[324] Luther visited Rome in 1510, or a year or two later. Luther’s Briefe, De Wette, 1. xxi.
[325] ‘Nullum enim annum vixi insuavius!’—Erasmus to Botzhem, leaf a, 4.
[326] Eras. Ep. cccclxxxvi. App.
[327] Epist. cccclxxxvii. App.
[328] Eras. to Botzhem, leaf b, 8.
[329] Mountjoy to Erasmus, Epist. x., dated May 27, 1497, but should be 1509.
[330] It is difficult to fix the date of the arrival of Erasmus in England. He was at Venice in the autumn of 1508. (See the Aldine edition of his Adagia, dated Sept. 1508.) After this he wintered at Padua (see Vita Erasmi, prefixed to Eras. Op. i.); and after this went to Rome (ibid.). This brings the chronology to the spring of 1509. In April, 1509, Henry VIII. ascended the English throne. On May 27, 1509, Lord Mountjoy wrote to Erasmus, who seems to have been then at Rome, pressing him to come back to England (Eras. Epist. x., the date of which is fixed by its contents).
The letter prefixed to the Praise of Folly is dated ex rure, ‘quinto Idas Junias,’ and states that the book is the result of his meditations during his long journeys on horseback on his way from Italy to England. This letter must have been dated June 9, 1510, at earliest, or 1511, at latest. 1510 is the probable date (see infra, note at p. 204). The later editions of the Praise of Folly put the year 1508 to this letter; but the edition of August, 1511 (Argent.) gives no year, nor does the Basle edition of 1519, to which the notes of Lystrius were appended. So that the printed date is of no authority, and it is entirely inconsistent with the history of the book as given by Erasmus. The first edition, printed by Gourmont, at Paris, I have not seen, but, according to Brunet, it has no date. In the absence of direct proof, it is probable on the whole that Erasmus returned to England between the autumn of 1509 and June, 1510.
[331] See the letter to More prefixed to the Praise of Folly.
[332] Roper, p. 9.