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Et nunc ille vagus spargit promissa per orbem, Qui cædem et furias, scelerataque castra sequantur,

Se Duce, ut his coelum pateat. Qua fraude tot urbes,

Et tot perdidit ille Duces, tot millia morti
Tradidit, et pulsa induxit bella acria pace,
Tranquillumque diu discordibus induit armis
Et scelere implevit mundum, fasque omne ne-
fasque

Miscuit, inque isto caneret cum classica motu
Naufraga direpti finxit patrimonia Petii
Vindice se bello asserere atque ulciscier armis,'
&c. &c.

Oper. Hutteni, Munch. 1, 287.

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At Bologna Erasmus remained nearly a y ear. There is only one incident preserved of his pursuits; about his friends not much is recorded. The plague broke out, the physicians and watchers of the infected persons were ordered to throw a white cloth over their shoulders, to distinguish them. The white scapular of his order, which Erasmus wore, caused him twice to be mistaken for one of these offi cials. As the scholar took pride in not knowing a word of Italian, he was mobbed, and once narrowly escaped with his life. From Bologna he removed to Venice, to print a new edition of his Adagia' at the famous Aldine Press. He became very intimate with the Aldi: his enemies afterwards reproached him as having degraded himself (such were the strange notions of literary dignity in those days) to the menial office of corrector of the Press for some of the splendid volumes issued by the Venetian typographers. At Venice and at Padua he found himself in the centre of many men, then of great distinction, but whose names we fear would awaken no great reverence, or might be utterly unknown to our ordinary readers. At Padua a natural son of James, King of Scotland, a youth of twenty years old, but already Archbishop of St. Andrews, was pursuing his studies. Both at Padua and afterwards when they met at Sienna, Erasmus charged himself with the young Scot's instruction. He was a youth of singular beauty, tall, of sweet disposition. The juvenile archbishop was a diligent student of rhetoric,

Greek, law divinity, music.* He fell afterwards at his father's side, at Flodden. Erasmus at length descended again to Rome, to make, it might be, a long, a lifelong sojourn. Those of the cardinals who were the professed patrons of letters received him with open arms-the Cardinal St. George, the Cardinal of Viterbo, the Cardinal de Medici, so soon to ascend the Papal throne as Leo X. He describes in one of his letters his interview with the Cardinal Grimani, who displayed not only the courtesy of a high-born and accomplished churchman, but a respect, almost a deference, for the poor adventurous scholar, which showed at once the footing on which men of letters stood, and what Erasmus might have become, had he devoted his transcendent learning and abilities to the Roman court and to the service of the Papacy. Pope Julius himself, unconscious of the unfavourable impression which he had made on the peaceful Teuton, condescended to notice him; he was offered the rank, office, and emoluments of one of the Penitentiaries. Julius put the scholar to a singular test. He commanded him to declaim one day against the war which he was meditating against Venice; on another, in favor of its justice and expediency. Erasmus either thought it not safe to decline, or was prompted by his vanity, in the display of his powers and of his Latinity, to undertake the perilous office, or probably treated it merely as trial of his skill in declamation after the old Roman fashion. By his own account he did not flatter the Pope by arguing more strongly on the warlike side; but the weaker oration, being in favour of the war, and recited before Pope Julius, could not fail of success. After his departure from Rome, however, he disburthened himself of his real, heart-rooted sentiments; he wrote his Antipolemo,' a bold tract, which at that time did not see the light, but was afterwards embodied in his Querela Pacis,' and proclaimed to the world all his intense and cherished and ineffaceable abhorrence of war.

