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.

If you have any rare authors in your press, I shall be obliged if you
will indicate this--my learned British friends have asked me to search
for them. If you decide not to print the _Tragedies_, will you return
the copy to the bearer to bring back to me?

VIII. TO THOMAS MORE[47]

[Paris?] 9 June [1511]

To his friend Thomas More, greetings:

... In days gone by, on my journey back from Italy into England, in
order not to waste all the time that must needs be spent on horseback in
dull and unlettered gossiping, I preferred at times either to turn over
in my mind some topic of our common studies or to give myself over to
the pleasing recollection of the friends, as learned as they are
beloved, whom I had left behind me in England. You were among the very
first of these to spring to mind, my dear More; indeed I used to enjoy
the memory of you in absence even as I was wont to delight in your
present company, than which I swear I never in my life met anything
sweeter. Therefore, since I thought that I must at all hazards do
_something_, and that time seemed ill suited to serious meditation, I
determined to amuse myself with the _Praise of Folly_. You will ask what
goddess put this into my mind. In the first place it was your family
name of More, which comes as near to the word _moria_ [folly] as you
yourself are far from the reality--everyone agrees that you are far
removed from it. Next I suspected that you above all would approve this
_jeu d'esprit_ of mine, in that you yourself do greatly delight in jests
of this kind, that is, jests learned (if I mistake not) and at no time
insipid, and altogether like to play in some sort the Democritus[48] in
the life of society. Although you indeed, owing to your incredibly sweet
and easy-going character, are both able and glad to be all things to all
men, even as your singularly penetrating intellect causes you to dissent
widely from the opinions of the herd. So you will not only gladly accept
this little declamation as a memento of your comrade, but will also take
it under your protection, inasmuch as it is dedicated to you and is now
no longer mine but yours.

And indeed there will perhaps be no lack of brawlers to represent that
trifles are more frivolous