Good evening and thank you for joining me for another boring books for bedtime.

I hope tonight selection provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you

get some sleep. So find a comfortable spot, adjust your volume, take a nice deep breath in, let it out

slowly and off we go.

Tonight let's relax with a classic of philosophy from the Renaissance

in praise of Folly by Erasmus

illustrated with many curious cuts

designed drawn and etched by Hans Holbein, with portrait, life of Erasmus, and his

epistle addressed to Sir Thomas More.

In an edition published in 1876

by Reeves and Turner,

196 Strand, W.C. London. Let's begin. The Life of Erasmus

Erasmus, so deservedly famous for his admirable writings,

the vast extent of his learning, his great candor and moderation, and for being one of the chief

restorers of the Latin tongue on this side of the The anonymous author of his life, commonly printed with his colloquies, is pleased to tell

us that de Ano Quonatus is aud Batavos non-Constat.

And if he himself wrote the life which we find before the elves of our edition, said to be Erasmo Autore.

He does not particularly mention the year in which he was born, but places it, Circa Anum 67,

supra millicentum quadringentissim

another Latin life

which is prefixed to the above mentioned London edition, fixes it in the year

1465, as does his epitaph at Basel. But as the inscription on his statue at Rotterdam, the place of his

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