Greek, and only a few Latin manuscripts of any interest--a Livy and a
Pliny, very old, but much injured and the texts corrupt--and nothing
at all that could be called eloquence, that is to say, pure
literature.

When he had been a little while in Groningen, the town council
bethought them to turn his talents and learning to some account. He
was a fine figure of a man, who would make a creditable show in
conducting their business; and for composing the elegant Latin
epistles, which every respectable corporation felt bound to rise to on
occasions, no one was better equipped than he. He was retained as town
secretary, and in the four years of his service went on frequent
embassies. During the first year we hear of him visiting his father at
Siloe, and contracting a friendship with one of the nuns[1]; to whom
he afterwards sent a work of Eucherius, bishop of Lyons, which he had
found in a manuscript at Roermond. Twice he visited Brussels on
embassy to Maximilian; and in the next year he followed the Archduke's
court for several months, visiting Antwerp, and making the
acquaintance of Barbiriau, the famous musician. Maximilian offered him
the post of tutor to his children and Latin secretary to himself; the
town of Antwerp invited him to become head of their school. He might
easily have accepted. He was not altogether happy at Groningen. His
countrymen had done him honour, but they had no real appreciation for
learning, and some of them were boorish and cross-grained. It was the
old story of Pegasus in harness; the practical men of business and the
scholar impatient of restraint. His parents, too, were now both
dead--in 1480, within a few months of each other--and such homes as he
had had, with his father amongst the nuns at Siloe and with his mother
in the house of her husband the tranter, were therefore closed to him.
And yet neither invitation attracted him. Friesland was his native