The third printer whom I have selected as typical of the Renaissance is Johann Froben, of Basel. His chief distinction is that he was the closest friend and associate of Erasmus, the principal publisher of Erasmus's works, and the representative in the book trade of the Erasmian attitude toward the Reformation. Although he did print the Greek Testament, years before Estienne published his edition in Paris, he accompanied it with no distinctively Protestant comments. Although at one time he issued some of the earlier works of Luther, he desisted when it became evident that Erasmus opposed any open schism in the Church. It was Froben who gave to the world those three famous works of Erasmus, the Encomium Moriae or Praise of Folly, the Adagia or Proverbs, and the Colloquia or Conversations, which did quite as much as the writings of Luther to arouse independent thinking within the Church, and to bring to an end the last vestiges of the middle ages in church and state. And in this relation of Froben to Erasmus there was not the mere commercial attitude of a shrewd publisher toward a successful author whose works became highly lucrative, but the support by one enlightened scholar who happened to be in a profitable business of another who happened to be out of it. The earlier life of Erasmus exhibits a rather depressing illustration of the humiliations to which professional scholars were exposed in trying to get a living from the pensions and benefactions of the idle rich. Literary patronage, as it existed from the days of Horace and Maecenas down to the death-blow which Dr. Johnson gave it in his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, has never helped the independence or the self-respect of scholars and poets. It was Froben's peculiar good fortune to be able to employ, on a business basis with a regular salary, the greatest scholar of the age as one of his editors and literary advisers, and at the same time enable him to preserve his independence of thought and of action. Aldus and the French publishers had gathered about them professional scholars and experts for the execution of specific tasks at the market price, supplemented often by generous private hospitality. That was good; but far better was Froben's relation with his friend, his intellectual master, and his profitable client Erasmus. In an age when no copyright laws existed for the author's benefit the works of Erasmus were shamelessly pirated in editions, published in Germany and France, from which the author received not a penny. Yet Froben went right on paying to Erasmus not only the fixed annual salary as a member of his consulting staff but also a generous share of the profits upon his books. In a greedy, unscrupulous, and rapacious age this wise and just, not to say generous, policy stands out as prophetic of a better time.