ladly give a
penny to a beggar? There is a chapter on Gluttony,--and who was ever more
than a little exhilarated after dinner? There is a chapter on
Church-goers,--and who ever went to church for respectability's sake, or to
show off a gaudy dress, or a fine dog, or a new hawk? There is a chapter
on Dancing,--and who ever danced except for the sake of exercise? There is
a chapter on Adultery,--and who ever did more than flirt with his
neighbor's wife? We sometimes wish that Brant's satire had been a little
more searching, and that, instead of his many allusions to classical fools
(for his book is full of scholarship), he had given us a little more of
the _chronique scandaleuse_ of his own time. But he was too good a man to
do this, and his contemporaries no doubt were grateful to him for his
forbearance.

Brant's poem is not easy to read. Though he was a contemporary of Luther,
his language differs much more from modern German than Luther's
translation of the Bible. His "Ship of Fools" wanted a commentary, and
this want has been supplied by one of the most learned and industrious
scholars of Germany, Professor Zarncke, in his lately published edition of
the "Narrenschiff." This must have been a work of many years of hard
labor. Nothing that is worth knowing about Brant and his works has been
omitted, and we hardly know of any commentary on Aristophanes or Juvenal
in which every difficulty is so honestly met as in Professor Zarncke's
notes on the German satirist. The editor is a most minute and painstaking
critic. He tries to reestablish the correct reading of every word, and he
enters upon his work with as much zeal as if the world could not be saved
till every tittle of Brant's poem had been restored. He is, however, not
only a critic, but a sensible and honest man. He knows what is worth
knowing and what is not, and he does not allow himself to be carried away
by a desire to display his own superior acquirements,--a weakness which
makes so many of his colleagues forgetful of the real ends of knowledge,
and the real duties of the scholar and the historian.

We have to say a few words on the English translation of Brant's "Ship of
Fools." It was not made from the original, but from Locher's Latin
translation. It reproduces the matter, but not the manner of the original
satire. Some portions are added by the translator, Alexander Barclay, and
in some parts his translation is an improvement on the original. It was
printe