One reason that we know Beatus so well is that his library has survived almost intact, as well as a great number of letters which he received.  At his death he left his books to the town of Schlettstadt; and there they still are, forming the major and by far the most important part of the town library.  It is a wonderful collection of about a thousand volumes, some of them extremely rare; many bought by him in his Paris days, some presents from friends sent or brought from far with dedicatory inscriptions.  Hardly a book has not his name and the date when he acquired it, or other marks of his use.  But they have not yet come to their full usefulness, for there is no adequate catalogue of them.  In many cases their direct value has passed away.  No one wishes to read the classics or the Fathers in the texts current in the sixteenth century; yet behind printed books lie manuscripts, and from examination of manuscripts on which printed texts are based, we can gather many useful indications to throw light on the tradition of the classics, the gradual steps by which the past has come down to us.  Besides such texts there are multitudes of original compositions of Beatus’ own period, books of great value for the history of scholarship; many of them requiring to be dated with more precision than is attainable on the surface.  It will be a signal service to learning when a trained bibliographer takes Beatus Rhenanus’ books in hand and gives us a scientific catalogue.

These were some of the friends who were in Basle when Erasmus first began to think of sending his work there to be printed.  By the summer of 1514 the preliminary negotiations had been satisfactorily concluded and he set out.  The story which he tells of his arrival is well known.  Amorbach was now dead; so he marched into the printing-house and asked for Froben.  ’I handed him a letter from Erasmus, saying that I was a familiar friend of his, and that he had charged me to arrange for the publication of his works; that any undertaking I made would be as valid as if made by him:  finally, that I was so like Erasmus that to see me was to see him.  He laughed and saw through the joke.  His father-in-law, old Lachner, paid my bill at the inn, and carried me off, horse and baggage to his house.’

He was not at first sure whether he would stay:  he might get the work better done at Venice or at Rome.  But the attractions of the printer’s house and circle were not to be resisted; and gradually, one after another, the books which he had brought were undertaken by Froben, a new edition of the Adagia, Seneca, the New Testament, Jerome.  The way in which the printing was carried out illustrates the critical standards of the age.  Erasmus was absent from Basle during the greater part of the time when Seneca was coming through the press; and the proofs were corrected by Beatus Rhenanus and a young man named Nesen.  Under such circumstances a modern author would feel that he had only himself to thank for any