After thanks and personalities he writes:
'Certainly you shall have the Lucian, and I will dedicate it to you: but not just yet, as I am too busy to revise it. My public lectures take up a good deal of my time. I have a fairly large audience; but their zeal is greater than their ability. The majority of them are M.A.'s or students in the Arts course;[7] who are obliged to spend all their time on their disputations, so they have only a meagre part of the day left for these studies. In consequence, as they can do so little, I am not very active.
'In addition to this I am trying to keep up my Latin and Greek (though they are fast slipping from me) and am beginning Hebrew, which I find very difficult: indeed to my surprise it costs me more effort than Greek did. However, I shall go on with it as I have begun: also because I like to have something new on hand, and much as I like Greek, its novelty has somewhat worn off. I have made up my mind to devote my old age, if I ever reach it, to theology. You know how I detest the barbarisms of those who fill the schools. On their side they are indignant with me for daring to question their decisions; but this will not deter me.
'My greetings to your host, Master Richard (Paffraet), and his wife.
'Worms, in great haste, on the third day of the week: as I have determined to call it, instead of our unclassical Feria secunda, tertia, &c., or the heathen names, Monday, Mars' day, Mercury's day, Jove's day.'
We may notice the anticipation of the Quakers, who in a similar way would only speak of first day and sixth month.
6. HEGIUS TO WESSEL; from Deventer <between 1483 and 1489>.
'I am sending you the Homilies of John Chrysostom, and hope you will enjoy reading them. His golden words have always been more acceptable to you than the precious metal itself from the mint.
'I have been, as you know, at Cusanus' library, and found there many Hebrew books which were quite unknown to me; also a few Greek. I remember the names of the following: Epiphanius against heresies, a very big book; Dionysius on the Hierarchy; Athanasius against Arius; Climacus.
'These I left behind there, but I brought away with me: Basil on the Hexaëmeron and some of his homilies on the Psalms; the Epistles of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles; Plutarch's Lives of Romans and Greeks, and his Symposium; some writings on grammar and mathematics; some poems on the Christian religion, written, I think, by Gregory Nazianzen; some prayers, in Latin and Greek.