WILL. "This is that ancient equality which tyranny has now driven from the world. I suppose that's the way Christ lived with his disciples!" BERT. "After all are seated, that crooked old Ganymede appears again, and again counts his company. Then he gives each one a wooden bowl, a spoon of the same metal, and a glass cup--some time afterward some bread, which everyone eats up to pass the time while the soup is cooking; and so they sit sometimes the space of an hour." WILL. "Does no guest meanwhile ask for food?" BERT. "Not one who knows the ways of the country. At last they bring on wine--good God! what a taste of smoke! The sophists ought to drink it, it is so keen and sharp. If any guest, even offering extra money, asks for another sort, they first put him off, but look at him as if they would murder him. If you press them they answer--'So many counts and marquises have put up here and there was never a complaint of my wine; if you don't like it, get you to another hostelry.' They think their own nobles are the only men in the world and are always showing you their coats of arms." So the banquet moves on to its end, through alternate courses of meat and soup, giving Erasmus abundant opportunity for gibes at his despised Germans. Could any good thing come out of a land where people washed their bed-linen once in six months? We may be tolerably sure that these early impressions of Erasmus were not without their effect upon his conception of the meaning of the Reformation. Indeed, he was not the only one who was inclined to reject the whole movement of Luther from the start, partly for the reason that it came from the reputed coarse and drunken folk of Germany. Erasmus remained in Basel only a few months. In March, 1515, he was again in England. The visit at Basel was, however, of lasting import to him in many ways. It made him familiar with the place which, more than any other, was to be his home during his remaining life. He found himself honourably treated, the climate suited him, good wine could be procured without too great difficulty, and he was near a group of scholars who were to be among his most efficient helpers in all his future work. Foremost among these was John Froben, the great printer and publisher, to whom we owe many of the very finest products of the early sixteenth century press. Froben was a man of the Aldus type, a scholar himself and with a talent for enlisting scholars in his service. Two pictures, one from the brush of Holbein, and one from the pen of Erasmus, have given us a clear impression of this amiable but forceful personality. Erasmus wrote after his death[105]: [105] iii., 1053-E. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF FROBEN BY HOLBEIN. EPITAPH BY ERASMUS--FACSIMILE OF HANDWRITING. FROM KNIGHT'S "LIFE OF ERASMUS."]