THE PRAISE OF FOLLY 
 
THE 
 
 PRAISE or FOLLI 
 
 BY 
 
 DESIDEEIUS EEASMUS 
 
 Translated from the Latin. And containing 
 Holbein's Illustrations 
 
 LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS & CO 
 GLASGOW: THOMAS D. MORISON 
 
 1887 
 

 
 & 
 
 OIQ 
 
PEEFATOEY DEDICATION,. 
 
 IN my late travels from Italy into England, that I 
 might not trifle away my time in the rehearsal of 
 old wives' fables. I thought it more pertinent to 
 employ my thoughts in reflecting upon some past 
 studies, or calling to remembrance several of those 
 highly learned, as well as smartly ingenious friends, 
 I had left behind, among whom you, dear SIB,* were 
 represented as the chief. And whose memory, 
 while absent at this distance, I respect with no less 
 a complacency than I was wont while present to 
 enjoy your more intimate conversation. Which last 
 afforded me the greatest satisfaction, I could possibly 
 hope for. 
 
 Having therefore resolved to be a doing, and 
 deeming that time improper for any serious concerns, 
 
 * Sir Thomas Mo6re. 
 
PREFATORY DEDICATION. 
 
 I thought good to divert myself with drawing up 
 a panegyric upon Folly. How ! what maggot, says 
 you, put this in your head ? Why, the first hint, 
 Sir, was y,our. own surname of More, which in Greek, 
 comes as" hear the literal sound of the word as you 
 ',y4urs&]?f ar&''dt,stant from the signification of it, and 
 that in all men's judgments is vastly wide. In the 
 next place, I supposed that this kind of sporting 
 wit would be by you more especially accepted of. 
 By you, Sir, that are wont with this sort oj!ocose 
 tail}ery,_ such as, if I mistake not, is neither dull 
 nor impertinent, to be mightily pleased, and in 
 your ordinary converse to approve yourself a 
 Democritus junior. For truly, as you do from a 
 singular vein of wit very much dissent from the 
 common herd of mankind. 'So, by an incredible 
 affability and pliableness of temper, you have the 
 art of suiting your humour with all sorts of com- 
 panies. I hope therefore you will not only readily 
 accept of this rude essay as a token from your 
 friend ; but take it under your more immediate pro- 
 tection, as being dedicated to you, and by that 
 title adopted for yours, rather than to be fathered 
 as my own. 
 
PREFATORY DEDICATION. 
 
 And it is a chance if there be wanting some 
 quarrelsome persons that will shew their teeth, and 
 pretend these fooleries are either too^buffoon-like for 
 a grave divine, or too satirical for a meek Christian. 
 And so will exclaim against me as if I were vamping 
 up some old farce, or acted anew the Lucian again 
 with a peevish snarling at all things. But those 
 who are offended at the lightness and pedantry of 
 this subject, I would have them consider that I do 
 not set myself for the first example of this kind, 
 but that the same has been oft done by many con- 
 siderable authors. For thus several ages since, 
 Homer wrote of no more weighty a subject than 01 
 a war between the frogs and mice ; Virgil of a gnat 
 and a pudding-cake; and Ovid of a nut. Polycrates 
 commended the cruelty of Busiris ; and Isocrates, 
 who corrects him for this, did as much for the in- 
 justice of Glaucus. Favorinus extolled Thersites, 
 and wrote in praise of a quartan ague. Synesius 
 pleaded in behalf of baldness ; and Lucian defended 
 a sipping fly. Seneca drollingly related the deify- 
 ing of Claudius ; Plutarch the dialogue betwixt 
 Gryllus and Ulysses ; Lucian and Apuleius the 
 story of an ass. And somebody else records the last 
 
PREFATORY DEDICATION. 
 
 will of a hog, of which St. Hierom makes mention. 
 So that if they please, let themselves think the 
 worst of me, and fancy to themselves that I was 
 all this while a playing at push-pin, or riding astride 
 on a hobby-horse. 
 
 For how unjust is it, if when we allow different 
 recreations to each particular course of life, we 
 afford no diversion to studies. Especially when 
 trifles may be a whet to more serious thoughts, and 
 comical matters may be so treated of, so that a 
 reader of ordinary sense may possibly thence reap 
 more advantage than from some more big and 
 stately' argument. And while one in a long winded 
 oration descants in commendation of rhetoric or 
 philosophy, another in a fulsome harangue sets forth 
 the praise of his nation, a third makes a zealous 
 invitation to a holy war with the Turks, another 
 confidently sets up for a fortune-teller, and a fifth 
 states questions upon mere impertinences. But as 
 nothing is more childish than to handle a serious 
 subject in a loose, wanton style, so is there nothing 
 more pleasant than so to treat of trifles, as to make 
 them seem nothing less than what their name im- 
 ports. As to what relates to myself, I must be 
 
PREFATORY DEDICATION. 
 
 forced to submit to the judgment of others ; yet, 
 except that I am too partial to be judge in my own 
 case, I am apt to believe I have praised Folly in 
 such a mariner as not to have deserved the name 
 of fool for my pains. 
 
 To reply now to the objection of sj/dricalness. 
 Wits have been always allowed this privilege, that 
 they might be smart upon any transactions of life, 
 if so be their liberty did not extend to railing. 
 Which makes me wonder at the tender -eared 
 humour of this age, which will admit of no address 
 without the prefatory repetition of all formal titles. 
 Nay, you may find some so preposterously devout, 
 that they will sooner wink at the greatest affront 
 against our Saviour, than be content that a prince, 
 or a pope, should be nettled witlxthe lea^-joke^r 
 gird, especially injvvhat relates^ to their ordinary 
 customs. But he who so blames men's irregulari- 
 ties, as to lash at no one particular person by name^ 
 does he, I say, seem to_car_0properly as to teach 
 and instruct ? And if so, 
 make any farther excuse ? Beside, he who in his 
 strictures points indifferently at allTTie^sBBms not 
 angry at one man 3 but at all vices. 
 
PREFATORY DEDICATION. 
 
 Therefore, if any singly complain they are par- 
 ticularly reflected upon, they do but betray their 
 own guilt, at least their cowardice. Saint Hierom 
 dealt in the same argument at a much freer and 
 sharper rate ; nay, and he did not sometimes re- 
 frain from naming the persons. Whereas I have 
 not only stifled the mentioning any one person, but 
 have so tempered my style, as the ingenious reader 
 will easily perceive! I aimed at diversion rather than 
 satirel] Neither did I so far imitate Juvenal, as to 
 rake into the sink of vices to procure a laughter, 
 rather thanj^Eeate- a h^arfcy-f^Jbt^rreriee. If there 
 be any one that after all remains yet unsatisfied, 
 let him at least consider that there may be good 
 use made of being reprehended by Folly, which 
 since we have feigned as speaking, we must keep 
 up that character which is suitable to the person 
 introduced. 
 
 But why do I trouble you, Sir, with this need- 
 less apology, you that are so peculiar a patron ; as, 
 though the cause itself be none of the best, you 
 can at least give it the best protection. Farewell. 
 
THE PRAISE or FOLLY: 
 
 It is Folly Who Speaks. 
 
 |OW slightly soever I am esteemed in 
 the common vogue of the world, for I 
 well know how disingenuously Folly is 
 decried, even by those who are them- 
 selves the greatest fools, yet it is from my 
 influence alone that the whole universe receives jf 
 ho. ie Linen t of mirth and jollity. Of which this' 
 may be urged as a convincing argument, in that 
 as soon as I appeared to speak before this 
 numerous assembly all their countenances were 
 gilded over with a lively sparkling pleasantness. 
 
10 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 You soon welcomed me with so encouraging a look, 
 you spurred me on with so cheerful a hum, that 
 truly in all appearance, you seemed now flushed 
 with a good dose of reviving nectar, when as 
 just before, you sate drowsy and melancholy, as 
 if you were lately come out of some hermit's cell. 
 But as it is usual, that as soon as the sun peeps 
 from her eastern bed, and draws back the curtains 
 of the darksome night ; or as when, after a hard 
 winter, the restorative spring breathes a more en- 
 livening air, nature forthwith changes her apparel, 
 and all things seem to renew their age ; so at 
 the first sight of me you all unmask, and appear 
 in more lively colours. 
 
 That therefore which expert orators can scarce 
 effect by all their little artifice of eloquence, to 
 wit, a raising the attentions of their auditors to 
 a composedness of thought, this a bare look from 
 me has commanded. The reason why I appear 
 in -'tbrs^DtidJand of --garb, you shall soon be in- 
 formed of, if for so short a while you will have 
 but the patience to lend me an ear. Yet not such 
 a one as you are wont to hearken with to your 
 reverend preachers, but as you listen withal to 
 
! 
 I 
 
 
^V-:;:^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 11 
 
 TTIOIIJJ^NIIIJ^ buffoona, arH Tn^rry-ft-yH-^w g ; in 
 short, such as formerly were fastened to Midas, 
 as a punishment for his affront to the god Pan. 
 For I am now in a humour to act awhile the 
 sophist, yet not of that sort who undertake the v 
 drudgery of tyrannizing over ^chooLbo.ys, and teach 
 a more than womanish knack of brawling. But in 
 imitation of those ancient ones, who to avoid the 
 scandalous epithet of wise, preferred this title of 
 sophists ; the task of these was to celebrate the 
 worth of gods and heroes. Prepare therefore to be 
 entertained with a panegywer^et^riot upon Her- 
 
 cules, Solon, or any other grandee, kut^on myself, 
 that is, upon Folly. 
 
 AncnTere I value not their censure that pretend r?1 
 it is foppish and affected for any person to praise 
 himself. Yet let it be as silly as they please, if 
 they will but allow it needful : and indeed what is 
 more befitting than that Folly should be the trum- 
 pet of her own praise, and dance after her own 
 pipe ? For who can set me forth better than my- 
 self? Or who can pretend to be so well acquainted 
 with my condition ? 
 
 And yet further, I may safely urge, that all this 
 
12 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 is no more than the same with what is done by 
 several seemingly great and wise men, who with a 
 new-fashioned modesty employ some paltry orator 
 or scribbling poet, whom they brihe_to_flatter them 
 with some high-flown character, that shall consist 
 ojlmere ites-and shams. And yet the persons thus 
 extolled shall bristle up, and, peacock-like, bespread 
 their plumes, while the impudent parasite magnifies 
 the pppr_ wretch to the-skiesj-and proposes him as a 
 complete pattern of all virtues, from each of which 
 he is yet as far distant as heaven itself from hell. 
 What is all this in the mean while, but the tricking 
 up of a daw . in stolen feathers ; a labouring to 
 change the black-a-moor's hue, and the drawing on 
 a pigmy's frock over the shoulders of a giant. 
 
 Lastly, I verify the old observation, that allows 
 him a right of praising himself, who has nobody 
 else to do it for him : for really, I cannot but admire 
 at that ingratitude, shall I term it, or blockishness 
 ( of mankind, who when they all willingly pay to me 
 .] their utmost devoir, and freely acknowledge their 
 respective obligations. That notwithstanding this, 
 there should have been none so grateful or com- 
 plaisant as to have bestowed on me a coramenda- 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 13 
 
 tory oration, especially when there have not been 
 wanting such as at a great expense of sweat, and 
 loss of sleep, have in elaborate speeches, given high 
 encomiums to tyrants, agues, flies, baldness, and 
 
 i vi i CAV6M\ e. V o- ^. 
 
 such like trumperies. 
 
 I shall entertain you with a hasty and unpre- 
 meditated, but so much the more natural dis- 
 course. My venting it ex tempore, I would not 
 have you think proceeds from any principles of 
 vain glory by which ordinary orators square their 
 attempts, who, as it is easy to observe, when they 
 are delivered of a speech that has been thirty 
 years a conceiving, nay, perhaps at last, none of 
 their own, yet they will swear they wrote- it in 
 a great hurry, and upon very short warning. 
 Whereas the reason of my not being provided 
 beforehand is only because it was always my< 
 humour constantly to speak that which lies upper- 
 most. 
 
 ^ Next, let no one be so fond as to imagine, that 
 I should so far stint my invention to the method 
 of other pleaders, as first to define, and then 
 divide my subject, i.e., myself. For it is equally 
 hazardous to attempt the crowding her within the 
 
14 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 narrow limits of a definition, whose nature is of so 
 diffusive an extent, or to mangle and disjoin that, 
 to the adoration whereof all nations unitedly con- 
 cur. Beside, to what purpose is it to lay down a 
 definition for a faint resemblance, and mere shadow 
 of me, while appearing here personally, you may 
 view me at a more certain light ? And if your 
 eye-sight fail not, you may at first blush discern 
 me to be her whom the Greeks term MwpU, the 
 Latins stultitia. 
 
 But why need I have been so impertinent as to 
 have told you this, as if my very looks did not 
 sufficiently betray what I am ; or supposing any be 
 so credulous as to take me for some sage matron 
 or goddess of wisdom, as if a single glance from 
 me would not immediately correct their mistake, 
 while iny visage, the exact reflex of my soul, would 
 supply and supersede the trouble of any other 
 confessions. For I appear always in my natural 
 colours, and an unartificial dress, and never let my 
 face pretend one thing, and my heart conceal an- 
 other. Nay, and in all things I am so true to my 
 principles, that I cannot be so much as counter- 
 feited, even by those who challenge the name of 
 

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 15 
 
 witsjj yet indeed are no better than jackanapes 
 tripped up in gawdy clothes, and asses strutting in 
 lions' skins ; and how cunningly soever they carry 
 it, their long ears appear, and betray what they are. 
 These in troth are very rude and disingenuous, 
 for while they apparently belong to my party, yet 
 among the vulgar they are so ashamed of my rela- 
 tion, as to cast it in others' dish for a shame and 
 reproach : wherefore since they are so eager to be 
 accounted wise, when in truth they are extremely 
 silly, what, if to give them their due, I dub them 
 with the title of wise fools. And herein they copy 
 after the example of some modern orators, who 
 swell to that proportion of conceitedness. as to 
 vaunt themselves for so many giants of eloquence, 
 if with a double-tongued fluency they can plead ; 
 indifferently for either side, and deem it a very 
 doughty exploit if they can but interlard a Latin 
 sentence with some Greek word, which for seeming 
 garnish they crowd in at a venture. And rather 
 than be at a stand for some cramp words, they will 
 furnish up a long scroll of old obsolete terms 
 out of some musty author, and foist them in, 
 to amuse the reader with, that those who under- 
 
16 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 stand them may be tickled with the happiness of 
 being acquainted with them : and those who under- 
 stand them not, the less they know the more they 
 may admire. Whereas it has been always a 
 custom to those of our side to contemn and under- 
 value whatever is strange and unusual, while those 
 that are better conceited of themselves will nod 
 and smile, and prick up their ears, that they 
 may be thought easily to apprehend that, of 
 which perhaps they do not understand one word. 
 And so much for this ; pardon the digression, now 
 I return. 
 
 Of my name I have informed you, Sirs ; what 
 additional epithet to give you I know not, except 
 you will be content with that of most foolish ; for 
 under what more proper appellation can the god- 
 dess Folly greet her devotees ? But since there 
 are few acquainted with my family and original, I 
 will now give you some account of my extraction. 
 $ First then, my father was neither the chaos, 
 nor hell, nor Saturn, nor Jupiter, nor any of 
 those old, worn out, grandsire gods, but Plutus, 
 the, very same that, maugre Homer, Hesiod, nay, 
 in spite of Jove himself, was the primary father 
 
 

 3 
 
 I 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 17 
 
 of the universe. At whose alone beck, for all 
 ages, religion and civil policy, have been succes- 
 sively undermined and re-established ; by whose 
 powerful influence war, peace, empire, debates, 
 justice, magistracy, marriage, leagues, compacts, 
 laws, arts; I have almost run myself out of breath, 
 but in a word, all affairs of church and state, and 
 business of private .concern, are severally ordered 
 and administered. Without whose assistance all 
 the Poets' gang of deities, nay, I may be so bold 
 as to say the very major-domos of heaven, would 
 either dwindle into nothing, or at least be confined 
 to their respective homes without any ceremonies 
 of devotional address. Whoever he combats with 
 as an enemy, nothing can be armour-proof against 
 his assaults ; and whosoever he sides with as a 
 friend, may grapple at even hand with Jove, and 
 all his bolts. 
 
 Of such a father I may well brag ; and he begot 
 me, not of his brain, as Jupiter did the hag Pallas, 
 but of a pretty young nymph, famed for wit no less 
 than beauty v''/ And this was not done in dull wed- 
 lock, but what gave a greater pleasure, it was done 
 at a stolen moment, as we may modestly phrase it. 
 
18 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 But to prevent your mistaking me, I would have 
 you understand that my father was not that 
 Plutus in Aristophanes, old, dry, withered, sapless 
 and blind ; but the same in his younger and brisker 
 days, and when his veins were more impregnated, 
 and the heat of his youth somewhat higher in- 
 flamed by a chirping cup of nectar, which he had 
 just before drank very freely of, at a merry-meeting 
 of the gods. 
 
 //'And now presuming you may be inquisitive after 
 my birth-place, the quality of the place we are born 
 in, being now looked upon as a main ingredient of 
 gentility. I was born neither in the floating Delos, 
 nor on the frothy sea, nor in any of these privacies, 
 where too forward mothers are wont to retire for 
 undiscovered delivery. But in the fortune islands, 
 where all things grow without the toil of hus- 
 bandry, wherein there is no drudgery, no distem- 
 pers, no old age, where in the fields grow no 
 daflbdills, mallows, onions, pease, beans, or such 
 kind of trash, but there give equal divertisement to 
 our sight and smelling, rue, all-heal, bugloss, mar- 
 joram, herb of life, roses, violets, hyacinth, and such 
 like fragrances as perfume the gardens of Adonis. 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 19 
 
 And being born amongst these delights, I did not, 
 like other infants, come crying into the world, but 
 perked up, and laughed immediately in my mother's 
 face./ And there is no reason I should envy Jove 
 for having a she-goat to his nurse, since I was more 
 creditably suckled by two jolly nymphs ; the name 
 of the first drunkenness, one of Bacchus's offspring, 
 the other ignorance, the daughter of Pan ; both 
 which you may here behold among several others of 
 my train and attendants, whose particular names, if 
 you would fain know, I will give you in short. 
 ^/This, who goes with a mincing gait, and holds 
 up her head so high, is Self-Love. She that looks 
 so spruce, and makes such a noise and bustle, is 
 Flattery. That other, which sits hum-drum, as if 
 she were half asleep, is called ^r^etfulness. She 
 that leans on her elbow, and sometimes yawningly 
 stretches out her arms, is Laziness. This, that 
 wears a plighted garland of flowers, and smells 
 so perfumed, is Pleasure. The other, which ap- 
 pears in so smooth a skin, and pampered-up 
 flesh, is Sensuality. She that stares so wildly, 
 and rolls about her eyes, is Madness. As to 
 those two gods whom you see playing among 
 
20 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 the lasses, the name of the one is Intemperance, 
 the other SoujidJSleep. By the help and service 
 of this retinue I bring all things under the verge 
 of my power, lording it over the greatest kings 
 and potentates. / 
 
 You have now heard of my descent, my edu- 
 cation, and my attendance ; that I may not be 
 taxed as presumptuous in borrowing the title of 
 a goddess, I come now in the next place to ac- 
 quaint you what obliging favours I everywhere 
 bestow, and how largely my jurisdiction extends : 
 for if. as one has ingenuously noted, to be a god 
 is no other than to be a benefactor of mankind : 
 and if they have been thought deservedly deified 
 who have invented the use of wine, corn, or any 
 other convenience for the well-being of mortals, 
 why may not I justly bear the van among the 
 whole troop of gods, who in all, and toward all, 
 exert an unparalleled bounty and beneficence ? 
 
 For instance, in the first place, what can be 
 more dear and precious than life itself? And yet 
 for this are none beholden, save to me alone. 
 For it is neither the spear of throughly-begotten 
 Pallas, nor the buckler of cloud-gathering Jove, 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 21 
 
 that multiplies and propagates mankind : but 
 that prime father of the universe, who at a dis- 
 pleasing nod makes heaven itself to tremble. He, ^ 
 I say, must lay aside his frightful ensigns of\ ' 
 majesty, and put away that grim aspect where- 
 with he makes the other gods to quake, and, stage 
 player-like, must lay aside his usual character, if 
 he would do that, the doing whereof he cannot 
 refrain from, i,e., getting of children. 
 
 The next place to the gods is challenged by the 
 Stoics. But give me one as stoical as ill-nature 
 can make him, and if I do not prevail on him to 
 part with his beard, that bush of wisdom, though 
 no other ornament than what nature in more 
 ample manner has given to goats, yet at least he 
 shall lay by his gravity, smooth up his brow, 
 relinquish' his rigid tenets, and in despite of 
 prejudice become sensible of some passion in 
 wanton sport and dallying. In a word, this 
 dictator of wisdom shall be glad to take Folly for 
 his diversion, if ever he would arrive to the honour 
 of a father. 
 
 And why should I not tell my story out ? To 
 proceed then. Is it the head, the face, the 
 
22 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 breasts, the hands, the ears, or other more comely 
 parts, that serve for instruments of generation ? I 
 trow not, but it is that member of our body which 
 is so odd and uncouth as can scarce be mentioned 
 without a smile. This part, I say, is that fountain 
 of life, from which originally spring all things in a 
 truer sense than from the elemental seminary. 
 Add to this, what man would be so silly as to run 
 his head into the collar of a matrimonial noose, if, 
 as wise men are wont to do, he had before-hand 
 duly considered the inconveniences of a wedded 
 life ? Or indeed what woman would accept a 
 husband, if she did but forecast the pangs of child- 
 birth, and the plague of being a nurse ? 
 
 Since then you owe your birth to the bride-bed, 
 and what was preparatory to that, the solemnizing 
 .. of marriage to my waiting-woman Madness/ you 
 cannot but acknowledge how much you are in- 
 debted to me. Beside, those who had once dearly 
 bought the experience of their folly, would never 
 re-engage themselves in the same entanglement by 
 a second match, if it were not occasioned by the 
 forgetfulness of past dangers. And Venus herself, 
 whatever Lucretius pretends to the contrary, can- 
 
1 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 not deny, but that with out^myjassis tan ce, her pro- 
 creative power would prove weak and ineffectual. 
 It was from my sportive and tickling recreation 
 that proceeded the old crabbed philosophers, and 
 those who now supply their stead, the mortified 
 monks and friars. As also kings, priests, arid 
 popes, nay, the whole tribe of poetic gods, who are 
 at last grown so numerous, as in the camp of 
 heaven, though ne'er so spacious, to jostle for elbow 
 room. 
 
 & But it is not sufficient to have made it appear 
 that I am the source and original of all life, except^ 
 I likewise shew that all the benefits of life are 
 equally at my disposal. And what are such ? 
 Why, can any one be said properly to live to 
 whom pleasure is denied? You will give me your 
 assent ; for there is none I know among you so 
 wise shall I say, or so silly, as to be of a contrary 
 opinion. The Stoics indeed contemn, and pretend 
 to banish pleasure ; but this is only a dissembling 
 trick, and a putting the vulgar out of conceit with 
 it, that they may more quietly engross it to them- 
 selves ; but I dare them now to confess what one 
 stage of life is not melancholy, dull, tiresome, 
 
24 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 i tedious, and uneasy, unless we spice it with 
 pleasure, that hautgoust of Folly. Of the truth 
 whereof, the never - enough to be commended 
 Sophocles is sufficient authority, who gives me the 
 highest character in that sentence of his, 
 
 To know nothing is the sweetest life. 
 
 Yet abating from this, let us examine the case 
 more narrowly. Who knows not that the first 
 scene of infancy is far the most pleasant and 
 delightsome ? What, then, is it in children that 
 makes us fo kiss, hug, and play with them, and 
 that the bloodiest enemy can scarce have the heart 
 to hurt them ; but their ingredients of innocence 
 and Folly ? Of which nature out of providence did 
 purposely compound and blend their tender infancy, 
 that by a frank return of pleasure they might make 
 some sort of amends for their parents' trouble, and 
 give in caution as it were for the discharge of a 
 future education ; the next advance from childhood 
 is youth, and how favourably is this dealt with ; 
 how kind, courteous, and respectful are all to it ? 
 and how ready to become serviceable upon all 
 
 occasions ? 
 
 And whence reaps it this happiness ? Whence 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 25 
 
 indeed, but jrom_. me. only, by whose procurement 
 it is furnished with little of wisdom, and so with 
 the less of disquiet ? And when once lads begin 
 to grow up, and attempt to write man, their pretti- 
 ness does then soon decay, their briskness flags, 
 their humours stagnate, their jollity ceases, and 
 their blood grows cold; and the further they pro- 
 ceed in years, the more they grow backward in the 
 enjoyment of themselves, till waspish old age comes 
 on, a burden to itself as well as others, and that so 
 heavy and oppressive, as none would bear the 
 weight of, unless out of pity to their sufferings. 
 
 I again intervene, and lend a helping hand, 
 assisting them at a dead lift, in the same method 
 the poets feign their gods to succour dying men, by 
 transforming them into new creatures, which I do 
 by bringing them back, after they have one foot in 
 the grave, to their infancy again ; so as there is a 
 great deal of truth couched in that old proverb, 
 " Once an old man, and twice a child." Now if any 
 one be curious to understand what course I take to 
 effect this alteration, my method is this. I bring 
 them to my well of forgetful ness, the fountain 
 whereof is in the Fortunate Islands, and the river 
 
26 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 Lethe in hell but a small stream of it, and when 
 they have there filled their bellies full, and washed 
 down care, by the virtue and operation whereof they 
 become young again. [ Ay, but, say you, they merely 
 dote, and play the fool. Why yes, this is what I 
 f mean by growing young again, j For what else is it to 
 / be a child than to be a fool and an idiot ? It is the 
 1 being such that makes that age so acceptable : for 
 who does not esteem it somewhat ominous to see a 
 boy endowed with the discretion of a man, and there- 
 fore for the curbing of too forward parts we have a 
 disparaging proverb, " Soon ripe, soon rotten ? " 
 
 And farther, who would keep company or have 
 any thing to do with such an old blade, as, after the 
 wear and harrowing of so many years should yet 
 continue of as clear a head and sound a judgment 
 as he had at any time been in his middle -age. And 
 therefore it is great kindness of me that old men 
 grow fools, since it is hereby only that they are 
 freed from such vexations as would torment them 
 if they were more wise : they can drink briskly, bear 
 up stoutly, and lightly pass over such infirmities, as 
 a far stronger constitution could scarce master. 
 Sometime, with the old fellow in Plautus, they are 
 
I 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 27 
 
 brought back to their horn-book again, to learn to 
 spell their fortune in love. / Most wretched would 
 they needs be if they had but wit enough to be 
 sensible of their hard condition ; but by my assist- 
 ance, they carry off all well, and to their respective 
 friends approve themselves good, sociable, jolly 
 companions. Thus Homer makes aged Nestor famed 
 for a smooth oily-tongued orator, while the delivery 
 of Achilles was but rough, harsh, and hesitant ; and 
 the same poet elsewhere tells us of old men that 
 sate on the walls, and spake with a great deal of 
 flourish and elegance. 
 
 o 
 
 And in this point indeed they surpass and outgo 
 children, who are pretty forward in a softly, innocent 
 prattle, but otherwise are too much tongue-tied, and 
 want the other's most acceptable embellishment of 
 a perpetual talkativeness. Add to this, that old 
 men love to be playing with children, and children 
 delight as much in them, to verify the proverb, that 
 "Birds of a feather flock together." And indeed 
 what difference can be discerned between them, but 
 that the one is more furrowed with wrinkles, and 
 has seen a little more of the world than the other ? 
 For otherwise their whitish hair, their want of teeth, 
 
28 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 their smallness of stature, their milk diet, their bald 
 crowns, their prattling, their playing, their short 
 memory, their heedlessness, and all their other en- 
 dowments, exactly agree. And the more they ad- 
 vance in years the nearer they come back to their 
 cradle, till like children indeed, at last they depart 
 the world, without any remorse at the loss of life, 
 or sense of the pangs of death. 
 
 And now let any one compare the excellency of 
 my metamorphosing power to that which Ovid at- 
 tributes to the gods ; their strange feats in some 
 drunken passions we will omit for their credit sake, 
 and instance only in such persons as they pretend 
 great kindness for; these they transformed into 
 trees, birds, insects, and sometimes serpents. But 
 alas, their very change into somewhat else argues 
 the destruction of what they were before. Whereas 
 I can restore the same numerical man to his pristine 
 state of youth, health and strength ; yea, what is 
 more, if men would but so far-ponsult , their own 
 interest, as to discard all thoughts of wisdom, and 
 entirely resign themselves to my guidance and con- 
 duct, old age should be a paradox, and each man's 
 years a perpetual spring. 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 29 
 
 For look how your hard plodding students, by a 
 close sedentary confinement to their books, grow 
 mopish, pale, and meagre, as if by a continual 
 wrack of brains, and torture of invention, their 
 veins were pumped dry, and their whole body 
 squeezed sapless, whereas my followers are smooth, 
 plump, and bucksome, and altogether as lusty as so 
 many bacon-hogs, or sucking calves, never in their 
 career of pleasure to be arrested with old age, if 
 they could but keep themselves untainted from the 
 contagiousness of wisdom, with the leprosy whereof, 
 if at any time they are infected,[it is only for pre- 
 vention, lest they should otherwise have been too 
 happy. 
 
