This account of the origin of the famous Adages of Erasmus seems in the main reasonable. It was in the strictest sense a bread-and-butter undertaking, calculated to meet a demand which every writer of that day must feel and for which there was no adequate supply. The scholar, no matter how great his claim to individuality, could not get on without continual references to classical literature. They were, so to speak, the certificates of his scholarship; they took the place of the references to the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures by which the mediæval scholar had at once supported his views and demonstrated his learning. Of course such decoration ought to come naturally as a result of the writer's own wide reading and profound reflection in the classic literature, and during the really great times of the Revival of Learning, while scholarship was confined to comparatively few men, and these men of really commanding powers, such had been the case. By the time of Erasmus, however, the new learning was falling rapidly into its second stage; it was becoming more widely diffused and, naturally, was drawing to itself ever more and more second-rate material. Learning was coming to be fashionable, and at just that stage all aids to a ready acquirement of at least the appearance of scholarship were sure to be in demand. It is an evidence of Erasmus' practical good sense that he was ready to advance his most serious purposes by contributing to this popularisation of learning. Erasmus was always fond of telling how rapidly he worked, but in the present case we have every reason to believe that his work was hasty and experimental in the extreme. Nothing more unscientific in form can well be imagined than this collection of scattered sayings from the writings, chiefly, of classic authors. The method, practically unchanged in the many later editions, was simply to jot down at random some verse of poetry or some word having a peculiar meaning and then to give a very brief explanation of its origin and value; then if the occasion warranted, upon this as a text to write a little essay. In this personal and individual comment lies the real importance of the Adages, in giving us an idea of their author. It was this personal element also which appealed most strongly to those of his own time who were capable of valuing it, but it was not this which commended the Adages, probably, to the widest circle of readers. To the great mass of young students and to the increasing numbers of men everywhere who were trying their hands at Latin composition, the book was rather an encyclopædia of classical quotations, from which they could select the needed decorations of their style without the trouble of going to the original sources.