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The Praise of Folly 29 when that chast Diana shall so far forget her Sexe as to be ever hunting and ready to perish for Endymion? But I had rather they should hear these things from Momus, from whom heretofore they were wont to have their shares, till in one of their angry humours they tumbled him, together with Ate, Goddess of Mischief, down headlong to the Earth, because his wisdom, forsooth, unseasonably disturb’d their happiness. Nor since that dares any mortal give him harbour, though I must confess there wanted little but that he had been receiv’d into the Courts of Princes, had not my companion Flattery reign’d in chief there, with whom and t’ other there is no more correspondence than between Lambs and Wolves. From whence it is that the Gods play the fool with the greater liberty and more content to themselves, !‘ doing all things carelessly,’ as says Father Homer, that is to say, without any one to correct them. For what ridiculous stuff is there which that stump of the Fig-tree Priapus does not afford ’em ? what Tricks and Legerdemains with which Mercury does not cloak his thefts? what buffonry that Vulcan pdoy dyovres,
