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An Oration of Feigned Matter, spoken by Folly in her own Person
At what rate soever the world talks of me (for I am not ignorant
what ill report Folly has got, even among the most foolish), yet
that I am that she, that only she, whose deity recreates both gods and
men, even this is a sufficient argument, that I no sooner stepped up
to speak to this full assembly than all your faces put on a kind of
new and unwonted pleasantness. So suddenly have you cleared your
brows, and with so frolic and hearty a laughter given me your
applause, that in truth as many of you as I behold on every side of me
seem to me no less than Homer's gods drunk with nectar and nepenthe;
whereas before, you sat as lumpish and pensive as if you had come from
consulting an oracle. And as it usually happens when the sun begins to
show his beams, or when after a sharp winter the spring breathes
afresh on the earth, all things immediately get a new face, new color,
and recover as it were a certain kind of youth again: in like
manner, by but beholding me you have in an instant gotten another kind
of countenance; and so what the otherwise great rhetoricians with
their tedious and long-studied orations can hardly effect, to wit,
to remove the trouble of the mind, I have done it at once with my
single look.
But if you ask me why I appear before you in this strange dress, be
pleased to lend me your ears, and I'll tell you; not those ears, I
mean, you carry to church, but abroad with you, such as you are wont
to prick up to jugglers, fools, and buffoons, and such as our friend
Midas once gave to Pan. For I am disposed awhile to play the sophist
with you; not of their sort who nowadays boozle young men's heads with
certain empty notions and curious trifles, yet teach them nothing
but a more than womanish obstinacy of scolding: but I'll imitate those
ancients who, that they might the better avoid that infamous
appellation of sophi or wise, chose rather to be called sophists.
Their business was to celebrate the praises of the gods and valiant
men. And the like encomium shall you hear from me, but neither of
Hercules nor Solon, but my own dear self, that is to say, Folly:
Nor do I esteem a rush that call it a foolish and insolent thing to
praise one's self. Be it as foolish as they would make it, so they
confess it proper: and what can be more than that Folly be her own
trumpet? For who can set me out better than myself, 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 generally agreed. Or to what purpose,
think you, should I describe myself when I am here present before you,
and you behold me speaking? For I am, as you see, that true and only
giver of wealth whom the Greeks call Moria, the Latins Stultitia,
and our plain English Folly.
Or what need was there to have said so much, as if my very looks
were not sufficient to inform you who I am? Or as if any man,
mistaking me for wisdom, could not at first sight convince himself
by my face the true index of my mind? I am no counterfeit, nor do I
carry one thing in my looks and another in my breast. No, I am in
every respect so like myself that neither can they dissemble me who
arrogate to themselves the appearance and title of wise men and walk
like asses in scarlet hoods, though after all their hypocrisy Midas'
ears will discover their master. A most ungrateful generation of men
that, when they are wholly given up to my party, are yet publicly
ashamed of the name, as taking it for a reproach; for which cause,
since in truth they are morotatoi, fools, and yet would appear to
the world to be wise men and Thales, we'll even call them morosophous,
wise fools.
Nor will it be amiss also to imitate the rhetoricians of our times,
who think themselves in a manner gods if like horse leeches they can
but appear to be double-tongued, and believe they have done a mighty
act if in their Latin orations they can but shuffle in some ends of
Greek like mosaic work, though altogether by head and shoulders and
less to the purpose. And if they want hard words, they run over some
worm-eaten manuscript and pick out half a dozen of the most old and
obsolete to confound their reader, believing, no doubt, that they that
understand their meaning will like it the better, and they that do not
will admire it the more by how much the less they understand it. Nor
is this way of ours admiring what seems most foreign without its
particular grace; for if there happen to be any more ambitious than
others, they may give their applause with a smile and, like the ass,
shake their ears, that they may be thought to understand more than the
rest of their neighbors.
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