Page 11 [11]
OCR
PREFACE vii of using the Latinized form when it seems to be established by contemporary or modern usage. For the simpler Christian names I use the English forms. In dealing with the text it has been impossible to attempt any uniformity of orthography. The sources for the correspondence are various, with very different degrees of authority: original letters in the handwriting of Erasmus and his friends; letters copied by his servant-pupils; letters copied by contemporaries or by later hands; books printed in his lifetime, where the orthography varies considerably according to the practice of the printer; and books printed under the direction of later scholars, whose critical standards unhappily allowed them to adopt the orthography deemed correct in their own day in preference to that of the originals. To construct from these various sources some attempt at a standard orthography for Erasmus himself might have been possible, though laborious; for his multitudinous correspondents it was entirely out of the question. I have contented myself with the endeavour to reproduce with fidelity the earliest source available in each case, whether manuscript or printed book, except where obvious depravation of the text has rendered correction necessary; or where on rare occasions too close adherence to the original, especially in the use of the termination -e for -ae, would have caused obscurity. Contractions and abbreviations 1 have not attempted to preserve; and in the forms of letters the long s is discarded, for j (usually only in capitals or ij) i is printed, and for u I have adopted the form v as initial, u as medial or final, according to the practice of Erasmus himself and most of his friends. In punctuation, whilst adhering as far as possible to the earliest text, I have allowed myself a free hand; and in the use of capital letters only modern requirements have been considered. The practice of the Renaissance in writing Greek differed so widely from our own that I have made no attempt to reproduce it. In the case of Erasmus’ letters published during his lifetime, the text here printed has been constructed by collating the London volume with the earliest authorized edition. The former was printed from one of the final Basle editions, either of 1538 or 1541, and as the successive Froben volumes were printed from one another more or less closely, it has not been
