ond edition of the _Adagia_, published by Josse Badius at
Paris in 1506, it is an indication that Erasmus, then forty years of
age, had found himself.

Circumstances had not made it easy for him to find his way. Almost in
his infancy, when hardly four years old, he thinks, he had been put to
school at Gouda, together with his brother. He was nine years old when
his father sent him to Deventer to continue his studies in the famous
school of the chapter of St. Lebuin. His mother accompanied him. His
stay at Deventer must have lasted, with an interval during which he was
a choir boy in the minster at Utrecht, from 1475 to 1484. Erasmus's
explicit declaration that he was fourteen years old when he left
Deventer may be explained by assuming that in later years he confused
his temporary absence from Deventer (when at Utrecht) with the definite
end of his stay at Deventer. Reminiscences of his life there repeatedly
crop up in Erasmus's writings. Those concerning the teaching he got
inspired him with little gratitude; the school was still barbaric, then,
he said; ancient medieval text-books were used there of whose silliness
and cumbrousness we can hardly conceive. Some of the masters were of the
brotherhood of the Common Life. One of them, Johannes Synthen, brought
to his task a certain degree of understanding of classic antiquity in
its purer form. Toward the end of Erasmus's residence Alexander Hegius
was placed at the head of the school, a friend of the Frisian humanist,
Rudolf Agricola, who on his return from Italy was gaped at by his
compatriots as a prodigy. On festal days, when the rector made his
oration before all the pupils, Erasmus heard Hegius; on one single
occasion he listened to the celebrated Agricola himself, which left a
deep impression on his mind.

His mother's death of the plague that ravaged the town brought Erasmus's
school-time at Deventer to a sudden close. His father called him and his
brother back to Gouda, only to die himself soon afterwards. He must have
been a man of culture. For he knew Greek, had heard the famous humanists
in Italy, had copied classic authors and left a library of some value.

Erasmus and his brother were now under the protection of three guardians
whose care and intentions he afterwards placed in an unfavourable light.
How far he exaggerated their treatment of him it is difficult to decide.
That the guardians, among whom one Peter Winckel, schoolmaster at Gouda,
occupied the