 For a more ample confirmation of the truth of 
 what foregoes, it is on all sides confessed, that 
 Folly is the best preservative of youth, and the 
 most effectual antidote against age. Arid it is a 
 never-failing observation made of the people of 
 Brabant, that, contrary to the proverb of " Older 
 and wiser/' the more ancient they grow, the more 
 fools they are ; and there is not any one country, 
 whose inhabitants enjoy themselves better, and rub 
 through the world with more ease and quiet. To 
 
30 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 these are nearly related, as well by affinity of 
 customs, as of neighbourhood, my friends the 
 Hollanders. Mine I may well call them, for they 
 stick so close and lovingly to me, that they are 
 styled fools to a proverb, and yet scorn to be 
 ashamed of their name. Well, let fond mortals go 
 now in a needless quest of some Medea, Circe, 
 Venus, or some enchanted fountain, for a resto- 
 rative of age, whereas the accurate performance 
 of this feat lies only within the ability of my art 
 and skill. 
 
 / It is I only who have the receipt of making that 
 liquor wherewith Memnon's daughter lengthened 
 out her grandfather's declining days : it is I that 
 am that Venus, who so far restored the languishing 
 Phaon, as to make Sappho fall deeply in love with 
 his beauty. /J/U Mine are those herbs, mine those 
 charms, that not only lure back swift time, when 
 past and gone, but what is more to be admired, clip 
 its wings, and prevent all farther flight. So then, 
 if you will all agree to my verdict, that nothing is 
 more desirable than the being young, nor any thing 
 more loathed than contemptible old age, you must 
 needs acknowledge it as an unrequitable obligation 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 31 
 
 from me, for fencing off the one, and perpetuating 
 the other. 
 
 But why should I confine my discourse to the 
 narrow subject of mankind only ? View the whole 
 heaven itself, and then tell me what one of that 
 divine tribe would not be mean and despicable, if 
 my name did not lend him some respect and 
 authority. /? Why is Bacchus always painted as a 
 young man, but only because he is freakish, drunk, 
 and mad ; and spending his time in toping, dancing, 
 masking, and revelling, seems to have nothing in 
 the least to do with wisdom ? Nay, so far is he 
 from the affectation of being accounted wise, that 
 he is content, all the rights of devotion which are 
 paid unto him should consist of apishness and 
 drollery. Farther, what scoffs and jeers did not 
 the old comedians throw upon him ? swinish 
 punch-gut god, say they, that smells rank of the 
 sty he was sowed up in, and so on.// ^^ 2 
 
 But prithee, who in this case, always merry, 
 youthful, soaked in wine, and drowned in pleasure, 
 who, I say, in such a case, would change conditions, 
 either with the lofty menace-looking Jove, the 
 grave, yet timorous Pan, the stately Pallas, or 
 
32 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 indeed any one other of heaven's landlords ? Why 
 is Cupid feigned as a boy, but only because he is an 
 under- witted whipster, that neither acts nor thinks 
 any thing with discretion ? Why is Y^nus adored 
 for the mirror of beauty, but only because she and 
 I claim kindred, she being of the same complexion 
 with my father Plutus, and therefore called by 
 Homer the Golden Goddess ? Beside, she imitates 
 me in being always a laughing, if either we believe 
 the poets, or their near kinsmen the painters, the 
 first mentioning, the other drawing her constantly 
 in that posture. Add farther, to what deity did 
 the Romans pay a more ceremonial respect than to 
 Flora, that bawd of obscenity ? And if any one 
 search the poets for any historical account of the 
 gods, he shall find them all famous for lewd pranks 
 and debaucheries. 
 
 It is needless to insist upon the miscarriages of 
 others, when the lecherous intrigues of Jove him- 
 self are so notorious, and when the pretendedly 
 chaste Diana so oft uncloaked her modesty to run a 
 hunting after her beloved Endymion. But I will 
 say no more, for I had rather they should be told of 
 their faults by Momus, who was wont formerly to 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 33 
 
 sting them with some close reflections, till nettled 
 by his abusive raillery, they kicked him out of 
 heaven for his sauciness of daring to reprove such as 
 were beyond corre6tion : r and now in his banish- 
 ment from heaven he finds but cold entertainment 
 here on earth, nay, is denied all admittance into 
 the court of princes, where notwithstanding my 
 handmaid Flattery finds a most encouraging wel- 
 come : but this petulant monitor being thrust out 
 of doors, the gods can now more freely rant and 
 revel, and take their whole swing of pleasure. 
 
 Now the beastly Priapus may recreate himself 
 without contradiction in lust and filthiness, now the 
 sly Mercury may, without discovery, go on in his 
 thieveries, and nimble-fingered juggles, the sooty 
 Vulcan may now renew his w r onted custom of 
 making the other gods laugh by his hopping so 
 limpingly, and coming off with so many dry jokes, 
 and biting repartees. Silenus, the old doting lover, 
 to shew his activity, may now dance a frisking jig, 
 and the nymphs be at the same sport naked. The 
 goatish satyrs may make up a merry ball, and Pan, 
 the blind harper may put up his bagpipes, and sing 
 bawdy catches, to which the gods, especially when 
 
34 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 they are almost drunk, shall give a most profound 
 attention. But why would I any farther rip open 
 and expose the weakness of the gods, a weakness so 
 childish and absurd, that no man can at the same time 
 keep his countenance, and make a relation of it ? 
 
 Now therefore, like Homer's wandering muse, I 
 will take my leave of heaven, and come down again 
 bere below, where we shall find nothing happy, 
 nay, nothing tolerable, without my presence 
 and assistance. And in the first place con- 
 sider how providently nature has took care 
 that in all her works there should be some 
 piquant smack and relish of Folly, for since the 
 Stoics define wisdom to be conducted by reason, 
 and folly nothing else but the being hurried by 
 passion, lest our life should otherwise have been too 
 dull and inactive, that creator, who out of clay first 
 tempered and made us up, put into the composition 
 of our humanity more than a pound of passions to 
 an ounce of reason ; and reason he confined within 
 "C the narrow cells of the brain, whereas he left 
 passions the whole body to range in. 
 
 Farther, he set up two sturdy champions to 
 stand perpetually on the guard, that reason might 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 35 
 
 make no assault, surprise, nor in-road. Anger, which 
 keeps its station in the fortress of the heart, and 
 lust, which like the signs Yirgo and Scorpio, 
 rules the belly and secret members. Against the 
 forces of these two warriors how unable is reason to 
 bear up and withstand, every day's experience does 
 abundantly witness. While let reason be never so 
 importunate in urging and reinforcing her admoni- 
 tions to virtue, yet the passions bear all before them , 
 and by the least offer of curb or restraint grow but 
 more imperious, till reason itself, for quietness sake, 
 is forced to desist from all further remonstrance. 
 
 But because it seemed expedient that man, who 
 was born for the transaction of business, should have 
 so much wisdom as should fit and capacitate him 
 for the discharge of his duty herein, and yet lest 
 such a measure as is requisite for this purpose might 
 prove too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with 
 for an antidote, who prescribed this infallible recipe 
 of taking a wife, a creature so harmless and silly, 
 and yet so useful and convenient, as might mollify 
 and make pliable the stiffness and morose humour 
 of man. Now that which made Plato doubt under 
 which genus to rank woman, whether among brutes 
 
36 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the 
 
 extreme stupidness and folly of that sex. A sex 
 
 so unalterably simple, that for any of them to 
 
 thrust forward, and reach at the name of wise, is but 
 
 to make themselves the more remarkable fools, such 
 
 as endeavour, being but a swimming against the 
 
 stream, nay, the turning the course of nature, the 
 
 bare attempting whereof is as extravagant as the 
 
 effecting of it is impossible. For as it is a trite 
 
 1\ proverb, " That an ape will be an ape, though clad 
 
 l|in purple;" so a woman will be a woman, i.e., a 
 
 \ \ fool, whatever disguise she takes up. /I 
 
 And yet there is no reason women should take it 
 amiss to be thus charged ; for if they do but 
 rightly consider they will find it is to Folly they 
 are beholden for those endowments, wherein they 
 so far surpass and excel man. As first, for their 
 unparalleled beauty, by the charm whereof they 
 tyrannize over the greatest tyrants. For what is 
 1 it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes 
 men so tawny and thin-skinned, so rough and 
 prickly-bearded, like an emblem of winter or old 
 age, while women have such dainty smooth cheeks, 
 such a low gentle voice, and so pure a complexion, 
 

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 37 
 
 as if nature had drawn them for a standing pattern 
 of all symmetry and comeliness ? Beside, what 
 greater or juster aim and ambition have they than 
 to please their husbands ? In order whereunto 
 they garnish themselves with paint, washes, curls, 
 perfumes, and all other mysteries of ornament ; yet 
 after all they become acceptable to them only for 
 their Folly. Wives are always allowed their 
 humour, yet it is only in exchange for gratification! 
 and pleasure, which indeed are but other names iorj 
 Folly. - 
 
 But now some blood-chilled old men, that are ] 
 more for wine than wenching, will pretend, that in / 
 their opinion the greatest happiness consists in 
 feasting and drinking. Grant it be so, yet certainly 
 in the most luxurious entertainments it is Folly 
 must give the sauce and relish to the daintiest 
 cates and delicacies ; so that if there be no one of 
 the guests naturally fool enough to be played upon 
 by the rest, they must procure some comical buffoon, 
 that by his jokes, and flouts, and blunders shall 
 make the whole company split themselves with 
 laughing. For to what purpose were it to be 
 stuffed and crammed with so many dainty bits, 
 
38 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 savoury dishes, and toothsome rarities, if after all 
 this epicurism of the belly, the eyes, the ears, and 
 the whole mind of man, were not as well foistred 
 and relieved with laughing, jesting, and such like 
 divertisements, which like second courses serve for 
 the promoting of digestion ? 
 
 And as to all those shooing horns of drunken- 
 ness, the keeping every one his man, the throwing 
 hey -jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two 
 in a hand, the beginning of mistress' healths. And 
 then the roaring out of drunken catches, the 
 calling in a fiddler, the leading out every one his 
 lady to dance, and such Kke riotous pastimes, these 
 were not taught or dictated by any of the wise men 
 of Greece, but of Gotham rather, being my in- 
 vention, and by me prescribed as the best preser- 
 vative of health : each of which, the more ridiculous 
 it is, the more welcome it finds. And indeed to 
 jog sleepingly through the world, in a dumpish 
 melancholy posture cannot properly be said to 
 live, but to be wound up as it were in a winding- 
 sheet before we are dead, and so to be shuffled 
 quick into a grave, and buried alive. 
 
 But there are yet others perhaps that have no 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 39 
 
 gust in this sort of pleasure, but place their great- 
 est content in the enjoyment of friends, telling 
 us that true friendship is to be preferred before 
 alLoth er acquirements. That it is a thing so use- 
 ful ancl^iecessary, as the very elements could not 
 long subsist without a natural combination ; so 
 pleasant that it affords as warm an influence as 
 the sun itself; so honest, if honesty in this case 
 deserve any consideration, that the very philoso- 
 phers have not stuck to place this as one among 
 the rest of their different sentiments of the chiefest 
 good. But what if I make it appear that I also 
 am the main spring and original of this endear- 
 ment ? Yes, I can easily demonstrate it, and that 
 not by crabbed syllogisms, or a crooked and unin- 
 telligible way of arguing, but can make it as the 
 proverb goes, " As plain as the nose on your face." 
 Well then, to scratch and curry one another, to 
 wink at a friend's faults ; nay, to cry up some 
 failings for virtuous and commendable, is not this 
 the next door to the being a fool? When one 
 looking steadfastly in hisnmsi^ess^Suice, admires a 
 mole as much as a beauty spot. When another 
 swears his lady's bad breath is a most redolent 
 
40 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 perfume. And at another time the fond parent 
 hugs the squint-eyed child, and pretends it is 
 rather a becoming glance and winning aspect than 
 any blemish of the eye-sight, what is all this but 
 the very height of Folly ? Folly, I say, that both 
 makes friends and keeps them so. I speak of 
 mortal men only, among whom there are none but 
 have some small faults ; he is most happy that has 
 fewest. If we pass to the gods, we shall find that 
 they have so much of wisdom, as they have very 
 little of friendship ; nay, nothing of that which is 
 true and hearty. 
 
 The reason why men make a greater improve- 
 ment in this virtue, is only because they are more 
 credulous and easy natured ; for friends must be of 
 the same humour and inclinations too, or else the 
 league of amity, though made with never so many 
 protestations, will be soon broke. Thus grave and 
 morose men seldom prove fast frienHs ; they are 
 too captious and censorious, and will not bear with 
 one another's infirmities ^ they are as eagle sighted 
 as may be in the espial of others' faults, while they 
 wink upon themselves, and never mind the beam 
 in their own eyes. ^In short, man being by nature 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 41 
 
 so prone to frailties, so humoursome and cross- 
 grained, and guilty of so many slips and miscar- 
 riages, there could be no firm friendship contracted, 
 except there be such an allowance made for each 
 others' defaults, which the Greeks term 'Ewj0 a> and 
 we may construe good nature, which is but another 
 word for_ Folly. 1 And what ? Is not Cupid, that 
 first father of all relation, is not he stark blind, 
 that as he cannot himself distinguish of colours, so 
 he would make us as mope-eyed in judging falsely 
 of all love concerns, and wheedle us into a thinking 
 that we are always in the right ? 
 
 Thus every Jack sticks to his own Jill ; every 
 tinker esteems his own trull ; and the hob-nailed ' 
 suitor prefers Joan the milk-maid before any of my 
 lady's daughters. These things are true, and are 
 ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however ridiculous 
 they seem, it is hence only that all societies receive 
 their cement and consolidation. J 
 
 The same which has been said of friendship is 
 much more applicable to a state of marriage, which 
 is but the highest advance and improvement of 
 friendship in the closest bond of union. Good' 
 God ! What frequent divorces, or worse mischief, 
 
 3 
 
42 THE r SE OF FOLLY. 
 
 would oft sadly hr L . except man and wife, were 
 so discreet as to pass rer light occasions of quarrel 
 with laughing, jesting, dissembling, and such like 
 playing the fool ? Nay, how few matches would- 
 go forward, if the hasty lover did but first know 
 how many little tricks of lust and wantonness, and 
 perhaps more gross failings, his coy and seemingly 
 bashful mistress had oft before been guilty of? 
 And how fewer marriages, when consummated, 
 would continue happy, if the husband were not 
 either sottishly insensible of, or did not purposely 
 wink at and pass over the lightness and forward- 
 ness of his good-natured wife ? 
 
 This peace and quietness is owing to my manage- 
 ment, for there would otherwise be continual jars, 
 and broils, and mad doings, if want of wit only did 
 not at the same time make a contented ^ cuckold 
 and a still house. If the cuckoo sing at the back 
 door, the unthinking cornute takes no notice of the 
 unlucky omen of others' eggs being laid in his own 
 nest, but laughs it over, kisses his dear spouse, and 
 all is well. And indeed it is much better patiently 
 to be such a hen-pecked frigot, than always to be 
 wracked and tortured with the grating surmises of 
 
THE PRAISE &* JLLY. 43 
 
 arrd-jealousy. 1%. line-, there is no one 
 society, no. one relation iifjn stand in, would be 
 comfortable, or indeed tolerable, without my assis- 
 tance. There could be no right understanding 
 betwixt prince and people, lord and servant, tutor 
 and pupil, friend and friend, man and wife, buyer 
 and seller, or any persons however otherwise 
 related, if they did not cowardly put up small 
 abuses, sneakingly cringe and submit, or after all 
 fawningly scratch and flatter each other. This you 
 will say is much, but you shall yet hear what is 
 more. 
 
 Tell me then, can any one love another that first 
 hates himself? Is it likely any one should agreg, 
 with a friend that is first fallen out with his own 
 judgment ? Or -is it probable he should be any 
 way pleasing to another, who is a perpetual pla.gue 
 and trouble to himself? This is such a paradox 
 that none can be so mad as to maintain. Well, but 
 if I am excluded and barred out, every man would 
 be so far from being able to bear with others, that 
 he would be burthensome to himself, and conse- 
 quently incapable of any ease or satisfaction. 
 Nature, that toward some of her products plays the 
 
44 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 step-mother rather than the indulgent parent, has 
 endowed some men with that unhappy peevishness 
 of disposition, as to nauseate and dislike whatever 
 is their own, and much admire what belongs to 
 other persons, so as they cannot in any wise enjoy 
 what their birth or fortunes have bestowed upon 
 them. For what grace is there in the greatest 
 beauty, if it be always clouded with frowns and 
 sulliness ? Or what vigour in youth, if it be 
 harassed with a pettish, dogged, waspish, ill 
 humour ? None, sure. 
 
 Nor indeed can there be any creditable acquire- 
 ment of ourselves in any one station of life, but we 
 should sink without rescue into misery and despair, 
 if we were not buoyed up and supported by self- 
 love, which is but the elder sister, as it were, of 
 Folly, and her own constant friend and assistant. 
 I For what is or can be, more silly than to be lovers 
 and admirers of ourselves ? And yet if it were not 
 so, there will be no relish to any of our words or 
 actions. Take away this one property of a fool, and 
 the orator shall become as dumb and silent as the 
 pulpit he stands in ; the musician shall hang up his 
 untouched instruments on the wall ; the completest 
 
THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 45 
 
 actors shall be Hissed off the stage ; the poet shall 
 be burlesqued with his own doggrel rhymes ; the 
 painter shall himself vanish into an imaginary land- 
 scape ; and the physician shall want food more than 
 his patients do physic. In short, without self-love, 
 instead of beautiful, you shall think yourself an old 
 beldam of fourscore ; instead of youthful, you shall 
 seem just dropping into the grave ; instead of 
 eloquent, a mere stammerer ; and in lieu of gentle 
 and complaisant, you shall appear like a downright 
 country clown ; it being so necessary that every one 
 should think well of himself before he can expect 
 the good opinion of others. 
 
 Finally, when it is the main and essential part of 
 happiness to desire to be no other than what we 
 already are. This expedient is again wholly owing 
 to self-love, which so flushes men with a good con- 
 ceit of their own, that no one repents of his shape, 
 of his wit, of his education, or of his country. So 
 as the dirty half-drowned Hollander would not re- 
 move into the pleasant plains of Italy, the rude 
 Thracian would not change his boggy soil for the 
 best seat in Athens, nor the brutish Scythian quit 
 his thorny deserts to become an inhabitant of the 
 
46 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 Fortunate Islands. And oh the incomparable contri- 
 vance of nature, who has ordered all things in so 
 even a method that wherever she has been less 
 bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a 
 larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former 
 defects, and makes all even. 
 
 x To enlarge farther, I may well presume to aver, 
 that there are no considerable exploits performed, 
 no useful arts invented, but what I am the respec- 
 tive author and manager of. As first, what is more 
 fo / lofty and heroical than war.^ And yet, what is more 
 foolish than for some petty, trivial affront, to take 
 such a revenge as both sides shall be sure to be 
 losers, and where the quarrel must be decided at 
 the price of so many limbs and lives ? And when 
 they come to an engagement, what service can be 
 done by such pale-faced students, as by drudging 
 at the oars of wisdom, have spent all their strength 
 and activity ? No, the only use is of blunt sturdy 
 fellows that have little of wit, and so the more of re- 
 solution. Except you would make a soldier of such 
 another Demosthenes as threw down his arms when 
 he came within sight of the enemy, and lost that 
 credit in the camp which he gained in the pulpit. 
 

 1 
 
 <s 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 47 
 
 But counsel, deliberation, and advice, say you, 
 are very necessary for the management of war. 
 Very true, but not such counsel as shall be pres- 
 cribed by the strict rules of wisdom and justice ; 
 for a battle shall be more successfully fought by 
 serving-men, porters, bailiffs, padders, rogues, gaol- 
 birds, and such like tag-rags of mankind, than by 
 the most accomplished philosophers ; which last, 
 how unhappy they are in the management of such 
 concern g^Socrates (by the oracle adjudged to be 
 the wisest of mortals) is a notable example. Who 
 when he appeared in the attempt of some public 
 performance before the people, he faltered in the 
 rst onset, and could never recover himself, but 
 was hooted and hissed home again. Yet this 
 philosopher was the less a fool, for refusing the ap- 
 pellation of wise, and not accepting the oracle's 
 compliment. - As also for advising that no philoso- 
 phers should have any hand in the government of 
 the commonwealth, He should have likewise at 
 the same time, added, that they should be banished 
 all human society. And what made this great man 
 poison himself to prevent the malice of his accusers ? 
 What made him the instrument of his own death, 
 
48 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 but only his excessiveness of wisdom ? Whereby, 
 while he was searching into the nature of clouds, 
 while he was plodding and contemplating upon 
 ideas, while he was exercising his geometry upon 
 the measure of a flea, and diving into the recesses 
 of nature, for an account how little insects, when 
 they were so small, could make so great a buzz and 
 hum. While he was intent upon these fooleries 
 1 he minded nothing of the world, or its ordinary 
 concerns. 
 
 Next to Socrates comes his scholar Plato, a 
 famous orator indeed, that could be so dashed out 
 of countenance by an illiterate rabble, as to demur, 
 ttnd hawk, and hesitate, before he could get to the 
 end of one short sentence. Theophrastus was such 
 another coward, who beginning to make an oration, 
 was presently struck down with fear, as if he 
 had seen some ghost, or hobgoblin. Isocrates 
 was so bashful and timorous, that though he 
 taught rhetoric, yet he could never have the 
 confidence to speak in public. Cicero, the 
 master of Roman eloquence, was wont to begin 
 his speeches with a low, quivering voice, just 
 like a school-boy, afraid of 'not saying his lesson 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 perfect enough to escape whipping. And yet 
 Fabius commends this property of Tully as an 
 argument of a considerate orator, sensible of the 
 difficulty of acquitting himself with credit ; but 
 what hereby does he do more than plainly confess 
 that wisdom is but a rub and impediment to the 
 well management of any affair ? How would these 
 heroes crouch, and shrink into nothing, at the 
 sight of drawn swords, that are thus quashed and 
 stunned at the delivery of bare words ? 
 
 Now then let Plato's fine sentence be cried up, 
 that " happy are those commonwealths where either 
 philosophers are elected kings, or kings turn philo- 
 sophers." Alas, this is so far from being true, that 
 if we consult all historians for an account of past 
 ages, we shall find no princes more weak, nor any 
 people more slavish and wretched, than where the 
 administration of affairs fell on the shoulders of 
 some learned bookish governor. Of the truth 
 whereof, the two Catos are exemplary instances. 
 The first of which embroiled the city, and tired out 
 the senate by his tedious harangues of defending 
 himself, and accusing others ; the younger was an 
 unhappy occasion of the loss of the peoples' liberty, 
 
50 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 while by improper methods he pretended to main- 
 tain it. 
 
 To these may be added Brutus, Cassius, the two 
 Gracchi, and Cicero himself, who was no less fatal 
 to Rome, than his parallel Demosthenes was to 
 Athens. As likewise Marcus Antoninus, whom we 
 may allow to have been a good emperor, yet the 
 less such for his being a philosopher ; and certainly 
 he did not do half that kindness to his empire by 
 his own prudent management of affairs, as he did 
 mischief by leaving such a degenerate successor as 
 his son Commodus proved to be. But it is a 
 common observation, that " A wise father has many 
 times a foolish son," nature so contriving it, lest the 
 taint of wisdom, like hereditary distempers, should 
 otherwise descend by propagation. Thus Tully's 
 son Marcus, though bred at Athens, proved but a 
 dull, insipid soul, and Socrates Ibis, children had as 
 one ingeniously expresses it, " more of the mother 
 than the father/' a phrase for their being fools. 
 
 However, it were the more excusable, though 
 wise men are so awkward and unhandy in the 
 ordering of public affairs, if they were not so bad, 
 or worse in the management of their ordinary and 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 51 
 
 domestic concerns. But alas, here they are much 
 to jseek. For place a formal wise man at a feast, 
 and he shall, either by his morose silence put the 
 whole table out of humour, or by his frivolous 
 questions disoblige and tire out all that sit near 
 him. Call him out to dance, and he shall move no 
 more nimbly than a camel. Invite him to any 
 public performance, and by his very looks he shall 
 damp the mirth of all the spectators, and at last 
 be forced, like Cato, to leave the theatre, because 
 he cannot unstarch his gravity, nor put on a more 
 pleasant countenance. If he engage in any dis- 
 course, he either breaks off abruptly, or tires out 
 the patience of the whole company, if he goes on. 
 If he have any contract, sale, or purchase to make, 
 or any other worldly business to transact, he 
 behaves himself more like a senseless stock than a 
 rational man. f So as he can be of no use nor ad- 
 vantage to himself, to his friends, or to his country; 
 because he knows nothing how the world goes, and 
 is wholly unacquainted with the humour of the 
 vulgar, who cannot but hate a person so disagreeing 
 in temper from themselves. 
 
 And indeed the whole proceedings of the world 
 
52 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 are nothing but one continued scene of Folly, all 
 the actors being equally fools and madmen. And 
 therefore if any be so pragmatically wise as to be 
 singular, he must even turn a second Timon, or 
 man-hater, and by retiring into some unfrequented 
 desert, become a recluse from all mankind. 
 <// But to return to what I first proposed, what was 
 it in the infancy of the world that made men, 
 naturally savage, unite into civil societies, but only 
 flattery, one of my chiefest virtues ? For there is 
 nothing else meant by the fables of Amphion and 
 Orpheus with their harps ; the first making the 
 stones jump into a well-built wall, the other induc- 
 ing the trees to pull their legs out of the ground, 
 and dance the morrice after him. What was it 
 that quieted and appeased the Roman people, 
 when they brake out into a riot for the redress of 
 grievances ? Was it any sinewy starched oration ? 
 No, alas, it was only a silly, ridiculous story, told 
 / by Menenius Agrippa, how the other members of 
 \^> the-^bedy^quarrelled with the belly, resolving no 
 / longer to continue her drudging caterers. Till by 
 the penance they thought thus in revenge to 
 impose, they soon found their own strength so far 
 
7 HE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 53 
 
 diminished, that paying the cost of experiencing a 
 mistake, they willingly returned to their respective 
 duties. 
 
 Thus when the rabble of Athens murmured at 
 the exaction of the magistrates, Themistocles satis- 
 fied them with such another tale of the fox and 
 the hedge-hog ; the first whereof being stuck fast 
 in a miry bog, the flies came swarming about him, 
 and almost sucked out all his blood, the latter 
 officiously offers his service to drive them away. 
 No, says the fox, if these which are almost glutted 
 be frighted off, there will come a new hungry set 
 that will be ten times more greedy and devouring. 
 The moral of this he meant applicable to the people, 
 who if they had such magistrates removed as they 
 complained of for extortion, yet their successors 
 would certainly be worse. 
 
 With what highest advances of policy could 
 Sertorius have kept the Barbarians so well in awe, 
 as by a white hart, which he pretended was pre- 
 sented to him by Diana, and brought him intelli- 
 gence of all his enemies' designs ? What was 
 Lycurgus his grand argument for demonstrating the 
 force of education, but only the bringing out two 
 
54 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 whelps of the same bitch, differently brought up, 
 and placing before them a dish, and a live hare. 
 The one, that had been bred to hunting, ran after 
 the game ; while the other, whose kennel had been 
 a kitchen, presently fell a licking the platter. 
 
 Thus the before-mentioned Sertorius made his 
 soldiers sensible that wit and contrivance would do 
 more than bare strength, by setting a couple of men 
 to the plucking off two horses' tails. The first 
 pulling at all in one handful, tugged in vain ; while 
 the other, though much the weaker, snatching off 
 one by one, soon performed his appointed task. 
 
 Instances of like nature are Minos and king 
 Numa,iboth which fooled the people into obedience 
 by a mere cheat and juggle. j The first by pre- 
 tending he was advised by Jupiter, the latter by 
 making the vulgar believe he had the goddess 
 ^Egeria assistant to him in all debates and transac- 
 tions. And indeed it is by such wheedles that the 
 common people are best gulled and imposed upon. 
 
 For farther, what city would ever submit to the 
 rigorous laws of Plato, to the severe injunctions of 
 Aristotle ? Or the more impracticable tenets of 
 Socrates ? No, these would have been too straight 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 55 
 
 and galling, there not being allowance enough 
 made for the infirmities of the people. 
 
 To pass to another head, what was it made the 
 Decii so forward to offer themselves up as a sacri- 
 fice for an atonement to the angry gods, to rescue 
 and stipulate for their indebted country ? What 
 made Curtius, on a like occasion so desperately to 
 throw away his life, but only vain -glory, that is 
 condemned, and unanimously voted for a main 
 branch of Folly by all wise men ? What is more ' 
 unreasonable and foppish, say they, than for any 
 man, out of ambition to some office, to v bow, to 
 scrape and cringe to the gaping rabble, to purchase 
 their favourby bribes and donatives, to have their l 
 names cried up in the streets, to be carried about 
 as it were for a fine sight upon the shoulders of the 
 crowd, to have their effigies carved in brass, and f 
 put up in the market place for a monument of their/ 
 popularity ? 
 
