[Footnote 300: It were much to be wished that Mr. Roscoe, who has so successfully turned his attention to the history of _Italian Literature_, of the period of Erasmus, would devote himself to the investigation of the philological history of the German schools, and more especially to the literary life of the great man of whom Lysander is above speaking. The biographical memoirs of Erasmus by Le Clerc, anglicised and enlarged by the learned Jortin, and Dr. Knight's life of the same, can never become popular. They want method, style and interest. Le Clerc, however, has made ample amends for the defectiveness of his biographical composition, by the noble edition of Erasmus's works which he put forth at Leyden, in the year 1703-6, in eleven volumes folio: of which volumes the reader will find an excellent analysis or review in the _Act. Erudit._, A.D. 1704, &c. Le Clerc, _Bibl. Choisie_, vol. i., 380; Du Pin's _Bibl. Eccles._, vol. xiv., and _Biblioth. Fabric_, pt. i., 359; from which latter we learn that, in the public library, at Deventer, there is a copy of Erasmus's works, in which those passages, where the author speaks freely of the laxity of the monkish character, have been defaced, "charta fenestrata." A somewhat more compressed analysis of the contents of these volumes appeared in the _Sylloge Opusculorum Hist.-Crit., Literariorum, J.A. Fabricii, Hamb._ 1738, 4to., p. 363, 378--preceded, however, by a pleasing, yet brief account of the leading features of Erasmus's literary life. Tn one of his letters to Colet, Erasmus describes himself as "a very poor fellow in point of fortune, and wholly exempt from ambition." A little before his death he sold his library to one John a Lasco, a Polonese, for only 200 florins. (Of this amiable foreigner, see Stypye's [Transcriber's Note: Strype's] _Life of Crammer_ [Transcriber's Note: Cranmer]; b. ii., ch. xxii.) Nor did he--notwithstanding his services to booksellers--and although every press was teeming with his lucubrations--and especially that of Colinaeeus--(which alone put forth 24,000 copies of his _Colloquies_) ever become much the wealthier for his talents as an author. His bibliomaniacal spirit was such, that he paid most liberally those who collated or described works of which he was in want. In another of his letters, he declares that "he shall not recieve [Transcriber's Note: receive] an _obolus_ that year; as he had spent more than what he had gained in rewarding those who had made book-researches for him;" and he complains, after being five months at Cambridge, that he had, fruitlessly, spent upwards of fifty crowns. "Noblemen," says he, "love and praise literature, and my lucubrations; but they praise and do not reward." To his friend Eobanus Hessus