After apologies for not having written for a long while, he proceeds: 

’You ask how my school is doing.  Well, it is full again now; but in summer the numbers rather fell off.  The plague which killed twenty of the boys, drove many others away, and doubtless kept some from coming to us at all.

’Thank you for translating Lucian’s Micyllus.  I am sure that all of us who read it, will be greatly pleased with it.  As soon as it comes, I will have it printed.  If I may, I should much like to ask you for an abridgement of your book on Dialectic:  it would be very valuable to students.  I understand that you have translated Isocrates’ Education of Princes.  If I had it here, I would expound it to my pupils.  For some of them, no doubt, will be princes some day and have to govern.

’I have been reading Valla’s book on the True Good, and have become quite an Epicurean, estimating all things in terms of pleasure.  Also it has persuaded me that each virtue has its contrary vice, rather than two vices as its extremes.  I should like to know whether the authorities at Heidelberg have abandoned their Marsilius[6] on the question of universals, or whether they still stick to him.’

[6] Of Inghen, first Rector of Heidelberg University (1386),
the author of the Parua Logicalia.

5.  AGRICOLA TO HEGIUS; from Worms, Tuesday January 1485, in reply.

After thanks and personalities he writes: 

’Certainly you shall have the Lucian, and I will dedicate it to you:  but not just yet, as I am too busy to revise it.  My public lectures take up a good deal of my time.  I have a fairly large audience; but their zeal is greater than their ability.  The majority of them are M.A.’s or students in the Arts course;[7] who are obliged to spend all their time on their disputations, so they have only a meagre part of the day left for these studies.  In consequence, as they can do so little, I am not very active.

’In addition to this I am trying to keep up my Latin and Greek (though they are fast slipping from me) and am beginning Hebrew, which I find very difficult:  indeed to my surprise it costs me more effort than Greek did.  However, I shall go on with it as I have begun:  also because I like to have something new on hand, and much as I like Greek, its novelty has somewhat worn off.  I have made up my mind to devote my old age, if I ever reach it, to theology.  You know how I detest the barbarisms of those who fill the schools.  On their side they are indignant with me for daring to question their decisions; but this will not deter me.

     ’My greetings to your host, Master Richard (Paffraet), and his
     wife.

’Worms, in great haste, on the third day of the week:  as I have determined to call it, instead of our unclassical Feria secunda, tertia, &c., or the heathen names, Monday, Mars’ day, Mercury’s day, Jove’s day.’

     [7] Scholastici, vt nos dicimus, artium.