 Add to this, the affectation of new titles and dis- 
 tinctive badges of honour ; nay, the very deifying 
 of such as were the most bloody tyrants, These 
 are so extremely ridiculous, that there is need of \j 
 more than one Democritus to laugh at them. And 
 
56 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 yet hence only have been occasioned those memor- 
 able achievements of heroes, that have so much 
 employed the pens of many laborious writers. 
 
 It is Folly that, in a variety of guise, governs cities, 
 appoints magistrates, and supports judicatures. 
 And, in short, makes the whole course of man's life 
 a mere children's play, and worse than push-pin 
 diversion. The invention of all arts and sciences 
 are likewise owing to the same cause. For what 
 sedentary, thoughtful men would have beat their 
 brains in the search of new and unheard- of- 
 <-/mysteries, if not egged on by the bubbling hopes of 
 credit and reputation ? j They think a little glitter- 
 ing flash of vain-glory is a sufficient reward for all 
 their sweat, and toil, and tedious drudgery, while 
 >they that are supposedly more foolish, reap advan- 
 tage of the others' labours. 
 
 /xAnd now since I have made good my title to 
 valour and industry, what if I challenge an equal 
 share of wisdom ? How ! this, you will say, is absurd 
 and contradictory ; the east and west may as soon 
 shake hands as Folly and Wisdom be reconciled. 
 Well, but have a little patience and I will warrant 
 you I will make out my claim. First then, if 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 57 
 
 wisdom, as must be confessed, is no more than a 
 readiness of doing good, and an expedite method of 
 becoming serviceable to the world, to whom does 
 this virtue more properly belong ? To the wise 
 man. who partly out of modesty, partly out of 
 cowardice, can proceed resolutely in no attempt. 
 Or to the fool, that goes hand over head, leaps 
 before he looks, and so ventures through the most 
 hazardous undertaking without any sense or pros- 
 pect of danger ? 
 
 In the undertaking any enterprize the wise man 
 shall run to consult with his books, and daze him- 
 self with poring upon musty authors, while the 
 dispatchful fool shall rush bluntly on, and have 
 done the business, while the other is thinking of it. 
 For the two greatest lets and impediments to the 
 issue of any performance are modesty, which casts 
 a mist before men's eyes ; and fear, which makes 
 them shrink back, and recede from any proposal. 
 Both these are banished and cashiered by Folly, 
 and in their stead such a habit of fool-hardiness 
 introduced, as mightily contributes to the success of 
 all enterprizes. Farther, if you will have wisdom 
 taken in the other sense, of being a right judgment 
 
 4 
 
58 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 of things, you snail see how short wise men fall of 
 it in this acceptation. // 
 
 First, then, it is certain that all things, like so 
 many Januses, carry a double face, or rather bear 
 a false aspect, most things being really in them- 
 selves far different from what they are in appear- 
 ance to others. So as that which at first blush 
 proves alive, is in truth dead ; and that again 
 which appears as dead, at a nearer view proves 
 to be alive. Beautiful seems ugly, wealthy poor, 
 scandalous is thought creditable, prosperous 
 passes for unlucky, friendly for what is most 
 opposite, and innocent for what is hurtful and 
 pernicious. In short, if we change the tables, 
 all things are found placed in a quite different 
 posture from what just before they appeared to 
 r 'and in. 
 
 If this seem too darkly and unintelligibly 
 expressed, I will explain it by the familiar instance 
 of some great king or prince, whom every one shall 
 suppose to swim in a luxury of wealth, and to be a 
 powerful lord and master. When, alas, on the one 
 Land he has poverty of spirit enough to make him 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 59 
 
 a mere bewar, and on the other side he is worse 
 
 OO ' 
 
 than a galley-slave to his own lusts and passions. 
 
 If I had a mind farther to expatiate, I could 
 enlarge upon several instances of like nature, but 
 this one may at present suffice. 
 
 Well, but what is the meaning, will some say, 
 of all this ? Why, observe the application. If 
 any one in a play-house be so impertinent and 
 rude as to rifle the actors of their borrowed clothes, 
 make them lay down the character assumed, and 
 force them to return to their naked selves, would 
 not such a one wholly discompose and spoil the 
 entertainment ? And would he not deserve to be 
 hissed and thrown stones at till the pragmatical 
 fool could learn better manners ? For by such a 
 disturbance the whole scene will be altered. Such 
 as acted the men will perhaps appear to be women. 
 He that was dressed up for a young brisk lover, 
 will be found a rough old fellow. And he that 
 represented a king, will remain but a mean ordinary 
 serving-man, j The laying things thus open is 
 marring all the sport, which consists only in 
 counterfeit and disguise^ 
 
 Now the world is nothing else but such another 
 
60 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 comedy, where every one in the tire-room is first 
 habited suitably to the part he is to act. And as 
 it is successively their turn, out they come on the 
 stage, where he that now personates a prince, shall 
 in another part of the same play alter his dress, 
 and become a beggar, all things being in a mask 
 and particular disguise, or o^ferwise the play could 
 never be presented. Now if there should arise any 
 starched, formal don, that would point at the 
 several actors, and tell how this, that seems a petty 
 god, is in truth worse than a brute, being made 
 captive to the tyranny of passion. That the other, 
 who bears the character of a king, is indeed the 
 most slavish of serving-men, in being subject to the 
 mastership of lust and sensuality. That a third, 
 who vaunts so much of his pedigree, is no better 
 than a bastard for degenerating from virtue, which 
 ought to be of greatest consideration in heraldry, 
 and so shall go on in exposing all the rest. Would 
 not any one think such a person quite frantic, and 
 ripe for bedlam ? 
 
 For as nothing is more silly than preposterous 
 wisdom, so is there nothing more indiscreet 
 than an unreasonable reproof. And therefore he 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 61 
 
 is to be hooted out of all society that will not be 
 pliable, conformable, and willing to suit his humour 
 with other men's, remembering the law of clubs 
 and meetings, that he who will not do as the rest 
 must get him out of the company. 
 
 And it is certainly one great degree of wisdom 
 for every one to consflfer that he is but a man, and 
 therefore he should not pitch his soaring thoughts 
 beyond the level of mortality, but imp the wings 
 of his towering ambition, and obligingly submit 
 and condescend to the weakness of others, it being 
 many times a piece of complaisance to go out of the 
 road for company's sake. No, say you, this is a 
 grand piece of Folly. True, but yet all our living 
 is no more than such kind of fooling. Which 
 though it may seem harsh to assert, yet it is not so 
 strange as true. 
 
 For the better making it out it might perhaps 
 be requisite to invoke the aid of the muses, to 
 whom the poets devoutly apply themselves upon 
 far more slender occasions. Come then and assist, 
 ye Heliconian lasses, while I attempt to prove that 
 there is no method for an arrival at wisdom, and 
 
62 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 consequently no track to the goal of happiness, 
 without the instructions and directions of Folly. 
 
 And here, in the first place it has been already 
 acknowledged, that all the passions are listed under 
 my regiment. Since this is resolved to be the 
 only distinction betwixt a wise man and a fool, 
 that this latter is governed by passion, the other 
 x guided by reason. And therefore the Stoics look 
 upon passions no other than as the infection and 
 malady of the soul that disorders the constitution 
 of the whole man, and by putting the spirits into 
 a feverish ferment many times occasion some mortal 
 distemper. 
 
 And yet these, however decried, are not only 
 our tutors to instruct us towards the attainment of 
 wisdom, but even bolden us likewise, and spur us 
 on to a quicker dispatch of all our undertakings. 
 This, I suppose, will be stomached by the stoical 
 Seneca, who pretends that the only emblem of 
 wisdom is the man without passion. Whereas the 
 supposing any person to be so, is perfectly to un- 
 man him, or else transforming him into some 
 fabulous deity that never was, nor ever will beJj 
 Nay, to speak more plain, it is but the making him 
 
t- 
 
 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 63 
 
 a mere statue, immoveable, senseless, and altogether 
 inactive. And if this be their wise man, let them 
 take him to themselves, and remove him into 
 Plato's commonwealth, the new Atlantis, or some 
 other-like fairy land. 
 
 For who would not hate and avoid such a person 
 as should be deaf to all the dictates of common 
 sense ? That should have no more power of love 
 or pity than a block or stone, that remains heedless 
 of all dangers ? That thinks he can never mistake, 
 but can foresee all contingencies at the greatest 
 distance, and make provision for the worst presages ? 
 That feeds upon himself and his own thoughts, that 
 monopolises health, wealth, power, dignity, and all 
 to himself? That loves no man, nor is beloved of 
 any ? That has the impudence to tax even divine 
 providence of ill contrivance, and proudly grudges, 
 nay, tramples under foot all other men's reputation ; 
 and this is he that is the Stoic's complete wise man. 
 
 But prithee what city would choose such a 
 magistrate ? What army would be willing to serve 
 under such a commander ? Or what woman would 
 be content with such a do -little husband ? Who 
 would invite such a guest ? Or what servant would 
 
64 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 be retained by such a master ? The most illiterate 
 mechanic would in all respects be a more acceptable 
 man, who would be frolicsome with his wife, free 
 with his friends, jovial at a feast, pliable in converse, 
 and obliging to all company. But I am tired out 
 with this part of my subject, and so must pass to 
 some other topics. 
 
 / And now were any one placed on that tower, 
 I from whence Jove is fancied by the poets to survey 
 the world, he would all around discern how many 
 grievances and calamities our whole life is on every 
 side encompassed with. How unclean our birth, 
 how troublesome our tendance in the cradle, how 
 liable our childhood is to a thousand misfortunes, 
 how toilsome and full of drudgery our riper years, 
 how heavy and uncomfortable our old age, and 
 lastly, how unwelcome the unavoidableness of death. 
 Farther, in every course of life how many wracks 
 there may be of torturing diseases, how many un- 
 happy accidents may casually occur, how many un- 
 expected disasters may arise, and what strange 
 alterations may one moment produce ? Not to 
 mention such miseries as men are mutually the 
 cause of, as poverty, imprisonment, slander, re- 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 65 
 
 proach, revenge, treachery, malice, cosenage, \ 
 deceit, and so many more, as to reckon them all | 
 would be as puzzling arithmetic as the numbering I 
 of the sands. 
 
 How mankind became environed with such hard 
 circumstances, or what deity imposed these plagues, 
 as a penance on rebellious mortals, I am not now at 
 leisure to enquire. ^ But whoever seriously takes 
 them into consideration must needs commend the 
 valour of the Milesian virgins, who voluntarily 
 killed themselves to get rid of a troublesome world. 
 And how many wise men have taken the same 
 course of becoming their own executioners. Among 
 whom, not to mention Diogenes, Xenocrates, Cato, 
 Cassius, Brutus, and other heroes. The self-denying 
 Chiron is never enough to be commended ; who, 
 when he was offered by Apollo the privilege of 
 being exempted from death, and living on to the 
 world's end, he refused the enticing proposal, as 
 deservedly thinking it a punishment rather than a 
 reward.; 
 
 N But if all were thus wise you see how soon the 
 world would be unpeopled, and what need there 
 would be of a second Prometheus, to plaster up the 
 
66 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 decayed image of mankind. I therefore come and 
 stand in this gap of danger, and prevent farther 
 mischief; partly by ignorance, partly by inadver- 
 tence. By the oblivion of whatever would be 
 grating to remember, and the hopes of whatever 
 may be grateful to expect, together palliating all 
 griefs with an intermixture of pleasure ; whereby I 
 make men so far from being weary of their lives, 
 that when their thread is spun to its full length, 
 they are yet unwilling to die, and mighty hardly 
 brought to take their last farewell of their friends. 
 Thus some decrepit old fellows, that look as 
 hollow as the grave into which they are falling, 
 that rattle in the throat at every word they speak, 
 that can eat no meat but what is tender enough to 
 suck, that have more hair on their beard than they 
 have on their head, and go sto0ping^ toward the 
 dust they must shortly return to. Whose skin 
 seems already drest into parchment, and their bones 
 already dried to a skeleton. These shadows of men 
 shall be wonderful ambitious of living longer, and 
 therefore fence off the attacks of death with all 
 imaginable sleights and impostures. One shall new 
 dye his grey hairs, for fear their colour should 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 67 
 
 betray his age. Another shall spruce himself up in 
 a light periwig. A third shall repair the loss of his 
 teeth with an ivory set. And a fourth perhaps shall 
 fall deeply in love with a young girl, and accordingly 
 court her with as much of gaiety and briskness as 
 the liveliest spark in the whole town. And we 
 cannot but know, that for an old man to marry a 
 young wife without a portion, to be a cooler to 
 other men's lust, is grown so common, that it is 
 become the a-la-mode of the times. 
 
 And what is yet more comical, you shall have 
 some wrinkled old women, whose very looks are a 
 sufficient antidote to lechery, that shall be canting 
 out, " Ah, life is a sweet thing," and so run a cater- 
 wauling. And to set themselves off the better, 
 they shall paint and daub their faces, always stand 
 a tricking up themselves at their looking-glass, go 
 naked-necked, bare-breasted, be tickled at a smutty 
 jest, dance among the young girls, write love- 
 letters, and do all the other little knacks of decoy- 
 ing hot-blooded suitors. And in the meanwhile, 
 however they are laughed at, they enj oy themselves 
 to the full, live up to their hearts' desire, and want 
 for nothing that may complete their happiness. 
 
68 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 
 
 As for those that think them herein so ridiculous, 
 I would have them give an ingenuous answer to 
 this one query, whether if folly or hanging were 
 left to their choice, they had not much rather live 
 like fools, than die like dogs ? 
 
 But what matter is it if these things are resented 
 by the vulgar ? Their ill word is no injury to fools, 
 who are either altogether insensible of any affront, 
 or at least lay it not much to heart. If they were 
 knocked on the head, or had their brains dashed 
 out, they would have some cause to complain ; but 
 alas, slander, calumny, and disgrace, are no other 
 way injurious than as they are interpreted. Nor 
 otherwise evil, than as they are thought to be so. 
 What harm is it then if all persons deride and scoff 
 you, if you bear but up in your own thoughts, and 
 be yourself thoroughly conceited of your deserts ? 
 
 And prithee, why should it be thought any 
 scandal to be a fool, since the being so is one part 
 of our nature and essence ; and as so, our not being 
 wise can no more reasonably be imputed as a fault, 
 than it would be proper to laugh at a man because 
 he cannot fly in the air like birds and fowls ; be- 
 cause he goes not on all four as beasts of the field ; 
 
1 
 
 i 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 69 
 
 because he does not wear a pair of visible horns 
 as a crest on his forehead, like bulls or stags. By 
 the same figure we may call a horse unhappy, 
 because he was never taught his grammar ; and an 
 ox miserable, for that he never learnt to fence ; but 
 sure as a horse for not knowing a letter is never- 
 theless valuable, so a man, for being a fool, is never 
 the more unfortunate, it being by nature and pro- 
 vidence so ordained for each. 
 
 Ay, but say our patrons of wisdom, the know- 
 ledge of arts and sciences is purposely attainable 
 by men, that the defect of natural parts may be 
 supplied by the help of acquired. As if it were 
 probable that nature, which had been so exact and 
 curious in the mechanism of flowers, herbs, and 
 flies, should have bungled most in her masterpiece, 
 and made man as it were by halves, to be after- 
 ward polished and refined by his own industry, in 
 the attainment of such sciences as the Egyptians 
 feigned were invented by their god Theuth, as a 
 sure plague and punishment to mankind, being so 
 far from augmenting their happiness, that they do 
 not answer that end they were first designed for, 
 
70 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 which, was the improvement of memory, as Plato 
 in his Phaedrus does wittily observe. 
 
 In the first golden age of the world there was 
 no need of these perplexities. There was then no 
 other sort of learning but what was naturally col- 
 
 lected from every man's common sense, improved 
 & 
 
 jc^ by an easy experience. What use could there have 
 
 o ^ been of grammar, when all men spoke the same 
 
 mother-tongue, and aimed at no higher pitch of 
 
 oratory, than barely to be understood by each 
 
 other ? What need of logic, when they were too 
 
 \vise to enter into any dispute ? Or what occasion 
 
 . for rhetoric, where no difference arose to require 
 
 any laborious decision ? 
 
 And as little reason had they to be tied up by 
 any laws, since the dictates of nature and common 
 morality were restraint and obligation sufficient. 
 And as to all the mysteries of providence, they 
 made them rather the object of their wonder, than 
 their curiosity. And therefore were not so pre- 
 sumptuous as to dive into the depths of nature, to 
 labour for the solving all phenomena in astronomy, 
 or to rack their brains in the splitting of entities ; 
 
 and unfolding the nicest speculations, judging it a 
 
 *\ 
 
 f 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 71 
 
 crime for any man to aim at what is put beyond 
 the reach of his shallow apprehension. 
 
 Thus was ignorance, in the infancy of the world, 
 as much the parent of happiness as it has been 
 since ofdevotion. But as soon as - the golden 
 age began by degrees to degenerate into more 
 drossy metals, then were arts likewise invented. 
 Yet at first but few in number, and those rarely 
 understood, till in farther process of time the 
 superstition of the Chaldeans, and the curiosity of | 
 the Grecians, spawned so many subtleties, that now 
 it is scarce the w r ork of an age to be thoroughly 
 acquainted with all the criticisms in grammar only. 
 
 And among all the several Arts, those are pro- 
 portionably most esteemed that come nearest to 
 weakness and fo]]y. For thus divines may bite 
 their nails, and naturalists may blow their fingers, 
 astrologers may know their own fortune is to be 
 poor, and the logician may shut his fist and grasp 
 the wind. 
 
 While all these hard-named fellows cannot make 
 So great a figure as a single quack. 
 
 And in this profession, those that have most confi- 
 dence, though the least skill, shall be sure of the 
 
72 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 greatest custom. And indeed this whole art as it 
 is now practised, is but one incorporated compound 
 of craft and imposture. 
 
 Next to the physician comes he, who perhaps 
 will commence a suit with me for not being placed 
 before him, I mean the lawyer. Who is so silly as 
 to be ignoramus to a proverb, and yet by such are 
 all difficulties resolved, all controversies determined, 
 and all affairs managed so much to their own ad- 
 vantage, that they get those estates to themselves 
 which they are ^einployedtorecover for their clients. 
 While the poor divine in the mean time shall have 
 the lice crawl upon his thread-bare gown, before, 
 by all his sweat and drudgery, he can get money 
 enough to purchase a new one. / 
 
 As those arts therefore are most advantageous 
 to their respective professors which are farthest 
 distant from wisdom,^ so are those persons incom- 
 parably most happy that have least to do with any 
 at all, but jog on in the common road of nature, 
 which will never mislead us, except we voluntarily 
 leap over those boundaries which she has cautiously 
 set to our finite beings.J Nature glitters most in 
 her own plain, homely garb, and then gives the 
 
: 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 73 
 
 greatest lustre when she is unsullied from all arti- 
 ficial garnish. 
 
 Thus if we enquire into the state of all dumb 
 creatures, we shall find those fare best that are left 
 to nature's conduct. As to instance in bees, what 
 is more to be admired than the industry and con- 
 trivance of these little animals ? What architect 
 could ever form so curious a structure as they give 
 a model of in their inimitable combs ? What king- 
 dom can be governed with better discipline than 
 they exactly observe in their respective hives ? 
 
 While the horse, by turning a rebel to nature 
 and becoming a slave to man, undergoes the wors 
 of tyranny. He is sometimes spurred on to battl 
 so long till he draws his guts after him for trappin 
 and at last falls down, and bites the ground instea 
 of grass. Not to mention the penalty of his jaw 
 being curbed, his tail docked, his back wrung, his 
 sides spur-galled, his close imprisonment in a stable, 
 his rapshin and fetters when he runs a grass, and 
 a great many other plagues, which he might have 
 avoided, if he had kept to that first station of 
 freedom which nature placed him in. 
 
 How much more desirable is the unconfined 
 
 5 
 
74 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 range of flies and birds, who living by instinct, 
 would want nothing to complete their happiness, if 
 some well-employed Domitian would not persecute 
 the former, nor the sly fowler lay snares and gins 
 for the entrapping of the other ? And if young 
 birds, before their unfledged wings can carry them 
 from their nests, are caught, and pent up in a cage, 
 for the being taught to sing, or whistle, all their 
 new tunes make not half so sweet music as their 
 wild notes, and natural melody. [ So much does 
 that which is but rough-drawn by nature surpass 
 and excel all the additional paint and varnish of 
 art. . 
 
 And we cannot sure but commend and admire 
 that Pythagorean cock, which as Lucian relates, 
 had been successively a man, a woman, a prince, a 
 subject, a fish, a horse, and a frog. After all his 
 experience, he summed up his judgment in this 
 censure, that man was the most wretched and de- 
 plorable of all creatures, all other patiently grazing 
 within the enclosures of nature, while man only 
 broke out, and strayed beyond those safer limits, 
 which he was justly confined to. 
 
 And Gryllus is to be adjudged wiser than the 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 75 
 
 much-counselling Ulysses, in as much as when by 
 the enchantment of Circe he had been turned into 
 a hog, he would not lay down his swinishnsss, nor 
 forsake his beloved sty, to run the peril of a 
 hazardous voyage. For a further confirmation 
 whereof I have the authority of Homer, that 
 captain of all poetry, who, as he gives to mankind 
 in general, the epithet of wretched and unhappy 
 so he bestows in particular upon Ulysses the title 
 of miserable, which he never attributes to Paris 
 Ajax, Achilles, or any other of the commanders 
 and that for this reason, because Ulysses was more 
 crafty, cautious, and wise, than any of the rest. 
 
 As those therefore fall shortest of happiness that , 
 reach highest at wisdom, meeting with the greater 
 repulse for soaring beyond the boundaries of their 
 nature, and without remembering themselves to 
 be but men, like the fallen angels, daring them to 
 vie with Omnipotence, and giant-like scale heaven 
 with the engines of their own brain. /So are those 
 most exalted in the road of bliss that degenerate 
 nearest into brutes, and quietly divest themselves 
 of all use and exercise of reason. 
 
 And this we can prove by a familiar instance. 
 
76 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 As namely, can there be any one sort of men that 
 enjoy themselves, better than those which we call 
 idiots, changelings, fools and naturals ? It may 
 perhaps sound harsh, but upon due consideration it 
 will be found abundantly true, that these persons 
 in all circumstances fare best, and live most com- 
 fortably. LAs first, they are void of all fear, which 
 is a very great privilege to be exempted from^ 
 They are troubled with no remorse, nor pricks of 
 conscience. They are jnoJL frighted with anv_bug^ 
 bear stories of another world. They startle not at 
 the fancied appearance of ghosts, or apparitions. 
 They are not wracked with the dread of impending 
 mischiefs, nor bandied with the hopes of any ex- 
 pected enjoyments.* In short, they are unassaulted 
 by all those legions of cares that war against the 
 quiet of rational souls. They are ashamed of 
 nothing, fear no man, banish the uneasiness of am- 
 bition, envy, and love. And to add the reversion 
 ! of a future happiness to the enjoyment of a present 
 me, they have no sin neither to answer for ; divines 
 unanimously maintaining, that a gross and una- 
 voidable ignorance does not only extenuate and 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 77 
 
 abate from the aggravation, but wholly expiate the 
 guilt of any immorality. 
 
 Come now then as many of you as challenge the 
 respect of being accounted wise, ingenuously confess 
 how many insurrections of rebellious thoughts, and 
 pangs of a labouring mind, ye are perpetually 
 thrown and tortured with. Reckon up all those 
 inconveniences that you are unavoidably subject to, 
 and then tell me whether fools, by being exempted 
 from all those embroilments, are not infinitely more 
 free and_happy than yourselves ? Add to this, 
 that fools do not barely laugh, and sing, and play 
 the good-fellow alone to themselves. But as it is 
 the nature of good to be communicative, so they 
 impart their mirth to others, by making sport for 
 the whole company they are at any time engaged 
 in, as if providence purposely designed them for an 
 antidote to melancholy. Whereby they make all 
 persons so fond of their society, that they are 
 welcomed to all places, hugged, caressed, and 
 defended, a liberty given them of saying or doing 
 anything. So well beloved, that none dares to 
 offer them the least injury ; nay, the most raven- 
 ous beasts of prey will pass them by untouched, 
 
78 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 as if by instinct they were warned that such 
 innocence ought to receive no hurt. 
 
 Farther, their converse is so acceptable in the 
 court of princes, that few kings will banquet, walk, 
 or take any other diversion, without their attend- 
 ance ; nay, and had much rather have their 
 company, than that of their gravest counsellors, 
 whom they maintain more for fashion-sake than 
 good-will. Nor is it so strange that these fools 
 should be preferred before graver politicians, since 
 these last, by their harsh, sour advice, and ill- 
 timing the truth, are fit only to put a prince out of 
 the humour, while the others laugh, and talk, and 
 joke, without any danger of disobliging. 
 
 It is one farther very commendable property 
 of fools, that they always speak the truth, than 
 which there is nothing more noble and heroical. 
 For so, though Plato relate it as a sentence of 
 Alcibiades, that in the sea of drunkenness truth 
 swims uppermost, and so wine is the only teller 
 of truth, yet this character may more justly be 
 assumed by me, as I can make good from the 
 authority of Euripides, who lays down this as an 
 
I 
 
 
 1 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 79 
 
 axiom, "Children and fools always speak the// 
 truth." 
 
 Whatever the fool has in his heart he betrays it 
 in his face ; or what is more notifying, discovers iti 
 by his words. While the wise man, as Euripides 
 observes, carries a double tongue ; the one to speak 
 what may be said, the other what ought to be. 
 The one what truth, the other what the time 
 requires. / Whereby he can in a trice so alter his 
 judgment, as to prove that to be now white, which 
 he had just before swore to be black. Like the 
 satyr at his porridge, blowing hot and cold at the 
 same breath ; in his lips professing one thing, when 
 in his heart he means another. 
 
 Furthermore, princes in their greatest splendour 
 seem upon this account unhappy, in that they miss 
 the advantage of being told the truth, and are 
 shammed off by a parcel of insinuating courtiers, 
 that acquit themselves as flatterers more than as 
 friends. But some will perchance object, that 
 princes do not love to hear the truth, and therefore 
 wise men must be very cautious how they behave 
 themselves before them, lest they should take too 
 
80 I HE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 great a liberty in speaking what is true, rather 
 than what is acceptable. 
 
 This must be confessed, truth indeed is seldom 
 palatable to the ears of kings. Yet fools have so 
 great a privilege as to have free leave, not only to 
 speak bare truths, but the most bitter ones too. 
 So as the same reproof, which, had it come from 
 the mouth of a wise man, would have cost him his 
 head, being blurted out by a fool, is not only par- 
 doned, but well taken, and rewarded. (. For truth 
 has naturally a mixture of pleasure, if it carry with 
 it nothing of offence to the person whom it is ap- 
 plied to ; and the happy knack of ordering it so is 
 bestowed only on fools. 'Tis for the* same reason 
 that this sort of men are more fondly beloved by 
 women, who like their taking them about, and 
 playing with them, though never so boisterously. 
 Pretending to take that only in jest, which they 
 would have to be meant in earnest, as that sex is 
 very ingenious in palliating, and dissembling the 
 bent of their foolish inclinations. 
 
 But to return. An additional happiness of these 
 fools appears farther in this, that when they have 
 run merrily on to their last stage of life, they 
 
r lHE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 81 
 
 neither find any fear nor feel any pain to die, but 
 march contentedly to the other world, where their 
 company sure must be as acceptable as it was here 
 upon earth. 
 
 Let us draw now a comparison between the 
 dition of a fool and that of a wise man, and see 
 how infinitely the one outweighs the other. 
 
 Give me any instance, then, of a man as wise 
 you can fancy him possible to be, that has spent 
 all his younger years in poring upon books, and 
 trudging after learning, in the pursuit whereof he 
 squanders away the pleasantest time of his life in 
 watching, sweat, and fasting. And in his latter 
 days he never tastes one mouthful of delight, 
 but is always stingy, poor, dejected, melancholy, 
 burthensome to himself,, and unwelcome to others. 
 Pale, lean, thin -jawed, sickly, contracting by his 
 sedentariness such hurtful distempers as bring him 
 to an untimely death, like roses plucked before 
 they shatter. Thus have you the draught of a 
 wise man's happiness, more the object of a com- 
 miserating pity, than of an ambitioning envy. 
 
 But now again come the croaking Stoics, and 
 tell me in mood and figure, that nothing is more 
 
82 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 miserable than the being mad. But the being a 
 fool is the being mad, therefore there is nothing 
 more miserable than the being a fool. Alas, this is 
 but a fallacy, the discovery whereof solves the force 
 of the whole syllogism. Well, then, they argue 
 subtlely, 'tis true ; but as Socrates in Plato makes 
 two Venuses and two Cupids, and shows how their 
 actions and properties ought not to be confounded, 
 so these disputants, if they had not been mad 
 themselves, should have distinguished between a 
 double madness in others. And there is certainly 
 a great difference in the nature as well as in the 
 degrees of them, and they are not both equally 
 scandalous ; for Horace seems to take delight in 
 one sort, when he says 
 
 Does welcome frenzy make me thus mistake ? 
 
