Excerpt from The Praise of Folly (1458 was a Strasburg inn-keeper's son, who, having taken his degree in law, added to his legal work great literary activity in Bergmann von Olpe's press at Basel. Brant conceived the idea of a ship laden with fools, about to set sail for the land of Narragonia; but he grew so interested in depicting the crew that the ship was forgotten and never left its port. The 'narrenschiff' was published in 1494, and its success was immediate. The 112 several kinds of fools, described with blunt realism, gave men opportunity to recognize their neighbours' por traits, and delightedly to fit caps on other heads. The book was further welcomed for its moral value, and was even used as the text for a series of sermons given by a famous Strasburg preacher. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.