This text uses UTF-8 (Unicode)file encoding. If the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraphappear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailablefonts. First, make sure that your browser’s “character set” or “fileencoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change thedefault font.
Typographical errors are shown in the text with mouse-hover popups; minornotations are similarlymarked. Some Latin passages use the abbreviation “q;” for “que”.Unless otherwise noted, French accents were printed as shown. Thisincludes pairs such as a : à andou : où. Some questioned readings were checkedagainst the 1714 French original.
In the original text, footnotes were identified with marks: * † Forthis e-text they have been numbered from 1 within each chapter.Footnotes added by the transcriber are identified with letters (1a, 1b).The word “possibly” means that an attribution exists but the transcriberhas not personally seen the source text.
If ever preface might servefor an apology, certainly this ought to do so. The bare title of thebook is enough to have it universally cried down, and to give the worldan ill opinion of its author; for people will not be backward to say,that he who writes the Praise of Drunkenness, must be a drunkard byprofession; and who, by discoursing on such a subject, did nothing butwhat was in his own trade, and resolved not to move out of his ownsphere, not unlike Baldwin, a shoe-maker’s son, (and a shoe-maker),in the days ofviyore, who published a treatise on the shoes of the ancients, having afirm resolution strictly to observe this precept, Ne sutor ultracrepidam.
To this I answer, I am very well contented, that the world shouldbelieve me as much a drunkard, as Erasmus, who wrote The Praise ofFolly, was a fool, and weigh me in the same balance.
But some will say, what good can a man propose to himself in being apa
