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The Praise of Folly 47 However this were to be born with, if only as to publick Employments they were 1° Like a Sow upon a pair of organs’, were they any thing apter to discharge even the common Offices of Life. Invite a Wise man to a Feast and he’ll spoil the company, either with Morose silence or troublesome Disputes. Take him out to Dance, and you’l swear ? ‘a Cow would have don’t better’. Bring him to the Theatre, and his very looks are enough to spoil all, till like Cato he take an occasion of withdrawing rather than put off his supercilious gravity. Let him fall into discourse, and 3 he shall make more sudden stops than if he had a Woolf before him. Let him buy, or sell, or in short go about any of those things without which there is no living in this world, and you °l say this piece of Wisdom were rather a Stock than a Man, of so little use is he to himself, Country, or Friends; and all because he is wholly ignorant of common things, and lives a course of life quite different from the people ; by which means ’tis impossible but that he 1 Asini ad lyram. 2 Camelus saltans. ? Lupus in fabula.
