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Updated: June 23, 2025
Now there was no longer merely the question of a little book of translations, but Aldus had declared himself willing to print the enormously increased collection of the Adagia. Beatus Rhenanus tells a story which, no doubt, he had heard from Erasmus himself: how Erasmus on his arrival at Venice had gone straight to the printing-office and was kept waiting there for a long time.
'The Archbishop of Canterbury', Mountjoy was able to apprise Erasmus, 'is not only continually engrossed in your Adagia and praises you to the skies, but he also promises you a benefice on your return and sends you five pounds for travelling expenses, which sum was doubled by Mountjoy. We do not know whether Erasmus really hesitated before he reached his decision.
He had in June 1535 gone to Basle, to work in Froben's printing-office, as of old; the Ecclesiastes was at last going to press and still required careful supervision and the final touches during the process; the Adagia had to be reprinted, and a Latin edition of Origenes was in preparation. The old, sick man was cordially received by the many friends who still lived at Basle.
Can Colet not find out for him how matters stand with regard to the proceeds of the hundred copies of the Adagia which, at one time, he sent to England at his own expense? The liberty of a few months may be bought for little money.
In a broad stream flowed the editions of the Fathers, of classic authors, the new editions of the New Testament, of the Adagia, of his own Letters, together with Paraphrases of the New Testament, Commentaries on Psalms, and a number of new theological, moral and philological treatises.
But we have only to cast an eye on the broad current of editions of the Adagia, of the Colloquia, etc., to realize of how much greater consequence he was in this respect than all the others. 'Erasmus' is the only name in all the host of humanists which has remained a household word all over the globe.
Old Charon, in his boat, "with eyes of brass, who beats the delaying souls with uplifted oar," is taken directly from Dante:— Caron demonio con occhi di bragia Loro accenando, tutte le raccoglie, Batte col remo qualunque si adagia. Those portions of the fresco in the semicircular spaces at the top, angels bearing implements of the Passion, appear to have been painted the last.
He worked there at an enlarged edition of his Adagia, which now, by the addition of the Greek ones, increased from eight hundred to some thousands of items.
An agent who acted as a mediator with authors for several publishers in Germany and France, one Francis Berckman, of Cologne, took the revised copy of the Adagia with the preface entrusted to him by Erasmus to hand over to Badius, not to Paris, but to Basle, to Johannes Froben, who had just, without Erasmus's leave, reprinted the Venetian edition!
As I had nothing ready, I hastily brought together, by a few days' reading, a collection of Adagia, in the supposition that such a booklet, however it might turn out, by its mere usefulness would get into the hands of students. In this way I demonstrated that my friendship had not cooled off at all.
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