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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 practis'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 Polycrates, and his Corrector Isocrates, extol’d Tyranny ; Glauco, Injustice ; Favorinus, Deformity, and the quartan Ague; Synescius, Baldness ; Lucian, the Fly, and Flattery ; when Seneca made such sport with Claudius’s Canonizations ; 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 B2
