CLAY'S WILL

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CATALOGUE OF BARCLAY'S WORKS

THE SHIP OF FOOLS

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Volume II.

THE SHIP OF FOOLS (CONCLUDED)

GLOSSARY

CHAPTER I. OF THE ORIGINAL (GERMAN), AND OF THE LATIN, AND FRENCH VERSIONS
OF THE SHIP OF FOOLS

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INTRODUCTION.

If popularity be taken as the measure of success in literary effort,
Sebastian Brandt's "Ship of Fools" must be considered one of the most
successful books recorded in the whole history of literature. Published in
edition after edition (the first dated 1494), at a time, but shortly after
the invention of printing, when books were expensive, and their circulation
limited; translated into the leading languages of Europe at a time when
translations of new works were only the result of the most signal merits,
its success was then quite unparalleled. It may be said, in modern phrase,
to have been the rage of the reading world at the end of the fifteenth and
throughout the sixteenth centuries. It was translated into Latin by one
Professor (Locher, 1497), and imitated in the same language and under the
same title, by another (Badius Ascensius, 1507); it appeared in Dutch and
Low German, and was twice translated into English, and three times into
French; imitations competed with the original in French and German, as well
as Latin, and greatest and most unprecedented distinction of all, it was
preached, but, we should opine, only certain parts of it, from the pulpit
by the best preachers of the time as a new gospel. The Germans proudly
award it the epithet, "epoch-making," and its long-continued popularity
affords good, if not quite sufficient, ground for the extravagant eulogies
they lavish upon it. Trithemius calls it "Divina Satira," and doubts
whether anything could have been written more suited to the spirit of the
age; Locher compares Brandt with Dante, and Hutten styles him the new
law-giver of German poetry.

A more recent and impartial critic (Mueller, "Chips from a German Workshop,"
Vol. III.), thus suggestively sets forth the varied grounds of Brandt's
wonderful popularity:--"His satires, it is true, are not very powerful, nor
pungent, nor original. But his style is free and easy. Brant is not a
ponderous poet. He writes in short chapters, and mixes his fools in such a
manner that we always meet with a variety of new faces. It is true that all
this would hardly be sufficie