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ing letter to Erasmus with his own hand, in his own Latin, acknowledging one which he had received from Erasmus, written with that eloquence which, as well as his erudition, was famous throughout the world.' Lord Mountjoy wrote from the Court at Greenwich, urging his friend to return to England; holding out the certain favour of the King, who had done him the unwonted honour of corresponding with him with his own hand, promising him the patronage of Archbishop Warham, who sent him five pounds towards the expense of his journey, and as an earnest of future favours. Erasmus set forth without much delay he crossed the Rhætian Alps, by Coire, to Constance, the Brisgau, and Strasburg; then down the Rhine to the Low Countries, from whence, after a short rest in Louvain, he crossed to England. He beguiled his time on his journy by meditating his famous satire on the Pope and on the Cardinals, for which in Rome itself, and all the way from Rome, he had found ample food-The praise of Folly.' He finished it in More's house, who enjoyed the kindred wit, nor as yet took alarm at the bitter sarcasms against the Church of Rome and her Head. It was on this journey from the coast that he saw all the sacred treasures of the church of Canterbury. The stately grandeur of the fabric impressed him with solemn awe; he admired the two lofty towers, with their sonorous bells; he remarked among the books attached to the pillars the spurious Gospel of Nicodemus. He mentions, not without what reads clearly enough like a covert sneer, the immense reliques, bones, skulls, chins, teeth, hands, fingers, arms, which they were forced to adore and kiss; but he was frightened (an ominous circumstance) at the profaneness of his companion, Gratian Pullen, a secret Wickliffite, who, notwithstand ing the presence of the Prior, could not restrain his mockery, handled one relique, and replaced it with a most contemptuous gesture, and instead of a reverential kiss, made a very unseemly noise with his lips. The Prior, from courtesy or prudence, dismissed his guests with a cup of wine. At the neighbouring Hospital of Harbledon, Erasmus duly kissed the shoe of Thomas à Becket, an incident not forgot ten in his pleasant Coloquy on Pilgrimages. Already had he gazed in wonder at the inestimable treasures of gold and of jewels, which the veneration of two centuries had gathered around the tomb of Becket; even Erasmus ventured to hint to himself, that such treasures had been better bestowed on the poor. He was sufficiently

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versed in Church History to know how immeasurably the sacerdotal power was strengthened in England by the death and saintship of Thomas à Becket. Little did he foresee how soon that power, with the worship of the Saint, should pass away; that sumptuous tomb be plundered, and its wealth scattered abroad, too little, it is to be feared, to the poor. Yet while he contemplated these treasures, these superstitions, and meditated on the character of Becket and of his worship, he seems to have had some prophetic foresight of the religious troubles of England.*

In London Erasmus took up his lodging in the Augustinian convent, with Bernard Andreas, the tutor of Prince Arthur, and Royal Historiographer, in which character he wrote his Life of Henry VII. A quarrel arose about the expenses of the great scholar's maintenance, which was set at rest by the liberality of Lord Mountjoy. King Henry, however, whether too busy on his accession to the throne, and too much absorbed in European politics, hardly appears to have sustained the promise of welcome and patronage to the stranger whom he had allured into his realm: we hear but little of the royal munificence. Erasmus ever wrote with the highest respect of Henry; propitiated him by dedications, in one of which he dexterously reminded him of their early intimacy; he afterwards vindicated the King's authorship of the famous answer to Luther; and Henry was certainly jealous of the preference, shown by Erasmus in his later life, of the Imperial patronage. King Henry appreciated Erasmus more highly when he had lost the fame which he might have conferred upon his realm by his denizenship. The great Cardinal, of whose splendid foundations at Oxford Erasmus writes with honest admiration, condescended to make noble promises to Erasmus, first of a

He appears to have seen the reliques of Thos. à Becket on another occasion, in company with Co et. I myself saw, when they displayed a torn rag with which he is said to have wiped his nose, the Abbot and other standers-by fall on their knees and lift up their hands in adoration. To Colet, for he was with me, this appeared intolerable; to me these things seemed rather to be borne with, till they could be corrected without tumult.' tie of Jortin's Life (Additions, ii. p. 706), to whom -Erasmi Modus Orandi,' Oper. v. p. 933 Jortin seems inclined to bow, supposes only one visit, and that Gratian Pullen was Colet; but the Wickiiffism and rather coarse behaviour seems out of character with that devout man.

A cri

This, the only contemporary biography of Henry VII., has appeared, exceedingly well edited, among the publications for which we are indebted to the Master of the Rolls.

*

canonry at Tournay (that see was one of Wolsey's countless commendams), which, as his friend Lord Mountjoy was governor of the city, would have been peculiarly acceptable afterwards of nothing less than a Bishopric. But his hopes from Wolsey turned out, in the words of his friend Ammonius, dreams. He more than once betrays some bitterness towards a patron, whose patronage was only in large words, and contemplated his fall, at least with equanimity. At this period Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, seems to have been his most active and zealous advocate. Even Fisher was an avowed friend of the new learning; as Chancellor of Cambridge it was his deliberate design to emancipate the University from the trammels of scholasticism himself, at an advanced age, had studied Greek. Through his influence Erasmus, who, as we have seen, had visited Cambridge in 1506, was appointed first Margaret Professor of Divinity, afterwards Professor of Greek. He had lodgings in Queen's College; in the time of Knight his rooms were still shown; a walk is even now called by his name. His scholars were at first but few, his emoluments small, and he did not scruple to express his disappointment at Cambridge. He had spent sixty nobles, and got barely one from his lectures. His friends were obliged to solicit aid, chiefly from Fox, Bishop of Winchester, and Tunstall of Durham. He became, however, better reconciled to Cambridge, and preferred it, but for the society of two or three dear friends, probably Mountjoy, no doubt More and Colet, to London. After two or three years the Archbishop Warham took him by the hand (bis dedications of his translated Greek plays had not been wasted on the accompished and liberal prelate), and from that time Warham's liberality was free and unintermitting, and the gratitude of Erasmus in due proportion. There are several long passages in which, during the life and after the death of Warham, he describes his character with equal eloquence and truth.f