 And Plato in his Phsedon ranks the madness 
 of poets, of prophets, and of lovers among those 
 properties which conduce to a happy life. And 
 Virgil, in the sixth ^Eneid, gives this epithet to his 
 industrious ^Eneas : 
 
 If you will proceed to these your mad attempts. 
 
 And indeed there is a two-fold sort of madness. 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 83 
 
 The one that which the furies bring from hell ; 
 those that are herewith possessed are hurried on 
 to wars and contentions, by an inexhaustible thirst 
 of power and riches, inflamed to some infamous and 
 unlawful lust, enraged to act the parricide, seduced 
 to become guilty of incest, sacrilege, or some other 
 of those crimson-dyed crimes ; or, finally, to be so 
 pricked in conscience as to be lashed and stung 
 with the whips and snakes of grief and remorse. 
 <x But there is another sort of madness that pro- 
 ceeds from Folly, so far from being any way 
 injurious or distasteful that it is thoroughly good 
 and desirable. And this happens when by a harm- 
 less mistake in the judgment of things the mind is 
 freed from those cares which would otherwise 
 gratingly afflict it, and smoothed over with a 
 content and satisfaction it could not under other 
 circumstances so happily enjoy. And this is that 
 comfortable apathy or insensibleness which Cicero, 
 in an epistle to his friend Atticus, wishes himself 
 master of; that he might the less take to heart 
 those insufferable outrages committed by the 
 tyrannizing triumvirate, Lepidus, Antonius, and 
 Augustus. 
 
84 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 That Grecian likewise had a happy time of it, 
 who was so frantic as to sit a whole day in the 
 empty theatre laughing, shouting, and clapping his 
 hands, as if he had really seen some pathetic 
 tragedy acted to the life. When indeed all was no 
 more than the strength of imagination, and the 
 efforts of delusion, while in all other respects the 
 same person behaved himself very discreetly was, 
 
 Sweet to his friends, to his wife, obliging, kind, 
 And so averse from a revengeful mind, 
 That had his men unsealed his bottled wine, 
 He would not fret, nor doggedly repine. 
 
 And when by a course of physic he was recovered 
 from this frenzy, he looked upon his cure so far 
 from a kindness, that he thus reasons the case with 
 his friends : 
 
 This remedy, my friends, is worse i' the main 
 Than the disease, the cure augments the pain ; 
 My only hope is a relapse again. 
 
 And certainly they were the more mad of the 
 two who endeavoured to bereave him of so pleasing 
 a delirium, and recall all the aches of his head by 
 dispelling the mists of his brain. 
 
 I have not yet determined whether it be proper 
 to include all the defects of sense and understanding 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 85 
 
 under the common genius of madness. For if any- 
 one be so short-sighted as to take a mule for an 
 ass, or so shallowpated as to admire a paltry ballad 
 for an elegant poem, he is not thereupon immedi- 
 ately censured as mad. But if anyone let not only 
 his senses but his judgment be imposed upon in the 
 most ordinary common concerns, he shall come 
 under the scandal of being thought next door to a 
 madman. 
 
 As suppose any one should hear an ass bray, and 
 should take it for ravishing music ; or if any one, 
 born a beggar, should fancy himself as great as a 
 prince, or the like. But this sort of madness, if, as 
 is most usual, it be accompanied with pleasure, 
 brings a great satisfaction both to those who are 
 possessed with it themselves, and those who deride 
 it in others, though they are not both equally 
 frantic. And this species of madness is of larger 
 extent than the world commonly imagines. Thus 
 the whole tribe of madmen make sport among 
 themselves, while one laughs at another ; he that 
 is more mad many times jeering him that is less so. 
 But indeed the greater each man's madness is, the 
 greater is his happiness, if it be but such a sort as 
 
86 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 proceeds from an excess of folly, which is so epide- 
 mical a distemper that it is hard to find any one 
 man so uninfected as not to have sometimes a fit 
 or two of some sort of frenzy. 
 
 There is only this difference between the several 
 patients, he that shall take a broom-stick for a 
 strait- bodied woman is without more ado sentenced 
 for a madman, because this is so strange a blunder 
 as very seldom happens. Whereas he whose wife 
 is a common jilt, that keeps a warehouse free for 
 all customers, and yet swears she is as chaste as an 
 untouched virgin, and hugs himself in his contented 
 mistake, is scarce taken notice of, because he fares 
 no worse than a gre^many more of his good- 
 natured neighbours.'^ 
 
 Among these are to be ranked such as take an 
 immoderate delight in hunting, and think no music 
 comparable to the sounding of horns and the 
 yelping of beagles. And were they to take physic, 
 would no question think the most sovereign virtues 
 to be in the album Grcecum of a dog's tail. When 
 they have run down their game, what strange plea- 
 sure they take in cutting of it up ! Cows and 
 sheep may be slaughtered by common butchers, 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 87 
 
 but what is killed in hunting must be broke up by 
 none under a gentleman, who shall throw down his 
 hat, fall devoutly on his knees, and drawing out a 
 slashing hanger, for a common knife is not good 
 enough, after several ceremonies shall dissect all the 
 parts as artificially as the best skilled anatomist, 
 while all that stand round shall look very intently, 
 and seem to be mightily surprised with the novelty, 
 though they have seen the same an hundred times 
 before. And he that can but dip his finger, and 
 taste of the blood, shall think his own bettered by 
 it. And though the constant feeding on such diet 
 does but assimilate them to the nature of those 
 beasts they eat of, yet they will swear that venison 
 is meat for princes, and that their living upon it 
 makes them as great as emperors. 
 
 Near akin to these are such as take a great 
 fancy for building. They raise up, pull down, 
 begin anew, alter the model, and never rest till 
 they run themselves out of their whole estate, 
 taking up such a compass for buildings, till they 
 leave themselves not one foot of land to live upon, 
 nor one poor cottage to shelter themselves from 
 cold and hunger. And yet all the while are mighty 
 
SS THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 proud of their contrivances, and sing a sweet 
 requiem to their own happiness. 
 
 To these are to be added those plodding vir- 
 tuosos, that plunder the most inward recesses of 
 nature for the pillage of a new invention, and 
 rake over sea and land for the turning up some 
 hitherto latent mystery. //And are so continually 
 tickled with the hopes of success, that they spare 
 for no 'cost nor pains, but trudge on, and upon a 
 defeat in one attempt, courageously tack about to 
 another, and fall upon new experiments, never 
 giving over till they have calcined their whole 
 estate to ashes, and have not money enough left 
 d to purchase one crucible or limbeck. 
 
 And, yet after all, they are not so much dis- 
 couraged, but that they dream fine things still, and 
 animate others what they can to the like undertak- 
 ings. Nay, when their hopes come to the last 
 gasp, after all their disappointments, they have yet 
 one salvo for their credit, that : 
 
 In great exploits our bare attempts suffice. 
 
 And so inveigh against the shortness of their life, 
 which allows them not time enough to bring their 
 designs to maturity and perfection. 
 
THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 89 
 
 Whether dice-players may be so favourably dealt 
 with as to be admitted among the rest is scarce yet 
 resolved upon. But sure it is hugely vain and 
 ridiculous, when we see some persons so devoutly 
 addicted to this diversion, that at the first rattle of 
 the box their heart shakes within them, and keeps 
 consort with the motion of the dice. They are 
 egg'd on so long with the hopes of always winning, 
 till at last, in a literal sense, they have thrown 
 away their whole estate, and made shipwreck of all 
 they have, scarce escaping to shore with their own 
 clothes to their backs, thinking it in the mean- 
 while a great piece of religion to be just in the, 
 payment of their stakes, and will cheat any 
 creditor sooner than him who trusts them in play. 
 
 And that poring old men, that cannot tell their 
 cast without the help of spectacles, should be 
 sweating at the same sport; nay, that such decrepit 
 blades, as by the gout have lost the use of their 
 fingers, should look over, and hire others to throw 
 for them. This indeed is prodigiously extravagant ;* 
 but the consequence of it ends so oft in downright 
 madness, that it seems rather to belong to the 
 furies than to folly. 
 
90 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 The next to be placed among the regiment of 
 fools are such as make a trade of telling or in- 
 quiring after incredible stories of miracles and 
 prodigies. Never doubting that a lie will choke 
 them, they will muster up a thousand several 
 strange relations of spirits, ghosts, apparitions, 
 raising of the devil, and such like bugbears of 
 superstition; which the farther they are from being 
 probably true, the more greedily they are swal- 
 lowed, and the more devoutly believed. And 
 these absurdities do not only bring an empty 
 -ure, and cheap divertisement, but they are a 
 good trade, and procure a comfortable income to 
 iuch priests and friars as by this craft get their gain. 
 
 To these again are nearly related such others as 
 attribute strange virtues to the shrines and images 
 of saints and martyrs, and so would make their 
 credulous proselytes believe, that if they pay their 
 devotion to St. Christopher in the morning, they 
 shall be guarded and secured the day following 
 from all dangers and misfortunes. If soldiers, when 
 they first take arms, shall come and mumble over 
 such a set prayer before the picture of St. Barbara, 
 they shall return safe from all engagements. Or if 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 91 
 
 any pray to Erasmus on such particular holidays, 
 with the ceremony of wax candles, and other fop- 
 peries, he shall in a short time be rewarded with a 
 plentiful increase of wealth and riches. The Chris- 
 tians have now their gigantic St. George, as well 
 as the pagans had their Hercules ; they paint the 
 saint on horseback, and drawing the horse in 
 splendid trappings, very gloriously accoutred, they 
 scarce refrain in a literal sense from worshipping 
 the very beast. 
 
 What shall I say of such as cry up and maintain "<* 
 the cheat of pardons and indulgences ? That by 
 these compute the time of each soul's residence in 
 purgatory, and assign them a longer or shorter con- 
 tinuance, according as they purchase more or fewer 
 of these paltry pardons and saleable exemptions ? 
 Or what can be said bad enough of others, who 
 pretend that by the force of such magical charms, 
 or by the fumbling over their beads in the rehearsal 
 of such and such petitions ; which some religious 
 impostors invented, either for diversion, or, what is 
 more likely, for advantage ; they shall procure 
 riches, honour, pleasure, health, long life, 'a lusty 
 
92 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 
 
 old age, nay, after death a sitting at the right 
 hand of our Saviour in His kingdom. 
 
 Though as to this last part of their happiness, 
 they care not how long it be deferred, having scarce 
 any appetite toward a tasting the joys of heaven ; 
 till they are surfeited, glutted with, and can no 
 longer relish their enjoyments on earth. By this 
 easy way of purchasing pardons, any notorious 
 highwayman, any plundering soldier, or any bribe- 
 taking judge, shall disburse some part of their un- 
 just gains, and so think all their grossest impieties 
 sufficiently atoned for. So many perjuries, lusts, 
 drunkenness, quarrels, bloodsheds, cheats, trea- 
 cheries, and all sorts of debaucheries, shall all be, 
 as it were, struck a bargain for, and such a con- 
 tract made, as if they had paid off all arrears, and 
 might now begin upon a new score. 
 
 And what can be more ridiculous, than for some 
 others to be confident of going to heaven by re- 
 peating daily those seven verses out of the Psalms, 
 which the devil taught St. Bernard ; thinking 
 thereby to have put a trick upon him, but that he 
 was over-reached in his cunning. 
 
 Several of these fooleries, which are so gross and 
 
1 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 33 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLL Y. 93 
 
 absurd, as I myself am even ashamed to own, are 
 practised and admired, not only by the vulgar, but 
 by such proficients in religion as one might well 
 expect should have more wit. 
 
 From the same principles of folly proceeds the 
 custom of each country's challenging their particular 
 guardian-saint. Nay, each saint has his distinct 
 office allotted to him, and is accordingly addressed 
 to upon the respective occasions. As one for the 
 toothache, a second to grant an easy delivery in 
 child-birth, a third to help persons to lost goods, 
 another to protect seamen in a long voyage, a fifth 
 to guard the farmer's cows and sheep, and so on. 
 For to rehearse all instances would be extremely 
 tedious. 
 
 There are some more catholic saints petitioned to 
 upon all occasions, as more especially the Virgin 
 Mary, whose blind devotees think Jt ppnera \\^\r 
 to place the mother before the Son. 
 
 And of all the prayers and intercessions that are 
 made to these respective saints the substance of 
 them is no more than downright Folly. Among all 
 the trophies that for tokens of gratitude are hung 
 upon the walls and ceilings of churches, you shall 
 
94 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 find no relics presented as a memorandum of any 
 that were ever cured of Folly, or had been made 
 one dram the wiser. 
 
 One perhaps after shipwreck got safe to shore ; 
 another recovered when he had been run through 
 
 o 
 
 by an enemy ; one, when all his fellow- soldiers 
 were killed upon the spot, as cunningly perhaps 
 as cowardly, made his escape from the field ; 
 another, while he was a hanging, the rope broke, 
 and so he saved his neck, and renewed his licence 
 for practising his old trade of thieving ; another 
 broke gaol, and got loose ; a patient, against his 
 physician's will, recovered of a dangerous fever ; 
 another drank poison, which putting him into a 
 violent looseness, did his body more good than hurt, 
 to the great grief of his wife, who hoped upon this 
 occasion to have become a joyful widow ; another 
 had his waggon overturned, and yet none of his 
 horses lamed ; another had caught a grievous fall, 
 and yet recovered from the bruise ; another had 
 been tampering with his neighbour's wife, and es- 
 caped very narrowly from being caught by the 
 enraged cuckold in the very act. 
 
 After all these acknowledgments of escapes from 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 95 
 
 such singular dangers, there is none, as I have 
 before intimated, that return thanks for being 
 freed from Folly. Folly being so sweet and luscious, 
 that it is rather sued for as a happiness, than 
 deprecated as a punishment. But why should I 
 launch out into so wide a sea of superstitions 1 
 
 Had I as many tongues as Argus eyes, 
 Briareus hands, they all would not suffice 
 Folly in all her shapes t'epitomize. 
 
 Almost all Christians being wretchedly enslaved 
 to blindness and ignorance, which the priests are so 
 far from preventing or removing, that they blacken 
 the darkness, and promote the delusion. Wisely 
 foreseeing that the people, like cows, which never 
 give down the>r milk so well as when they are 
 gently stroked, would part with less if they knew 
 more, their bounty proceeding only from a mis- 
 take of charity. 
 
 Now if any grave wise man should stand up, and 
 .unseasonably speak the truth, telling every one 
 that a^gious life is the only way of securing a happy 
 death ; tKaTtfie best title to a pardon of our sins 
 is purchased by a hearty abhorrence of our guilt, 
 and sincere resolutions of amendment ; that the 
 
96 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 Xbest devotion which can be paid to any saints is to 
 imitate them in their exemplary life. If he should 
 proceed thus to inform them of their several mis- 
 takes, there would be quite another estimate put 
 upon tears, watchings, masses, fastings, and other 
 severities, which before were so much prized, as 
 persons will now be vexed to lose that satisfaction 
 they formerly found in them. 
 
 In the same predicament of fools are to be ranked 
 such, as while they are yet living, and in good 
 health, take so great a care how they shall be 
 buried when they die, that they solemnly appoint 
 how many torches, how many escutcheons, how 
 many gloves to be given, and how many mourners 
 they will have at their funeral. As if they thought 
 they themselves in their coffins could be sensible of 
 what respect was paid to their corpse. Or as if 
 they doubted they should rest a whit the less quiet 
 in the grave if they were with less state and pomp 
 
 ^interred. 
 
 Now though I am in so great haste, as I would 
 not willingly be stopped or detained, yet I cannot 
 pass by without bestowing some remarks upon 
 another sort of fools ; who, though their first des- 
 
! 
 
 t 
 i 
 
 a 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 97 
 
 cent was perhaps no better than from a tapster or 
 tinker, yet highly value themselves upon their birth 
 and parentage. One fetches his pedigree from 
 ./Eneas, another from Brute, a third from king 
 Arthur. They hang up their ancestors' worm-eaten 
 pictures as records of antiquity, and keep a long 
 list of their predecessors, with an account of all 
 their offices and titles, while they themselves are 
 but transcripts of their forefathers' dumb statues, 
 and degenerate even into those very beasts which 
 they carry in their coat of arms as ensigns of their 
 nobility. And yet by a strong presumption of 
 their birth and quality, they live not only the most 
 pleasant and unconcerned themselves, but there are 
 not wanting others too who cry up these brutes 
 almost equal to the gods. 
 
 But why should I dwell upon one or two in- 
 stances of Folly, when there are so many of like 
 nature. Conceitedness and self-love making many 
 by strength of Fancy believe themselves happy, 
 when otherwise they are really wretched and 
 despicable. Thus the most ape-faced, ugliest 
 fellow in the whole town, shall think himself a 
 mirror of beauty. Another shall be so proud of 
 
98 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 his parts, that if he can but mark out a triangle 
 with a pair of compasses, he thinks he has mastered 
 all the difficulties of geometry, and could outdo 
 Euclid himself. A third shall admire himself for a 
 ravishing musician, though he have no more skill 
 in the handling of any instrument than a pig play- 
 ing on the organs. And another that rattles in 
 the throat as hoarse as a cock crows, shall he proud 
 of his voice, and think he sings like a nightingale. 
 
 There is another very pleasant sort of madness, 
 whereby persons assume to themselves whatever of 
 accomplishment they discern in others. Thus the 
 happy rich churl in Seneca, who had so short a 
 memory, as he could not tell the least story with- 
 out a servant standing by to prompt him, and was 
 at the same time so weak that he could scarce go 
 upright ; yet he thought he might adventure to^ 
 accept a challenge to a duel, because he kept at 
 home some lusty, sturdy fellows, whose strength 
 he relied upon instead of his own. 
 
 It is almost needless to insist upon the several 
 professors of arts and sciences, who are all so egre- 
 giously conceited, that they would sooner give up 
 their title to an estate in lands, than part with the 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 99 
 
 reversion of their wits. Among these, more especi- 
 ally stage-players, musicians, orators, and poets, 
 each of which, the more of duncery they have, and 
 the more of pride, the greater is their ambition. 
 And how notoriously soever dull they be, they 
 meet with their admirers ; nay, the more silly they 
 are the higher they are extolled. Folly, as we 
 have before intimated, never failing of respect and 
 esteem. If therefore every one, the more ignorant 
 he is, the greater satisfaction he is to himself, and 
 the more commended by others, to what purpose is 
 it to sweat and toil in the pursuit of true learning, 
 which shall cost so many gripes and pangs of the 
 brain to acquire, and when obtained, shall only 
 make the laborious student more uneasy to him- 
 self, and less acceptable to others ? 
 
 As nature in her dispensation of coriceitedness 
 has dealt with private persons, so has she given a 
 particular smatch of self-love to each country and 
 nation. Upon this account it is that the English 
 challenge the prerogative of having the most hand- 
 some women, of the being most accomplished in the 
 skill of music, and of keeping the best tables. The 
 Scotch brag of their gentility, and pretend the 
 
100 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 genius of their native soil inclines them to be good 
 disputants. The French think themselves remark- 
 able for complaisance and good breeding. The 
 Sorbonists of Paris pretend before any others to 
 have made the greatest proficiency in polemic divi- 
 nity. The Italians value themselves for learning 
 and eloquence. And, like the Grecians of old, 
 account all the world barbarians in respect of them- 
 selves ; to which piece of vanity the inhabitants of 
 Rome are more especially addicted, pretending 
 themselves to be owners of all those heroic virtues, 
 which their city so many ages since was deservedly 
 famous for. The Venetians stand upon their birth 
 and pedigree. The Grecians pride themselves in 
 having been the first inventors of most arts, and in 
 their country being famed for the product of so 
 many eminent philosophers, The Turks, and all the 
 other refuse of Mahometism, pretend they profess 
 the only true religion, and laugh at all Christians 
 for superstitious, narrow-souled fools. The Jews to' 
 this day expect their Messias as devoutly as they 
 believe in their first prophet Moses. The Spaniards 
 challenge the repute of being accounted good 
 soldiers. And the Germans are noted for their tall, 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 101 
 
 proper stature, and for their skill in magic. But 
 not to mention any more, I suppose you are already 
 convinced how great an improvement and addition 
 to the happiness of human life is occasioned by 
 self-love. Next step to which is flattery : for as 
 self-love is nothing but the coaxing up of ourselves, 
 so the same currying and humouring , of others is 
 termed flattery. 
 
 Flattery, it is true, is now looked upon as a $ce*<S 
 dalous name, but it is by such only as mind words 
 more than things. They are prejudiced against it 
 upon this account, because they suppose it jostles 
 out all truth and sincerity? Whereas indeed its 
 property is quite contrary, as appears from the 
 examples of several brute creatures. What is more 
 fawning than a spaniel ? And yet what is more 
 faithful to his master? What is more fond and 
 loving than a tame squirrel? And yet what is 
 more sporting and inoffensive ? This little frisking 
 creature is kept up in a cage to play withal, while 
 lions, tigers, leopards, and such other savage em- 
 blems of rapine and cruelty are shown only for state 
 and rarity, and otherwise yield no pleasure to their 
 respective keepers. 
 
102 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 There is indeed a pernicious destructive sort of 
 flattery wherewith rookers and sharks work their 
 several ends upon such as they can make a prey of, 
 by decoying them into traps and snares beyond re- 
 covery. But that which is the effect of folly is of 
 a much different nature. It proceeds from a soft- 
 ness of spirit,. and a flexibleness of good humour, 
 'and cGmefr far.iiearer to virtue than that other ex- 
 'ijpei?ie oi friendship, namely, a stiff, sour, dogged 
 moroseness. It refreshes our .minds when tired, 
 enlivens them when melancholy, reinforces them 
 when languishing, invigorates them when heavy, 
 recovers them when sick, and pacifies them when 
 rebellious. It puts us in a method how to procure 
 friends, and how to keep them. It entices children 
 to swallow the bitter rudiments of learning. It 
 gives a new ferment to the almost stagnated souls 
 of old men ; it both reproves and instructs prin- 
 ciples without offence under the mask of commenda- 
 tion. In short, it makes every man fond and in- 
 dulgent of himself, which is indeed no small part of 
 each man's happiness; and at the same time renders 
 him obliging and complaisant in all company, where 
 
8 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 10S 
 
 it is pleasant to see how the asses rub arid scratch 
 one anotherj 
 
 This, again, is a great accomplishment to an 
 orator, a greater to a physician, and the only one 
 to a poet. In fine, it is the best sweetener to all 
 afflictions, and gives a true relish to the otherwise 
 insipid enjoyments of our whole life. Ay, but, say 
 you, to flatter is to deceive ; and to deceive is very 
 harsh and hurtful. No, rather just contrary ; no- 
 thing is more welcome and bewitching than the 
 being deceived. They are much to be blamed for 
 an undistinguishing head, that make a judgment of 
 things according to what they are in themselves, 
 when their whole nature consists barely in the 
 opinions that are had of them. 
 
 For all sublunary matters are enveloped in such 
 a cloud of obscurity, that the short-sightedness of 
 human understanding cannot pry through and ar- 
 rive to any comprehensive knowledge of them. 
 Hence the sect of academic philosophers have 
 modestly resolved, that all things being no more 
 than probable, nothing can be known as certain ; 
 or if there could, yet would "IF but interrupt and 
 abate from the pleasure of a more happy ignorance. 
 
104 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 Finally, our souls are so fashioned and moulded, 
 that they are sooner captivated by appearances 
 than by real truths ; of which, if any one would 
 demand an example, he may find a very familiar 
 one in churches, where, if what is delivered from 
 the pulpit be a grave, solid, rational discourse, all 
 the congregation grow weary, and fall asleep, till 
 their patience be released. Whereas if the preacher, 
 pardon the impropriety of the word, the prater I 
 would have said, be zealous, in his thumps of the 
 cushion, antic gestures, and spend his glass in the 
 telling of pleasant stories, his beloved shall then 
 stand up, tuck their hair behind their ears, and be 
 very devoutly attentive. 
 
 So among the saints, those are most resorted to 
 who are most romantic and fabulous. As, for in- 
 stance, a poetic St. George, a St. Christopher, or a 
 St. Barbara, shall be oftener prayed to than St. 
 Peter, St. Paul, nay, perhaps than Christ himself; 
 but this, it is possible, may more properly be re- 
 ferred to another place. 
 
 In the mean w r hile observe what a cheap pur- 
 chase of happiness is made by the strength of 
 fancy. For whereas many things even of incon- 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 105 
 
 siderable value, would cost a great deal of pains 
 and perhaps pelf, to procure ; opinion spares 
 charges, and yet gives us them in as ample a man- 
 ner by conceit, as if we possessed them in reality. 
 Thus he who feeds on such a stinking dish of fish, 
 as another must hold his nose at a yard's distance 
 from, yet if he feed heartily, and relish them palat- 
 ably, they are to him as good as if they were fresh 
 caught. Whereas, on the other hand, if any one 
 be invited to never so dainty a joul of sturgeon, if 
 it go against his stomach to eat any, he may sit a 
 hungry, and bite his nails with greater appetite 
 than his victuals. 
 
 If a woman be never so ugly and nauseous, yet if 
 her husband can but think her handsome, it is all^L 
 one to him as if she really were so. If any mair x 
 have never so ordinary and smutty a draught, yet 
 if he admires the excellency of it, and can suppose 
 it to have been drawn by some old Appelles, or 
 modern Vandyke, he is as proud of it as if it had 
 really been done by one of their hands. I knew a 
 friend of mine that presented his bride with several 
 false and counterfeit stones, making her believe 
 that they were right jewels, and cost him so many 
 
 7 
 
106 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 hundred thousand crowns. Under his mistake the- 
 poor woman was as choice of pebbles, and painted 
 glass, as if they had been so many natural rubies 
 and diamonds, while the subtle husband saved a 
 great deal in his pocket, and yet made his wife as 
 well pleased as if he had been at ten hundred times 
 the cost. 
 
 What difference is there between them that in 
 the darkest dungeon, can with a platonic brain 
 survey the whole world in idea, and him that stands 
 in the open air, and takes a less deluding prospect 
 of the universe ? If the beggar in Lucian, that 
 dreamt he was a prince, had never waked, his 
 imaginary kingdom had been as great as a real one. 
 Betweenjiim- therefore that truly is happy, and 
 XJiim that thmksjiimself so, there is no perceivable 
 - distinction ; or if any, the fool has the better of it. 
 First, because his happiness costs him less, standing 
 him only in the price of a single thought ; and then, 
 secondly, because he has more fellow-companions 
 and partakers of his good fortune. 
 
 For no enjoyment is comfortable where the 
 benefit is not imparted to others ; nor is any one 
 station of life desirable, where we can have no con- 
 
=5 
 
 I 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 107 
 
 verse with persons of the same condition with our- 
 selves : and yet this is the hard fate of wise men, 
 who are grown so scarce, that like Phoenixes, they 
 appear but one in an age. The Grecians, it is 
 true, reckoned up seven within the narrow precincts 
 of their own country ; yet I believe, were they to 
 cast up their accounts anew, they would not find 
 a half, nay, not a third part, of one in far larger 
 
 Farther, when among the several good properties 
 of Bacchus this is looked upon as the chief, namely, 
 that he drowns the cares and anxieties of the mind, 
 though it be indeed but for a short while. For after 
 a small nap, when our brains are a little settled, they 
 all return to their former corrodings. How much 
 greater is the more durable advantage which I 
 bring ? While by one uninterrupted fit of being 
 drunk in conceit, I perpetually cajole the mind 
 with riots, revels, and all the excess and energy of 
 
 joy- 
 Add to this, that I am so communicative and 
 
 bountiful, as to let no one particular person pass 
 without some token of my favour ; whereas other 
 deities bestow their gifts sparingly to their elect 
 
108 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 only. Bacchus has not thought fit that every soil 
 should bear the same juice-yielding grape. Yenus 
 has not given to all a like portion of beauty. 
 Mercury endows but few with the knack of an 
 accomplished eloquence. Hercules gives not to all 
 the same measure of wealth and riches. Jupiter 
 has ordained but a few to be born to a kingdom. 
 Mars in battle gives a complete victory but to one 
 party ; nay, he often makes them both losers. 
 Apollo does not answer the expectation of all that 
 consult his oracles. Jove oft thunders. Phoebus 
 sometimes shoots the plague, or some other infec- 
 tion, at the point of his darts. And Neptune 
 swallows down more than he bears up. Not to 
 mention their Ve-Jupiters, their Plutos, their Ate 
 goddess of loss, their evil geniuses, and such other 
 monsters of divinity, as had more of the hangman 
 than the god in them, and were worshipped only 
 to deprecate that hurt which used to be inflicted 
 by them., 
 
 I say, not to mention these, I am that high and 
 mighty goddess, whose liberality is of as large an 
 extent as her omnipotence. I give to all that ask. \ 
 I never appear sullen, nor out of humour, nor ever 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 109 
 
 demand any atonement or satisfaction for the omis- 
 sion of any ceremonious punctilio in my worship. 
 I do not storm or rage, if mortals, in their addresses 
 to the other gods pass me by unregarded, without 
 the acknowledgment of any respect or application ; 
 whereas all the other gods are so scrupulous and 
 exact, that it often proves less dangerous manfully 
 to despise them, than srieakingly to attempt the 
 difficulty of pleasing them. Thus some men are of 
 that captious, froward humour, that a man had 
 better be wholly strangers to them, than never so 
 intimate friends. 
 
