use the German language for political purposes. His fly-sheets, his
illustrated editions, had given useful hints how to address the large
masses of the people. If he looked upon the world, as it then was, as a
ship of fools, and represented every weakness, vice, and wickedness under
the milder color of foolery, the people who read his poems singled out
some of his fools, and called them knaves. The great work of Sebastian
Brant was his "Narrenschiff." It was first published in 1497, at Basle,
and the first edition, though on account of its wood-cuts it could not
have been a very cheap book, was sold off at once. Edition after edition
followed, and translations were published in Latin, in Low-German, in
Dutch, in French, and English. Sermons were preached on the
"Narrenschiff;" Trithemius calls it _Divina Satira_, Locher compares Brant
with Dante, Hutten calls him the new lawgiver of German poetry. The
"Narrenschiff" is a work which we may still read with pleasure, though it
is difficult to account for its immense success at the time of its
publication. Some historians ascribe it to the wood-cuts. They are
certainly very clever, and there is reason to suppose that most of them
were, if not actually drawn, at least suggested by Brant himself. Yet even
a Turner has failed to render mediocre poetry popular by his
illustrations, and there is nothing to show that the caricatures of Brant
were preferred to his satires. Now 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 sufficient to secure a decided success
for a work like his at the present day. But then we must remember the time
in which he wrote. What had the poor people of Germany to read toward the
end of the fifteenth century? Printing had been invented, and books were
published and sold with great rapidity. People were not only fond, but
proud, of reading books. Reading was fashionable, and the first fool who
enters Brant's ship is the man who buys books. But what were the books
that were offered for sale? We find among the early prints of the
fifteenth century religious, theological, and classical works in great
abundance, and we know that the respectable and wealthy burghers of
Augsburg and Strassburg were proud to fill their