' In the excitement of
contention he perhaps 'remembered with advantages', for in Italy he
had one great opportunity. He had published in 1500 at Paris a
chrematistic work entitled _Collectanea Adagiorum_, a collection of
Latin proverbs with brief explanations designed to be useful to the
numerous public who aspired to write Latin with elegance. After the
book was out, as authors do, he went on collecting, and on his way to
Italy in 1506, he published a slightly enlarged edition, also in
Paris. In Italy he made acquaintance with Aldus, and after finishing
his year of superintendence over the pupils he had brought with him,
he went, about the beginning of 1508, to dwell in the Neacademia at
Venice. In September 1508 there appeared from Aldus' press a Volume on
the same subject, but very different in bulk; no longer _Collectanea
Adagiorum_, but _Adagiorum Chiliades_. The Paris volume, a thin
quarto, had contained about 800 proverbs, Aldus' had more than 3,000,
and the commentary became so amplified, with occasional lengthy
disquisitions on subjects moral and political, that nothing but a
folio size would accommodate it.

Where this work was done, Erasmus does not specifically state. One
passage gives the impression that he had made his new collections in
England; but as one reason for his dissatisfaction with the first
edition was the absence of citations from the Greek, it seems more
probable that he really wrote the new book in Aldus' house at Venice.
There, surrounded by the scholars of the New Academy, Egnatius,
Carteromachus, Aleander, Urban of Belluno, besides Aldus himself and
his father-in-law Asulanus, having at hand all the wealth of the
Aldine Greek editions and the Greek manuscripts which were sent from
far and near to be printed, Erasmus was thoroughly equipped to
transform his quarto into folio, his hundreds into thousands. He tells
us that the compositors printed as he wrote, and that he had hard work
to keep pace with them. Some of his rough manuscripts--written rapidly
in his smooth hand and flowing sentences--survive still to help us
picture the scene. It is remarkable how little correction there is.
Here and there a whole page is drawn straight through, to be
rewritten, or a passage is inserted in the neat margin; but there is
little botching, little mending of words or transposing of phrases,
such as make the rough work of other humanists difficult reading. As
he wished the sentences to run, so they f