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Title: The Ship of Fools, Volume 1

 

Author: Sebastian Brandt

 

Translator: Alexander Barclay

 

Release Date: December 23, 2006 [EBook #20179]

 

Language: English

 

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

 

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHIP OF FOOLS, VOLUME 1 ***

 

Produced by Frank van Drogen, Keith Edkins and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

file was produced from images generously made available

by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

 

Transcriber’s note: A few typographical errors in the 1874 introduction

have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text. In the spirit

of that edition, the text of the Ship of Fools itself has been retained

exactly as it stands, even to the punctuation.

 

[Illustration]

THE SHIP OF FOOLS TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER BARCLAY

[Illustration]

VOLUME FIRST

EDINBURGH: WILLIAM PATERSON

 

LONDON: HENRY SOTHERAN & CO.

 

MDCCCLXXIV.

 

PREFATORY NOTE.

 

It is necessary to explain that in the present edition of the Ship of

Fools, with a view to both philological and bibliographical interests, the

text, even to the punctuation, has been printed exactly as it stands in the

earlier impression (Pynson’s), the authenticity of which Barclay himself

thus vouches for in a deprecatory apology at the end of his labours (II.

330):—

 

“… some wordes be in my boke amys

For though that I my selfe dyd it correct

Yet with some fautis I knowe it is infect

Part by my owne ouersyght and neglygence

And part by the prynters nat perfyte in science

 

And other some escaped ar and past

For that the Prynters in theyr besynes

Do all theyr workes hedelynge, and in hast”

 

Yet the differences of reading of the later edition (Cawood’s), are

surprisingly few and mostly unimportant, though great pains were evidently

bestowed on the production of the book, all the misprints being carefully

corrected, and the orthography duly adjusted to the fashion of the time.

These differences have, in this edition, been placed in one alphabetical

arrangement with the glossary, by which plan it is believed reference to

them will be made more easy, and much repetition avoided.

 

The woodcuts, no less valuable for their artistic merit than they are

interesting as pictures of contemporary manners, have been facsimiled for

the present edition from the originals as they appear in the Basle

edition of the Latin, “denuo seduloque reuisa,” issued under Brandt’s own

superintendence in 1497. This work has been done by Mr J. T. Reid, to whom

it is due to say that he has executed it with the most painstaking and

scrupulous fidelity.

 

The portrait of Brandt, which forms the frontispiece to this volume, is

taken from Zarncke’s edition of the Narrenschiff; that of Barclay

presenting one of his books to his patron, prefixed to the Notice of his

life, appears with a little more detail in the Mirror of Good Manners and

the Pynson editions of the Sallust; it is, however, of no authority, being

used for a similar purpose in various other publications.

 

For the copy of the extremely rare original edition from which the text of

the present has been printed, I am indebted to the private collection and

the well known liberality of Mr David Laing of the Signet Library, to whom

I beg here to return my best thanks, for this as well as many other

valuable favours in connection with the present work.

 

In prosecuting enquiries regarding the life of an author of whom so little

is known as of Barclay, one must be indebted for aid, more or less, to the

kindness of friends. In this way I have to acknowledge my obligations to Mr

Æneas Mackay, Advocate, and Mr Ralph Thomas, (“Olphar Hamst”), for searches

made in the British Museum and elsewhere.

 

For collations of Barclay’s Works, other than the Ship of Fools, all of

which are of the utmost degree of rarity, and consequent inaccessibility, I

am indebted to the kindness of Henry Huth, Esq., 30 Princes’ Gate,

Kensington; the Rev. W. D. Macray, of the Bodleian Library, Oxford; W. B.

Rye, Esq., of the British Museum; Henry Bradshaw, Esq., of the University

Library, Cambridge; and Professor Skeat, Cambridge.

 

For my brief notice of Brandt and his Work, it is also proper to

acknowledge my obligations to Zarncke’s critical edition of the

Narrenschiff (Leipzig, 1854) which is a perfect encyclopædia of everything

Brandtian.

 

T. H. JAMIESON.

 

ADVOCATES’ LIBRARY,

EDINBURGH, December 1873.

 

*

 

Volume I.

INTRODUCTION

NOTICE OF BARCLAY AND HIS WRITINGS

 

BARCLAY’S WILL

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CATALOGUE OF BARCLAY’S WORKS

THE SHIP OF FOOLS

*

 

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

*

 

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 (Müller, “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 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…. There was room at that time for a work like the ‘Ship of Fools.’

It was the first printed book that treated of contemporaneous events and

living persons, instead of old German battles and French knights. People

are always fond of reading the history of their own times. If the good

qualities of their age are brought out, they think of themselves or their

friends; if the dark features of their contemporaries are exhibited, they

think of their neighbours and enemies. Now the ‘Ship of Fools’ is just such

a satire which ordinary people would read, and read with pleasure. They

might feel a slight twinge now and then, but they would put down the book

at the end, and thank God that they were not like other men. There is a

chapter on Misers—and who would not gladly 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 neighbour’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 were no doubt grateful to him

for his forbearance.”

 

Brandt’s satire is a satire for all time. Embodied in the language of the

fifteenth century, coloured with the habits and fashions of the times,

executed after the manner of working of the period, and motived by the

eager questioning spirit and the discontent with “abusions” and “folyes”

which resulted in the Reformation, this satire in its morals or lessons is

almost as applicable to the year of grace 1873 as to the year of

gracelessness 1497. It never can grow old; in the mirror in which the men

of his time saw themselves reflected, the men of all times can recognise

themselves; a crew of “able-bodied” is never wanting to man this old,

weather-beaten, but ever seaworthy vessel. The thoughtful, penetrating,

conscious spirit of the Basle professor passing by, for the most part,

local, temporary or indifferent points, seized upon the never-dying follies

of human nature and impaled them on the printed page for the amusement,

the edification, and the warning of contemporaries and posterity alike. No

petty writer of laborious vers de societe to raise a laugh for a week, a

month, or a year, and to be buried in utter oblivion for ever after, was

he, but a divine seer who saw the weakness and wickedness of the hearts of

men, and warned them to amend their ways and flee from the wrath to come.

Though but a retired student, and teacher of the canon law, a humble-minded

man of letters, and a diffident imperial Counsellor, yet is he to be

numbered among the greatest Evangelists and Reformers of mediæval Europe

whose trumpet-toned tongue penetrated into regions where the names of

Luther or Erasmus were but an empty sound, if even that. And yet, though

helping much the cause of the Reformation by the freedom of his social and

clerical criticism, by his unsparing exposure of every form of corruption

and injustice, and, not least, by his use of the vernacular for political

and religious purposes, he can scarcely be classed in the great army of the

Protestant Reformers. He was a reformer from within, a biting, unsparing

exposer of every priestly abuse, but a loyal son