Editor sI ntroduction A few words concerning the setting and the educational significance of this treatise are desirable by way of introduction. The Dialogus Ciceronianus (1528) is the one important technical educational treatise of Erasmus, that has never appeared in anE nglish form. Even in the original, it has had few reprints and none of these are of recent date. His De Ratione Studii, and the treatise De Pueris Statim ac Liberaliter I nstituendis are given in English by Professor Woodward in his Erasmus Con cerning Education? the Colloquies have appeared in several forms, most completely in theB ailey edition ;2 his letters, which contain much discussion of direct educational value, are adequately represented in the recent Nichols edition;3 but theD ialogus Ciceronianus, his most extensive treatise on an educational subject as it demanded attention in his own day, has not been deemed of sufficient interest to the student of education to justify a translation. In the broad significance of the term, almost all of the works of Erasmus are educational. As Professor Saintsbury remarks,4 Very great man of letters as he was, and almost wholly literary as were his interests, those interests were suspiciously directed towards the applied rather than the pure aspects of literature were, in short, perse scientific rather than literary proper. This suspicious practical interest constitutes the characteristic which gives his writings educational value. His dominant interest in scholarly work was to remove ignorance of literature and of life in the past, and to furnish a proper basis for the study of these by the editing of numerous classical texts; to establish proper standards of lifes value and of conduct through his satirical and controversial writings; and to furnish a proper basis for formal educational processes through adequate linguistic aids. In following o(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)