When Rabelais lay on his death-bed, he could not help jesting at the very last moment; for, having received the extreme unction, a friend coming to see him, said, he hoped he was prepared for the next world. Yes, yes, answered Rabelais, I am ready for my journey now; they have just greased my boots.
GERMAN WIT AND HUMOR
Brandt’s Das Narrenschiff, or The Ship of Fools, a long satirical poem, was published at the close of the Fifteenth century.
It was followed by The Boats of Foolish Women and other imitative works.
Among them, was The Praise of Folly, by Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch classical scholar and satirist.
The following is from the Dedicatory Epistle which introduces The Praise of Folly, and which is addressed to Sir Thomas More.
“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 considerable authors. For thus, several ages since, Homer wrote of no more weighty a subject than of 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, that corrects him for this, did as much for the injustice of Glaucus. Favorinus extolled Thersites, and wrote in praise of a quartane ague. Synesius pleaded in behalf of baldness; and Lucian defended a sipping fly. Seneca drollingly related the deifying of Claudius; Plutarch the dialogue betwixt Gryllus and Ulysses; Lucian and Apuleius the story of an ass; and somebody else records the last 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, as that a reader of ordinary sense may possibly thence reap more advantage than from some more big and stately argument.... As to what relates to myself, I must be forced to submit to the judgment of others, yet, except I am too partial to be judge in my own case, I am apt to believe I have praised Folly in such a manner as not to have deserved the name of fool for my pains.”
A short extract from the book follows.
“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 relates 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 axiom, ‘Children and fools always speak the truth.’ Whatever the fool has in his heart, he betrays in his face; or what is more notifying, discovers it 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 time requires; whereby he can in a trice so alter his judgment, as to prove that to be now white, which he had just 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 splendor 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 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 pardoned, 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 applied to; and the happy knack of ordering it so, is bestowed only on fools....”