 Well, but there are noire, say you, build any 
 altars, or dedicate any temple to Folly. I admire, 
 as I have befor^4niirimted^riTaTthe world should 
 be so wretchedly ungrateful. But I am so good 
 natured as to pass by and pardon this seeming 
 affront, though indeed the charge thereof, as un- 
 necessary, may well be saved ; for to what purpose 
 should I demand the sacrifice of frankincense, 
 cakes, goats, and swine, since all persons every- 
 where pays me that more acceptable service, which 
 all divines agree to be more effectual and meritori- 
 ous, namely, an imitation of my communicable 
 
110 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 attributed ? I do not therefore any way envy 
 Diana for having her altars bedewed with human 
 blood. I think myself then most religiously adored, 
 when my respective devotees, as is their usual 
 custom, conform themselves to my practice, tran- 
 scribe my pattern, and so live the copy of me their 
 original. 
 
 And truly this pious devotion is not so much in 
 use among Christians as is much to be wished it 
 were. For how many zealous votaries are there 
 that pay so profound respect to the Virgin Mary, 
 as to place lighted tapers even at noon day upon 
 her altars ? And yet how few of them copy after 
 her untouched chastity, her modesty, and her other 
 commendable virtues, in the imitation whereof con- 
 sists the truest esteem of divine worship ? Farther, 
 why should I desire a temple, since the whole 
 world is but one ample continued choir, entirely 
 dedicated to my use and service ? Nor do I want 
 worshippers at any place where the earth wants not 
 inhabitants. [ 
 
 And as to the manner of my worship, I am not 
 yet so irrecoverably foolish, as to be prayed to by 
 proxy, and to have my honour intermediately be- 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. . Ill 
 
 stowed upon senseless images and pictures, which 
 quite subvert the true end of religion ; while the 
 unwary supplicants seldom distinguish betwixt the 
 things themselves and the objects they represent. 
 The same respect in the meanwhile is paid to me in 
 a more legitimate manner ; for to me there are as 
 many statues erected as there are moving fabrics of 
 mortality ; [every person, even against his own will, 
 carrying the image of me, i.e., the signal of Folly 
 instamped on his countenance. J 
 
 I have not therefore the least tempting induce- 
 ment to envy the more seeming state and splendour 
 of the other gods, who are worshipped at set times 
 and places. As Phoebus at Rhodes, Venus in her 
 Cyprian isle, Juno in the city Argos, Minerva at 
 Athens, Jupiter on the hill Olympus, Neptune at 
 Tarentum, and Priapus in the town of Lampsacum. 
 j While my worship extending as far as my influence, 
 the whole world is my one altar, whereon the most 
 valuable incense and sacrifice is perpetually offered 
 up. 
 
 But lest I should seem to speak this with more 
 of confidence than truth, let us take a nearer view 
 of. the mode of men's lives, whereby it will be 
 
112 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 rendered more apparently evident what largesses I 
 everywhere bestow, and how much I am respected 
 and esteemed of persons, from the highest to the 
 basest quality. For the proof whereof, it being 
 too tedious to insist upon each particular, I shall 
 only mention such in general as are most worthy 
 the remark, from which by analogy we may easily 
 judge of the remainder. 
 
 And indeed to what purpose would it be singly 
 to recount the commonalty and rabble of mankind, 
 who beyond all question are entirely on my side ? 
 And for a token of their vassalage do wear my 
 livery in so many older shapes, and more newly 
 invented modes of Folly, that the lungs of a 
 thousand Democrituses would never hold out to 
 such a laughter as this subject would excite. And 
 to these thousand must be superadded one more, to 
 laugh at them as much as they do at the other. 
 
 It is indeed almost incredible to relate what 
 mirth, what sport, what diversion, the grovelling 
 inhabitants here on earth give to the above-seated 
 gods in heaven. For these exalted deities spend 
 their fasting sober hours in listening to those peti- 
 tions that are offered up, and in succouring such as 
 
'1HE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 113- 
 
 they are appealed to by for redress. But when 
 they are a little entered at a glass of nectar, they 
 then throw off all serious concerns, and go and 
 place themselves on the ascent of some promontory 
 in heaven, and from thence survey the little mole- 
 hill of earth. And trust me, there cannot be a more 
 delightsome prospect than to view such a theatre so 
 stuffed and crammed with swarms of fools. 
 
 One falls desperately in love, and the more he is- 
 slighted the more does his spaniel-like passion in- 
 crease ; another is wedded to wealth rather than to 
 a wife ; a third pimps for his own spouse, and is 
 content to be a cuckold^sojie may wejirJiisJiorns^ ( 
 gilt ; a fourth is haunted with a jealousy of his 
 visiting neighbours ; another sobs and roars, and 
 plays the child, for the death of a friend or relation ; 
 and lest his own tears should not rise high enough 
 to express the torrent of his grief, he hires other 
 mourners to accompany the corpse to the grave, 
 and sing its requiem in sighs and lamentations ; 
 another hypocritically weeps at the funeral of one 
 whose death at heart he rejoices for ; here a glut- 
 tonous cormorant, whatever he can scrape up, 
 thrusts all into his guts to pacify the cryings of 
 
114 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 a hungry stomach ; there a lazy wretch sits yawn- 
 ing and stretching, and thinks nothing so desirable 
 as sleep and idleness. 
 
 Some are extremely industrious in other men's 
 business, and sottishly neglectful of their own ; 
 some think themselves rich because their credit is 
 great, though they can never pay, till they break, 
 and compound for their debts ; one is so covetous 
 that he lives poor to die rich ; one for a little un- 
 certain gain will venture to cross the roughest seas, 
 and expose his life for the purchase of a livelihood ; 
 another will depend on the plunders of war, rather 
 than on the honest gains of peace ; some will close 
 with and humour such warm old blades as have a 
 good estate, and no children of their own to bestow 
 it upon ; others practice the same art of wheedling 
 upon good old women, that have hoarded and 
 coffered up more bags than they know how to dis- 
 pose of; both of these sly flatteries make fine sport 
 for the gods, when they are beat at their own wea- 
 pons, and as oft happens are gulled by those very 
 persons they intended to make a prey of. 
 
 There is another sort of base scoundrels in 
 gentility, such scraping merchants, who although, 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 115 
 
 for the better vent of their commodities they lie, 
 swear, cheat, and practice all the intrigues of 
 dishonesty, yet think themselves no way inferior 
 to persons of the highest quality, only because they 
 have raked together a plentiful estate. And there 
 are not wanting such insinuating hangers on, as 
 shall caress and compliment them with the greatest 
 respect, in hopes to go snacks in some of their dis- 
 honest gains. There are -others so infected with 
 the philosophical paradox of banishing property, 
 and having all things in common, that they make 
 no conscience of fastening on, and purloining what- 
 ever they can get, and converting it to their own 
 use and possession. There are some who are rich 
 only in wishes, and yet while they barely dream of 
 vast mountains of wealth, they are as happy as if 
 their imaginary fancies commenced real truths. 
 
 Some put on the best side outermost, and starve 
 themselves at home to appear gay and splendid 
 abroad. One with an open-handed freedom spends 
 all he lays his fingers on ; another with a 
 logic-fisted gripingness catches at and grasps 
 all he can come within the reach of; one apes 
 it about in the streets to court popularity ; 
 
116 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 another consults his ease, and sticks to the confine- 
 ment of a chimney-corner ; many others are tugging 
 hard at law for a trifle, and drive on an endless 
 suit, only to enrich a deferring judge, or a knavish 
 advocate ; one is for new-modelling a settled 
 government; another is for some notahle heroical 
 attempt ; and a third hy all means must travel a 
 pilgrim to Rome, Jerusalem, or some shrine of a 
 saint elsewhere, though he have no other business 
 than the paying of a formal impertinent visit, 
 leaving his wife and children to fast, while he him- 
 self forsooth is gone to pray. 
 
 In short, if, as Lucian fancies Menippus to have 
 done heretofore, any man could now again look 
 down from the orb of the moon, he would see thick 
 swarms as it were of flies and gnats, that were 
 quarrelling with each other, justling, fighting, 
 fluttering, skipping, playing, just new produced, 
 soon after decaying, and then immediately vanish- 
 ing ; and it can scarce be thought how many 
 tumults and tragedies so inconsiderate a creature 
 as man does give occasion to, and that in so short a 
 space as the small span of life ; subject to so many 
 casualties, that the sword, pestilence, and other 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 117 
 
 epidemic accidents, shall many times sweep away 
 whole thousands at a brush. \"^\ 
 
 But hold. I should but expose myself too far, 
 and incur the guilt of being roundly laughed at, 
 if I proceed to enumerate the several kinds of 
 the folly of the vulgar. [_I shall confine therefore 
 my following discourse only to such as challenge 
 the repute of wisdom, and seemingly pass for 
 men of the soundest intellectuals. Among whom 
 the Grammarians present themselves in the front, 
 a sort of men who would be the most miserable, 
 the most slavish, and the most hateful ' of all 
 persons, if I did not in some way alleviate the 
 pressures and miseries of their profession by bless- 
 ing them with a bewitching sort of madness. For 
 they are not only liable to those five curses, which 
 they so oft recite from the first five verses of 
 Homer, but- to five hundred more of a worse nature ; 
 as always damned to thirst and hunger, to be 
 choked with dust in their unswept schools. Schools, 
 shall I term them, or rather elaboratories, nay, 
 bridewells, and houses of correction. 
 
 To wear out themselves in fret and drudgery ; to 
 be deafened with the noise of gaping boys ; and in 
 
118 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 short, to be stifled with heat and stench ; and yet 
 they cheerfully acquiesce in all these inconveniences, 
 and, by the help of a fond conceit, think themselves 
 as happy as any men living. Taking a great pride 
 and delight in frowning and looking big upon the 
 trembling urchins, in boxing, slashing, striking 
 with the ferula, and in the exercise of all their 
 other methods of tyranny. While thus lording it 
 over a parcel of young, weak chits, they imitate 
 the Cuman ass, and think themselves as stately as 
 a lion, that domineers over all the inferior herdL_J 
 
 Elevated with this conceit, they can hold filth 
 and nastiness to be an ornament ; can reconcile 
 their nose to the most intolerable smells; and finally, 
 think their wretched slavery the most arbitrary 
 kingdom, which they would not exchange for the 
 jurisdiction of the most sovereign potentate. And 
 they are yet more happy by a strong persuasion of 
 their own parts and abilities ; for thus when their 
 employment is only to rehearse silly stories, and 
 poetical fictions, they will yet think themselves 
 wiser than the best experienced philosopher ; nay, 
 they have an art of making ordinary people, such 
 

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 119 
 
 as their school boys' fond parents, to think them 
 as considerable as their own pride has made them. 
 
 Add hereunto this other sort of ravishing plea- 
 sure. When any of them has found out who was 
 the mother of Anchises, or has lighted upon some 
 old unusual word, such as bubsequa bovinator, 
 manticulator, or other like obsolete cramp terms ; 
 or can, after a great deal of poring, spell out the 
 inscription of some battered monument ; Lord I 
 what joy, what triumph, what congratulating their 
 success, as if they had conquered Africa, or taken 
 Baby] on the Great ! When they recite some of 
 their frothy, bombast verses, if any happen to ad- 
 mire them, they are presently flushed with the 
 least hint of commendation, and devoutly thank 
 Pythagoras for his grateful hypothesis, whereby 
 they are now become actuated with a descent of 
 Virgil's poetic soul. 
 
 Nor is any divertisement more pleasant, than 
 when they meet to flatter and curry one another; yet 
 they are so critical, that if any one hap to be guilty 
 of the least slip, or seeming blunder, another shall 
 presently correct him for it, and then to it they go 
 in a tongue-combat with all the fervour, spleen, 
 
120 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 and eagerness imaginable. May Priscian himself 
 be my enemy if what I am now going to say be not 
 exactly true. I knew an old Sophister that was a 
 Grecian, a latinist, a mathematician, a philosopher, 
 a musician, and all to the utmost perfection, who, 
 after threescore years' experience in the world, had 
 spent the last twenty of them only in drudging to 
 conquer the criticisms of grammar^ and made it the 
 chief part of his prayers, that his life might be so 
 long spared till he had learned how rightly to 
 distinguish betwixt the eight parts of speech, which 
 no grammarian, whether Greek or Latin, had yet 
 accurately done. If any chance to have placed 
 that as a conjunction which ought to have been 
 used as an adverb, it is a sufficient alarm to raise a 
 war for doing justice to the injured word. 
 
 And since there have been as many several 
 grammars, as particular grammarians, nay, more, for 
 Aldus alone wrote five distinct grammars for his 
 own share, the schoolmaster must be obliged to 
 consult them all, sparing for no time nor trouble, 
 though never so great, lest he should be otherwise 
 posed in an unobserved criticism, and so by an 
 irreparable disgrace lose the reward of all his toil. 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 121 
 
 It is indifferent to me whether you call this folly 
 or madness, since you must needs confess that it is 
 by my influence these school-tyrants, though in 
 never so despicable a condition, are so happy in 
 their own thoughts, that they would not change 
 fortunes with the most illustrious Sophi of Persia. 
 
 The Poets, however somewhat less beholden to 
 me, own a professed dependence on me, being a 
 sort of lawless blades, that by prescription claim a 
 license to a proverb, while the whole intent of their 
 profession is only to smooth up and tickle the ears 
 of fools. That by mere toys and fabulous shams, 
 with which however ridiculous they are so bolstered 
 up in an airy imagination, as to promise them- 
 selves an everlasting name, and promise, by their 
 balderdash, at the same time to celebrate the 
 never-dying memory of others. To these rapturous 
 wits self-love and flattery are never-failing atten- 
 dants ; nor do any prove more zealous or constant 
 devotees to folly. 
 
 The Rhetoricians likewise, though they are 
 ambitious of being ranked among the Philosophers, 
 yet are apparently of my faction, as appears among 
 other arguments, by this more especially. In that 
 
122 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 among their several topics of completing the art of 
 oratory, they all particularly insist upon the knack 
 of jesting, which is one species of folly ; as is evident 
 from the books of oratory wrote to Herennius, put 
 among Cicero's work, but done by some other un- 
 known author. And in Quintilian, that great mas- 
 ter of eloquence, there is one large chapter spent 
 in prescribing the methods of raising laughter. In 
 short, they may well attribute a great efficacy to 
 folly, since on any argument they can many times 
 by a slight laugh over what they could never 
 seriously confute. 
 
 Of the same gang are those scribbling fops, who 
 think to eternize their memory by setting up for 
 authors. Among which, though they are all some 
 way indebted to me, yet are those more especially 
 so, who spoil paper in blotting it with mere trifles 
 and impertinences. For as to those graver drudgers 
 to the press, that write learnedly, beyond the reach 
 of an ordinary reader, who durst submit their 
 labours to the review of the most severe critic, these 
 are not so liable to be envied for their honour, as 
 to be pitied for their sweat and slavery. They 
 make additions, alterations, blot out, write anew, 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 123 
 
 amend, interline, turn it upside down, and yet can 
 never please their fickle judgment, but that they 
 shall dislike the next hour what they penned the 
 former ; and all this to purchase the airy commen- 
 dations of a few understanding readers, which at 
 most is but a poor reward for all their fastings, 
 watchings, confinements, and brain-breaking tor- 
 tures of invention. Add to this the impairing of 
 their health, the weakening of their constitution, 
 their contracting sore eyes, or perhaps turning 
 stark blind ; their poverty, their envy, their debar- 
 ment from all pleasures, their hastening on old age, 
 their untimely death, and what other inconveni- 
 ences of a like or worse nature can be thought 
 upon : and yet the recompense for all this severe 
 penance is at best no more than a mouthful or two 
 of frothy praise. 
 
 These, ns they are more laborious, so are they 
 less happy than those other hackney scribblers 
 which 1 first mentioned, who never stand much to 
 consider. !>' it write what comes next at a venture, 
 knowing that the more silly their composures are, 
 the moiv they will be bought up by the greater 
 number of readers, who are fools and blockheads. 
 
/ T-' V. 
 
 y / ' 
 y 4% 
 
 124 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 And if they hap to be condemned by some few 
 judicious persons, it is an easy matter by clamour 
 to drown their censure, and to silence them by 
 urging the more numerous commendations of 
 
 - others. 
 
 They are^yet the wisest who transcribe whole 
 discourses from others, and then reprint them as 
 their own. By doing so they mak a cheap and 
 easy seizure to themselves of that reputation which 
 cost the first author so much time and trouble to 
 procure. If they are at any time pricked a little in 
 conscience for fear of discovery, they feed them- 
 selves however with this hope, that if they be at 
 ;. last found plagiaries, yet at least for some time 
 
 they have the credit of passing for the genuine 
 authors. 
 
 It is pleasant to see how all these several writers 
 are puffed up with the least blast of applause, espe- 
 cially if they come to the honour of being pointed 
 at as they walk along the streets, when their several 
 pieces are laid open upon every bookseller's stall, 
 when their names are embossed in a different char- 
 acter upon the title-page, sometime only with the 
 two first letters, and sometime with fictious cramp 
 
I 
 
 0} 
 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 125 
 
 terms, which few shall understand the meaning of. 
 And of those that do, all shall not agree in their 
 verdict of the performance. Some censuring, others 
 approving it, men's judgments being as different as 
 their palates, that being toothsome to one which is 
 unsavoury and nauseous to another. Though it is 
 a sneaking piece of cowardice for authors itcT put 
 feigned names to their works, as if, like bastards of 
 their brain, they were afraid to own them. Thus 
 one styles himself Telemachus, another Stelenus, a 
 third Polycrates, another Thrasymachus, and so on. 
 By the same liberty we may ransack the whole 
 alphabet, and jumble together any letters that come 
 next to hand. 
 
 It is farther very pleasant when these coxcombs 
 employ their pens in writing congratulatory epistles, 
 poems, and panegyricks, upon each other, wherein 
 one shall be complimented with the title of Alcseus, 
 another shall be charactered for the incomparable 
 Callimachus ; this shall be commended for a com- 
 pleter orator than Tully himself ; a fourth shall be 
 told by his fellow-fool that the divine Plato comes 
 short of him for a philosophic soul. 
 
 Sometime again they take up the cudgels, and 
 
126 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 challenge out an antagonist, and so get a name by 
 a combat at dispute and controversy, wbile the 
 unwary readers draw sides according to their 
 different judgments. The longer the quarrel holds 
 the more irreconcilable it grows ; and when both 
 parties are weary, they each pretend themselves 
 the conquerors, and both lay claim to the credit of 
 coming off with victory. These fooleries make 
 sport for wise men, as being highly absurd, 
 ridiculous and extravagant. True, but yet these 
 paper-combatants, by my assistance, are so flushed 
 with a conceit of their own greatness, that they 
 prefer the solving of a syllogism before the sacking 
 of Carthage ; and upon the defeat of a poor 
 objection carry themselves more triumphant than 
 the most victorious Scipio. 
 
 Nay, even the learned and more judicious, that 
 have wit enough to laugh at the other's folly, are 
 very much beholden to my goodness ; which, 
 except ingratitude have drowned their ingenuity, 
 they must be ready upon all occasions to confess. 
 Among these I suppose the lawyers will shuffle in 
 for precedence, and they of all men have the 
 greatest conceit of their own abilities. They will 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 127 
 
 argue as confidentially as if they spoke gospel 
 instead of law ; they will cite you six hundred 
 several precedents, though not one of them come 
 near to the case in hand. They will muster up the 
 authority of judgments, deeds, glosses, and reports, 
 and tumble over so many musty records, that they 
 make their employ, though in itself easy, the 
 greates^""* slavery imaginable; always accounting 
 that the best plea which they have took most 
 pains for. 
 
 To these, as bearing great resemblance to them, 
 may be added Logicians and Sophisters, fellows 
 that talk as much by rote as a parrot ; who shall 
 run down a whole gossiping of old women, nay, 
 silence the very noise of a belfry, with louder 
 clappers than those of the steeple. And if their 
 unappeasable clamorousness were their only fault 
 it would admit of some excuse ; but they are at 
 the same time so fierce and quarrelsome, that they 
 will wrangle bloodily for the least trifle, and be so 
 over intent and eager, that they many times lose 
 their game in the chase and fright away that truth 
 they are hunting for. Yet self-conceit makes these 
 nimble disputants such doughty champions, that 
 
128 r IHE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 armed with three or four close-linked syllogisms 9 
 they shall enter the lists with the greatest masters 
 of reason, and not question the foiling of them in 
 an irresistible baffle. Nay, their obstinacy makes 
 them so confident of their being in the right, 
 that all the arguments in the world shall never 
 f convince them to the contrary. 
 / Next to these come the Philosophers in their 
 long beards and short cloaks, who esteem them- 
 selves the only favourites of wisdom, and look upon 
 the rest of mankind as the dirt and rubbish of the 
 creation. Yet these men's happiness is only a 
 frantic craziness of brain ; they build castles in the 
 air, and infinite worlds in a vacuum. They will 
 give you to a hair's breadth the dimensions of the 
 sun, moon, and stars, as easily as they would do 
 that of a flaggon or pipkin. They will give a 
 punctual account of the rise of thunder, of the 
 origin of winds, of the nature of eclipses, and of all 
 the other obstrusest difficulties in physics, without 
 the least demur or hesitation, as if they had been 
 admitted into the cabinet council of nature, or had 
 been eye-witnesses to all the accurate methods of 
 creation ; though alas nature does but laugh at all 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 129- 
 
 their puny conjectures. For they never yet made 
 one considerable discovery, as appears in that they 
 are unanimously agreed in no one point of the 
 smallest moment ; nothing so plain or evident but 
 what by some or other is opposed and contradicted. 
 
 But though they are ignorant of the artificial 
 contexture of the least insect, they vaunt however, 
 and brag that they know all things, when indeed 
 they are unable to construe the mechanism of their 
 own body. Nay, when they are so purblind as not 
 to be able to see a stone's cast before them, yet 
 they shall be as sharp-sighted as possible in spying- 
 out ideas, universals, separate forms, first matters, 
 quiddities, formalities, and a hundred such like 
 niceties, so diminutively small, that were not their 
 eyes extremely magnifying, all the art of optics 
 could never make them discernible. 
 
 But they then most despise the low grovelling 
 vulgar when they bring out their parallels, triangles, 
 circles, and other mathematical figures, drawn up 
 in battalia, like so many spells and charms of con- 
 juration in muster, with letters to refer to the 
 explication of the several problems ; hereby raising 
 devils as it were, only to have the credit of 
 
130 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 laying them, and amusing the ordinary spectators 
 into wonder, because they have not wit enough 
 to understand the juggle. Of these some under- 
 take to profess themselves judicial astrologers, 
 pretending to keep correspondence with the 
 stars, and so from their information can resolve 
 any query. And though it is all but a pre- 
 sumptuous imposture, yet some to be *sure will be 
 so great fools as to believe them. 
 ' The divines present themselves next. But it 
 may perhaps be most safe to pass them by, and not 
 to touch upon so harsh a string as this subject 
 would afford. Beside, the undertaking may be 
 very hazardous ; for they are a sort of men gener- 
 ally very hot and passionate ; and should I provoke 
 them, I doubt not would set upon me with a full 
 cry, and force me with shame to recant, which if I 
 stubbornly refuse to do, they will presently brand 
 me for a heretic, and thunder out an excommunica- 
 tion, which is their spiritual weapon to wound such 
 as lift up a hand against them. 
 
 It is true, no men own a less dependence on me, 
 yet have they reason to confess themselves indebted 
 for no small obligations. For it is by one of my 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 131 
 
 properties, self-love, that they fancy themselves, 
 with their elder brother Paul, caught up into the 
 third heaven, from whence, like shepherds indeed, 
 they look down upon their flock, the laity, grazing 
 as it were, in the vales of the world below. They 
 fence themselves in with so many surrounders of 
 magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, pro- 
 positions explicit and implicit, that there is no 
 falling in with them. Or if they do chance to be 
 urged to a seeming non-plus, yet they find out so 
 many evasions, that all the art of man can never 
 bind them so fast, but that an easy distinction shall 
 give them a starting-hole to escape the scandal of 
 being baffled. 
 
 [JThey will cut asunder the toughest argument 
 with as much ease as Alexander did the gordian 
 knot ; they will thunder out so many rattling 
 terms as shall fright an adversary into conviction. 
 They are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the 
 most intricate mysteries ; they will tell you to a 
 tittle all the successive proceedings of Omnipotence 
 in the creation of the universe ; they will explain 
 the precise manner of original sin being derived 
 from our first parents. They will satisfy you in 
 
132 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 
 
 what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a 
 time, our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin's 
 womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer 
 how accidents may subsist without a subject. Nay, 
 these are accounted trivial, easy questions ; they 
 have yet far greater difficulties behind, which not- 
 withstanding they solve with as much expedition 
 as the former. 
 
 As namely, whether supernatural generation re- 
 quires any instant of time for its acting ? Whether 
 Christ, as a son, bears a double specifically distinct 
 relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother ? 
 Whether this proposition is possible to be true, 
 the first person of the Trinity hated the second ? 
 Whether God, who took our nature upon him in 
 the form of a man, could as well have become a 
 woman, a devil, a beast, an herb, or a stone ? And 
 were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared 
 in any shape of an inanimate substance, how he 
 should then have preached his gospel ? Or how 
 have been nailed to the cross ? Whether if St. 
 Peter had celebrated the eucharist at the same time 
 our Saviour was hanging on the cross, the conse- 
 crated bread would have been transubstantiated 
 
. 
 
 8 
 
 5 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 133 
 
 into the same body that remained on the tree ? 
 Whether in Christ's corporal presence in the sacra- 
 mental wafer, his humanity be not abstracted from 
 his Godhead ? Whether after the resurrection we 
 shall carnally eat and drink as we do in this life ? 
 
 There are a thousand other more sublimated and 
 refined niceties of notions, relations, quantities, 
 formalities, quiddities, hseccities, and such like ab- 
 strusities, as one would think no one could pry into, 
 except he had not only such cat's eyes as to see 
 best in the dark, but even such a piercing faculty 
 as to see through an inch-board, and spy out what 
 really never had any being. Add to these some of 
 their tenets and opinions, which are so absurd and 
 extravagant, that the wildest fancies of the Stoics, 
 which they so much disdain and decry as paradoxes, 
 seem in comparison just and rational. As their 
 maintaining, that it is a less aggravating fault to 
 kill a hundred men, than for a poor cobbler to set 
 a stitch on the Sabbath-day ; or, that it is more 
 justifiable to do the greatest injury imaginable to 
 others, than to tell the least lie ourselves. 
 
 And these subtleties are alchymized to a more 
 refined sublimate by the abstracting brains of their 
 
134 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 
 
 several schoolmen ; the Realists, the Nominalists, 
 the Thomists, the Albertists, the Occainists, the 
 Scotists. These are not all, but the rehearsal of a 
 few only, as a specimen of their divided sects ; in 
 each of which there is so much of deep learning, so 
 much of unfathomable difficulty, that I believe the 
 apostles themselves would stand in need of a new 
 illuminating spirit, if they were to engage in any 
 controversy with these new divines. St. Paul, no 
 question, had a full measure of faith ; yet when he 
 lays down faith to be the substance of things not 
 seen, these men carp at it for an imperfect definition, 
 and would undertake to teach the apostles better 
 logic. Thus the same holy author wanted for 
 nothing of the grace of charity, yet, say they, he 
 describes and defines it but very inaccurately, when 
 he treats of it in the thirteenth chapter of his first 
 epistle to the Corinthians, j 
 
 The primitive disciples were very frequent in 
 administering the holy sacrament, breaking bread 
 from house to house ; yet should they be asked of 
 the Terminus a quo and the Terminus ad quern, the 
 nature of trans ubstantiat ion ? The manner how one 
 body can be in several places at the same time ? 
 
[( CNIVERSITl 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 135 
 
 The difference betwixt the several attributes of 
 Christ in heaven, on the cross, and in the con- 
 secrated bread ? What time is required for the 
 transubstantiating the bread into flesh ? How it 
 can be done by a short sentence pronounced by the 
 priest, which sentence is a species of discreet 
 quantity, that has no permanent punctum ? Were 
 they asked these, and several other confused 
 queries, I do not believe they could answer so 
 readily as our mincing school-men now-a-days take 
 a pride to do. They were well acquainted with the 
 Virgin Mary, yet none of them undertook^ to prove 
 that she was presep^^Timftaeul^eTrom original^ 
 stints stomp, nf nnr djvvnps very hotly contend for. 
 
 St. Peter had the keys grveirtcrfetmT^nd that 
 by our Saviour himself, who had never entrusted 
 him except he had known him capable of their 
 manage and custody. And yet it is much to be 
 questioned whether Peter was sensible of that 
 subtlety broached by Scotus, that he may have the 
 key of knowledge effectually for others, who has no 
 knowledge actually in himself.' Again, the disciples 
 baptized all nations, and yet never taught what was 
 the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of 
 
136 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 baptism, and certainly never dreamt of distinguish- 
 ing between a delible and an indelible character in 
 this sacrament. They worshipped in the spirit, fol- 
 lowing their master's injunction, God is a spirit, and 
 they which worship him, must worship him in spirit, 
 and in truth ; yet it does not appear that it was 
 ever revealed to them how divine adoration should 
 be paid at the same time to our blessed Saviour in 
 heaven, and to his picture here below on a wall, 
 drawn with two figures held out, a bald crown, 
 and a circle round his head. To reconcile these 
 intricacies to an appearance of reason requires 
 three-score years' experience in metaphysics. 
 
