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xiv Introduction could carry on his own practice as a lawyer without fear of molestation. ‘The home-life there was at its happiest, since the son gentle Mistress More had longed for, had been added to the nursery of three little girls. In these bright surroundings chequered only by his ill health Erasmus wrote the ‘ Moriae Encomium’, in praise of Folly. In a letter from Antwerp, May 1515, he says: ‘I was staying with More after my return from Italy, when I was kept several days in the house by lumbago. My library had not yet arrived; and if it had, my illness forbade exertion in more serious studies. So, for want of employment, I began to amuse myself with the Praise of Folly, not with the intention of publishing the result, but to relieve the discomfort of sickness by this sort of distraction. I showed a specimen of the unfinished work to some friends, in order to heighten the enjoyment of the ridiculous by sharing it. They were mightily pleased, and insisted on my going on. I complied, and spent some seven days upon the work; an expenditure of time which I thought out of proportion to the importance of the subject. Afterwards the same persons
