unless perhaps I could be better known to another than to myself? Though
yet I think it somewhat more modest than the general practice of our
nobles and wise men who, throwing away all shame, hire some flattering
orator or lying poet from whose mouth they may hear their praises, that
is to say, mere lies; and yet, composing themselves with a seeming
modesty, spread out their peacock's plumes and erect their crests, while
this impudent flatterer equals a man of nothing to the gods and proposes
him as an absolute pattern of all virtue that's wholly a stranger to it,
sets out a pitiful jay in other's feathers, washes the blackamoor white,
and lastly swells a gnat to an elephant. In short, I will follow that old
proverb that says, "He may lawfully praise himself that lives far from
neighbors." Though, by the way, I cannot but wonder at the ingratitude,
shall I say, or negligence of men who, notwithstanding they honor me in
the first place and are willing enough to confess my bounty, yet not one
of them for these so many ages has there been who in some thankful
oration has set out the praises of Folly; when yet there has not wanted
them whose elaborate endeavors have extolled tyrants, agues, flies,
baldness, and such other pests of nature, to their own loss of both time
and sleep. And now you shall hear from me a plain extemporary speech, but
so much the truer. Nor would I have you think it like the rest of
orators, made for the ostentation of wit; for these, as you know, when
they have been beating their heads some thirty years about an oration and
at last perhaps produce somewhat that was never their own, shall yet
swear they composed it in three days, and that too for diversion: whereas
I ever liked it best to speak whatever came first out.

But let none of you expect from me that after the manner of rhetoricians
I should go about to define what I am, much less use any division; for I
hold it equally unlucky to circumscribe her whose deity is universal, or
make the least division in that worship about which everything is so