[This letter describes a journey made in the exceptionally cold winter of 1498-9, when Erasmus paid a visit to his friend, James Batt. Batt was then at the castle of Tournehem, near Calais, acting as tutor to a young nobleman, the son of Anne of Borsselen, Lady of Veere, near Middelburg; to whose patronage he was generously trying to introduce Erasmus.]

TIT. GUILHELMO] This form of the name William represents the German Wilhelm; Gulielmus is more akin to the Italian Guglielmo; Guielmus, which also occurs, to the French Guillaume.

5. AEOLUM] The king of the winds, whom Juno had persuaded to oppose the Trojan fleet under Aeneas as it sailed from Troy to Italy. See Verg. Aen. 1. 50 seq.

14. VIDISSES] sc. si adfuisses.

31. Bellerophon, after having vanquished the Chimaera on Pegasus, wished to fly with his winged steed to heaven. But Pegasus threw him off and ascended alone, to become a constellation in the sky.

35-6. CREDAS … ACCIDISSET] The slight irregularity of tense is easily intelligible.

35. Lucian, fl. 160 A.D., was a Syrian citizen of the Roman Empire. His writings, which are mostly satirical, are in Greek. One of them is entitled Vera Historia.

57. ALLEVARE] 'to exaggerate,' opp. to elevare,'to disparage.' Allevare can also mean 'to understate', but the sequence of thought is not so natural.

62. SCRIBEBAM] The epistolary imperfect, representing the time of the action when the words would be read by the recipient of the letter.

PATRIAM] Holland.

64. CONVICTU] Evidently it had been proposed that Erasmus should come and live with Lord Mountjoy in Paris as his tutor.