The Ship of Fools Part 1

The Ship of Fools.

Volume 1.

by Sebastian Brandt.

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 repet.i.tion 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 Sall.u.s.t; 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 aeneas 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 encyclopaedia of everything Brandtian.

T. H. JAMIESON.

ADVOCATES' LIBRARY, EDINBURGH, _December_ 1873.

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 t.i.tle, 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 (Muller, "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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.sical 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 pa.s.sing 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 mediaeval 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 cla.s.sed 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 of the Church, who rebuked the faults of his brethren, but visited with the pains of h.e.l.l those of "fals herytikes," and wept over the "ruyne, inclynacion, and decay of the holy fayth Catholyke, and dymynucion of the Empyre."

So while he was yet a reformer in the true sense of the word, he was too much of the scholar to be anything but a true conservative. To his scholarly habit of working, as well as to the manner of the time which hardly trusted in the value of its own ideas but loved to lean them upon cla.s.sical authority, is no doubt owing the cla.s.sical mould in which his satire is cast. The description of every folly is strengthened by notice of its cla.s.sical or biblical prototypes, and in the margin of the Latin edition of Locher, Brandt himself supplied the citations of the books and pa.s.sages which formed the basis of his text, which greatly added to the popularity of the work. Brandt, indeed, with the modesty of genius, professes that it is really no more than a collection and translation of quotations from biblical and cla.s.sical authors, "Gesamlet durch Sebastianu Brant." But even admitting the work to be a Mosaic, to adopt the reply of its latest German editor to the a.s.sertion that it is but a compilation testifying to the most painstaking industry and the consumption of midnight oil, "even so one learns that a Mosaic is a work of art when executed with artistic skill." That he caused the cla.s.sical and biblical pa.s.sages flitting before his eyes to be cited in the margin proves chiefly only the excellence of his memory. They are also before our eyes and yet we are not always able to answer the question: where, _e.g._, does this occur? ...

Where, _e.g._, occur the following appropriate words of Goethe: "Who can think anything foolish, who can think anything wise, that antiquity has not already thought of."

Of the Greek authors, Plutarch only is used, and he evidently by means of a Latin translation. But from the Latin large draughts of inspiration are taken, direct from the fountainhead. Ovid, Juvenal, Persius, Catullus, and Seneca, are largely drawn from, while, strangely enough, Cicero, Boethius, and Virgil are quoted but seldom, the latter, indeed, only twice, though his commentators, especially Servetus, are frequently employed. The Bible, of course, is a never-failing source of ill.u.s.tration, and, as was to be expected, the Old Testament much more frequently than the New, most use being made of the Proverbs of Solomon, while Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, and the Sapientia follow at no great distance.

The quotations are made apparently direct from the Vulgate, in only a few cases there being a qualification of the idea by the interpretation of the Corpus Juris Canonici. But through this medium only, as was to be expected of the professor of canon law, is the light of the fathers of the Church allowed to shine upon us, and according to Zarncke (Introduction to his edition of the Narrenschiff, 1854), use of it has certainly been made far oftener than the commentary shows, the sources of information of which are of the most unsatisfactory character. On such solid and tried foundations did Brandt construct his great work, and the judgment of contemporaries and posterity alike has declared the superstructure to be worthy of its supports.

The following admirable notice from Ersch and Gruber (Encyclopadie) sums up so skilfully the history, nature, and qualities of the book that we quote at length:--"The Ship of Fools was received with almost unexampled applause by high and low, learned and unlearned, in Germany, Switzerland, and France, and was made the common property of the greatest part of literary Europe, through Latin, French, English, and Dutch translations. For upwards of a century it was in Germany a _book of the people_ in the n.o.blest and widest sense of the word, alike appreciated by an Erasmus and a Reuchlin, and by the mechanics of Stra.s.sburg, Basel, and Augsburg; and it was a.s.sumed to be so familiar to all cla.s.ses, that even during Brandt's lifetime, the German preacher Gailer von Kaiserberg went so far as to deliver public lectures from the pulpit on his friend's poem as if it had been a scriptural text. As to the poetical and humorous character of Brandt's poem, its whole conception does not display any extraordinary power of imagination, nor does it present in its details any very striking sallies of wit and humour, even when compared with older German works of a similar kind, such as that of Renner. The fundamental idea of the poem consists in the shipping off of several shiploads of fools of all kinds for their native country, which, however, is visible at a distance only; and one would have expected the poet to have given poetical consistency to his work by fully carrying out this idea of a ship's crew, and sailing to the 'Land of Fools.' It is, however, at intervals only that Brandt reminds us of the allegory; the fools who are carefully divided into cla.s.ses and introduced to us in succession, instead of being ridiculed or derided, are reproved in a liberal spirit, with n.o.ble earnestness, true moral feeling, and practical common sense. It was the straightforward, the bold and liberal spirit of the poet which so powerfully addressed his contemporaries from the Ship of the Fools; and to us it is valuable as a product of the piety and morality of the century which paved the way for the Reformation. Brandt's fools are represented as contemptible and loathsome rather than _foolish_, and what he calls follies might be more correctly described as sins and vices.

