without their serious matter, and foolery is so handled that the reader
that is not altogether thick-skulled may reap more benefit from it than
from some men's crabbish and specious arguments. As when one, with long
study and great pains, patches many pieces together on the praise of
rhetoric or philosophy; another makes a panegyric to a prince; another
encourages him to a war against the Turks; another tells you what will
become of the world after himself is dead; and another finds out some new
device for the better ordering of goat's wool: for as nothing is more
trifling than to treat of serious matters triflingly, so nothing carries
a better grace than so to discourse of trifles as a man may seem to have
intended them least. For my own part, let other men judge of what I have
written; though yet, unless an overweening opinion of myself may have
made me blind in my own cause, I have praised folly, but not altogether
foolishly. And now to say somewhat to that other cavil, of biting. This
liberty was ever permitted to all men's wits, to make their smart, witty
reflections on the common errors of mankind, and that too without
offense, as long as this liberty does not run into licentiousness; which
makes me the more admire the tender ears of the men of this age, that can
away with solemn titles. No, you'll meet with some so preposterously
religious that they will sooner endure the broadest scoffs even against
Christ himself than hear the Pope or a prince be touched in the least,
especially if it be anything that concerns their profit; whereas he that
so taxes the lives of men, without naming anyone in particular, whither,
I pray, may he be said to bite, or rather to teach and admonish? Or
otherwise, I beseech you, under how many notions do I tax myself?
Besides, he that spares no sort of men cannot be said to be angry with
anyone in particular, but the vices of all. And therefore, if there shall
happen to be anyone that shall say he is hit, he will but discover either
his guilt or fear. Saint Jerome sported in this kind with more freedom
and greater sharpness, not sparing sometimes men's very name. But I,