sometimes three or four students,
or more, take a house or a room, and then club together and
engage a cook, and that their weekly bills scarcely amount to a
teston <1/5 of a crown> a head. If that is so, join a party
like that and live carefully.

Good-bye. Your mother sends her love.

Your affectionate father, John Amorbach.

[22] Bruno, satis admirari non possum quid agas vt tot pecunias
consumas.
[23] Consumimus omnes de capitali.
[24] Habeo prouidere domui meae.

No answer came back, and on 18 August John Amorbach wrote again. Think
of a modern parent waiting a month for an answer to such a
communication and getting none! It might quite well have come. But
posts were slow and uncertain; and when he wrote again, the father's
righteous indignation had somewhat abated. It was not till 16 October
that Bruno replied, but with a very proper letter. He was a good
fellow, and knew what he owed to his father. After expressing his
regrets and determination to live within his allowance in future, he
goes on: 'There is a man just come from Italy, who is lecturing
publicly on Greek. <This was Francis Tissard of Amboise, who began
lecturing on Lascaris' Greek Grammar.> I have so long been wishing to
learn this language, and here at length is an opportunity. I have
plunged headlong into it, and with such a teacher I feel sure of
satisfying my desires, which are as eager as any inclinations of the
senses. So please allow me to stay a few months longer, and then I
shall be able to bring home some Greek with me. After that I will come
whenever you bid me.' Next summer he did return and settled down to
work in the press. It was well worth while, even for a scholar who was
eager to go on learning, and was inclined to grudge time given to
business: for with Jerome beginning and all the scholars whom we
mentioned coming in and out, Amorbach's house in Klein-Basel became an
'Academy' which could bear comparison with Aldus' at Venice. It was
worth Boniface's while, too, to take his course at Basle under such
circumstances; especially as in 1511 John Cono began to teach Greek
and Hebrew regularly to the printer's sons and to any one else who
wished to come and learn. It is worth noticing that not one of these
young men went to Italy for his humanistic education.

Amorbach's partner, John Froben, 1460-1527, was a man after his own
heart: open and easy to deal with, but of dogged