ation of his works.
Now there was no longer merely the question of a little book of
translations, but Aldus had declared himself willing to print the
enormously increased collection of the _Adagia_.

Beatus Rhenanus tells a story which, no doubt, he had heard from Erasmus
himself: how Erasmus on his arrival at Venice had gone straight to the
printing-office and was kept waiting there for a long time. Aldus was
correcting proofs and thought his visitor was one of those inquisitive
people by whom he used to be pestered. When he turned out to be Erasmus,
he welcomed him cordially and procured him board and lodging in the
house of his father-in-law, Andrea Asolani. Fully eight months did
Erasmus live there, in the environment which, in future, was to be his
true element: the printing-office. He was in a fever of hurried work,
about which he would often sigh, but which, after all, was congenial to
him. The augmented collection of the _Adagia_ had not yet been made
ready for the press at Bologna. 'With great temerity on my part,'
Erasmus himself testifies, 'we began to work at the same time, I to
write, Aldus to print.' Meanwhile the literary friends of the New
Academy whom he got to know at Venice, Johannes Lascaris, Baptista
Egnatius, Marcus Musurus and the young Jerome Aleander, with whom, at
Asolani's, he shared room and bed, brought him new Greek authors,
unprinted as yet, furnishing fresh material for augmenting the _Adagia_.
These were no inconsiderable additions: Plato in the original,
Plutarch's _Lives_ and _Moralia_, Pindar, Pausanias, and others. Even
people whom he did not know and who took an interest in his work,
brought new material to him. Amid the noise of the press-room, Erasmus,
to the surprise of his publisher, sat and wrote, usually from memory, so
busily occupied that, as he picturesquely expressed it, he had no time
to scratch his ears. He was lord and master of the printing-office. A
special corrector had been assigned to him; he made his textual changes
in the last impression. Aldus also read the proofs. 'Why?' asked
Erasmus. 'Because I am studying at the same time,' was the reply.
Meanwhile Erasmus suffered from the first attack of his tormenting
nephrolithic malady; he ascribed it to the food he got at Asolani's and
later took revenge by painting that boarding-house and its landlord in
very spiteful colours in the _Colloquies_.

When in September 1508, the edition of the _Adagia_ was ready, Aldus