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The Praise of Folly 27 But why do I altogether spend my breath in speaking of Mortals? View Heaven round, and let him that will, reproach me with my name, if he find any one of the Gods that were not stinking and contemptible, were he not made acceptable by my Deity. Whence is it that Bacchus is always a Stripling, and bushy-hair’d ? but because he is mad, and drunk, and spends his life in Drinking, Dancing, Revels, and Maygames, not having so much as the least society with Pallas. And lastly, he is so far from desiring to be accounted wise, that he delights to be worshipp’d with Sports and Gambals ; nor is he displeas’d with the Proverb that gave him the sirname of Fool, 1‘A greater Fool than Bacchus’; which name of his was chang’d to Morychus, for that sitting before the gates of his Temple, the wanton Countrey people were wont to bedaub him with new Wine and Figgs. And of scoffs, what not, hath not the antient Comedies thrown on him? O foolish God, say they, and worthy to be born as thou wert of thy Father’s thigh! And yet, who had not rather be thy Fool and Sot, alwayes merry, ever
