THERE'S ne'er a blade of honour in the town, But if you chance to term him _fool_ and _clown_, Straight _satisfaction_ cries, and then with speed The time, the place, and rapier's length's decreed. Prodigious fops, I'll swear, which can't agree To be call'd what's their happiness to be: Blest _Idiots!_ That in an humble sphere securely move, And there the sweets of a safe _dulness_ prove, Nor envy the proud heights of those who range above. _Folly_, sure friend of a misguided will, Affords a kind excuse for doing ill; And _Socrates_, that prudent, thinking tool, Had the gods lik'd him would have prov'd a _fool_. Methinks our author, when without a flaw, The graces of his mistress he does draw, Wishes (if _Metempsychosis_ be true, And souls do change their case, and act anew), In his next life he only might aspire To the few brains of some soft country squire, Whose head with such like rudiments is fraught, As in his youth his careful grannum taught. And now (dear friend) how shall we to thy brow Pay all those laurels which we justly owe? For thou fresh honours to the work dost bring, And to the theme: nor seems that pleasing thing, Which he so well in _Latin_ has express'd, Less comical in _English_ garments dress'd; Thy sentences are all so clearly wrought, And so exactly plac'd in every thought, That, which is more oblig'd we scarce can see The subject by thine author, or himself by thee. FINIS End of Project Gutenberg's In Praise of Folly, by Desiderius Erasmus