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Erasmus was absent from Basle during the greater part of the time when Seneca was coming through the press; and the proofs were corrected by Beatus Rhenanus and a young man named Nesen. Under such circumstances a modern author would feel that he had only himself to thank for any defects in the book. Not so Erasmus. He boils over with annoyance against the correctors for the blunders they let pass.
Rhenanus by conjecture wrote apud patrem to correspond with apud avunculum. But Passow restored ad with the best reason. For T. prefers different words and constructions in antithetic clauses. Perhaps also a different sense is here intended from that which would have been expressed by apud.
Beatus Rhenanus, although then already Erasmus's trusted friend, had it printed at once without the latter's knowledge. That was in 1518. Erasmus was justly offended at it, the more so as the book was full of slovenly blunders and solecisms. So he at once prepared a better edition himself, published by Maertensz at Louvain in 1519.
'A most unfortunate book', wrote Beatus Rhenanus in 1525, 'without style and without judgement. To Aventinus in 1531 it was 'an impudent compilation from Stabius and Trithemius, by a poor creature of the most despicable intelligence'. But even a bad book can be a measure of the time, showing the ideas current and the catchwords that were thought likely to attract the reading public.
Besides such texts there are multitudes of original compositions of Beatus' own period, books of great value for the history of scholarship; many of them requiring to be dated with more precision than is attainable on the surface. It will be a signal service to learning when a trained bibliographer takes Beatus Rhenanus' books in hand and gives us a scientific catalogue.
'If, what I pray may never happen, he writes to Sadolet in 1530, 'you should see horrible commotions of the world arise, not so fatal for Germany as for the Church, then remember Erasmus prophesied it. To Beatus Rhenanus he frequently said that, had he known that an age like theirs was coming, he would never have written many things, or would not have written them as he had.
This brief survey may close with a far more considerable work, the Res Germanicae of Beatus Rhenanus, published in 1531; from which we have made some extracts above. The book is sober and serious, and the subject-matter is handled scientifically; but in his preface Beatus is careful to point out that German history is as important as Roman, modern as much worth studying as ancient.
He declined, and in his place sent his friends, Beatus Rhenanus and the young Amerbachs. Three times he made excuse; and at length the Nuncio went on foot to seek in Froben's press the scholar who would not come to him.
It is pleasant to see the devotion with which Beatus Rhenanus and Boniface Amerbach comforted his last years; never wavering in the service to which they had plighted themselves in the enthusiasm of youth. The chance survival of the following note enables us to stand by Erasmus' bedside in his last hours.
So the MSS. For they read ejus here, and amissus est below. Rhenanus omitted ejus, and wrote es for est; and he has been followed in the common editions since. Conditione. By the circumstance, or by virtue of our long absence. T. and his wife had parted with A. four years before his death, and had been absent from Rome ever since, where or why does not appear. Superfuere. Cf. superest, G. 6, note.
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