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xvi Introduction carrying them out. He was urgent for the foundation of public, as opposed to private schools, under which he included those of monasteries and colleges; and he took much interest in Colet’s school at St. Paul’s, which was to educate 153 boys, the number of the miraculous draught of fishes. That the ‘Praise of Folly’, written in 1509, was not published till June 1511, is easily to be understood. What is surprising is that Erasmus should ever have ventured to publish, in his own name, so bold an attack on the abuses in Church and State. His next work of this kind, the ‘Julius Exclusus’, appeared anonymously. Erasmus not only refused to acknowledge it, but tried to father it on to other writers: so skilfully indeed that without explicitly declaring he was not the author, he managed to convey this impression. But under Folly’s mask he was brave enough. Fools had the right of free speech, and made sport by telling men home truths. In Germany the greatest licence was allowed to players, dressed in motley, who on Carnival night roamed the streets and made their way into private houses. The (Bote,
