s head in admiration of the
"entertaining volume," extolling the figures without stint for "merit in
conception and execution," "bold and free pencilling," "spirit and point,"
"delicacy, truth, and force," "spirit of drollery," &c., &c.; summarising
thus, "few books are more pleasing to the eye, and more gratifying to the
fancy than the early editions of the 'Stultifera Navis.' It presents a
combination of entertainment to which the curious can never be
indifferent."

Whether it were the racy cleverness of the pictures or the unprecedented
boldness of the text, the book stirred Europe of the fifteenth century in a
way and with a rapidity it had never been stirred before. In the German
actual acquaintance with it could then be but limited, though it ran
through seventeen editions within a century; the Latin version brought it
to the knowledge of the educated class throughout Europe; but, expressing,
as it did mainly, the feelings of the common people, to have it in the
learned language was not enough. Translations into various vernaculars were
immediately called for, and the Latin edition having lightened the
translator's labours, they were speedily supplied. England, however, was
all but last in the field but when she did appear, it was in force, with a
version in each hand, the one in prose and the other in verse.

Fifteen years elapsed from the appearance of the first German edition,
before the English metrical version "translated out of Laten, French, and
Doche ... in the colege of Saynt Mary Otery, by me, Alexander Barclay," was
issued from the press of Pynson in 1509. A translation, however, it is not.
Properly speaking, it is an adaptation, an English ship, formed and
fashioned after the Ship of Fools of the World. "But concernynge the
translacion of this boke; I exhort ye reders to take no displesour for y^t,
it is nat translated word by worde acordinge to ye verses of my actour. For
I haue but only drawen into our moder tunge, in rude langage the sentences
of the verses as nere as the parcyte of my wyt wyl suffer me, some tyme
addynge, somtyme detractinge and takinge away suche thinges as semeth me
necessary and superflue. Wherfore I desyre of you reders pardon of my
presumptuous audacite, trustynge that ye shall holde me excused if ye
consyder ye scarsnes of my wyt and my vnexpert youthe. I haue in many
places ouerpassed dyuers poetical digressions and obscurenes of fables and
haue concluded my worke in rude la