Complete. From the “Holy State.”

THEY have the cases of men, and little else of them besides speech and laughter. And indeed it may seem strange, that, risible being the property of man alone, they who have least of man should have most thereof, laughing without cause or measure.

  Generally, nature hangs out a sign of simplicity in the face of a fool, and there is enough in his countenance for a hue and cry to take him on suspicion; or else it is stamped on the figure of his body,—their heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit, sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room.

  Yet some by their faces may pass current enough till they cry themselves down by their speaking. Thus men know the bell is cracked when they hear it tolled; yet some that have stood out the assault of two or three questions, and have answered pretty rationally, have afterwards, of their own accord, betrayed and yielded themselves to be fools.

  The oaths and railing of fools is oftentimes no fault of theirs, but their teachers. The Hebrew word barak signifies to bless and to curse; and it is the speaker’s pleasure if he use it in the worst acceptation. Fools of themselves are equally capable to pray and to swear; they, therefore, have the greatest sin who by their example or otherwise teach them so to do.

  One may get wisdom by looking on a fool. In beholding him, think how much thou art beholden to him that suffered thee not to be like him; only God’s pleasure put a difference betwixt you. And consider that a fool and a wise man are alike both in the starting place, their birth, and at the post, their death; only they differ in the race of their lives.

  It is unnatural to laugh at a natural. How can the object of thy pity be the subject of thy pastime? I confess sometimes the strangeness, and, as I may say, witty simplicity of their actions may extort a smile from a serious man, who at the same time may smile at them and sorrow for them. But it is one thing to laugh at them in transitu, a snap and away, and another to make a set meal in jeering them, and as the Philistines, to send for Samson to make them sport.

  To make a trade of laughing at a fool is the highway to become one. Tully confesseth that whilst he laughed at one Hircus, a very ridiculous man; dum illum rideo pene factus sum ille; and one telleth us of Gallus Vibius, a man first of great eloquence, and afterwards of great madness, which seized not on him so much by accident as his own affectation, so long mimically imitating madmen that he became one.

  Many have been the wise speeches of fools, though not so many as the foolish speeches of wise men. Now the wise speeches of these silly souls proceed from one of these reasons: either because talking much and shooting often they must needs hit the mark sometimes, though not by aim, by hap; or else, because a fool’s mediocriter is optime, sense from his mouth, a sentence, and a tolerable speech cried up for an apothegm; or, lastly, because God may sometimes illuminate them, and, especially towards their death, admit them to the possession of some part of reason. A poor beggar in Paris, being very hungry, stayed so long in a cook’s shop, who was dishing up meat, till his stomach was satisfied with only the smell thereof. The choleric covetous cook demanded of him to pay for his breakfast. The poor man denied it, and the controversy was referred to the deciding of the next man that should pass by, which chanced to be the most notorious idiot in the whole city. He, on the relation of the matter, determined that the poor man’s money should be put betwixt two empty dishes, and the cook should be recompensed with the jingling of the poor man’s money, as he was satisfied with only the smell of the cook’s meat. And this is affirmed by credible writers as no fable, but an undoubted fact. More waggish was that of a rich landed fool, whom a courtier had begged, and carried about to wait on him. He, coming with his master to a gentleman’s house where the picture of a fool was wrought in a fair suit of arras, cut the picture out with a penknife. And being chidden for so doing, “You have more cause,” said he, “to thank me; for if my master had seen the picture of the fool, he would have begged the hangings of the king, as he did my lands.” When the standers-by comforted a natural which lay on his deathbed, and told him that four proper fellows should carry his body to the church, “Yea,” quoth he, “but I had rather by half go thither myself”; and then prayed to God at his last gasp not to require more of him than he gave him.

  As for a changeling, which is not one child changed for another, but one child on a sudden much changed from itself; and for a jester, which some count a necessary evil in a court, an office which none but he that hath wit can perform, and none but he that wants wit will perform, I conceive them not to belong to the present subject.