of Amorbach and Froben, in Basle.  His attention had perhaps been aroused by a flattering mention of him in a preface written in Froben’s name for the pirated edition of the Adagia, August 1513, to which Erasmus was referring in the letter just quoted.  Rumour had spread through Europe that Erasmus was dead—­it was repeated six months later in a book printed at Vienna—­and the Basle circle deplored the loss that this would mean to learning.

There were other reasons for this choice, apart from the excellence of the printers.  Erasmus had never been happy in Paris.  He had often been ill beside the sluggish Seine, and had only found his health again by leaving it.  The theologians were still predominant there, and Louis XII had a way of interfering with scholars who discovered any freedom of thought.  Standonck, for instance, the refounder of Montaigu, had had to disappear in 1499-1500.  For Erasmus to sit in Paris for two or three years while his books were being printed, would have been at least a penance.  But Basle was very different.  The Rhine, dashing against the piers of the bridge which joined the Great and Little towns, brought fresh air and coolness and health.  The University, founded in 1460, was active and liberally minded.  The town had recently (1501) thrown in its lot with the confederacy of Swiss cantons, thereby strengthening the political immunity which it had long enjoyed.  Between the citizens and the religious orders complete concord prevailed; and finally, except Paris, there was no town North of the Alps which could vie with Basle in the splendour and number of the books which it produced.  This is how a contemporary scholar[21] writes of the city of his adoption.  ’Basle to-day is a residence for a king.  The streets are clean, the houses uniform and pleasant, some of them even magnificent, with spacious courts and gay gardens and many delightful prospects; on to the grounds and trees beside St. Peter’s, over the Dominicans’, or down to the Rhine.  There is nothing to offend the taste even of those who have been in Italy, except perhaps the use of stoves instead of fires, and the dirt of the inns, which is universal throughout Germany.  The climate is singularly mild and agreeable, and the citizens polite.  A bridge joins the two towns, and the situation on the river is splendid.  Truly Basle is [Greek:  basileia], a queen of cities.’

     [21] Beatus Rhenanus, Res Germanicae, 1531, pp. 140, 1.

In 1513 the two greatest printers of Basle were in partnership, John Amorbach and John Froben.  Amorbach, a native of the town of that name in Franconia, had taken his M.A. in Paris, and then had worked for a time in Koberger’s press at Nuremberg.  About 1475 he began to print at Basle, and for nearly forty years devoted all his energies to producing books that would promote good learning; being, however, far too good a man of business to be indifferent to profit.  His ambition was to publish worthily the four Doctors