with noble zeal the failings and extravagances
of his age, and applies his lash unsparingly even to the dreaded Hydra of
popery and monasticism, to combat which the Hercules of Wittenberg had not
yet kindled his firebrands. But the poet's object was not merely to reprove
and to animadvert; he instructs also, and shows the fools the way to the
land of wisdom; and so far is he from assuming the arrogant air of the
commonplace moralist, that he reckons himself among the number of fools.
The style of the poem is lively, bold, and simple, and often remarkably
terse, especially in his moral sayings, and renders it apparent that the
author was a classical scholar, without however losing anything of his
German character."

Brandt's humour, which either his earnestness or his manner banished from
the text, took refuge in the illustrations and there disported itself with
a wild zest and vigour. Indeed to their popularity several critics have
ascribed the success of the book, but for this there is no sufficient
authority or probability. Clever as they are, it is more probable that they
ran, in popularity, but an equal race with the text. The precise amount of
Brandt's workmanship in them has not been ascertained, but it is agreed
that "most of them, if not actually drawn, were at least suggested by him."
Zarncke remarks regarding their artistic worth, "not all of the cuts are of
equal value. One can easily distinguish five different workers, and more
practised eyes would probably be able to increase the number. In some one
can see how the outlines, heads, hands, and other principal parts are cut
with the fine stroke of the master, and the details and shading left to the
scholars. The woodcuts of the most superior master, which can be recognized
at once, and are about a third of the whole, belong to the finest, if they
are not, indeed, the finest, which were executed in the fifteenth century,
a worthy school of Holbein. According to the opinion of Herr Rudolph
Weigel, they might possibly be the work of Martin Schoen of Colmar.... The
composition in the better ones is genuinely Hogarth-like, and the longer
one looks at these little pictures, the more is one astonished at the
fulness of the humour, the fineness of the characterisation and the almost
dramatic talent of the grouping." Green, in his recent work on emblems,
characterizes them as marking an epoch in that kind of literature. And
Dibdin, the Macaulay of bibliography, loses hi