 Farther, the apostles often mention Grace, yet 
 never distinguish between gratia, gratis data, and 
 gratia gratiftcans. They earnestly exhort us like- 
 wise to good works, yet never explain the differ- 
 ence between Opus operans, and Opus operatum. 
 They very frequently press and invite us to seek 
 after charity, without dividing it into infused and 
 acquired, or determining whether it be a substance 
 or an accident, a created or an uncreated being. 
 They detested sin themselves, and warn others from 
 the commission of it ; and yet I am sure they 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 137 
 
 could never have defined so dogmatically, as the 
 Scotists have since done. 
 
 St. Paul, who in other's judgment is no less the 
 chief of the apostles, than he was in his own the 
 chief of sinners, who being bred at the feet of 
 Gamaliel, was certainly more eminently a scholar 
 than any of the rest, yet he often exclaims against 
 vain philosophy, warns us from doting about 
 questions and strifes of words, and charges us to 
 avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions 
 of science falsely so called. Which he would not 
 have done, if he had thought it worth his while to 
 have become acquainted with them, which he 
 might soon have been, the disputes of that age 
 being but small, and more intelligible sophisms, in 
 reference to the vastly greater intricacies they are 
 now improved to. 
 
 But yet, however, our scholastic divines are so 
 modest, that if they meet with any passage in St. 
 Paul, or any other penman of holy writ, which is 
 not so well modelled, or critically disposed of, as 
 they could wish, they will not roughly condemn 
 it, but bend it rather to a favourable interpretation, 
 out of reverence to antiquity, and respect to the 
 
 9 
 
138 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 holy scriptures. Though indeed it were unreason- 
 able to expect anything of this nature from the 
 apostles, whose lord and master had given unto 
 them to know the mysteries of God, but not those 
 of philosophy. If the same divines meet with 
 anything of like nature unpalatable in St. 
 Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Hierom, or others of the 
 fathers, they will not stick to appeal from their 
 authority, and very fairly resolve that they lay 
 under a mistake. 
 
 Yet these ancient fathers were they who confuted 
 both the Jews and Heathens, though they both 
 obstinately adhered to their respective prejudices ; 
 they confuted them I say, yet by their lives and 
 miracles, rather than by words and syllogisms. 
 And the persons they thus proselyted were down- 
 right honest, well meaning people, such as under- 
 stood plain sense better than any artificial pomp of 
 reasoning. Whereas if our divines should now set 
 about the gaining converts from paganism by their ' 
 metaphysical subtleties, they would find that most 
 of the persons they applied themselves to were 
 either so ignorant as not at all to apprehend them, 
 or so impudent as to scoff and deride them. Or 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 139 
 
 finally, so well skilled at the same weapons, that 
 they would be able to keep their pass, and fence off 
 all assaults of conviction. And this last way the 
 victory would be altogether as hopeless, as if two 
 persons were engaged of so equal strength, that it 
 were impossible any one should overpower the 
 oilier. 
 
 If my judgment might be taken, I would advise 
 Christians, in their next expedition to a holy war, 
 instead of those many unsuccessful legions, which 
 they have hitherto sent to encounter the Turks and 
 Saracens, that they would furnish out their 
 clamorous Scotists, their obstinate Occamists, their 
 invincible Albertists, and all their forces of tough, 
 crabbed and profound disputants. The engagement, 
 I fancy, would be mighty pleasant, and the victory 
 we may imagine op. our side not to be questioned. 
 For which of the enemies would not veil their 
 turbants at so solemn an Appearance ? Which of 
 the fiercest Janizaries would noK throw away his 
 scimitar, and all the half-moons be eclipsed by the 
 interposition of so glorious an army ? 
 
 I suppose you mistrust I speak all this by way 
 of jeer and irony ; and well I may, since among 
 
140 THE PEAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 divines themselves there are some so ingenious 
 as to despise these captious and frivolous imper- 
 tinences. They look upon it as a kind of profane 
 sacrilege, and a little less than blasphemous im- 
 piety, to determine of such niceties in religion, 
 as ought rather to be the subject of an humble 
 vand uncon tradict ing faith, than of a scrupulous 
 ajid inquisitive reason. They abhor a defiling the 
 mysteries of Christianity with an intermixture of 
 heathenish philosophy, and judge it very improper 
 to reduce divinity to an obscure speculative science, 
 whose end is such a happiness as can be gained 
 only by the means of practice. 
 
 But alas, those notional divines, however con- 
 demned by the soberer judgment of others, are yet 
 mightily pleased with themselves, and are so labori- 
 ously intent upon prosecuting their crabbed studies, 
 that they cannot afford so much time as to read a 
 single chapter in any one book of the whole bible. 
 And while they thus trifle away their mis-spent 
 hours in trash and babble, they think that they 
 support the Catholic Church with the props and 
 pillars of propositions and syHogisms, no less elfec- 
 
I 
 
 3 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 141 
 
 tuallj than Atlas is feigned by the poets to sustain 
 on his shoulders the burden of a tottering world. 
 
 Their privileges, too, and authority are very con- 
 siderable. They can deal with any text of scripture 
 as with a nose of wax, knead it into what shape 
 best suits their interest ; and whatever conclusions 
 they have dogmatically resolved upon, they would 
 have them as irrepealably ratified as Solon's laws, 
 and in as great force as the very decrees of the 
 papal chair. If any be so bold as to remonstrate 
 to their decisions, they will bring him on his knees 
 to a recantation of his impudence. They shall 
 pronounce as irrevocably as an oracle, this proposi- 
 tion is scandalous, that irreverent ; this has a 
 smack of heresy, and that is bald and improper ; 
 so that it is not the being baptised into the church, 
 the believing of the scriptures, the giving credit to 
 St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Hierom, St. Augustin, nay, 
 or St. Thomas Aquinas himself, that shall make a 
 man a Christian, except he have the joint suffrage 
 of these novices in learning, who have blessed the 
 world no doubt with a great many discoveries, 
 which had never come to light if they had not 
 struck the fire of subtlety out of the flint of ob- 
 
142 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 scurity. These fooleries sure must be a happy 
 employ. 
 
 Farther, they make as many partitions and 
 divisions in hell and purgatory, and describe as 
 many different sorts and degrees of punishment 
 as if they were very well acquainted with the 
 soil and situation of those infernal regions. And 
 to prepare a seat for the blessed above, they in- 
 vent new orbs, and a stately empyrean heaven, 
 so wide and spacious as if they had purposely con- 
 trived it, that the glorified saints might have room 
 enough to walk, to feast, or to take any recreation. 
 
 With these, and a thousand more such like toys, 
 their heads are more stuffed and swelled than Jove, 
 when he went big of Pallas in his brain, and was 
 forced to use the midwifery of Vulcan's axe to ease 
 him of his teeming burden. Do not wonder, there- 
 fore, that at public disputations they bind their 
 heads with so many caps one over another ; for this 
 is to prevent the loss of their brains, which would 
 otherwise break out from their uneasy confinement. 
 It affords likewise a pleasant scene of laughter, to 
 listen to these divines in their hotly managed dis- 
 putations. To see how proud they are of talking 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 143 
 
 such hard gibberish, and stammering out such 
 blundering distinctions, as the auditors perhaps 
 may sometimes gape at, but seldom apprehend. 
 
 And they take such a liberty in their speaking 
 of Latin, that they scorn to stick at the exactness 
 of syntax or concord ; pretending it is below the 
 majesty of a divine to talk like a pedagogue, and 
 be tied to the slavish observance of the rules of 
 grammar. Finally, they take a vast pride, among 
 other citations, to allege the authority of their 
 respective master, which word they bear as pro- 
 found a respect to as the Jews did to their ineffable 
 tetragrammaton, and therefore they will be sure 
 never to write it any otherwise than in great 
 letters, MAGISTER NOSTEB. And if any 
 happen to invert the order of the words, and say, 
 noster magister, instead of magister noster, they will 
 presently exclaim against him as a pestilent heretic 
 apd underminer of the catholic faith. 
 //The next to these are ^nottiBissoj't of brainsick 
 fools, who style themselves monks and of religious, 
 orders, though they assume both titles very un- 
 justly. For as to the last, they have very little 
 religion in them ; and as to the former, the etymo- 
 
144 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 logy of the word monk implies a solitariness, or 
 being alone ; whereas they are so thick abroad that 
 we cannot pass any street or alley without meeting 
 them. Now I cannot imagine what one degree of 
 men would be more hopelessly wretched, if I did 
 not stand their friend, and buoy them up in that 
 lake of misery, which by the engagements of a holy 
 vow they have voluntarily immerged themselves in. 
 But when these sort of men are so unwelcome to 
 others, as that the very sight of them is thought 
 ominous, I yet make them highly in love with 
 themselves, and fond admirers of their own happi- 
 ness. The first step whereunto they esteem a pro- 
 found ignorance, thinking carnal knowlege a great 
 enemy to their spiritual welfare, and seem confi- 
 ydent of becoming greater proficients in divine 
 <^ mysteries the less they are poisoned with any 
 human learning. They imagine that they bear a 
 sweet consort with the heavenly choir, when they 
 tone out their daily tally of psalms, which they 
 rehearse only by rote, without permitting their 
 understanding or affections to go along with their 
 voice. 
 
 Among these, some make a good profitable trade 
 

 I 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 145 
 
 of beggary, going about from house to house, not 
 like the apostles, to break, but to beg, their bread. 
 Nay, thrust into all public-houses, come aboard the 
 passage-boats, get into the travelling waggons, and 
 omit no opportunity of time or place for the craving 
 people's charity ; doing a great deal of injury to 
 common highway beggars by interloping in their 
 traffic of alms. And when they are thus volun- 
 tarily poor, destitute, not provided with two coats, 
 nor with any money in their purse, they have the 
 impudence to pretend that they imitate the first 
 disciples, whom their master expressly sent out in 
 such an equipage. 
 
 It is pretty to observe how they regulate all their 
 actions as it were by weight and measure to so 
 exact a proportion, as if the whole loss of their 
 religion depended upon the omission of the least 
 punctilio. Thus they must be very critical in the 
 precise number of knots to the tying on of their 
 sandals ; what distinct colours their respective 
 habits, and what stuff made of ; how broad and long 
 their girdles ; how big, and in what fashion, their 
 hoods ; whether their bald crowns be to a hair's- 
 
146 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 breadth of the right cut ; how many hours they 
 must sleep, at what minute rise to prayers, etc. 
 
 And these several customs are altered accord- 
 ing to the humours of different persons and places. 
 While they are sworn to the superstitious obser- 
 vance of these trifles, they do not only despise all 
 others, but are very inclinable to fall out among 
 themselves ; for though they make profession of an 
 apostolic charity, yet they will pick a quarrel, and 
 be implacably passionate for such poor provoca- 
 tions, as the girting on a coat the wrong way, for 
 the wearing of clothes a little too darkish coloured, 
 or any such nicety not worth the speaking of. 
 Some are so obstinately superstitious that they will 
 wear their upper garment of some coarse dog's hair 
 stuff, and that next their skin as soft as silk. But 
 others, on the contrary, will have linen frocks 
 outermost, and their shirts of wool or hair. Some, 
 again, will not touch a piece of money, though they 
 make no scruple of the sin of drunkermsss-and the 
 lust of the flesh. 
 
 All their several orders are mindful of nothing 
 more than of their being distinguished from each 
 other by their different customs and habits. They 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 147 
 
 seem, indeed, not so careful of becoming like Christ, 
 and of being known to be his disciples, as the being 
 unlike to one another, and distinguishable for fol- 
 lowers of their several founders. A great part of 
 their religion consists in their title. Some will be 
 called cordeliers, and these subdivided into capu- 
 chines, minors, minims, and mendicants ; some, 
 again, are styled Benedictines, others of the order 
 of St. Bernard, others of that of St, Bridget ; some 
 are Augustin monks, some Willielmites, and others 
 Jacobists, as if the common name of Christian were 
 too mean and vulgar. 
 
 Most of them place their greatest stress for sal- > 
 vation on a strict conformity to their foppish cere- 
 monies, and a belief of their legendary traditions. 
 Wherein they fancy to have acquitted themselves 
 with so much of supererogation, that one heaven 
 can never be a condign reward for their meritorious 
 life ; little thinking that the Judge of all the earth 
 at the last day shall put them off, with a " Who 
 hath required these things at your hands ? " and 
 call them to account only for the stewardship of 
 his legacy, which was the precept of love and 
 charity. 
 
148 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 It will be pretty to hear their pleas before the 
 great tribunal. One will brag how he mortified his 
 carnal appetite by feeding only upon fish. Another 
 will urge that he spent most of his time on earth 
 in the divine exercise of singing psalms. A third 
 will tell how many days he fasted, and what severe 
 penance he imposed on himself for the bringing his 
 body into subjection. Another shall produce in his 
 own behalf as many ceremonies as would load a 
 fleet of merchantmen. A fifth shall plead that in 
 threescore years he never so much as touched a 
 piece of money, except he fingered it through a 
 thick pair of gloves. A sixth, to testify his 
 former humility, shall bring along with him his 
 sacred hood, so old and nasty, that any seaman had 
 rather stand bare headed on the deck, than put it 
 on to defend his ears in the sharpest storms. The 
 next that comes to answer for himself shall plead, 
 that for fifty years together, he had lived like a 
 sponge upon the same place, and was content never 
 to change his homely habitation. Another shall 
 whisper softly, and tell the judge he has lost his 
 voice by a continual singing of holy hymns and 
 anthems. The next shall confess how he fell into 
 
1 
 
 3 
 
 15 
 
 " 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 149 
 
 a lethargy by a strict, reserved, and sedentary life. 
 And the last shall intimate that he has forgot to 
 speak, by having always kept silence, in obedience 
 to the injunction of taking heed lest he should have 
 offended with his tongue. 
 
 But amidst all their fine excuses our Saviour 
 shall interrupt them with this answer, Woe unto 
 you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, verily I know 
 you not ; I left you but one precept, of loving one 
 another, which I do not hear any one plead he has 
 faithfully discharged ; I told you plainly in my 
 gospel, without any parable, that my father's 
 kingdom was prepared not for such as should lay 
 claim to it by austerities, prayers, or fastings, but 
 for those who should render themselves worthy of 
 it by the exercise of faith, and the offices of charity ; 
 I cannot own such as depend on their own merits 
 without a reliance on my mercy ; as many of you 
 therefore as trust to the broken reeds of your own 
 deserts may even go search out a new heaven, for 
 you shall never enter into that, which from the 
 foundations of the w r orld was prepared only for such 
 as are true of heart. 
 
 When these monks and friars shall meet with 
 
150 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 such a shameful repulse, and see that ploughmen 
 and mechanics are admitted into that kingdom, 
 from which they themselves are shut out, how 
 sneakingly will they look, and how pitifully slink 
 away ? Yet till this last trial they had more 
 comfort of a future happiness, because more hopes 
 of it than any other men. And these persons are 
 not only great in their own eyes, but highly 
 esteemed and respected by others, especially those 
 of the order of mendicants, whom none dare to offer 
 any affront to, because as confessors they are in- 
 trusted with all the secrets of particular intrigues, 
 which they are bound by oath not to discover. Yet 
 many times, when they are almost drunk, they can- 
 not keep their tongue so far within their head, as not 
 to be babbling out some hints, and showing them- 
 selves so full, that they are in pain to be delivered. 
 If any person give them the least provocation 
 they will sure to be revenged of him, and in their 
 next public harangue give him such shrewd wipes 
 and reflections, that the whole congregation must 
 needs take notice at whom they are levelled. Nor 
 will they ever desist from this way of declaiming, 
 till their mouth be stopped with a bribe to hold 
 
r lHE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 151 
 
 their tongue. All their preaching is mere stage- 
 playing, and their delivery the very transports of 
 ridicule and drollery. Good Lord ! how mimical 
 are their gestures ? What heights and falls in their 
 voice ? What toning, what bawling, what singing, 
 what squeaking, what grimaces, making of mouths, 
 apes' faces, and distorting of their countenance ; and 
 this art of oratory as a choice mystery, -they convey 
 down by tradition to one another. 
 
 The manner of it I may adventure thus farther 
 to enlarge upon. First, in a kind of mockery they 
 implore the divine assistance, which they borrowed 
 from the solemn custom of the poets ; then if their 
 text suppose be of charity, they shall take their 
 exordium as far off as from a description of the 
 river Nile in Egypt ; or if they are to discourse of 
 the mystery of the Cross, they shall begin with a 
 story of Bell and the Dragon ; or perchance if their 
 subject be of fasting, for an entrance to their sermon 
 they shall pass though the twelve signs of the 
 zodiac; or lastly, if they are to preach of faith, they 
 shall address themselves in a long mathematical ac- 
 count of the quadrature of the circle. 
 
 I myself once heard a great fool, a great scholar 
 
152 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 ,Xwould have said, undertaking in a laborious dis- 
 course to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity, 
 in the unfolding whereof, that he might shew his 
 wit and reading, and together satisfy itching ears, 
 he proceeded in a new method, as by insisting on 
 the letters, syllables, and proposition, on the con- 
 cord of noun and verb, and that of noun substantive, 
 and noun adjective. The auditors all wondered, 
 and some mumbled to themselves that hemistitch 
 of Horace, 
 
 Why all this needless trash ? 
 
 But at last he brought it thus far, that he could 
 demonstrate the whole Trinity to be represented 
 by these first rudiments of grammar, as clearly and 
 plainly as it was possible for a mathematician 
 to draw a triangle in the sand. And for the 
 making of this grand discovery, this subtle divine 
 had plodded so hard for eight months together, 
 that he studied himself as blind as a beetle, the 
 intenseness of the eye of his understanding over- 
 shadowing and extinguishing that of his body. 
 And yet he did not at all repent him of his blind- 
 ness, but thinks the loss of his sight an easy pur- 
 chase for the gain of glory and credit. 
 
1 
 

 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 153 
 
 /I heard at another time a grave divine, of 
 fourscore years of age at least, so sour and hard- 
 favoured, that one would be apt to mistrust that 
 it was Scotus Redivivus ; he taking upon him to 
 treat of the mysterious name, JESUS, did very 
 subtly pretend that in the very letters was con- 
 tained, whatever could be said of it. For first, its 
 being declined only with three cases, did expressly 
 point out the trinity of persons, then that the nomi- 
 native ended in S, the accusative in M, and the 
 ablative in U, did imply some unspeakable mystery, 
 viz., that in words of those initial letters Christ was 
 the summus, or beginning, the medius, or middle, 
 and the idtimus, or end of all things. There was 
 yet a more abstruse riddle to be explained, which 
 was by dividing the word JESUS into two parts, 
 and separating the S in the middle from the two 
 extreme syllables, making a kind of pentameter, the 
 word consisting of five letters. And this inter- 
 medial S being in the Hebrew alphabet called sin, 
 which in the English language signifies what the 
 Latins term peccatum, was urged to imply that 
 the holy Jesus should purify us from all sin and 
 wickedness?! 
 
 10 
 
154 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 Thus did the pulpiteer cant, while all the con- 
 gregation, especially the brotherhood of divines, 
 were so surprised at his odd way of preaching, 
 that wonder served them, as grief did Niobe, 
 almost turned them into stones. I among the 
 rest ; as Horace describes Priapus viewing the 
 enchantments of the two sorceresses, Canidia 
 and Sagane ; could no longer contain, but let fly 
 a cracking report of the operation it had upon 
 me. These impertinent introductions are not 
 without reason condemned ; for of old, whenever 
 Demosthenes among the Greeks, or Tully among 
 the Latins, began their orations with so great a 
 digression from the matter in hand, it was always 
 looked upon as improper and unelegant, and 
 indeed, were such a long-fetched exordium any 
 token of a good invention, shepherds and plough- 
 men might lay claim to the title of men of greatest 
 parts, since upon any argument it is easiest for them 
 to talk what is least to the purpose. 
 
 These preachers think their preamble, as we may 
 well term, it, to be the most fashionable, when it is 
 farthest from the subject they propose to treat of, 
 while each auditor sits and wonders what they 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 155 
 
 drive at, and many times mutters out the complaint 
 of Virgil : 
 
 Whither does all this jargon tend ? 
 
 In the third place, when they come to the division 
 of their text, they shall give only a very short touch 
 at the interpretation of the words, when the fuller 
 explication of their sense ought to have been their 
 only province. Fourthly, after they are a little 
 entered, they shall start some theological queries, 
 far enough off from the matter in hand, and bandy 
 it about pro and con till they lose it in the heat of 
 scuffle. 
 
 ^And here they shall cite their doctors invincible, 
 subtle, seraphic, cherubic, holy, irrefragable, and 
 such like great names to confirm their several asser- 
 tions. Then out they bring their syllogisms, their 
 majors, their minors, conclusions, corollaries, sup- 
 positions, and distinctions, that will sooner terrify 
 the congregation into an amazement, than persuade 
 them into a conviction. Now comes the fifth act, 
 in which they must exert their utmost skill to come 
 off with applause. Here therefore they fall a telling 
 some sad lamentable story out of their legend, or 
 some other fabulous history, and this they descant 
 
156 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 upon allegorically, tropologically, and analogically^ 
 And so they draw to a conclusion of their discourse? 
 which is a more brain-sick chimera than ever 
 Horace could describe in his De Arte Poetica, when 
 he began : 
 
 Humano Capiti, etc. 
 
 Their praying is altogether as ridiculous as 
 their preaching ; for imagining that in their 
 addresses to heaven they should set out in a low 
 and tremulous voice, as a token of dread and 
 reverence, they begin therefore with such a soft 
 whispering as if they were afraid any one should 
 overhear what they said. But when they are 
 gone a little way, they clear up their pipes by 
 degrees, and at last bawl out so loud as if with Baal's 
 priests, they were resolved to awake a sleeping 
 god. Arid then again, being told by rhetoricians 
 that heights and falls, and a different cadency in 
 pronunciation, is a great advantage to the setting 
 off any thing that is spoken, they will sometimes, 
 as it were, mutter their words inwardly, and then 
 of a sudden hollo them out, and be sure at last, in 
 such a flat, faltering tone, as if their spirits were 
 spent, and they had run themselves out of breath. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 157 
 
 Lastly, they have read that most systems of 
 rhetoric treat of the art of exciting laughter ; 
 therefore, for the effecting of this, they will sprinkle 
 some jests and puns that must pass for ingenuity, 
 though they are only the froth and folly of affected- 
 ness. Sometimes they will nibble at the wit of 
 being satirical, though their utmost spleen is so 
 toothless, that they suck rather than bite, tickle 
 rather than scratch or wound. Nor do they ever 
 flatter more than at such times as they pretend to 
 speak with greatest freedom. 
 
 Finally, all their actions are so buffbonish and 
 mimical, that any would judge the^had learned all 
 their tricks of mountebanks and stage -players, who 
 in action, it is true, may perhaps outdo them, but 
 in oratory there is so little odds between both, that 
 it is hard to determine which seems of longest 
 standing in the schools of eloquence. Yet these 
 preachers, however ridiculous, meet with such 
 hearers, who admire them as much as the people of 
 Athens did Demosthenes, or the citizens of Rome 
 could do Cicero. Among which admirers are chiefly 
 shopkeepers, and women, whose approbation and 
 good opinion they only court ; because the first, if 
 
158 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 they are humoured, give them some snacks out of 
 unjust gain ; and the last come and ease their grief 
 to them upon all pinching occasions, especially 
 when their husbands are any ways cross or unkind. 
 
 Thus much, I suppose, may suffice to make you 
 sensible how much these cell -hermits and recluses 
 are indebted to my bounty. Who, when they 
 tyrannise over the consciences of the deluded laity 
 with fopperies, juggles, and impostures, yet think 
 themselves as eminently pious as St. Paul, St. 
 Anthony, or any other of the saints. But these 
 stage-divines, not less ungrateful disowners of their 
 obligations to folly, than they are impudent pre- 
 tenders to the profession of piety, I willingly take 
 my leave of, and pass now Jx> kings, ]prjnces, and 
 courtiers, who, paying me a devout acknowledg- 
 ment, may justly challenge back the respect of 
 being mentioned and taken notice of by me. 
 
 And first, had they wisdom enough to make a 
 true judgment of things, they would find their own 
 condition to be more despicable and slavish than 
 that of the most menial subjects. For certainly 
 none can esteem perjury or parricide a cheap 
 purchase for a crown, if he does but seriously 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 159 
 
 reflect on that weight of cares a princely diadem is 
 loaded with. He that sits at the helm of govern- 
 ment acts in a public capacity, and so must sacrifice 
 all private interest to the attainment of the common' 
 good. He must himself be conformable to those 
 laws his prerogative exacts, or else he can expect 
 no obedience paid them from others ; he must have 
 a strict eye over all his inferior magistrates and 
 officers, or otherwise it is to be doubted they will 
 but carelessly discharge their respective duties. 
 
 Every king, within his own territories, is placed 
 for a shining example as it were in the firmament 
 of his wide-spread dominions, to prove ^either a 
 glorious star of benign influence, if his behaviour 
 be remarkably just and innocent ; or else to impend 
 as a threatening comet, if his blazing power be 
 pestilent and hurtful. Subjects move in a darker 
 sphere, and so their wanderings and failings are less 
 discernible. Whereas princes, being fixed in a 
 more exalted orb, and encompassed with a brighter 
 dazzling lustre, their spots are more apparently 
 visible, and their eclipses, or other defects, 
 influential on all that is inferior to them. Kings 
 are baited with so many temptations and oppor- 
 
160 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 tunities to vice and immorality, such as are high 
 feeding, liberty, flattery, luxury, and the like, that 
 they must stand perpetually on their guard, to 
 fence off those assaults that are always ready to be 
 made upon them. 
 
 In fine, abating from treachery, hatred, dangers, 
 
 fear, and a thousand other mischiefs impending on 
 
 crowned heads, however uncontrollable they are 
 
 this side heaven ; yet after their reign here they 
 
 must appear before a supremer judge, and there be 
 
 called to an exact account for the discharge of that 
 
 great stewardship which was committed to their 
 
 trust. If princes did but seriously consider, and 
 
 consider they would if they were but wise, these 
 
 Smany hardships of a royal life, they would be so 
 
 ^perplexed in the result of their thoughts thereupon., 
 
 "^&s scarce to eat or sleep in quiet. 
 
 But now by my assistance they leave all these 
 
 \cares to the gods, and mind only their own ease 
 
 \and pleasure, and therefore will admit none to their 
 
 attendance but who will divert them with sport 
 
 and mirth, lest they should otherwise be seized and 
 
 damped with the surprisal of sober thoughts. They 
 
 think they have sufficiently acquitted themselves 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 161 
 
 in the duty of governing, if they do but ride con- 
 stantly a-hunting, breed up good race-horses, sell 
 places and offices to those of the courtiers that will 
 give most for them, and find out new ways for in- 
 vading of their people's property, and hooking in a 
 larger revenue to their own exchequer. For the 
 procurement whereof they will always have some 
 pretended claim and title ; that though it be 
 manifest extortion, yet it may bear the show of law 
 and justice. And then they daub over their 
 oppression with a submissive, flattering carriage, 
 that they may so far insinuate into the affections of 
 the vulgar, as they may not tumult nor rebel, but 
 patiently crouch to burdens and exactions. 
 
 Let us feign now a person ignorant of the laws- 
 and constitutions of that realm he lives in, an 
 enemy to the public good, studious only for his own 
 private interest, addicted wholly to pleasures and 
 delights, a hater of learning, a professed enemv to 
 liberty and truth, careless andN^unmindftil^tJi the 
 common concerns, taking all the measures of justice 
 and honesty from the false beam of self-interest 
 and advantage, after this hang about his neck a 
 gold chain, for an intimation that he ought to have 
 
162 I HE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 all virtues linked together. Then set a crown of 
 gold and jewels on his head, for a token that he 
 ought to overtop and outshine others in all com- 
 mendable qualifications ; next, put into his hand a 
 royal sceptre for a symbol of justice and integrity ; 
 lastly clothe him with purple, for an hieroglyphic 
 of a tender love and affection to the commonwealth. 
 If a prince should look upon this portraiture, and 
 draw a comparison between that and himself, 
 certainly he would be ashamed of his ensigns 
 of majesty, and be afraid of being laughed out of 
 them. 
 
 ext to kings themselves may come their 
 courtiers, who, though they are for the most part 
 a base, servile, cringing, low-spirited sort of flat- 
 terers, yet they look big, swell great, and have 
 high thoughts of their honour and grandeur. 
 Their confidence appears upon all occasions ; 
 yet in this one thing they are very modest, in 
 that they are content to adorn their bodies with 
 gold, jewels, purple, and other glorious ensigns of 
 virtue and wisdom, but leave their minds empty 
 and unfraught ; and taking the resemblance of good- 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 163 
 
 ness to themselves, turn over the truth and reality 
 of it to others. 
 
