emselves entitled to come and waste his time,
coaxing out of him a few lines of verse or a little letter. So
compliant was he that they made it very difficult for him. To refuse
seemed uncivil when they pressed him so. But to write when his mind
was intent elsewhere, and not a minute to spare from his labours----!
However, he did write, on the spur of the moment, turning aside for a
little to the groves of the Muses.'

Some other visitors can be traced in this period. John Alexander
Brassicanus, poet laureate, came from Tubingen in September 1520 and
saw Erasmus at Antwerp; whence in reply to a letter of self-introduction
he bore away a complimentary letter that he afterwards printed, and
the sound piece of advice, that if he wished to become learned, he
must never think himself so. More distinguished was Ferdinand
Columbus, the explorer's natural son and heir, who in October 1520,
on one of those journeys on which he gathered his famous library,
received at Louvain a copy of Erasmus' _Antibarbari_, with his name
inscribed in it by the author. A visitor to whom we must pay more heed
was John Draco, one of the Erfurt circle, who in July 1520 came to pay
homage at Louvain.

In the autumn of 1518 the agent of a Leipzig bookseller trading to
Prague received a letter to carry back with him and forward on to
Erasmus at Louvain. The writer was a certain Jan Slechta, a Bohemian
country gentleman, who was living at Kosteletz on the upper waters of
the Elbe, a few miles to the North-east of Prague. He was a man of
education and position. After taking his M.A. at Prague in 1484, he
had served for sixteen years as a secretary to King Ladislas of
Bohemia and Hungary; but about 1507, disgusted with the turmoils of
court life in that very troubled time, he had retired to his home, to
give his later years to the education of his son and the personal
management of his estates. The world of affairs had not extinguished
his love of learning. He was an intimate friend of Bohuslaus of
Hassenstein, scholar and traveller, and corresponded with him in
elegant Latin. Attracted by the reputation for eloquence won by the
notorious Hieronymus Balbus, he had persuaded him _c._ 1499 to come
and teach in Prague--a step which in view of Balbus' bad life he
afterwards deeply regretted. He was also the author of a dialogue on
the relations of body and soul, entitled _Microcosmus_; which with
characteristic modesty he kept for more than twenty years kn