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 Seneca, with translations from Basil, with Latin manuals for St Paul's School, just founded by his friend Colet—and with much else. It was here that he began revising the text of Jerome's works. "My mind is in such a glow over Jerome," he writes, "that I could fancy myself actually inspired." But there is one labour above all that entitles those rooms in the old tower at Queens' to be reckoned among the sacred places of literature. It was there in 1512 that the Lady Margaret Professor completed a collation of the Greek Text of the New Testament. Four years later, his edition—the first ever published—appeared at Basle.

In 1513 Cambridge was visited by the plague, and nearly every one fled from it. During some months of the autumn, Erasmus had scarcely heard a foot-fall in the cloister beneath his rooms. At the end of the year, he finally left the University. Some of his reasons for going can be conjectured from his letters. They express disappointment with England; and they speak of poverty. It is well to observe the sense in which these complaints are to be understood. After 1510 Erasmus was never actually indigent. Archbishop Warham had offered him the Rectory of Aldington in Kent; Erasmus declined it, because he could not speak English—he never learned any modern language, and besides his own vernacular, spoke Latin only: then Warham gave him a pension from the benefice. Fisher and Mountjoy were also liberal. At Cambridge, with these resources, and the stipend of his Chair, it has