The Praise of Folly | Page 2

I rode on a
hobbyhorse. For what injustice is it that when we allow every course of
life its recreation, that study only should have none? Especially when
such toys are not without their serious matter, and foolery is so handled
that the reader that is not altogether thick-skulled may reap more

benefit from it than from some men's crabbish and specious arguments.
As when one, with long study and great pains, patches many pieces
together on the praise of rhetoric or philosophy; another makes a
panegyric to a prince; another encourages him to a war against the
Turks; another tells you what will become of the world after himself is
dead; and another finds out some new device for the better ordering of
goat's wool: for as nothing is more trifling than to treat of serious
matters triflingly, so nothing carries a better grace than so to discourse
of trifles as a man may seem to have intended them least. For my own
part, let other men judge of what I have written; though yet, unless an
overweening opinion of myself may have made me blind in my own
cause, I have praised folly, but not altogether foolishly. And now to say
somewhat to that other cavil, of biting. This liberty was ever permitted
to all men's wits, to make their smart, witty reflections on the common
errors of mankind, and that too without offense, as long as this liberty
does not run into licentiousness; which makes me the more admire the
tender ears of the men of this age, that can away with solemn titles. No,
you'll meet with some so preposterously religious that they will sooner
endure the broadest scoffs even against Christ himself than hear the
Pope or a prince be touched in the least, especially if it be anything that
concerns their profit; whereas he that so taxes the lives of men, without
naming anyone in particular, whither, I pray, may he be said to bite, or
rather to teach and admonish? Or otherwise, I beseech you, under how
many notions do I tax myself? Besides, he that spares no sort of men
cannot be said to be angry with anyone in particular, but the vices of all.
And therefore, if there shall happen to be anyone that shall say he is hit,
he will but discover either his guilt or fear. Saint Jerome sported in this
kind with more freedom and greater sharpness, not sparing sometimes
men's very name. But I, besides that I have wholly avoided it, I have so
moderated my style that the understanding reader will easily perceive
my endeavors herein were rather to make mirth than bite. Nor have I,
after the example of Juvenal, raked up that forgotten sink of filth and
ribaldry, but laid before you things rather ridiculous than dishonest.
And now, if there be anyone that is yet dissatisfied, let him at least
remember that it is no dishonor to be discommended by Folly; and
having brought her in speaking, it was but fit that I kept up the
character of the person. But why do I run over these things to you, a

person so excellent an advocate that no man better defends his client,
though the cause many times be none of the best? Farewell, my best
disputant More, and stoutly defend your Moriae.
From the country, the 5th of the Ides of June.

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY
An oration, of feigned matter, spoken by Folly in her own person
At what rate soever the world talks of me (for I am not ignorant what
an ill report Folly has got, even among the most foolish), yet that I am
that she, that only she, whose deity recreates both gods and men, even
this is a sufficient argument, that I no sooner stepped up to speak to this
full assembly than all your faces put on a kind of new and unwonted
pleasantness. So suddenly have you cleared your brows, and with so
frolic and hearty a laughter given me your applause, that in truth as
many of you as I behold on every side of me seem to me no less than
Homer's gods drunk with nectar and nepenthe; whereas before, you sat
as lumpish and pensive as if you had come from consulting an oracle.
And as it usually happens when the sun begins to show his beams, or
when after a sharp winter the spring breathes afresh on the earth, all
things immediately get a new face, new color, and recover as it were a
certain kind of youth again: in like manner, by but beholding me you
have in an instant gotten another kind of countenance; and so what the
otherwise great rhetoricians with their tedious and long-studied orations
can hardly