 They think themselves mighty happy in that they 
 can call the king master, and be allowed the famili- 
 arity of talking with him. That they can volubly 
 rehearse his several titles of august highness, super- 
 eminent excellence, and most serene majesty, that 
 they can boldly usher in any discourse, and that 
 they have the complete knack of insinuation and 
 flattery ; for these are the arts that make them 
 truly genteel and noble. If you make a stricter 
 enquiry after their other endowments, you shall 
 find them mere sots and dolts. They will sleep 
 generally till noon, and then their mercenary chap- 
 lains shall come to their bed-side, and entertain 
 them perhaps with a short morning prayer. As soon 
 as they are dressed they must go to breakfast, and 
 when that is done, immediately to dinner. When 
 the cloth is taken away, then to cards, dice, tables, 
 or some such like diversion. After this they must 
 have one or two afternoon banquets, and so in the 
 evening to supper. When they have supped then 
 begins the game of drinking ; the bottles are mar- 
 
164 THE PEAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 shalled, the glasses ranked, and round go the 
 healths and bumpers till they are carried to bed. 
 
 And this is the constant method of passing away 
 their hours, days, months, years, and ages. I have 
 many times took great satisfaction by standing in 
 the court, and seeing how the tawdry butterflies 
 vie upon one another. The ladies shall measure 
 the height of their humours by the length of their 
 trails, which must be borne up by a page behind. 
 The nobles jostle one another to get nearest to the 
 king's elbow, and wear gold chains of that weight 
 and bigness as require no less strength to carry 
 than they do wealth to purchase. 
 
 And now for some reflections upon popes^. car- 
 dinals, and bishops, who in pomp and splendour 
 <have almost equalled if not outgone secular princes. 
 Now if any one consider that their upper crotchet 
 of white linen is to signify their unspotted purity 
 and innocence ; that their forked mitres, with both 
 divisions tied together by the same knot, are to 
 denote the joint knowledge of the Old and New 
 Testament. That their always wearing gloves, re- 
 presents their keeping their hands clean and unde- 
 nted from lucre and covetousness; that the pastoral 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 165 
 
 staff implies the care of a flock committed to their 
 charge ; that the cross carried before them expresses 
 their victory over all carnal affections. He that 
 considers this, and much more of the like nature, 
 must needs conclude they are entrusted with a very 
 weighty and difficult office. But alas, they think 
 it sufficient if they can but feed themselves; and as 
 to their flock, either commend them to the care of 
 Christ himself, or commit them to the guidance of 
 some inferior vicars and curates. Not so much as 
 remembering what their name of bishop imports, to 
 wit, labour, pains, and dilligence, but by base 
 simoniacal contracts, they are in a profane sense 
 Episcopij i.e., overseers of their own gain and income. 
 So cardinals, in like manner, if they did but con- 
 sider that the church supposes them to succeed in 
 the room of the apostles ; that therefore they must 
 behave themselves as their predecessors, and so not 
 be lords, but dispensers of spiritual gifts, of the dis- 
 posal whereof they must one day render a strict 
 account. Or if they would but reflect a little on 
 their habit, and thus reason with themselves, what 
 means this white upper garment, but only an un- 
 spotted innocence ? What signifies my inner purple, 
 
166 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 but only an ardent love and zeal to God ? What 
 imports my outermost pall, so wide and long that 
 it covers the whole mule when I ride, nay, should 
 be big enough to cover a camel, but only a diffusive 
 charity, that should spread itself for a succour and 
 protection to all, by teaching, exhorting, comforting, 
 reproving, admonishing, composing of differences, 
 courageously withstanding wicked princes, and 
 sacrificing for the safety of our flock our life and 
 blood, as well as our wealth and riches. Though 
 indeed riches ought not to be at all possessed by 
 such as boast themselves successors to the apostles, 
 who were poor, needy, and destitute. I say, if they 
 did but lay these considerations to heart they would 
 never be so ambitious of being created to this honour, 
 they would willingly resign it when conferred upon 
 them, or at least would be as industrious, watchful 
 and laborious, as the primitive apostles were. 
 
 Now as to the popes of Rome, who pretend 
 themselves Christ's vicars, if they would but imi- 
 tate his exemplary life, in the being employed in 
 an unintermitted course of preaching. In the being 
 attended with poverty, nakedness, hunger, and a 
 contempt of this world ; if they did but consider 
 
I 
 
 "8 
 
 a 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 167 
 
 the import of the word pope, which signifies a 
 father ; or if they did but practice their surname of 
 most holy, what order or degrees of men would be 
 in a worse condition ? There would be then no 
 such vigorous making of parties, and buying of 
 votes, in the conclave upon a vacancy of that see. 
 
 And those who, by bribery or other indirect 
 courses, should get themselves elected, would never 
 secure their sitting firm in the chair by pistol, 
 poison, force, and violence. How much of their 
 pleasure would be abated if they were but endowed 
 with one dram of wisdom ? Wisdom, did I say ? 
 Nay, with one grain of that salt which our Saviour 
 bid them not lose the savour of. All their riches, 
 all their honour, their jurisdictions, their Peter's 
 patrimony, their offices, their dispensations, their 
 licences, their indulgences, their long train and 
 attendants, see in how short a compass I have 
 abbreviated all their marketing of religion ; in a 
 word, all their perquisites would be forfeited and 
 lost ; and in their room would succeed watchings, 
 fastings, tears, prayers, sermons, hard studies, 
 repenting sighs, and a thousand such like severe 
 penalties. Nay, what's yet more deplorable, it 
 
168 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 
 
 would then follow, that all their clerks, amanu- 
 enses, notaries, advocates, proctors, secretaries, 
 the offices of grooms, ostlers, serving-men, pimps, 
 and somewhat else which for modesty's sake I 
 shall not mention ; in short, all these troops of 
 attendants, which depends on his holiness, would 
 all lose their several employments. This indeed 
 would be hard, but what yet remains would be 
 more dreadful. The very Head of the Church, the 
 spiritual prince, would then be brought from all his 
 splendour to the poor equipage of a scrip and staff. 
 But all this is upon the supposition on]y that 
 they understood what circumstances they are 
 placed in ; whereas now, by a wholesome neglect 
 of thinking, they live as well as heart can wish. 
 Whatever of toil and drudgery belongs to their 
 office that they assign over to St. Peter, or St. 
 Paul, who have time enough to rnind it ; but if 
 there be any thing of pleasure and grandeur, that 
 they assume to themselves, as being hereunto 
 called. So that by my influence no sort of people 
 live more to their own ease and content. They 
 think to satisfy that Master they pretend to serve, 
 our Lord and Saviour, with their great state and 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 169 
 
 magnificence, with the ceremonies of instalments, 
 with the titles of reverence and holiness, and with 
 exercising their episcopal function only in blessing 
 and cursing. 
 
 LJThe working of miracles is old and out -dated ; 
 to teach the people is too laborious ; to interpret 
 scripture is to invade the prerogative of the school- 
 men ; to pray is too idle ; to shed tears is cowardly 
 and unmanly ; to fast is too mean and sordid ; to 
 be easy and familiar is beneath the grandeur of him 
 who, without being sued to and entreated, will 
 scarce give princes the honour of kissing his toe ; 
 finally, to die for religion is too self-denying ; and 
 to be crucified as their Lord of life, is base and igno- 
 minious. Their only weapons ought to be those of 
 the Spirit ; and of these indeed they are mighty 
 liberal, as of their interdicts, their suspensions, 
 their denunciations, their aggravations, their 
 greater and lesser excommunications, and their 
 roaring bulls, that fright whomever they are 
 thundered against. And these most holy fathers 
 never issue them out more frequently than against 
 those who, at the instigation of the devil, and not 
 having the fear of God before their eyes, do feloni- 
 
 ii 
 
170 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 ously and maliciously attempt to lessen and impair 
 St. Peter's patrimony. 
 
 And though that apostle tells our Saviour in the 
 gospel, in the name of all the other disciples, we 
 have left all and followed you, yet they challenge 
 as his inheritance, fields, towns, treasures, and large 
 dominions. For the defending whereof, inflamed 
 with a holy zeal, they fight with fire and sword, to 
 the great loss and effusion of Christian blood, 
 thinking they are apostolical maintainers of Christ's 
 spouse, the church, when they have murdered all 
 such as they call her enemies. Though, indeed, 
 the church has no enemies more bloody and ty- 
 Xannical than such impious popes, who give dispen- 
 sations for the not preaching of Christ ; evacuate 
 the main effect and design of our redemption by 
 their pecuniary bribes and sales ; adulterate the 
 gospel by their forced interpretations, and under- 
 mining traditions ; and lastly, by their lusts and 
 wickedness grieve the Holy Spirit, and make their 
 Saviour's wounds to bleed anewTJ 
 
 Further, when the Christian church has been all 
 along first planted, then confirmed, and since estab- 
 lished by the blood of her martyrs, as if Christ, her 
 
<s 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
 8 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 171 
 
 head, would be wanting in the same methods still 
 of protecting her, they invert the order, and pro- 
 pagate their religion now by arms and violence, 
 which was wont formerly to be done only wi f h 
 patience and sufferings. And though war be so 
 brutish, as that it becomes beasts rather than men; 
 so extravagant, that the poets feigned it an effect 
 of the furies ; so licentious, that it stops the course 
 of all justice and honesty ; so desperate, that it is 
 best waged by ruffians and banditti ; and so un- 
 christian, that it is contrary to the express com- 
 mands of the gospel. Yet, maugre all this, peace 
 is too quiet, too inactive, and they must be engaged 
 in the boisterousness of war. 
 
 Among which undertaking popes, you shall have 
 some so old that they can scarce creep, and yet 
 they will put on a young, brisk resolution ; will 
 resolve to stick at no pains, to spare no cost, nor to 
 waive any inconvenience, so they may involve laws, 
 religion, peace, and all other concerns, whether 
 sacred or civil, in unappeasable tumults and dis- 
 tractions. And yet some of their learned fawning 
 courtiers will interpret this iiotQrioTrs~Tiuidii6gs for 
 zeal, and piety, and fortitude, having found out the 
 
172 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 way how a man may draw his sword, and sheathe 
 it in his brother's bowels, and yet not offend against 
 the duty of the second table, whereby we are 
 obliged to love our neighbours as ourselves. 
 
 /\-\j is yet uncertain whether these Romish fathers 
 / j 
 
 have taken example from, or given precedent to, 
 such other German bishops who, omitting their 
 ecclesiastical habit, and other ceremonies, appear 
 openly armed cap-a-pie, like so many champions 
 and warriors, thinking no doubt that they come 
 short of the duty of their function, if they die in 
 any other place than the open field, fighting the 
 battles of the Lord. The inferior clergy, deeming 
 it unmannerly not to conform to their patrons and 
 diocesans, devoutly tug and fight for their tithes 
 with syllogisms and arguments, as fiercely as with 
 swords, sticks, stones, or anything that came next 
 to hand. ^ 
 
 When they read the rabbies, fathers, or other 
 ancient writings, how quick-sighted are they in 
 spying out any sentences that they may frighten 
 the people with and make them believe that more 
 than the tenth is due, passing by whatever they 
 meet with in the same authors that minds them of 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 173 
 
 the duty and difficulty of their own office. They 
 never consider that their shaven crown is a token 
 that they should pare off and cut away all the 
 superfluous lusts of this world, and give themselves 
 wholly to divine meditation. But instead of this, 
 our bald-pated priests think they have done 
 enough, if they do but mumble over such a fardel 
 of prayers ; which it is a wonder if God should 
 hear or understand, when they whisper them so 
 softly, and in so unknown a language, which they 
 can scarce h ear_ or_u n dgrstan d themselves. 
 
 This they have in common with other mechanics, 
 that they are most subtle in the craft of getting 
 money, and wonderfully skilled in their respective 
 dues of tithes, offerings, and perquisites. Thus 
 they are all content to reap the profit, but as to 
 the burden, that they toss as a ball from one hand 
 to another, and assign it over to any they can get 
 or hire. For as secular princes have their judges 
 and subordinate ministers to act in their name, and 
 supply their stead, so ecclesiastical governors have 
 their deputies, vicars, and curates, nay, many times 
 turn over the whole care of religion to the laity. 
 
 The laity, supposing they have nothing to do 
 
174 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 with the church, as if their baptismal vow did not 
 initiate them members of it, make it over to the 
 priests. Of the priests, again, those that are 
 secular, thinking their title implies them to be a 
 little too profane, assign this task over to the re- 
 gulars, the regulars to the monks, the monks bandy 
 it from one order to another, till it light upon the 
 mendicants. They lay it upon the Carthusians, 
 which order alone keeps honesty and piety among 
 them, but really keep them so close that no body 
 ever yet could see them. Thus the popes, thrust- 
 ing only their sickle into the harvest of profit, leave 
 all the other toil of spiritual husbandry to the 
 bishops, the bishops bestow it upon the pastors, the 
 pastors on their curates, and the curates commit it 
 to the mendicants, who return it again to such as 
 well know how to make good advantage of the 
 flock, by the benefit of their fleece. 
 
 But I would not be thought purposely to ex- 
 pose the weaknesses of popes and priests, lest I 
 should seem to recede from my title, and make 
 a satire instead of a panegyric. Nor let anyone 
 imagine that I reflect on good princes, by com- 
 mending of bad ones. I did this only in brief, to 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 175 
 
 shew that there is no one particular person can 
 lead a comfortable life, except he be entered of my 
 society, and retain me for his friend. Nor indeed 
 can it be otherwise, since fortune, that empress of 
 the world, is so much in league and amity with me, 
 that to wise men she i s ^wa^s^st jngy , and sparing 
 of her gifts, but is profusely liberal and lavish to 
 fools. Thus Timotheus, the Athenian commander, 
 in all his expeditions, was a mirror of good luck, 
 because he was a little underwitted ; from him was 
 occasioned the Grecian proverb, " The net fills, 
 though the fisherman sleeps ;" there is also another 
 favourable proverb, "The owl flies," an omen of 
 success. 
 
 But against wise men are pointed these ill-abod- 
 ing proverbs, " Born under a bad planet ; " " He 
 cannot ride the fore-horse ; " " Ill-gotten goods will 
 never prosper ; " and more to the same purpose. 
 But I forbear from any farther proverbializing, lest 
 I should be thought to have rifled my Erasmus's 
 adages. To return, therefore, fortune we find still 
 favouring the blunt, and flushing the forward ; 
 strokes and smoothes up fools, crowning all their 
 undertakings with success ; but wisdom makes her 
 
176 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 followers bashful, sneaking, and timorous, and 
 therefore you see that they are commonly reduced 
 to hard shifts, must grapple with poverty, cold and 
 hunger, must lie recluse, despised, and unregarded, 
 while fools roll in money, are advanced to dignities 
 and offices, and in a word, have the whole world at 
 command, 
 
 If any one think it happy to be a favourite at 
 court, and to manage the disposal of places and 
 preferments, alas, this happiness is so far Jrom 
 being attainable by wisdom, that the very suspicion 
 of it would put a stop to all advancement. Has 
 any man a mind to raise himself a good estate ? 
 Alas what dealer in the world would ever get a 
 farthing, if he be so wise as to scruple at perjury, 
 blush at a lie, or stick at any fraud and over- 
 reaching. 
 
 Farther, does any one appear a candidate for 
 any ecclesiastical dignity ? Why, an ass, or a 
 plough-jobber, shall sooner gain it than a wise 
 man. Again, are you in love with any handsome 
 lady ? Alas, women-kind are so addicted to 
 folly, that they will not at all listen to the court- 
 ship of a wise suitor. Finally, wherever there is- 
 
! 
 
 S3 
 
 1 
 
 e 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. Ill 
 
 any preparation made for mirth and jollity, all wise 
 men are sure to be excluded the company, lest they 
 should stint the joy, and dampthe^jiolic. In a 
 word, to what side soever we turn ourselves, to 
 popes, princes, judges, magistrates, friends, enemies, 
 rich or poor, all their concerns are managed by 
 money, which because it is undervalued by wise 
 men, therefore, in revenge to be sure, it never 
 comes at them. 
 
 But now, though my praise and commendation 
 might well be endless, yet it is requisite I should 
 put some period to my speech. I'll therefore draw 
 toward an end, when I have first confirmed what I 
 have said by the authority of several authors. 
 Which by way of farther proof I shall insist upon, 
 partly that I may not be thought to have said 
 more in my own behalf than what will be justified 
 by others, and partly that the lawyers may not 
 check me for citing no precedents nor allegations. 
 To imitate them, therefore, I will produce some re- 
 ports and authorities, though perhaps, like theirs 
 too, they are nothing to the purpose. 
 
 First, then, it is confessed almost to a proverb, 
 that the art of dissembling is a very necessary 
 
178 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 accomplishment. And therefore it is a common 
 verse among schoolboys : 
 
 "To feign the fool when fit occasions rise, 
 Argues the being more completely wise." 
 
 It is easy, therefore, to collect how great a value ought 
 to be put upon real folly, when the very shadow, 
 and bare imitation of it, is so much esteemed. 
 Horace, who in his epistles thus styles himself: 
 
 "My sleek-skinn'd corpse as smooth as if I lie 
 'Mong th' fatted swine of Epicurus's sty." 
 
 This poet gives this advice in one of his odes : 
 
 " Short Folly with your counsels mix." 
 
 The epithet of short, it is true, is a little improper. 
 The same poet, again, has this passage elsewhere :- 
 
 " Well- timed Folly has a sweet relish." 
 
 And in another place : 
 
 ' ' I'd rather much be censured for a fool, 
 Than feel the lash and smart of wisdom's school." 
 
 Homer praises Telemachus as much as any one of 
 his heroes, and yet he gives him the epithet of 
 Silly. And the Grecians generally use the same 
 word to express children, as a token of their in- 
 nocence. And what is the argument of all Homer's 
 Iliads, but only, as Horace observes : 
 
 "They kings and subjects dotages contain?" 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 179 
 
 How positive also is Tully's commendation that 
 all places are filled with fools ? Now every excel- 
 lence being to be measured by its extent, the good- 
 ness of folly must be of as large compass as those 
 universal places she reaches to. But perhaps 
 christians may slight the authority of a heathen. 
 I could therefore, if I pleased, back and confirm the 
 truth hereof by the citations of several texts of 
 scripture ; though herein it were perhaps my duty 
 to beg leave of the divines, that I might so far in- 
 trench upon their prerogative. 
 
 Supposing we grant this, the task seems so diffi- 
 cult as to require the invocation of some aid and 
 assistance. Yet because it is unreasonable to put 
 the muses to the trouble and expense of so tedious 
 a journey, especially since the business is out of 
 their sphere, I shall choose rather, while I am 
 acting the divine, and venturing in their polemic 
 difficulties, to wish myself for such time animated 
 with Scotus, and his bristling and prickly soul, 
 which I would not care how afterwards it returned 
 to his body, though for refinement it were stopped 
 at a purgatory by the way. I cannot but wish 
 that I might wholly change my character, or at 
 
180 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 least that some grave divine, in my stead, might 
 rehearse this part of the subject for me ; for truly 
 I suspect that somebody will accuse me of plunder- 
 ing the closets of those reverend men, while I pre- 
 tend to so much divinity, as must appear in my 
 following discourse. Yet however, it may not seem 
 strange, that after so long and frequent a converse, 
 I have gleaned some scraps from the divines. Since 
 Horace's wooden god by hearing his master read 
 Homer, learned some words of Greek ; and Lucian's 
 cock, by long attention, could readily uncterstand 
 what any man spoke. But now to the purpose, 
 wishing myself success. 
 
 Ecclesiastes doth somewhere confess that there 
 are an infinite number of fools. Now when he 
 speaks of an infinite number, what does he else but 
 imply, that herein is included the whole race of 
 mankind, except some very few, which I know 
 not whether ever any one had yet the happiness to 
 
 see ? 
 
 The prophet Jeremiah speaks yet more plainly 
 in his tenth chapter, where he saith, that " Every 
 man is brutish in his knowledge." He just before 
 attributes wisdom to God alone, saying that the 
 
4 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 181 
 
 " Wise men of the nations are altogether brutish 
 and foolish." And in the preceding chapter he 
 gives this seasonable caution, " Let not the wise 
 man glory in his wisdom ; " the reason is obvious, 
 because no man hath truly whereof to glory. But 
 to return to Ecclesiastes, when he saith, " Vanity 
 of vanities, all is vanity." what else can we imagine 
 his meaning to be, than that our whole life is 
 nothing but one continued interlude of Folly ? 
 
 This confirms that assertion of Tully, which is 
 delivered in that noted passage we but just now 
 mentioned, namely, that " All places swarm with 
 fools." Farther, what does the son of Sirach mean 
 when he saith in Ecclesiasticus, that the " Fool is 
 changed as the moon," while the " Wise man is 
 fixed as the sun," than only to hint out the folly of 
 all mankind ; and that the name of wise is due to 
 no other but the all-wise God ? For all inter- 
 preters by Moon understand mankind, and by Sun 
 that fountain of all light, the Almighty. The 
 same sense is implied in that saying of our Saviour 
 in the gospel, " There is none good but one, that is 
 God;" for if whoever is not wise must be conse- 
 quently a fool, and if, according to the Stoics, every 
 
182 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 man be wise so far only as he is good, the meaning 
 of the text must be, all mortals are unavoidably 
 fools ; and there is none wise but one, that is God. 
 Solomon also in the fifteenth chapter of his 
 proverbs hath this expression, " Folly is joy to him 
 that is destitute of wisdom ; " plainly intimating, 
 that the wise man is attended with grief and 
 vexation, while the foolish only roll in delight and 
 pleasure. To the same purpose is that saying of 
 his in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, "In much 
 wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth 
 knowledge increaseth sorrow." Again, it is 
 confessed by the same preacher in the seventh 
 chapter of the same book, " That the heart of the 
 wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of 
 fools is in the house of mirth." This author him- 
 self had never attained to such a portion of 
 wisdom, if he had not applied himself to a searching 
 out the frailties and infirmities of human nature ; 
 as, if you believe not me, may appear from his own 
 words in his first chapter, " I gave my heart to 
 know wisdom, and to know madness and folly ; " 
 where it is worthy to be observed that as to the 
 order of words, Folly for its advantage is put in the 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 183 
 
 last place. Thus Ecclesiastes wrote, and thus 
 indeed did an ecclesiastical method require ; namely, 
 that what has the precedence in dignity should 
 come hindermost in rank and order, according to 
 the tenor of that evangelical precept, " The last 
 shall be first, and the first shall be last." 
 
 And in Ecclesiastes likewise, whoever was author 
 of the holy book which bears that name, in the 
 forty-fourth chapter, the excellency of folly above 
 wisdom is positively acknowledged ; the very words 
 I shall not cite, till I have the advantage of an 
 answer to a question I am proposing, this way of 
 interrogating being frequently made use of by Plato 
 in his dialogues between Socrates, and other dis- 
 putants. I ask you then, what is it we usually 
 hoard and lock up, things of greater esteem and 
 value, or those which are more common, trite, and 
 despicable ? Why are you so backward in making 
 an answer ? Since you are so shy and reserved, 
 I'll take the Greek proverb for a satisfactory reply ; 
 namely, " Foul water is thrown down the sink ; " 
 which saying, that no person may slight it, may 
 be convenient to advertise that it comes from no 
 
184 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 meaner an author than that oracle of truth, Aristotle 
 himself. 
 
 And indeed there is no one on this side Bedlam 
 so mad as to throw out upon the dunghill his gold 
 and jewels, but rather all persons have a close re- 
 pository to preserve them in, and secure them under 
 all the locks, bolts, and bars, that either art can 
 contrive, or fears suggest. Whereas the dirt, 
 pebbles, and oyster-shells, that lie scattered in the 
 streets, ye trample upon, pass by, and take no 
 notice of. If then what is more valuable be coffered 
 up, and what legs so lies unregarded,it follows, that 
 accordingly Folly should meet with a greater esteem 
 than wisdom, because that wise author advises us 
 to the keeping close and concealing the first, and 
 exposing or laying open the other. As take him 
 now in his own words, " Better is he that hideth 
 his folly than him that hideth his wisdom." 
 
 Beside, the sacred text does oft ascribe innocence 
 and sincerity to fools, while the wise man is apt to 
 be a haughty scorner of all such as he thinks or 
 censures to have less wit than himself. For so I 
 understand that passage in the tenth chapter of 
 Ecclesiastes, " When he that is a fool walketh 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 185 
 
 by the way, his wisdom faileth him, and he saith to 
 every one that he is a fool." Now what greater 
 argument of candour or ingenuity can there be, than 
 to demean himself equal with all others, and not 
 think their deserts any way inferior to his own. 
 Folly is no such scandalous attribute, but that the 
 wise Agur was not ashamed to confess it, in the 
 thirtieth chapter of Proverbs, "JSurely I am more 
 brutish than any man, and have not the under- 
 standing of a man." 
 
 Nay, St. Paul himself, that great doctor of the 
 Gentiles, writing to his Corinthians, readily owns i 
 the name saying, " If any man speak as a fool, I 
 am more ; " as if to have been less so had been a 
 reproach and disgrace. But perhaps I may be 
 censured for mis-interpreting this text by some 
 modern annotators, who like crows pecking at^one ^j 
 another's eyes, fincT'fault, and correct all that went V\. 
 before them, pretend: ^ScfeTEeir"own glosses i~Wj[/ " 
 contaln'"llTe~^Dnly Lrue""Tiird genuine explication^ 
 among whom my Erasmus, whom I cannot but 
 mention with respect, may challenge the second 
 place, if not the precedency. 
 
 This citation, say they, is purely impertinent ; 
 
 12 
 
186 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 the meaning of the apostle is far different from 
 what you dream of. He would not have these 
 words so understood, as if he desired to be thought 
 a greater fool than the rest, but only when he had 
 before said, " Are they ministers of Christ ? so am 
 I ; " as if the equalling himself herein to others 
 had been too little, he adds, " I am more," thinking 
 a bare equality not enough, unless he were even 
 superior to those he compares himself with. 
 
 This he would have to be believed as true ; yet 
 lest it might be thought offensive, as bordering 
 too much on arrogance and conceit, he tempers 
 and alleviates it by the covert of Folly. I speak, 
 says he, as a fool, knowing it to be the peculiar 
 privilege of fools to speak the truth, without giving 
 offence. But what St. Paul's thoughts were when 
 he wrote this, I leave for them to determine. In 
 my own judgment at least I prefer the opinion of 
 the good old tun-bellied divines, with whom it's 
 safer and more creditable to err, than to be in the 
 right with smattering, raw, novices. 
 
 Nor indeed should any one mind the late 
 critics any more than the senseless chattering of 
 a daw. Especially since one of the most eminent 
 
1 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 8? 
 
 9 
 
 s 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 187 
 
 of them, whose name I advisedly conceal, magis- 
 terially and dogmatically descanting upon his text, 
 " Are they the ministers of Christ V I speak as a 
 fool, I am more, makes a distinct chapter, and, 
 which without good store of logic he could never 
 have done, adds a new section, and then gives this 
 paraphrase, which I shall verbatim recite, that you 
 may have his words materially, as well as formally 
 his sense, for that's one of their babbling distinc- 
 tions. "I speak as a fool," that is, if the equalling 
 myself to those false apostles would have been con- 
 strued as the vaunt of a fool, I will willingly be 
 accounted a greater fool, by taking place of them, 
 and openly pleading, that as to their ministry, I 
 not only come up even with them, but outstrip and 
 go beyond them. Though this same commentator 
 a little after, as it were forgetting what he had just 
 before delivered, tacks about and shifts to another 
 interpretation. 
 
 But why do I insist upon any one particular 
 example, when in general it is the public charter of 
 all divines, to mould and bend the sacred oracles 
 till they comply with their own fancy, spreading 
 them, as Heaven by its Creator, like a curtain, 
 
188 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 closing together, or drawing them back, as they 
 please ? Thus indeed St. Paul himself minces and 
 mangles some citations he makes use of, and seems 
 to wrest them to a different sense from what they 
 were first intended for, as is confessed by the great 
 linguist, St. Hierom. Thus when that apostle saw 
 at Athens the inscription of an altar, he draws from 
 it an argument for the proof of the Christian 
 religion ; but leaving out great part of the sentence, 
 which perhaps if fully recited might have prejudiced 
 his cause, he mentions only the two last words, viz., 
 " To the unknown God ;" and this too not without 
 alteration, for the whole inscription runs thus, 
 " To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to all 
 foreign and unknown Gods." 
 
 'Tis an imitation of the same pattern, I will 
 warrant you, that our young divines, by leaving 
 out four or five words in a place, and putting a 
 false construction on the rest, can make any 
 passage serviceable to their own purpose ; though 
 from the coherence of what went before, or fol- 
 lows after, the genuine meaning appears to be 
 either wide enough, or perhaps quite contradictory 
 to what they would thrust and impose upon it. In 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 189 
 
 which knack the divines are grown now so expert, 
 that the lawyers themselves begin to be jealous of 
 an encroachment upon what was formerly their sole 
 privilege and practice. 
 
 And indeed what can they despair of proving, 
 since the fore-mentioned commentator, I had almost 
 blundered out his name, but that I am restrained 
 by fear of the same Greek proverbial sarcasm, did 
 upon a text of St. Luke put an interpretation, no 
 more agreeable to the meaning of the place, than 
 one contrary quality is to another ? The passage 
 is this, when Judas's treachery was preparing to be 
 executed, and accordingly it seemed requisite that 
 all the disciples should be provided to guard and 
 secure their assaulted master, our Saviour, that he 
 might piously caution them against reliance for 
 his delivery on any worldly strength, asks them : 
 Whether in all their embassy they lacked anything, 
 when he had sent them out so unfurnished for the 
 performance of a long journey, that they had not 
 so much as shoes to defend their feet from the in- 
 juries of flints and thorns, or a scrip to carry a 
 meal's meat in. And when they had answered that 
 they* lacked nothing, he adds, "But now he that 
 
190 1HE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 
 
 hath a purse let him take it, and likewise a script ; 
 and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment, 
 and buy one." 
 