* His Epistles to Henry VIII. and to Wolsey are couched in a kind of respectful familiarity. The scholar is doing honour even to the haughty King, as well as receiving it, and to his alter ego,' as Erasmus describes Wolsey.

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See especially the preface to the 3rd edition of Jerome, and the note to I Thessal. ii. 7, quoted at length by Jortin, i. 612, Epist. 922. 1234:-The contrast of the pious, enlightened, and unworldly Warham with Wolsey is very striking. Compare the preferments and possessions of Wolsey on his fall, with Warham's dying demand of his steward, what money he had. "Thirty pounds;"-"Satis viatici ad cœlum"-Enough to carry me to Hea

ven.'

Warham presented him to the living of Adlington, near Ashford, in Kent, to which he was collated March 22, 1511. Before the end of the year he resigned it, from scruples which did him honour: he could not pretend to feed a flock of whose language he was ignorant.' Erasmus disdained English, as he did all modern languages. The Archbishop accepted his resignation, assigning him a pension on the living. Erasmus still remonstrated, but the Archbishop argued that Erasmus was so much more usefully employed in instructing preachers than in preaching himself to a small country congregation, that he had a right to remuneration from the Church. To the 201. from the living the Archbishop added another 201. Knight justly mentions, as a very curious circumstance, that Adlington was the parish in which, some years after, appeared the Holy Nun of Kent, whose history is so admirably told by Mr. Froude. The successor of Erasmus, Robert Master, was, if not the author, deeply implicated in that for a time successful, but in the end most fatal, imposture. Even Warham, to say nothing of More and Fisher, listened with too greedy or too credulous ears to this monstrous tale.

During the whole of this visit, his longest sojourn in England, his intimacy increased with the two Englishmen who obtained the strongest hold on his admiration and affections-More and Colet. The genial playfulness of More, his as yet liberal views on the superstitions and abuses of the Church, and as yet unquestioned tolerance, qualified him beyond all men to enjoy the quiet satire, the accomplishments, the endless learning of Erasmus. To Colet he was bound by no less powerful sympathies; the love of polite letters, the desire of giving a more liberal and elegant tone to education, the aversion to scholastic teaching, the avowed determination to supersede St. Thomas and Duns Scotus by lessons and sermons directly drawn from St. Paul and the Gospels, the stition. Whatever made Colet an object contempt for much of the dominant superof suspicion and jealousy, of actual prosecution as a heretic by Fitzjames, Bishop of London, against which he was protected by the more enlightened Warham-all, in short, which justified to him and may justify to the latest posterity the elaborate, most eloquent, and affectionate character which he drew of the Dean of St. Paul's, with Vitrarius, the Franciscan, his two model Christians-all conspired to unite the two scholars in the most uninterrupted

friendship. Erasmus did great service to Colet's school at St. Paul's, that most remarkable instance of a foundation whose statutes were conceived with a prophetic liberality, which left the election of the students and the course of studies absolutely free, with the avowed design that there should be alterations with the change of times and circumstances. He composed hymns and prayers to the Child Jesus, and grammatical works, the De Copia Verborum,' for the institution of his friend. Erasmus remained in England during this visit about four years-from the beginning of 1510 to 1514. Either disappointment, or restlessness, or ambition, the invitations of Charles of Austria, afterwards the Emperor, now holding his court at Brussels, or sanguine hopes, on account of the elevation of Cardinal de Medici, who had shown him so much favour at Rome, to the Papal throne as Leo X., draw him forth again into the world. From Charles he received the appointment of honorary counsellor, to which was attached a pension of 200 florins. A bishopric in Sicily was held out as a provision for the northern scholar; but the bishopric turned out not to be in the gift of Charles, but of the Pope. His old convent of Stein began to covet the fame of the great scholar whom they had permitted to leave their walls. His friend Servatius had become prior, and endeavoured to induce Erasmus to join again the brotherhood from which he bad departed. The answer of Erasmus is among the most remarkable of his letters; free, full, fearless on the degeneracy of the monastic life, of which he acknowledges the use and excellence in former times, but of which he exposes in the most uncompromising language the almost universal abuses. What is more corrupt and more wicked than these relaxed religions? Consider even those which are in the best esteem, and you shall find in them nothing that resembles Christianity, but only I know not what cold and Judaical observances. Upon this the religious Orders value themselves, and by this they judge and despise others. Would it not be better, according to the doctrines of our Saviour, to look upon Christendom as one house, one family, one monastery, and all Christians as one brotherhood? Would it not be better to account the Sacrament of Baptism the most sacred of all vows and engagements, and never trouble ourselves where we live so we live well?'* For the six or seven following busy years Erasmus

