The Colloquies of Erasmus. TRANSLATED BY N. BAILEY. _Edited, with Notes, by the Rev. E. Johnson, M.A._ VOL. I. LONDON: 1878. CONTENTS. VOL. I. _Prefatory Note_ _Dedication_ _Admonitory Note_ _To the Divines of_ Louvain _Copy of_ Bailey's _Title_ Bailey's _Preface_ _Life of_ Erasmus _Courtesy in Saluting_ _Family Discourse_ _Of Rash Vows_ _Of Benefice-Hunters_ _Of a Soldier's Life_ _The Commands of a Master_ _The School-master's Admonitions_ _Of Various Plays_ _The Child's Piety_ _The Art of Hunting_ _Scholastic Studies_ _The Profane Feast_ _The Religious Treat_ _The Apotheosis of_ Capnio _A Lover and Maiden_ _The Virgin Averse to Matrimony_ _The Penitent Virgin_ _The Uneasy Wife_ _The Soldier and Carthusian_ Philetymus _and_ Pseudocheus _The Shipwreck_ _Diversoria_ _Young Man and Harlot_ _The Poetical Feast_ _An Enquiry concerning Faith_ _The Old Mens Dialogue_ _The Franciscans,_ [Greek: Ptôchoplousioi], _or Rich Beggars_ _The Abbot and Learned Woman_ _The Epithalamium of Petrus Ægidius_ _The Exorcism or Apparition_ _The Alchymist_ _The Horse-Cheat_ _The Beggars' Dialogue_ _The Fabulous Feast_ _The Lying-in Woman_ Prefatory Note. The present English version of Erasmus' _Colloquies_ is a reprint of the translation of N. Bailey, the compiler of a well-known Dictionary. In his Preface Bailey says, "I have labour'd to give such a Translation as might in the general, be capable of being compar'd with the Original, endeavouring to avoid running into a paraphrase: but keeping as close to the original as I could, without Latinizing and deviating from the English Idiom, and so depriving the English reader of that pleasure that Erasmus so plentifully entertains his reader with in Latin." This is a modest and fair account of Bailey's work. The chief peculiarity of his version is its reproduction of the idiomatic and proverbial Latinisms, and generally of the classical phrases and allusions in which Erasmus abounds, in corresponding or analogous English forms. Bailey had acquired, perhaps from his lexicographical studies, a great command of homely and colloquial English; the words and phrases by which he frequently _represents_ rather than construes Erasmus' text have perhaps in many instances not less piquancy than the original. Thus his translation, as a piece of racy English, has a certain independent value of its own, and may be read with interest even by those who are familiar with the original. In preparing this volume for the press, Bailey's text has been carefully revised, and clerical errors have been corrected, but the liberty has not been taken of altering his language, even to the extent of removing the coarsenesses of expression which disfigure the book and in which he exaggerates the plain speaking of the original. Literary feeling is jealous, no doubt justly, on general grounds, of expurgations.