 Now when the whole doctrine of our Saviour in- 
 culcates nothing more frequently than meekness, 
 patience, and a contempt of this world, is it not 
 plain what the meaning of the place is ? Namely, 
 that he might now dismiss his ambassadors in a 
 more naked, defenceless condition, he does not only 
 advise them to take no thought for shoes or scrip, 
 but even commands them to part with the very 
 clothes from their back, that so they might have 
 the less incumbrance and entanglement in the going 
 through their office and /unction. "He cautions 
 them, it is true, to be furnished with a sword, yet 
 not such a carnal one as rogues and highwaymen 
 make use of for murder and bloodshed, but with 
 the sword of the Spirit, which pierces through the 
 heart, and searches out the innermost retirements 
 of the soul, lopping off all our lust, and corrupt 
 affections, and leaving nothing in possession of our 
 breast but piety, zeal, and devotion. This, I say, 
 in my opinion is the most natural interpretation. 
 But see how that divine misunderstands the 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 191 
 
 place ; by sword, says he, is meant, defence 
 against persecution ; by scrip, or purse, a sufficient 
 quantity of provision ; as if Christ had, by 
 considering better of it, changed his mind in 
 reference to that mean equipage, which he had 
 before sent his disciples in, and therefore came now 
 to a recantation of what he had formerly instituted. 
 Or as if he had forgot what in time past he had 
 told them, " Blessed are you when men shall revile 
 you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil 
 against you for my sake/' Render not evil for evil, 
 for blessed are the meek, not the cruel. As if he 
 had forgot that he encouraged them by the 
 examples of sparrows and lilies to take no 
 thought for the morrow ; he gives them now 
 an other v lesson, and charges them, rather than go 
 " without a sword, to sell their garment, and buy 
 one ; " as if the going cold and naked were more 
 excusable than the marching unarmed. And as 
 this author thinks all means which are requisite for 
 the prevention or retaliation of injuries to be 
 implied under the name of sword, so under that of 
 scrip, he would have everything to be compre- 
 
192 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 hended, which either the necessity or conveniency 
 of life requires. // 
 
 Thus does this provident commentator furnish 
 out the disciples with halberts, spears, and guns, 
 for the enterprise of preaching Christ crucified ; he 
 supplies them at the same time with pockets, bags, 
 and portmanteaus, that they might carry their 
 cupboards as well as their bellies always about 
 them. He takes no notice how our Saviour after- 
 wards rebukes Peter for drawing that sword which 
 he had just before so strictly charged him to buy ; 
 nor that it is ever recorded that the primitive 
 Christians did by no ways withstand their heathen 
 persecutors otherwise than with tears and prayers, 
 which they would have exchanged more effectually 
 for swords and bucklers, if they had thought this 
 text would have borne them out. 
 
 There is another, and he of no mean credit, 
 whom for respect to his person I shall forbear to 
 name, who commenting upon that verse in the 
 prophet Habakkuk, "I saw the tents of Cushan in 
 affliction, and the curtains of the land of Midian 
 did tremble," because tents were sometimes made 
 of skins, he pretended that the word tents did here 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 signify the skin of St. Bartholomew, who was 
 flayed for a martyr. 
 
 I myself was lately at a divinity disputation, 
 where I very often pay my attendance, where one 
 of the opponents demanded a reason why it should 
 be thought more proper to silence all heretics by 
 sword and faggot, rather than convert them by 
 moderate and sober arguments ? A certain cynical 
 old blade, who bore the character of a divine, 
 legible in the frowns and wrinkles of his face, not 
 without a great deal of disdain answered, that it 
 was the express injunction of St. Paul himself, in 
 those directions to Titus, "A man that is an heretic, 
 after the first and second admonition, reject/' 
 quoting it in Latin, where the word reject is devita, 
 while all the auditory wondered at this citation, 
 and deemed it no way applicable to his purpose ; 
 he at last explained himself, saying, that devita 
 signified de vita tollendum hereticum, a heretic 
 must be slain. Some smiled at his ignorance, but 
 others approved of it as an orthodox comment. 
 
 And however some disliked that such violence 
 should be done to so easy a text, our hair-splitting 
 and irrefragable doctor went on in triumph. To 
 
194 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 prove it yet, says he, more undeniably, it is com- 
 manded in the old law " Thou shalt not suffer a 
 witch to live." Now then every Maleficus, or 
 witch, is to be killed, but an heretic is Maleficus, 
 which in the Latin translation is put for a witch. 
 All that were present wondered at the ingenuity of 
 the person, and very devoutly embraced his opinion, 
 never dreaming that the law was restrained only to 
 magicians, sorcerers, and enchanters, for otherwise, 
 if the word Maleficus signified what it most 
 naturally implies, every evil-doer, then drunkenness 
 and whoredom were to meet with the same capital 
 punishment as witchcraft. But why should I 
 squander away my time in a too tedious prosecution 
 of this topic, which if driven on to the utmost 
 would afford talk to eternity ? I aim herein at no 
 more than this, namely, that since those grave 
 doctors take such a swinging range and latitude, I, 
 who am but a smattering novice in divinity, may 
 have the larger allowance for any slips or mistakes. 
 Now therefore I return to St. Paul, who uses 
 these expressions, "Ye suffer fools gladly," apply- 
 ing it to himself; and again " As a fool receive 
 me," and " That which I speak, I speak not after 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 195 
 
 the Lord, but as it were foolishly ;" and in another 
 place " We are fools for Christ's sake." See how 
 thes$. commendations of Folly are equal to the 
 author of them, both great and sacred. The same 
 holy person does yet enjoin and command the 
 beingfool, as a virtue of all others most requisite 
 and ne^^sary, for says he, " If any man seem to 
 be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that 
 he may be wise/' Thus St. Luke records, how our 
 Saviour, after his resurrection, j oined himself with 
 two of his disciples travelling to Emmaus, at his 
 first salutation he calls them fools, saying, "O 
 fools, and slow of heart to believe." 
 
 Nor may this seem strange in comparison to 
 what is yet farther delivered by St. Paul, who 
 adventures to attribute something of Folly even to 
 the all- wise God himself. " The foolishness of God 
 is wiser than men ;" in which text St. Origen 
 would not have the word foolishness any way 
 referred to men, or applicable to the same sense, 
 wherein is to be understood that other passage of 
 St. Paul, " The preaching of the cross to them that 
 perish, foolishness." 
 
 But why do I put myself to the trouble of citing 
 
196 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 
 
 so many proofs, since this one may suffice for all, 
 namely, that in those mystical psalms wherein 
 David represents the type of Christ, it is there 
 acknowledged by our Saviour, in way of confession, 
 that even he himself was guilty of Folly ; " Thou, 
 O God, knowest my foolishness ?" Nor is it with- 
 out some reason that fools for their plainness and 
 sincerity of heart have always been most acceptable 
 to God Almighty. For as the princes of this 
 world have shrewdly suspected, and carried a 
 jealous eye over such of their subjects as were the 
 most observant, and deepest politicians ; for thus 
 Caesar was afraid of the plodding Cassius, and 
 Brutus, thinking himself secure enough from the 
 careless drinking Anthony ; Nero likewise mis- 
 trusted Seneca, and Dionysius would have been 
 willingly rid of Plato, whereas they can all put 
 greater confidence in such as are of less subtlety 
 and contrivance. 
 
 So our Saviour in like manner dislikes and 
 condemns the wise and crafty, as St. Paul does 
 expressly declare in these words, " God hath 
 chosen the foolish things of the world ;" and again, 
 " it pleased God by foolishness to save the world ;" 
 
1 
 
 Q 
 
 I 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 197 
 
 implying that by wisdom it could never have 
 been saved. Nay, God himself testifies as 
 much when he speaks by the mouth of his 
 prophet, " I will destroy the wisdom of the 
 wise, and bring to nought the understanding 
 of the learned." Again, our Saviour does solemnly 
 return his Father thanks for that he had " hidden 
 the mysteries of salvation from the wise, and re- 
 vealed them, to babes," i.e., to fools ; for the original 
 word vwiou, being opposed to <ro<t>ois, if one signify 
 wise, the other must foolish. To the same purpose 
 did our blessed Lord frequently condemn and up- 
 braid the scribes, pharisees, and lawyers, while he 
 carries himself kind and obliging to the unlearned 
 multitude. For what otherwise can be the mean- 
 ing of that tart denunciation, "Woe unto you 
 scribes and pharisees," then woe unto you wise 
 men, whereas he seems chiefly delighted with 
 children, women, and illiterate fishermen. 
 
 We may farther take notice, that among all the 
 several kinds of brute creatures he shews greatest 
 liking to such as are farthest distant from the 
 subtlety of the fox. Thus in his progress to 
 Jerusalem he chooses to ride sitting upon an 
 
198 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 ass, though, if he pleased, he might have mounted 
 the back of a lion with more of state, and as little 
 of danger. The Holy Spirit chose rather likewise 
 to descend from heaven in the shape of a simple 
 gall-less dove, than that of an eagle, kite, or other 
 more lofty fowl. 
 
 Thus all along in the holy scriptures there are 
 frequent metaphors and similitudes of the most 
 inoffensive creatures, such as stags, hinds, lambs, 
 and the like. Nay, those blessed souls that in 
 the day of judgment are to be placed at our 
 Saviour's right hand are called sheep, which are 
 the most senseless and stupid of all cattle, as 
 is evidenced by Aristotle's Greek proverb, 
 a sheepishness of temper, i.e., a dull, blockish, 
 sleepy, unmanly humour. Yet of such a flock 
 Christ is not ashamed to profess himself the shep- 
 herd. Nay, he would not only have all his 
 proselytes termed sheep, but even he himself would 
 be called a lamb ; as when John the Baptist seeth 
 Jesus coming unto him, he saith, "Behold the 
 Lamb of God;" which same title is very often 
 given to our Saviour in the apocalypse. 
 
 All this amounts to no less than that all mortal 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 s 
 
 .^ 
 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 199 
 
 men are fools, even the righteous and godly as well 
 as sinners ; nay, in some sense our blessed Lord 
 himself, who, although he was " the wisdom of the 
 Father," yet to repair the infirmities of fallen man, 
 he became in some measure a partaker of human 
 Folly, when he "took our nature upon him, and 
 was found in fashion as a man;" or when "God 
 made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that 
 we might be made the righteousness of God in 
 him." Nor would he heal those breaches our sins 
 had made by any other method than by the 
 "foolishness of the cross," published by the ig- 
 norant and unlearned apostles, to whom he fre- 
 quently recommends the excellence of Folly, cau- 
 tioning them against the infectiousness of wisdom, 
 by the several examples he proposes them to 
 imitate, such as children, lilies, sparrows, mustard, 
 and such like beings, which are either wholly in- 
 animate, or at least devoid of reason and ingenuity, 
 guided by no other conduct than that of instinct, 
 without care, trouble, or contrivance. 
 
 To the same intent the disciples were warned by 
 their lord and master, that when they should be 
 "brought unto the synagogues, and unto magis- 
 
200 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 trates and powers," they shall " take no thought 
 how, or what thing they should answer, nor what 
 they should say." They were again strictly forbid 
 to " enquire into the times and seasons," or to place 
 any confidence in their own abilities, but to depend 
 wholly upon divine assistance. 
 
 At the first peopling of paradise the Almighty 
 had never laid so strict a charge on our father 
 Adam to refrain from eating of the tree of know- 
 Jedge except he had thereby forewarned that the 
 --taste of knowledge would be the bane of all happi- 
 ness. St. Paul says expressly, that knowledge 
 puffeth up, i.e., it is fatal and poisonous. In pur- 
 suance whereunto St. Bernard interprets that ex- 
 ceeding high mountain whereon the devil had 
 erected his seat to have been the mountain of 
 knowledge. And perhaps this may be another 
 argument which ought not to be omitted, namely, 
 that Folly is acceptable, at least excusable, with 
 the gods, inasmuch as they easily pass by the 
 heedless failures of fools, while the miscarriages of 
 such as are known to have more wit shall very 
 hardly obtain a pardon. Nay, when a wise man 
 comes to sue for an acquitment from any guilt, he 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 201 
 
 must shroud himself under the patronage and pre- 
 text of Folly. 
 
 For thus in the twelfth of Numbers Aaron en- 
 treats Moses to stay the leprosy of his sister Miriam, 
 saying, " Alas, my Lord, I beseech thee lay not the 
 sin upon us, wherein we have done foolishly." Thus, 
 when David spared Saul's life, when he found him 
 sleeping in a tent of Hachilah, not willing to stretch 
 forth his hand against the Lord's anointed. Saul 
 excuses his former severity by confessing, " Behold, 
 I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly." 
 David also himself in much the same form begs the 
 remission of his sin from God Almighty with this 
 prayer, " Lord, I pray thee take away the iniquity 
 of thy servant, for I have done very foolishly ; " as 
 if he could not have hoped otherwise to have his 
 pardon granted except he petitioned for it under 
 the covert and mitigation of Folly. 
 
 The agreeable practice of our Saviour is yet more 
 convincing, who, when he hung upon the cross, 
 prayed for his enemies, saying, " Father, forgive 
 them," urging no other plea in their behalf than 
 that of their ignorance, " for they know not what 
 they do." To the same effect St. Paul in his first 
 
 13 
 
202 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 epistle to Timothy acknowledges he had been a 
 blasphemer and a persecutor, " But," saith he, "I 
 obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in un- 
 belief." Now what is the meaning of the phrase, I 
 did it ignorantly, but only this ? My fault was 
 occasioned from a misinformed Folly, not from a 
 deliberate malice. What signifies " I obtained 
 mercy" but only that I should not otherwise have 
 obtained it had not folly and ignorance been my 
 vindication ? 
 
 To the same purpose is that other passage in the 
 mysterious Psalmist, which I forgot to mention in 
 its proper place, namely, " Oh remember not the 
 sins and offences of my youth ! >J the word which 
 we render offences, is in Latin ignorantias, ignor- 
 ances. Observe, the two things he alleges in his 
 excuse are, first, his rawness of age, to which Folly 
 and want of experience are constant attendants : 
 and secondly, his ignorances, expressed in the plural 
 number for an enhancement and aggravation of his 
 foolishness. 
 
 But that I may not wear out this subject too far, 
 to draw now towards a conclusion, it is observable 
 that the Christian religion seems to have some rela- 
 
rvt 
 
 k 
 
 1 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 203 
 
 tion to Folly, and no alliance at all with wisdom. 
 Of the truth whereof, if you desire farther proof 
 than my bare word you may please, first, to consider, 
 that children, women, old men, and fools, led as it 
 were by a secret impulse of nature, are always most 
 constant in repairing to church, and most zealous, 
 devout and attentive in the performance of the 
 several parts of divine service. Nay, the first pro- 
 mulgators of the gospel, and the first converts to 
 Christianity, were men of plainness and simplicity, 
 wholly unacquainted with secular policy or learning. 
 Farther, there are none more silly, or nearer 
 their wits' end, than those who are too supersti- 
 tiously religious. They are profusely lavish in their 
 charity ; they invite fresh affronts by an easy for- 
 giveness of past injuries ; they suffer themselves to 
 be cheated and imposed upon by laying claim to 
 the innocence of the dove ; they make it the interest 
 of no person to oblige them, because they will love, 
 and do good to their enemies, as much as to the 
 most endearing friends ; they banish all pleasure, 
 feeding upon the penance of watching, weeping, 
 fasting, sorrow and reproach ; they value not their 
 lives, but with St. Paul, wish to be dissolved, and 
 
204 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 covet the fiery trial of martyrdom. In a word, 
 they seem altogether so destitute of common sense, 
 that their soul seems already separated from the 
 dead and inactive body. 
 
 And what else can we imagine all this to be than 
 downright madness ? It is the less strange there- 
 fore that at the feast of Pentecost the apostles 
 should be thought drunk with new wine ; or that 
 St. Paul was censured by Festus to have been be- 
 side himself. 
 
 And since I have had the confidence to go thus 
 far, I shall venture yet a little further, and be so 
 bold as to say thus much more. All that final 
 happiness, which christians, through so many rubs 
 and briars of difficulties, contend for, is at last no 
 better than a sort of folly and madness. This, no 
 question, will be thought extravagantly spoke ; but 
 consider awhile, and deliberately state the case. 
 
 First, then, the christians so far agree with the 
 Platonists as to believe that the body is no better 
 than a prison or dungeon for the confinement of 
 the soul. That therefore, while the soul is 
 shackled to the walls of flesh, her soaring wings are 
 impeded, and all her enlivening faculties clogged 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 205 
 
 and fettered by the gross particles of matter, so 
 that she can neither freely range after, nor, when 
 happily overtook, can quietly contemplate her 
 proper object of truth. 
 
 Farther, Plato defines philosophy to be the 
 meditation of death, because the one performs the 
 same office with the other ; namely, withdraws the 
 mind from all visible and corporeal objects. There- 
 fore, while the soul does patiently actuate the 
 several organs and members of the body, so long is 
 a man accounted of a good and sound disposition ; 
 but when the soul, weary of her confinement, 
 struggles to break jail, and fly beyond her cage of 
 flesh and blood, then a man is censured at least for 
 being magotty and crack-brained ; nay, if there be 
 any defect in the external organs it is then termed 
 downright madness. 
 
 And yet many times persons thus affected shall 
 have prophetic ecstacies of foretelling things to 
 come, shall in a rapture talk languages they never 
 before learned, and seem in all things actuated by 
 somewhat divine and extraordinary ; and all this, 
 no doubt, is only the effect of the soul's being more 
 released from its engagement to the body, whereby 
 
206 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 it can with less impediment exert the energy of life 
 and motion. From hence, no question, has sprung 
 an observation of like nature, confirmed now into a 
 settled opinion, that some long-experienced souls 
 in the world, before their dislodging, arrive to the 
 height of prophetic spirits. 
 
 If this disorder arise from an intemperance in 
 religion/ and too high a strain of devotion, though 
 it be of a somewhat differing sort, yet it is so near 
 akin to the former, that a great part of mankind 
 apprehend it as a mere madness ; especially when 
 persons of that superstitious humour are so prag- 
 maticaFand singular as to separate and live apart, 
 as it were, from all the Avorld beside. So as they 
 seem to have experienced what Plato dreams to 
 have happened between some, who, enclosed in a 
 dark cave, did only ruminate on the ideas and 
 abstracted speculations of entities ; and one other 
 of their company, who had got abroad into the open 
 light, and at his return tells them what a blind 
 mistake they had lain under. That he had seen 
 the substance of what their dotage of imagination 
 reached only in shadow ; that therefore he could 
 not but pity and condole their deluding dreams, 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 207 
 
 while they on the other side no less bewail his 
 frenzy, and turn him out of their society for a 
 lunatic and madman. 
 
 Thus the vulgar are wholly taken up with those 
 objects that are most familiar to their senses, be- 
 yond which they are apt to think all is but fairy- 
 land ; while those that are devoutly religious scorn 
 to set their thoughts or affections on any things 
 below, but mount their soul to the pursuit of incor- 
 poreal and invisible beings. The former, in their 
 marshalling the requisites of happiness, place riches 
 in the front, the endowments of the body in the 
 next rank, and leave the accomplishments of the 
 soul to bring up the rear ; nay, some will scarce 
 believe there is any such thing at all as the soul, 
 because they cannot literally see a reason of their 
 faith ; while the other pay their first fruits of service 
 tothat most simple and incomprehensible Being, 
 God, employ themselves next in providing for the 
 happiness of that which comes nearest to their im- 
 mortal soul, being not at all mindful of their corrupt 
 bodily carcases, and slighting money as the dirt and 
 rubbish of the world ; or if at any time some urging 
 occasions require them to become entangled in 
 
208 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 secular affairs, they do it with regret, and a kind 
 of ill-will, observing what St. Paul advises his 
 Corinthians, having wives, and yet being as though 
 they had none ; buying, and yet remaining as though 
 they possessed not. 
 
 There are between these two sorts of persons 
 many differences in several other respects. As first, 
 though all the senses have the same mutual relation 
 to the body, yet some are more gross than others ; 
 as those five corporeal ones, of touching, hearing, 
 smelling, seeing, tasting, whereas some again are 
 more refined, and less adulterated with matter ; 
 such are the memory, the understanding, and the 
 will. Now the mind will be always most ready 
 and expedite at that to which it is naturally most 
 inclined. Hence is it that a pious soul, employing 
 all its power and abilities in the pressing after such 
 things as are farthest removed from sense, is per- 
 fectly stupid and brutish in the management of 
 any worldly affairs ; while on the other side, the 
 vulgar are so intent upon their business and em- 
 ployment, that they have not time to bestow one 
 poor thought upon a future eternity. From such 
 ardour of divine meditation was it that Saint 
 
' 
 
 a 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 209 
 
 Bernard in his study drank oil instead of wine, and 
 yet his thoughts were so taken up that he never 
 observed the mistake. 
 
 Farther, among the passions of the soul, some 
 have a greater communication with the body than 
 others ; as lust, the desire of meat and sleep, anger, 
 pride, and envy ; with these the pious man is in 
 continual war, and irreconcileable enmity, while 
 the vulgar cherish and foment them as the best 
 comforts of life. 
 
 There are other affections of a middle nature, 
 common and innate to every man ; such are love to 
 one's country, duty to parents, love to children, 
 kindness to friends, and such like ; to these the 
 vulgar pay some respect, but the religious endea- 
 vour to supplant and eradicate from their soul, 
 except they can raise and sublimate them to the 
 most refined pitch of virtue ; so as to love or 
 honour their parents, not barely under that cha- 
 racter, for what did they do more than generate a 
 body ? Nay, even for that we are primarily be- 
 holden to God, the first parent of all mankind, but 
 as good men only, upon whom is imprinted the 
 lively image of that divine nature, which they 
 
210 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 
 
 esteem as the chief and only good, beyond whom 
 nothing deserves to be beloved, nothing desired. 
 
 By the same rule they measure all the other 
 offices or duties of life ; in each of which, whatever 
 is earthly and corporeal, shall, if not wholly re- 
 jected, yet at least be put behind what faith makes 
 the substance of things not seen. Thus in the 
 sacraments, and all other acts of religion, they make 
 a difference between the outward appearance or 
 body of them, and the more inward soul or spirit. 
 As to instance, in fasting, they think it very in- 
 effectual to abstain from flesh, or debar themselves 
 of a meal's meat, which yet is all the vulgar under- 
 stand by his duty, unless they likewise restrain 
 their passions, subdue their anger, and mortify 
 their pride ; that the soul being thus disengaged 
 from the entanglement of the body, may have a 
 better relish to spiritual objects, and take an ante- 
 past of heaven. 
 
 Thus, say they, in the holy Eucharist, though 
 the outward form and ceremonies are not wholly to 
 be despised, yet are these prejudicial, at least un- 
 profitable, if as bare signs only they are riot accom- 
 panied with the thing signified, which is the body 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 211 
 
 and blood of Christ, whose death, till his second 
 coming, we are hereby to represent by the van- 
 quishing and burying our vile affections that they 
 may arise to a newness of life, and be united first 
 to each other, then all to Christ. 
 
 These are the actions and meditations of the 
 truly pious person ; while the vulgar place all 
 their religion in crowding up close to the altar, in 
 listening to the words of the priest, and in being 
 very circumspect at the observance of each trifling 
 ceremony. Nor is it in such cases only as we have 
 here given for instances, but through his whole course 
 of life, that the pious man, without any regard to 
 the baser materials of the body, spends himself 
 wholly in a fixed intentness upon spiritual, invisible, 
 and eternal objects. 
 
 Now since these persons stand off, and keep at so 
 wide a distance between themselves, it is customary 
 for them both to think each other mad. And were 
 I to give my opinion to which of the two the name 
 does most properly belong, I should, I confess, ad- 
 judge it to the religious ; of the reasonableness 
 whereof you may be farther convinced if I proceed 
 to demonstrate what I formerly hinted at, namely, 
 
212 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 that that ultimate happiness which religion pro- 
 poses is no other than some sort of madness. 
 
 First, therefore, Plato dreamed somewhat of this 
 nature when he tells us that the madness of lovers 
 was of all other dispositions of the body most desir- 
 able ; for he who is once thoroughly smitten with 
 this passion, lives no longer within himself, but has 
 removed his soul to the same place where he has 
 settled his affections, and loses himself to find the 
 object he so much dotes upon. This straying now, 
 and wandering of a soul from its own mansion, what 
 is it better than a plain transport of madness ? 
 What else can be the meaning of those proverbial 
 phrases, " he is not himself; " " recover yourself; " 
 and "he is come again to himself?" And accord- 
 ingly as love is more hot and eager, so is the mad- 
 ness thence ensuing more incurable, and yet more 
 happy. 
 
 Now what shall be that future happiness of 
 glorified saints, which pious souls here on earth so 
 earnestly groan for, but only that the spirit, as the 
 more potent and prevalent victor, shall over-master 
 and swallow up the body ; and that the more easily. 
 Because while here below, the several members, by 
 
j 
 
 i 
 
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 213 
 
 being mortified, and kept in subjection, were the 
 better prepared for this separating change ; and 
 afterward the spirit itself shall be lost, and drowned 
 in the abyss of beatific vision, so as the whole man 
 will be then perfectly beyond all its own bounds, 
 and be no otherwise happy, than as transported 
 into ecstasy and wonder, it feels some unspeakable 
 influence from that omnipotent Being, which makes 
 all things completely blessed, by assimilating them 
 to his own likeness. 
 
 Now although this happiness be then only con- 
 summated, when souls at the general resurrection 
 shall be re-united to their bodies, and both be 
 clothed with immortality ; yet because a religious 
 life is but a continued meditation upon, and as it 
 were a transcript of the joys of heaven, therefore to 
 such persons there is allowed some relish and fore- 
 taste of that pleasure here, which is to be their re- 
 ward hereafter. And although this indeed be but 
 a small pittance of satisfaction compared with that 
 future inexhaustible fountain of blessedness, yet 
 does it abundantly over-balance all worldly delights, 
 were they all in conjunction set off to their best 
 advantage ; so great is the precedency of spiritual 
 
214 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 things before corporeal, of invisible before material 
 and visible. 
 
 This is what the apostle gives an eloquent 
 description of. where he says by way of encour- 
 agement, that " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
 nor hath it entered into the heart of man to con- 
 ceive those things which God hath prepared for 
 them that love him." This likewise is that better 
 part which Mary chose, which shall not be taken 
 from her, but perfected and completed by her 
 mortal putting on immortality. 
 
 Now those who are thus devoutly affected, 
 though few there are so, undergo somewhat of 
 strange alteration, which very nearly approaches to 
 madness ; they speak many things at an abrupt 
 and incoherent rate, as if they were actuated by 
 some possessing demon ; they make an inarticulate 
 noise, without any distinguishable sense or mean- 
 ing. They sometimes screw and distort their faces 
 to uncouth and antic looks ; a.t one time beyond 
 measure cheerful, then as immoderately sullen; now 
 sobbing, then laughing, and soon after sighing, as 
 if they were perfectly distracted, and out of their 
 senses. 
 
r lHE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 215 
 
 If they have any sober intervals of coming to 
 themselves again, like St. Paul they then con- 
 fess, that they were caught up they know not 
 where, whether in the body, or out of the body, 
 they cannot tell ; as if they had been in a dead 
 sleep or trance, they remember nothing of what 
 they have heard, seen, said, or done. This they 
 only know, that their past delusion was a most 
 desirable happiness ; that therefore they bewail 
 nothing more than the loss of it, nor wish for any 
 greater joy than the quick return of it, and more 
 durable abode for ever. And this, as I have said, 
 is the foretaste or anticipation of future blessedness. 
 
 But I doubt I have forgot myself, and have 
 already transgressed the^rmmd^jpf modesty. How- 
 ever, if I have said anything too confidently or 
 impertinently, be pleased to consider that it was 
 spoke by Folly, and that unHer the person of a 
 woman ; yet at the same time remembes the appli- 
 cableness of that Greek proverb : 
 
 A fool of fc speaks a seasonable truth : 
 
 Unless you will be so witty as to object that this 
 makes no apology for me, because the word 
 
216 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 
 
 signifies a man, not a woman, and consequently my 
 sex debars me from the benefit of that observation. 
 I perceive now, that, for a concluding treat, you 
 expect a formal epilogue, and the summing up of 
 all in a brief recitation ; but I will assure you, you 
 are grossly mistaken if you suppose that after such 
 a hodge-podge medley of speech I should be able to 
 recollect anything I have delivered. Beside, as it 
 is an old proverb, " I hate a pot-companion with a 
 good memory ; " so indeed I may as truly say, " I 
 hate a hearer that will carry any thing away with 
 him." Wherefore, in short : 
 
 Farewell ! live long, drink deep, be jolly, 
 Ye most illustrious votaries of folly ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY ALEXANDER GARDNER, PAISLEY. 
 
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