"The 'Ship of Fools' is written in the dialect of Swabia, and consists of vigorous, resonant, and rhyming iambic quadrameters. It is divided into 113 sections, each of which, with the exception of a short introduction and two concluding pieces, treats independently of a certain cla.s.s of fools or vicious persons; and we are only occasionally reminded of the fundamental idea by an allusion to the ship. No folly of the century is left uncensured. The poet attacks with n.o.ble zeal the failings and extravagances of his age, and applies his lash unsparingly even to the dreaded Hydra of popery and monasticism, to combat which the Hercules of Wittenberg had not yet kindled his firebrands. But the poet's object was not merely to reprove and to animadvert; he instructs also, and shows the fools the way to the land of wisdom; and so far is he from a.s.suming the arrogant air of the commonplace moralist, that he reckons himself among the number of fools.

The style of the poem is lively, bold, and simple, and often remarkably terse, especially in his moral sayings, and renders it apparent that the author was a cla.s.sical scholar, without however losing anything of his German character."

Brandt's humour, which either his earnestness or his manner banished from the text, took refuge in the ill.u.s.trations and there disported itself with a wild zest and vigour. Indeed to their popularity several critics have ascribed the success of the book, but for this there is no sufficient authority or probability. Clever as they are, it is more probable that they ran, in popularity, but an equal race with the text. The precise amount of Brandt's workmanship in them has not been ascertained, but it is agreed that "most of them, if not actually drawn, were at least suggested by him."

Zarncke remarks regarding their artistic worth, "not all of the cuts are of equal value. One can easily distinguish five different workers, and more practised eyes would probably be able to increase the number. In some one can see how the outlines, heads, hands, and other princ.i.p.al parts are cut with the fine stroke of the master, and the details and shading left to the scholars. The woodcuts of the most superior master, which can be recognized at once, and are about a third of the whole, belong to the finest, if they are not, indeed, the finest, which were executed in the fifteenth century, a worthy school of Holbein. According to the opinion of Herr Rudolph Weigel, they might possibly be the work of Martin Schon of Colmar.... The composition in the better ones is genuinely Hogarth-like, and the longer one looks at these little pictures, the more is one astonished at the fulness of the humour, the fineness of the characterisation and the almost dramatic talent of the grouping." Green, in his recent work on emblems, characterizes them as marking an epoch in that kind of literature. And Dibdin, the Macaulay of bibliography, loses his head in admiration of the "entertaining volume," extolling the figures without stint for "merit in conception and execution," "bold and free pencilling," "spirit and point,"

"delicacy, truth, and force," "spirit of drollery," &c., &c.; summarising thus, "few books are more pleasing to the eye, and more gratifying to the fancy than the early editions of the 'Stultifera Navis.' It presents a combination of entertainment to which the curious can never be indifferent."

Whether it were the racy cleverness of the pictures or the unprecedented boldness of the text, the book stirred Europe of the fifteenth century in a way and with a rapidity it had never been stirred before. In the German actual acquaintance with it could then be but limited, though it ran through seventeen editions within a century; the Latin version brought it to the knowledge of the educated cla.s.s throughout Europe; but, expressing, as it did mainly, the feelings of the common people, to have it in the learned language was not enough. Translations into various vernaculars were immediately called for, and the Latin edition having lightened the translator's labours, they were speedily supplied. England, however, was all but last in the field but when she did appear, it was in force, with a version in each hand, the one in prose and the other in verse.

Fifteen years elapsed from the appearance of the first German edition, before the English metrical version "translated out of Laten, French, and Doche ... in the colege of Saynt Mary Otery, by me, Alexander Barclay," was issued from the press of Pynson in 1509. A translation, however, it is not.

