THE SHIP OF FOOLS

TRANSLATED BY

ALEXANDER BARCLAY

VOLUME FIRST

EDINBURGH: WILLIAM PATERSON

LONDON: HENRY SOTHERAN & CO.

MDCCCLXXIV.

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):—

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 repetition 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 Sallust; 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 Æneas 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 encyclopædia of everything Brandtian.

T. H. JAMIESON.

Volume I.

Introduction

Notice of Barclay and his Writings

Barclay's Will

Notes

Bibliographical Catalogue of Barclay's Works

The Ship of Fools

Volume II.

The Ship of Fools (concluded)

Glossary

Chapter I. of the Original (German), and of the Latin, and French Versions of the Ship of Fools

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 title, 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 (Müller, "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,