tzerland, and
France, and was made the common property of the greatest part of literary
Europe, through Latin, French, English, and Dutch translations. For upwards
of a century it was in Germany a _book of the people_ in the noblest and
widest sense of the word, alike appreciated by an Erasmus and a Reuchlin,
and by the mechanics of Strassburg, Basel, and Augsburg; and it was assumed
to be so familiar to all classes, that even during Brandt's lifetime, the
German preacher Gailer von Kaiserberg went so far as to deliver public
lectures from the pulpit on his friend's poem as if it had been a
scriptural text. As to the poetical and humorous character of Brandt's
poem, its whole conception does not display any extraordinary power of
imagination, nor does it present in its details any very striking sallies
of wit and humour, even when compared with older German works of a similar
kind, such as that of Renner. The fundamental idea of the poem consists in
the shipping off of several shiploads of fools of all kinds for their
native country, which, however, is visible at a distance only; and one
would have expected the poet to have given poetical consistency to his work
by fully carrying out this idea of a ship's crew, and sailing to the 'Land
of Fools.' It is, however, at intervals only that Brandt reminds us of the
allegory; the fools who are carefully divided into classes and introduced
to us in succession, instead of being ridiculed or derided, are reproved in
a liberal spirit, with noble earnestness, true moral feeling, and practical
common sense. It was the straightforward, the bold and liberal spirit of
the poet which so powerfully addressed his contemporaries from the Ship of
the Fools; and to us it is valuable as a product of the piety and morality
of the century which paved the way for the Reformation. Brandt's fools are
represented as contemptible and loathsome rather than _foolish_, and what
he calls follies might be more correctly described as sins and vices.

"The 'Ship of Fools' is written in the dialect of Swabia, and consists of
vigorous, resonant, and rhyming iambic quadrameters. It is divided into 113
sections, each of which, with the exception of a short introduction and two
concluding pieces, treats independently of a certain class of fools or
vicious persons; and we are only occasionally reminded of the fundamental
idea by an allusion to the ship. No folly of the century is left
uncensured. The poet attacks