that I could make him any return.  He was enthusiastic for good learning, and felt his work to be his own reward.  It was delightful to see him with the first pages of some new book in his hands, some author of whom he approved.  His face was radiant with pleasure, and you might have supposed that he had already received a large return of profit.  The excellence of his work would bear comparison with that of the best printers of Venice and Rome.  Six years before his death he slipped down a flight of steps on to a brickwork floor, and injured himself so severely that he never properly recovered:  but he always pretended that the effects had passed away.  Last year he was seized with a serious pain in his right ankle, and the doctors could do nothing except to suggest that the foot should be taken off.  Some alleviation was brought by the skill of a foreign physician, but there was still a great deal of pain in the toes.  However, he was not to be deterred from making the usual journeys to Frankfort (in March and September for the book-fairs) and rode on horseback both ways.  We entreated him to take more care of himself, to wear more clothes when it was cold; but he could not be induced to give in to old age, and abandon the habits of a vigorous lifetime.  All lovers of good learning will unite to lament his loss.’

If Erasmus was fortunate in his printer, he was still more fortunate in the friend and confidant whom he found awaiting him at Basle, Beat Bild of Rheinau, 1485-1547, known then and now as Beatus Rhenanus, one of the choicest spirits of his own or any age.  His father was a butcher of Rheinau who left his home because of continued ravages by the Rhine which threatened to sweep away the town.  Settling in Schlettstadt, a free city of the Empire near by, he rose to the highest civic offices, and sent his son to the Latin school under first Crato Hofman and then Gebwiler.  Beatus was contemporary there with Bruno and Basil Amorbach, and staying on longer than they did, rose to be a ‘praefect’ in the school, which a few years later, according to Thomas Platter, had 900 boys in it.  This number seems large for a town of perhaps not more than four or five thousand inhabitants; but it was equalled by the school at Alcmar in the days of Bartholomew of Cologne, and by Deventer, as we have seen, it was far surpassed.  In 1503 Beatus went to Paris, and there overtook the Amorbach boys who had two years’ start of him; becoming B.A. in 1504 and M.A. in 1505, a year before Bruno.  After his degree he stayed on in Paris as corrector to the press of Henry Stephanus for two years; and then returning home engaged himself in a similar capacity to Schurer at Strasburg, also giving a hand with editions of new texts.  In 1511, attracted by the fame of the good Dominican, John Cono, he went to Basle to work for the elder Amorbach and take lessons under Cono with the sons.  When Erasmus came, Beatus at once fell under his spell, and subordinated his own projects to the requirements of his friend’s more important undertakings.