In Praise of Folly
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! what joy, what triumph, what congratulating their success, as if
they had conquered Africa, or taken Babylon the Great! When they recite
some of their frothy, bombast verses, if any happen to admire them, they
are presendy flushed with the least hint of commendation, and devoudy
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 presendy correct
him for it, and then to it they go in a tongue-combat, with all the
fervour, spleen, 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 righdy 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. 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 themselves 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 attendants; 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 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 unknown author; and in Quintilian,
that great master 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, 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 commendations of a few understanding readers,
which at most is but a poor reward for all their fastings, watchings,
confinements, and brain-breaking tortures 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 debarment from all pleasures, their hastening
on old age, their untimely death, and what other inconveniences 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, as they are more laborious, so are they less happy than
those other hackney scribblers which I first mentioned, who never stand
much to consider, but write what comes next at a venture, knowing that
the more silly their composures are, the more they will be bought up by
the greater number of readers, who are fools and blockheads: 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 make 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 themselves 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,
especially 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
character upon the tide-page, sometime only with the two first letters,
and sometime with fictitious cramp 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 to 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
Thrasyma-chus, 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 episdes, poems, and panegyricks, upon each other, wherein
one shall be complimented with the title of Alcaeus, another shall be
charactered for the incomparable Callimachus; this shall be commended
for a completer 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 challenge out an
antagonist, and so get a name by a combat at dispute and controversy,
while 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 argue as confidently 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 greatest 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 armed with three or four
close-linked syllogisms, they shall enter the lists with the greatest
masters of reason, and not question the foiling of them in an
irresistible way, nay, their obstinacy makes them so confident of their
being in the right, that all the arguments in the world shall never
convince them to the contrary.
Next to these come the philosophers in their long beards and short
cloaks, who esteem themselves 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 abstrusest 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 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