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The Praise of Folly 75 are two sorts of Madness; the one that which the revengeful Furies send privily from Hell, as often as they let loose their Snakes, and put into men’s breasts either the desire of War, or an insatiate thirst after Gold, or some dishonest Love, or Parricide, or Incest, or Sacriledge, or the like Plagues, or when they terrifie some guilty soul with the Conscience of his Crimes; the other, but nothing like this, that which comes from me, and is of all other things the most desirable; which happens as oft as some pleasing dotage not onely clears the mind of its troublesome cares, but renders it more jocund. And this was that which, as a special blessing of the Gods, Cicero, writing to his friend Atticus, wisht to himself, that he might be the less sensible of those miseries that then hung over the Common-wealth. Nor was that Grecian in Horace much wide of it, who was so far mad that he would sit by himself whole daies in the Theatre laughing and clapping his hands, as if he had seen some Tragedy acting, whereas in truth there was nothing presented; yet in other things a man well enough, pleasant among his Friends, kind
