people would read, and read with pleasure.  They might feel a slight twinge now and then, but they would put down the book at the end, and thank God that they were not like other men.  There is a chapter on Misers,—­and who would not gladly give a penny to a beggar?  There is a chapter on Gluttony,—­and who was ever more than a little exhilarated after dinner?  There is a chapter on Church-goers,—­and who ever went to church for respectability’s sake, or to show off a gaudy dress, or a fine dog, or a new hawk?  There is a chapter on Dancing,—­and who ever danced except for the sake of exercise?...  We sometimes wish that Brandt’s satire had been a little more searching, and that, instead of his many allusions to classical fools, ... he had given us a little more of the scandalous gossip of his own time.  But he was too good a man to do this, and his contemporaries no doubt were grateful to him for his forbearance.”

From a line in his poem saying that the Narrenschiff was to be found in the neighborhood of Aix, it is supposed that Brandt received his idea from an old chronicle which describes a ship built near Aix-la-Chapelle in the twelfth century, and which was borne through the country as the centre-piece for a carnival, and followed by a suite of men and women dressed in gay costume, singing and dancing to the sound of instruments.  The old monk calls it “pagan worship,” and denounces it severely; but Brandt saw great possibilities in it for pointing a moral, according to the fashion of his time.  The illustrations contributed not a little to the popularity of the book, for he put all his humor into the pictures and all his sermons and exhortations into his text.

Just as Brandt in his literary qualities has been compared to Rabelais, so his satirical pencil has been likened to Hogarth’s.  Boldness, drollery, dramatic spirit, force, and spontaneous satire characterize both artists.  He does not mount a pulpit and speak to the erring masses with sanctimonious self-righteousness; but he enters the Ship himself to lead the babbling folk in motley to the land of wisdom.  His own folly is that of the student, and he therefore begins caricaturing himself.

To open the ‘Ship of Fools’ is to witness a masquerade of the fifteenth century.  The frontispiece shows a large galley with high poop and prow and disordered rigging.  Confusion reigns.  Every one wears the livery of Folly,—­the fantastic hood with two peaks like asses’ ears, and decorated with tiny jingling bells.  One man on the prow gesticulates wildly to a little boat, and cries to the passengers, “Zu schyff, zu schyff, brueder:  ess gat, ess gat!” (On board, on board, brothers; it goes, it goes!)

In these pages every type of society is seen, “from beardless youth to crooked age,” as the author asserts.  Men and women of all classes and conditions, high and low, rich and poor, learned and unlearned:  ladies in long trains and furred gowns; knights with long peaked shoes, carrying falcons upon their wrists; cooks and butlers busy in the kitchen; women gazing into mirrors; monks preaching in pulpits; merchants selling goods; gluttons at the table; drunkards in the tavern; alchemists in their laboratories; gamesters playing cards and rattling dice; lovers in shady groves—­all and each wear Folly’s cap and bells.