ds such a fine rivalry of competitive cooperation as already existed
among such leaders as Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, he should be well
content to live laborious days and to die poor. Both these he did; but
he gathered around him such a company of friends and collaborators as
few men have enjoyed; he must have breathed with a rare exhilaration,
born of honest and richly productive toil, the very air of Athens in her
glory; and he must have realized sometimes amid the dust and heat of the
printing shop that it was given to him at much cost of life and grinding
toil to stand upon the threshold of the golden age alike of typography
and of the revival of learning. In 1514, the year before his death,
Aldus wrote to a friend a letter of which I borrow a translation from
George Haven Putnam's Books and Their Makers during the Middle Ages.
This is the picture Aldus drew of his daily routine:

"I am hampered in my work by a thousand
interruptions. Nearly every hour comes a letter
from some scholar, and if I undertook to reply to
them all, I should be obliged to devote day and
night to scribbling. Then through the day come
calls from all kinds of visitors. Some desire
merely to give a word of greeting, others want to
know what there is new, while the greater number
come to my office because they happen to have
nothing else to do. 'Let us look in upon Aldus,'
they say to each other. Then they loaf in and sit
and chatter to no purpose. Even these people with
no business are not so bad as those who have a
poem to offer or something in prose (usually very
prosy indeed) which they wish to see printed with
the name of Aldus. These interruptions are now
becoming too serious for me, and I must take steps
to lessen them. Many letters I simply leave
unanswered, while to others I send very brief
replies; and as I do this not from pride or from
discourtesy, but simply in order to be able to go
on with my task of printing good books, it must
not be taken hardly. As a warning to the heedless
visitors who use up my office hours to no purpose,
I have now put up a big notice on the door of my
office to the following effect: Whoever thou art,
thou art earnestly requested by Ald