mours of war. There is nothing to show
that he was impressed by the beauty of the Italy of the Renaissance. The
scanty correspondence dating from his stay in Italy mentions neither
architecture, nor sculpture, nor pictures. When much later he happened
to remember his visit to the Chartreuse of Pavia, it is only to give an
instance of useless waste and magnificence. Books alone seemed to occupy
and attract Erasmus in Italy.

At Bologna, Erasmus served as a mentor to the young Boerios to the end
of the year for which he had bound himself. It seemed a very long time
to him. He could not stand any encroachment upon his liberty. He felt
caught in the contract as in a net. The boys, it seems, were intelligent
enough, if not so brilliant as Erasmus had seen them in his first joy;
but with their private tutor Clyfton, whom he at first extolled to the
sky, he was soon at loggerheads. At Bologna he experienced many
vexations for which his new relations with Paul Bombasius could only in
part indemnify him. 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.

[Illustration: VII. Title-page of the _Adagia_, printed by Aldus
Manutius in 1508]

[Illustration: VIII. VIEW OF VENICE, 1493]

[Illustration: IX. PORTRAIT MEDAL OF ALDUS MANUTIUS. On the reverse the
Aldine emblem]

[Illustration: X. A page from the _Praise of Folly_ with a drawing by
Holbein of Erasmus at his desk.]

From Bologna, in October 1507, Erasmus addressed a letter to the famous
Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, in which he requested him to publish,
anew, the two translated dramas of Euripides, as the edition of Badius
was out of print and too defective for his taste. What made Aldus
attractive in his eyes was, no doubt, besides the fame of the business,
though it was languishing at the time, the printer's beautiful
type--'those most magnificent letters, especially those very small
ones'. Erasmus was one of those true book-lovers who pledge their heart
to a type or a size of a book, not because of any artistic preference,
but because of readableness and handiness, which to them are of the very
greatest importance. What he asked of Aldus was a small book at a low
price. Towards the end of the year their relations had gone so far that
Erasmus gave up his projected journey to Rome, for the time, to remove
to Venice, there personally to superintend the public