Page:The Golden Ass of Apuleius.djvu/44

 pose why hee invented so sportfull a jest, I was verily per- swaded that my small travell should not onely be accepted by many, but the matter it selfe allowed and praised of all. Wherefore I intend, God willing, as nigh as I can, to utter and open the meaning thereof, to the simple and ignorant, whereby they may not take the same, as a thing only to jest and laugh at (for the fables of JEsop and the feigning of Poets were never written for that purpose) but by the pleasantnesse thereof bee rather induced to the knowledge of their present estate, and thereby transforme themselves into the right and perfect shape of men. The argument of the book is, how Lucius Apuleius the Author himselfe travelled into Thessaly, being a region in Greece, where all the women for the most part bee such wonderfull Witches, that they can transforme men into the figure of brute beasts : Where after he had continued a few dayes, by the mighty force of a violent confection hee was changed into a miserable Asse, and nothing might reduce him to his wonted shape but the eating of a Rose, which after the indurance of infinite sorrow, at length he obtained by prayer. Verily under the wrap of this transformation is taxed the life of mortall men, when as we suffer our mindes so to bee drowned in the sensuall lusts of the flesh, and the beastly pleasure thereof (which aptly may be called the violent confection of Witches) that wee lose wholly the use of reason and vertue, which properly should be in man, and play the parts of brute and savage beasts. By like occasion we reade, how divers of the companions of Vlysses were turned by the marvellous power of Circe into swine. And finde we not in Scripture, that Nabuchadnezzar the ninth King of Babylon, by reason of his great dominions and realmes, fell into such exceeding pride, that he was suddenly transformed of Almighty God into an horrible monster, having the head of an Oxe, the feet of a Beare, and the taile of Lion, and did eat hay as a Beast. But as Lucius Apuleius was changed into his humane shape by a Rose, the companions of Vlysses by great intercession, and Nabuchadnezzar by the continual prayers of Daniel, wher- by they knew themselves, and lived after a good and