By Sebastian Brandt
This book was first published in 1494. It was translated into Latin by one Professor (Locher, 1497), and imitated in the same language and under the same title, by another, Badius Ascensius, 1507; it appeared in Dutch and Low German, and was twice translated into English, and three times into French; imitations competed with the original in French and German, as well as Latin, and greatest and most unprecedented distinction of all, it was preached, but, we should opine, only certain parts of it, from the pulpit by the best preachers of the time as a new gospel.
The Germans proudly award it the epithet, “epoch-making,” and its long continued popularity affords good, if not quite sufficient, ground for the extravagant eulogies they lavish upon it.
It is noted that Coke spoke of Francis Bacon’s Great Instauration as “it deserves not to be read in schools, but to be freighted in the Ship of Fools.”
