Badius with
a new, revised edition of the _Adagia_, though the Aldine might still be
had there at a moderate price. The _Laus_, which had just appeared at
Gourmont's, was reprinted at Strassburg as early as 1511, with a
courteous letter by Jacob Wimpfeling to Erasmus, but evidently without
his being consulted in the matter. By that time he was back in England,
had been laid up in London with a bad attack of the sweating sickness,
and thence had gone to Queens' College, Cambridge, where he had resided
before. From Cambridge he writes to Colet, 24 August 1511, in a vein of
comical despair. The journey from London had been disastrous: a lame
horse, no victuals for the road, rain and thunder. 'But I am almost
pleased at this, I see the track of Christian poverty.' A chance to make
some money he does not see; he will be obliged to spend everything he
can wrest from his Maecenases--he, born under a wrathful Mercury.

This may sound somewhat gloomier than it was meant, but a few weeks
later he writes again: 'Oh, this begging; you laugh at me, I know. But I
hate myself for it and am fully determined, either to obtain some
fortune, which will relieve me from cringing, or to imitate Diogenes
altogether.' This refers to a dedication of a translation of Basilius's
Commentaries on Isaiah to John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester.

Colet, who had never known pecuniary cares himself, did not well
understand these sallies of Erasmus. He replies to them with delicate
irony and covert rebuke, which Erasmus, in his turn, pretends not to
understand. He was now 'in want in the midst of plenty', _simul et in
media copia et in summa inopia_. That is to say, he was engaged in
preparing for Badius's press the _De copia verborum ac rerum_, formerly
begun at Paris; it was dedicated to Colet. 'I ask you, who can be more
impudent or abject than I, who for such a long time already have been
openly begging in England?'

Writing to Ammonius he bitterly regrets having left Rome and Italy; how
prosperity had smiled upon him there! In the same way he would
afterwards lament that he had not permanently established himself in
England. If he had only embraced the opportunity! he thinks. Was not
Erasmus rather one of those people whom good fortune cannot help? He
remained in trouble and his tone grows more bitter. 'I am preparing some
bait against the 1st of January, though it is pretty sure to be in
vain,' he writes to Ammonius, referring to new translatio