s are read there. Formerly
there was nothing but the Parables of Alan <of Lille, _fl._ 1200>, the
moral distichs of Cato, Aesop's Fables, and a few others, whom the
moderns despise; but the boys worked hard, and made their own way over
difficulties. Now when even in small schools the choicest authors are
read, ancient and modern, prose and poetry, there is not the same
profit; for virtue and industry are declining. With the decay of that
school, religion also is decaying, especially in our Order, which drew
so many good men from there. And yet it is not a hundred years since
our reformation.'

He does not indicate how far back he was turning his regretful gaze;
whether to the early years of the fifteenth century when Nicholas of
Cues was a scholar at Deventer, or to the more recent times of
Erasmus, who was about three school-generations ahead of him. But of
the books used there in the last quarter of the fifteenth century we
can form a clear notion from the productions of the Deventer printers,
Richard Paffraet and Jacobus of Breda. School-books then as now were
profitable undertakings, if printed cheap enough for the needy
student; and Paffraet, with Hegius living in his house, must have had
plenty of opportunities for anticipating the school's requirements.
Between 1477 and 1499 he printed Virgil's Eclogues, Cicero's _De
Senectute_ and _De Amicitia_, Horace's _Ars Poetica_, the _Axiochus_
in Agricola's translation, Cyprian's Epistles, Prudentius' poems,
Juvencus' _Historia Euangelica_, and the _Legenda Aurea_: also the
grammar of Alexander with the commentary of Synthius and Hegius,
Agostino Dato's _Ars scribendi epistolas_, Aesop's Fables, and the
_Dialogus Creaturarum_, the latter two being moralized in a way which
must surely have pleased Butzbach. Jacobus of Breda, who began
printing at Deventer in 1486, produced Virgil's Eclogues, Cicero's _De
Senectute_ and _De Officiis_, Boethius' _De consolatione philosophiae_
and _De disciplina scholarium_, Aesop, a poem by Baptista Mantuanus,
the 'Christian Virgil', Alan of Lille's _Parabolae_, Alexander, two
grammatical treatises by Synthius and the _Epistola mythologica_ of
Bartholomew of Cologne.

This last, as being the work of a master in the school, deserves
attention; and also for its intrinsic interest. As its title implies,
it is cast in the form of a letter, addressed to a friend Pancratius;
and it is dated from Deventer 10 July 1489--nine years before Butzbach