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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 with¬
drawing 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.