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1V Introduction (1458-1521), was a Strasburg inn-keeper’s son, who, having taken his degree in law, added to his legal work great literary activity in Bergmann von Olpe’s press at Basel. Brant conceived the idea of a ship laden with fools, about to set sail for the land of Narragonia; but he grew so interested in depicting the crew that the ship was forgotten and never left its port. The ‘Narrenschiff’ was published in 1494, and its success was immediate. The 112 several kinds of fools, described with blunt realism, gave men opportunity to recognize their neighbours’ portraits, and delightedly to fit caps on other heads. The book was further welcomed for its moral value, and was even used as the text for a series of sermons given by a famous Strasburg preacher. Despite his scholarship, Brant had written in his own Swabian dialect as the best medium for reaching the mass of his countrymen. But contempt for ‘ the vulgar and vernacular’ did not keep the learned world from interest ; and the moment the book appeared, Trithemius added it to Brant’s Latin works in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, calling it a ‘ divine satire’. In 1497 it became accessible to the
