More Folly

Hans Holbein (1515) Folly. Drawing in margin of the author’s first edition copy of The Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium) by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, Kupferstichkabinett, Basel.

James Gillray (1804) The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver. Colored steel engraving on paper. Andrew Edmunds Print Gallery, London

William Hogarth Gin Lane (1751) Etching and engraving on paper. Andrew Edmunds Print Gallery, London.

Of yonge folys that take olde wymen to theyr wyues, for theyr ryches.

“Within our shyp that fole shall haue a hode Whiche an olde wyfe taketh in maryage Rather for hir ryches and hir worldly gode Than for pure loue, or hope to haue lynage But suche youth as mary them selfe with age The profyte and pleasour of wedlocke lese certayne And worthely lyue in brawlynge stryfe and payne.”

Brant, Sebastian: Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools) First published in Basle, 1494. Translated into English By Alexander Barclay (1475-1552). Illustrated with woodcuts by Albrecht Durer.

Gustave Doré (1863) Steel engraving illustration from Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel Cervantes, translated by Louis Viardot. Hachette, Paris.

"Do you hear me, my dear Sir, what I am telling you?
I am not only hearing it, Sir. I am smelling it."

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1891) Priest Raigo of Mii Temple Transformed by Wicked Thoughts into a Rat. Print #25 from the 36 Ghosts series. Relief color woodblock print on paper.

Honoré Daumier (1840) Human Weaknesses, number one. Lithograph on paper.

"My little fiend Gruldig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon yourself and Country, but from what I can gather from your own relation, & the answers I have with much pains, wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but consider you to be one of the most pernicious little reptiles that nature ever suffer'd to crawl on the surface of the Earth."

Jonathan Swift (1726) amended 1735) Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships.

… And next these come our philosophers, so much reverenced for their furred gowns and starched beards that they look upon themselves as the only wise men and all others as shadows. And yet how pleasantly do they dote while they frame in their heads innumerable worlds; measure out the sun, the moon, the stars, nay and heaven itself, as it were, with a pair of compasses; lay down the causes of lightning, winds, eclipses, and other the like inexplicable matters; and all this too without the least doubting, as if they were Nature's secretaries, or dropped down among us from the council of the gods; while in the meantime Nature laughs at them and all their blind conjectures.

Desierius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1509) The Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium) English translation by John Wilson, 1668.