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 otherwise 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 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 consider 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.

[Illustration: 126]

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 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