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It was well worth while, even for a scholar who was eager to go on learning, and was inclined to grudge time given to business: for with Jerome beginning and all the scholars whom we mentioned coming in and out, Amorbach's house in Klein-Basel became an 'Academy' which could bear comparison with Aldus' at Venice.

His poems were first published by Aldus in 1505, two years after his death. In one characteristic composition he laments the loss of his wife, to whom he was deeply attached; another introduces under a pastoral name his greater disciple Sannazzaro .

Had this continued for any length of time with the same rigor, I verily believe I should have died in despair at the foot of the hated dungeon. However, if my letter produced but little effect, I did not on account of it attribute to myself much merit, for I mentioned it but to very few people, and never to Diderot himself. Privately Printed for the Members of the Aldus Society London, 1903

He was at work printing books two years before Columbus sailed on his first voyage. The descendents of Aldus continued the business after his death for about one hundred years. The books published by them were called "Aldine," from Aldus. They were the most beautiful that had ever come from the press. They are admired and valued to this day.

He corresponded with every important writer of his generation, and he was on terms of personal friendship with Aldus Manutius, the famous publisher of Venice, with Sir Thomas More, the distinguished statesman and scholar of England, with Pope Leo X, with Francis I of France, and with Henry VIII of England. For a time he presided at Paris over the new College of France.

No visitor can read all this on the lettered backs of the books that have gathered around the scholar, but for him, from the Aldus on the lowest shelf to the Elzevir on the highest, every volume has a language which none but he can interpret. Be patient with the book-collector who loves his companions too well to let them go. Let the fruit fall with the leaves still clinging round it.

Modern machinery has swept all this old-world mechanism into oblivion; the wooden press which, with all its imperfections, turned out such beautiful work for the Elzevirs, Plantin, Aldus, and Didot is so completely forgotten, that something must be said as to the obsolete gear on which Jerome-Nicolas Sechard set an almost superstitious affection, for it plays a part in this chronicle of great small things.

If you insist on my taking a hundred or two hundred volumes, though the god of gain does not usually favour me and it will be most inconvenient to transport the package, I shall not refuse, if only you fix a horse as the price. Farewell, most learned Aldus, and reckon Erasmus as one of your well-wishers.

This relation was printed in a small and scarce collection at the Aldus press in Venice, by Antonio Minutio in 1543, and was afterwards inserted in the collection of Giovanne Baptista Ramusio. The following is an abstract of that journey.

Born in Asia Minor, probably in 484 B.C.; died in Italy, probably in 424; commonly called the "Father of History"; assisted in the expulsion of the tyrant Lygdamis from Halicarnassus; traveled in Persia, Egypt, and Greece; lived afterward in Samos and Athens, settling in Thurii, Italy, about 444 B.C.; his history of the Persian invasion of Greece, extending to 479 B.C., was first printed in Greek by Aldus Manutius in 1502, but a Latin version had appeared in 1474.