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But let me be most foolish myself, and one whom Democritus may not only laugh at but flout,
if I go one foot further in the discovery of the follies and madnesses of the common people.
I'll betake me to them that carry the reputation of wise men and hunt after that golden bough,
as says the proverb. Among whom the grammarians hold the first place, a generation of men
than whom nothing would be more miserable, nothing more perplexed, nothing more hated
of the gods, did not I allay the troubles of that pitiful profession with a certain kind of pleasant
madness. For they are not only subject to those five curses with which Home begins his Iliads,
as says the Greek epigram, but six hundred; as being ever hunger-starved and slovens in their
schools--schools, did I say? Nay, rather cloisters, bridewells, or slaughterhouses--grown old
among a company of boys, deaf with their noise, and pined away with stench and nastiness.
And yet by my courtesy it is that they think themselves the most excellent of all men, so greatly
do they please themselves in frighting a company of fearful boys with a thundering voice and
big looks, tormenting them with ferules, rods, and whips; and, laying about them without fear
or wit, imitate the ass in the lion's skin. In the meantime all that nastiness seems absolute
spruceness, that stench a perfume, and that miserable slavery a kingdom, and such too as they
would not change their tyranny for Phalaris' or Dionysius' empire. Nor are they less happy in
that new opinion they have taken up of being learned; for whereas most of them beat into
boys' heads nothing but foolish toys, yet, you good gods! what Palemon, what Donatus, do
they not scorn in comparison of themselves? And so, I know not by what tricks, they bring it
about that to their boys' foolish mothers and dolt-headed fathers they pass for such as they
fancy themselves. Add to this that other pleasure of theirs, that if any of them happen to find
out who was Anchises' mother, or pick out of some worm-eaten manuscript a word not
commonly known--as suppose it bubsequa for a cowherd, bovinator for a wrangler,
manticulator for a cutpurse--or dig up the ruins of some ancient monument with the letters
half eaten out; O Jupiter! what towerings! what triumphs! what commendations! as if they
had conquered Africa or taken in Babylon.