Properly speaking, it is an adaptation, an English ship, formed and fashioned after the Ship of Fools of the World. "But concernynge the translacion of this boke; I exhort ye reders to take no displesour for y^t, it is nat translated word by worde acordinge to ye verses of my actour. For I haue but only drawen into our moder tunge, in rude langage the sentences of the verses as nere as the parcyte of my wyt wyl suffer me, some tyme addynge, somtyme detractinge and takinge away suche thinges as semeth me necessary and superflue. Wherfore I desyre of you reders pardon of my presumptuous audacite, trustynge that ye shall holde me excused if ye consyder ye scarsnes of my wyt and my vnexpert youthe. I haue in many places ouerpa.s.sed dyuers poetical digressions and obscurenes of fables and haue concluded my worke in rude langage as shal apere in my translacion."

"Wylling to redres the errours and vyces of this oure royalme of England ... I haue taken upon me ... the translacion of this present boke ... onely for the holsome instruccion commodyte and doctryne of wysdome, and to clense the vanyte and madness of folysshe people of whom ouer great nombre is in the Royalme of Englonde."

Actuated by these patriotic motives, Barclay has, while preserving all the valuable characteristics of his original, painted for posterity perhaps the most graphic and comprehensive picture now preserved of the folly, injustice, and iniquity which demoralized England, city and country alike, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and rendered it ripe for any change political or religious.

"Knowledge of trouth, prudence, and iust symplicite Hath vs clene left; For we set of them no store.

Our Fayth is defyled loue, goodnes, and Pyte: Honest maners nowe ar reputed of: no more.

Lawyers ar lordes; but Justice is rent and tore.

Or closed lyke a Monster within dores thre.

For without mede: or money no man can hyr se.

Al is disordered: Vertue hath no rewarde.

Alas, compa.s.sion; and mercy bothe ar slayne.

Alas, the stony hartys of pepyl ar so harde That nought can constrayne theyr folyes to refrayne."

His ships are full laden but carry not all who should be on board.

"We are full lade and yet forsoth I thynke A thousand are behynde, whom we may not receyue For if we do, our nauy clene shall synke He oft all lesys that coueytes all to haue From London Rockes Almyghty G.o.d vs saue For if we there anker, outher bote or barge There be so many that they vs wyll ouercharge."

The national tone and aim of the English "Ship" are maintained throughout with the greatest emphasis, exhibiting an independence of spirit which few ecclesiastics of the time would have dared to own. Barclay seems to have been first an Englishman, then an ecclesiastic. Everywhere throughout his great work the voice of the people is heard to rise and ring through the long exposure of abuse and injustice, and had the authorship been unknown it would most certainly have been ascribed to a Langlande of the period.

Everywhere he takes what we would call the popular side, the side of the people as against those in office. Everywhere he stands up boldly in behalf of the oppressed, and spares not the oppressor, even if he be of his own cla.s.s. He applies the cudgel as vigorously to the priest's pate as to the Lolardes back. But he disliked modern innovation as much as ancient abuse, in this also faithfully reflecting the mind of the people, and he is as emphatic in his censure of the one as in his condemnation of the other.

Barclay's "Ship of Fools," however, is not only important as a picture of the English life and popular feeling of his time, it is, both in style and vocabulary, a most valuable and remarkable monument of the English language. Written midway between Chaucer and Spenser, it is infinitely more easy to read than either. Page after page, even in the antique spelling of Pynson's edition, may be read by the ordinary reader of to-day without reference to a dictionary, and when reference is required it will be found in nine cases out of ten that the archaism is Saxon, not Latin. This is all the more remarkable, that it occurs in the case of a priest translating mainly from the Latin and French, and can only be explained with reference to his standpoint as a social reformer of the broadest type, and to his evident intention that his book should be an appeal to all cla.s.ses, but especially to the ma.s.s of the people, for amendment of their follies. In evidence of this it may be noticed that in the didactic pa.s.sages, and especially in the L'envois, which are additions of his own, wherever, in fact, he appears in his own character of "preacher," his language is most simple, and his vocabulary of the most Saxon description.

In his prologue "excusynge the rudenes of his translacion," he professes to have purposely used the most "comon speche":--

"My speche is rude my termes comon and rural And I for rude peple moche more conuenient Than for estates, lerned men, or eloquent."

He afterwards humorously supplements this in "the prologe," by:--