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The Praise of Folly 3
and partly more biting than may beseem the
modesty of a Christian, and consequently
exclaim that I resemble the Ancient Comedy,
or another Lucian, and snarle at every thing.
But I would have them whom the lightness
or foolery of the Argument may offend, to
consider that mine is not the first of this kind,
but the same thing that has been often prac¬
tis'd even by great Authors: when Homer, so
many Ages since, did the like with the battel
of Frogs and Mice ; Virgil, with the Gnat, and
Puddings; Ovid, with the Nut; when Poly¬
crates, and his Corrector Isocrates, extol’d
Tyranny ; Glauco, Injustice ; Favorinus, De¬
formity, and the quartan Ague; Synescius,
Baldness ; Lucian, the Fly, and Flattery ; when
Seneca made such sport with Claudius’s Canon¬
izations ; Plutarch, with his Dialogue between
Ulysses and Gryllus; Lucian and Apuleius,
with the Asse; and some other, I know not
who, with the Hog that made his last Will and
Testament, of which also, even S. Jerome makes
mention. And therefore if they please, let ’em
suppose I play’d at Tables for my diversion,
or if they had rather have it so, that I rod on
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