To these two lines of patronage the Adages owed their great and immediate popularity. The first edition was printed at Paris in 1500 and contained about eight hundred selections. As to the method of the future editions Erasmus gives us some information. When he saw that the book was received with gratitude by scholars and was apparently going to live, and moreover that publishers were vying with each other in printing it, he kept enriching it from time to time as his own leisure or the supply of available books gave him opportunity. What he regarded as the final edition was printed at Basel by Froben in 1523. After that he merely annotated previous editions, "rather as giving to others material for a future work than as really making a new book with proper care."[50] This first edition of the Adages was dedicated to Mountjoy. Without the later additions it must, one would think, have been as dry reading as could well be imagined, but the fact of its popularity is unquestionable. Edition after edition appeared with great rapidity, so that we are now able to record no less than sixty-two within the author's lifetime. [50] _Catalogus lucubrationum_, i. As for the pecuniary rewards which Erasmus may have had in view, there is no indication that they were immediate or considerable. The ethics of book-publishing were at that time in a highly rudimentary state. So far as one can see there was nothing to prevent any printer from putting forth any writing that by any chance got into his hands. Erasmus in a dedicatory letter to Mountjoy with a later edition[51] says that his reason for the new publication was that the earlier editions had been printed so badly that one might suppose the errors had been made intentionally. In another place[52] he says, with an unusual effort at accuracy, that the first edition of the Adages was published on the 15th of June, 1500, while he was absent from Paris. This date is certainly a very early one, and we have to bear in mind that Erasmus' object in giving it was to prove that he had got ahead of a rival compiler of proverbs who had accused him of stealing his thunder. It agrees, however, with our other indications. The most singular thing about it is that a young author, putting forth his first ambitious publication, should have been willing to absent himself from the place where the work was being done. The fact was, probably, that Erasmus was frightened half out of his wits by the presence of the plague in Paris, and this impression is strengthened by the pains he takes to convince his friend Faustus Andrelinus of his uncommon freedom from the vulgar emotion of fear. He was at Orleans and Faustus had urged him to come back to Paris; had even, so Erasmus says, called him a coward by the mouth of his own servant. [51] ii., _ad init._ [52] iii.¹, 57.