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And if anything is said in them touching matters of faith, it is not I who say it, is it? As often as he censures classes or offices in the Adagia, princes above all, he warns the readers not to regard his words as aimed at particular persons. Erasmus was a master of reserve.
As soon as he no longer enjoys More's hospitality, the difficulties and complaints recommence. Continual poverty, uncertainty and dependence were extraordinarily galling to a mind requiring above all things liberty. At Paris he charged Badius with a new, revised edition of the Adagia, though the Aldine might still be had there at a moderate price.
'With great temerity on my part, Erasmus himself testifies, 'we began to work at the same time, I to write, Aldus to print. Meanwhile the literary friends of the New Academy whom he got to know at Venice, Johannes Lascaris, Baptista Egnatius, Marcus Musurus and the young Jerome Aleander, with whom, at Asolani's, he shared room and bed, brought him new Greek authors, unprinted as yet, furnishing fresh material for augmenting the Adagia.
Now to say something of my works I think you have read the Enchiridion, through which not a few confess themselves inspired to the study of piety; I make no claim for myself, but give thanks to Christ for any good which has come to pass through me by His giving. I do not know whether you have seen the Adagia, printed by Aldus.
In 1515 the enlarged Adagia contained an essay on the same theme, under the title quoted above: words which, translated into English, were again and again reprinted during the nineteenth century by Peace Associations and the Society of Friends. In 1516 he was appointed Councillor to Philip's son, Charles, who at 16 had just succeeded to the crowns of Spain.
He hoped to add Jerome's letters to these. For the Adagia they had agreed upon a copy-fee of fifteen guilders; for Jerome's letters Badius was willing to give the same sum and as much again for the rest of the consignment. 'Ah, you will say, what a very small sum!
When in September 1508, the edition of the Adagia was ready, Aldus wanted Erasmus to remain in order to write more for him. Till December he continued to work at Venice on editions of Plautus, Terence, and Seneca's tragedies. Visions of joint labour to publish all that classic antiquity still held in the way of hidden treasures, together with Hebrew and Chaldean stores, floated before his mind.
When, therefore, the full form, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, first appears, in the second edition of the Adagia, published by Josse Badius at Paris in 1506, it is an indication that Erasmus, then forty years of age, had found himself. Circumstances had not made it easy for him to find his way.
But the attractions of the printer's house and circle were not to be resisted; and gradually, one after another, the books which he had brought were undertaken by Froben, a new edition of the Adagia, Seneca, the New Testament, Jerome. The way in which the printing was carried out illustrates the critical standards of the age.
What actually happened is not known. But in December 1513 he writes to an intimate friend that he has been badly treated about the Adagia by an agent a travelling bookseller, who acted as go-between for printers and authors and public; that instead of taking them to Badius and offering him the refusal, the knavish fellow had gone straight to Basle and sold them, with some other work of Erasmus, to a printer who had only just completed an edition of the Adagia.
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