reported faithfully all the prodigies and omens in which those early ages abounded, and which seemed to have formed the principal part of their religion; but, he has several times observed, that he narrates those wonderful events because he found them in the ancient annalists whom he consulted, without meaning to vouch for their accuracy. Livy was evidently gifted by nature with a brilliant talent for narration, and for seizing the characteristic features of humanity. He was a poet, though without the power or perhaps the love of versifying. His rhetorical powers, too, were of the highest order; and, in the palmy state of the republic, he would have ranked among the first orators of his age. The periods of Livy are full and well rounded, in imitation of the style of Cicero; and indeed the age in which he lived would have tolerated no other mode of writing. It is strange that there should be any difficulty in discovering the political sentiments of the historian; but he felt that he was writing under the eye of a despot, however amiable, and he thought himself obliged to suppress many sentiments to which he would, in other circumstances, have given utterance. He was fully sensible of the degeneracy of his own days, and was glad to forget it by reviving the recollection of all that was glorious and noble in the past. He might also imagine that he could excite in the breasts of his countrymen a desire to emulate the heroic deeds of their ancestors, and might thus be the means of restoring the constitution of his country to its ancient form and strength.

It is said that Augustus accused him of being too favourable to the party of Pompey (Tacit. Ann. iv. 34); and we may therefore conclude that he was in his heart a partisan of the republic. It has been much disputed what Asinius Pollio (Quintil. viii. 1) meant by the accusation he brought against Livy of Patavinity (Patavinatus); but it seems the most likely conjecture that it was some provincialism in the language and style, perceptible to the refined ear of a Roman critic, though we can no longer discern it.

Livy's history was first printed at Rome, about the year 1469, by Sweynheym and Pannartz, in folio. Of this rare edition Lord Spencer is in possession of a fine copy; but the most exquisite one is that printed on vellum, which formerly belonged to the Imperial Library at Vienna, but was afterwards acquired by a private collector in England. Among the subsequent editions of the history may be mentioned that of Gronovius, who first placed the text upon a satisfactory basis by a collation of many MSS., of which the best edition is printed by Elzevir, 3 vols. 8vo, 1679; that of Leclerc, 10 vols. 8vo, Amsterdam, 1710, containing the supplements of Freinsheimius entire; that of Crevier, 6 vols. 4to, Paris, 1735. The standard edition is considered to be by Drakenborch, published at Leyden, in 7 vols. 4to, 1738-46. Later editions, by Ruperti, Göttingen, 1807; and of Bekker and Raschig, Leipzig, 1829, are of less value. There is a new edition by Alchelski, Berlin, 8vo, 1841, brought down to the end of the first decade; but perhaps Drakenborch, with the Commentaries of Lachmann, supplies every assistance necessary for the scholar. (See Schweiger's Handbuch der Classischen Bibliographie, Svo, Leipzig, 1832.) There are the following English translations:—Philemon Holland, folio, London, 1600-1659; Baker's, in many editions; and one published by John Hayes (London, 1744-45, 6 vols. 8vo), said to be executed by several hands; also one in Bohm's Classical Library, 1850.

Livius, Andronicus, a comic poet who flourished at Rome about 240 years before the Christian era. He was the first who turned the personal satires and Fescennine verses, so long the admiration of the Romans, into the form of a proper dialogue and regular play. Though the character of a player, so valued and applauded in Greece, was reckoned vile and despicable amongst the Romans, Andronicus acted a part in his dramatical compositions. Andronicus was the freedman of M. Livius Salinator, whose children he educated. His poetry had grown obsolete in the age of Cicero, whose nicety and judgment would not even recommend the reading of it. Horace mentions his dramas as popular in schools; but Suetonius says they were mere translations from the Greek. His Hymns are said to have been sung to propitiate the gods. A Latin Odyssey is attributed to him; but of this, as well as of his plays, tradition has only preserved the name.