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4 Erasmus
a Hobby-horse. For what injustice is it, that
when we allow every course of life its Recrea¬
tion, that Study only should have none? espe¬
cially when such toyes are not without their
serious matter, and foolery is so handled that
the Reader that is not altogether thick-skull’d
may reap more benefit from ’t than from some
men’s crabbish and specious Arguments. As
when one, with long study and great pains,
patches many pieces together on the praise of
Rhetorick or Philosophy; another makes a
Panegyrick to a Prince; another encourages
him to a War against the Turks; another tells
you what will become of the world after himself
is dead ; and another finds out some new device
for the better ordering of Goat’s-wooll: for as.
nothing is more trifling than to treat of serious
matters triflingly, so nothing carries a better
grace, than so to discourse of trifles as a man
may seem to have intended them least. For
my own part, let other men judge of what I
have written; though yet, unlesse an over¬
weening opinion of my self may have made me
blind in my own cause, I have prais’d Folly,
but not altogether foolishly. And now to say