* Jortin's Translation, p. 61.

himself might seem to care little where he lived; and, if indefatigable industry, if to devote transcendent abilities to letters, and above all to religious letters, be to live well, he might look back to those years of his life as the best spent, and, notwithstanding some drawbacks, some difficulties from the precariousness of his income, much suffering from a distressing malady, which enforced a peculiar diet and great care, as the happiest.

But no doubt the frequent changes of residence during this period of the life of Erasmus arose out of his vocation. Books and manuscripts were scattered in many places: if he would consult them, far more if he would commit the works of ancient authors to the press, he must search into the treasures of various libraries, most of them in disorder, and very few with catalogues. The printers, too, who would undertake, and to whom could be intrusted, the care of printing and correcting voluminous works in the ancient languages, were rare to be found. The long residence of Erasinus at Basil was because he there enjoyed not only the courtesy of the Bishop and Clergy and many learned men, but because the intelligent and friendly printer Frobenius was boldly engaged in the most comprehensive literary enterprises.* He had, of course, no domestic ties; in fact, no country. His birth precluded any claim of kindred; his brother, if he had a brother, was dead; his family had from the first repudiated him. After his death Rotterdam might take pride in her illustrious son, and adorn her market-place with his statue; but it never had been and never was his dwelling-place. Once free, and now released by Papal authority from his vows of seclusion in the monastery of his Order, he would not submit to the irksome imprisonment of a cloister. He had refused all preferment which bound him to residence ; his home was wherever there were books, literary friends, and printers. He was, in truth, a citizen of the world; and the world welcomed him wherever he chose for a time to establish himself, in any realm or in any city. It was the pride of the richest or most famous capital in Europe to be

*This was the motive which led him so often to 'Decretum erat meditate a retreat to Rome. hyemare Romæ, cum aliis de causis, tum ut locis nonnullis Pontificiae bibliothecæ præsidiis uterer. Apud nos sacrorum Voluminum Græcorum magna penuria. Nam Aldina officina nobis præter profanos auctores adhuc non ita multum dedit. Romæ ubi bonis studiis non solum tranquillitas verum etiam honos.'-Epist. DXLVII.

In other letters he expresses his determination to live and die in England.

chosen even as the temporary residence of Erasmus.

Up to the year 1520 (the 54th of his life) Erasmus thus stood before the world, ac knowledged and honoured as the greatest scholar, in a certain sense as the greatest Theologian, not only on this side of the Alps, but fairly competing with or surpassing the greatest in Italy. Reuchlin, now famous for his victory, extorted even in Rome herself from his stupid and bigoted persecutors, was chiefly strong in Hebrew and Oriental learning-knowledge more wondered at than admired; and to which Erasmus, as we have said, made no pretension.* Budæus alone (in Paris) was his superior in Greek, and in his own province of more profound erudition, but that province was narrow and limited. Some of the Italian scholars, Sadolet and Bembo and Longolius, might surpass him in the elegance and purity of their Latinity; but he was hereafter to give a severe shock to these purists in his 'Ciceronianus,' and had already shown himself at least their equal, if not their master, in his full command of a vigorous, idiomatic, if less accurate style. In his wit and pungent satire he stood almost alone; he was rivalled only by the inimitable Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,' and the Julius Exclusus,' which in its lofty and biting sarcasm, its majestic rebuke, and terrible invective, soars above anything in the more playful and genialColloquies.' Of the authorship of both of these, indeed, Erasmus, notwithstanding his reiterated protestations, could hardly escape the honours and the perils. But the Praise of Folly,' and the Colloquies,'t in which the surprised and staggered Monks hardly had discovered, what they afterwards denounced as the impiety, even the atheism,

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*Erasmus is accused of doing scanty honour to Reuchlin, of having timidly stood aloof from the contest with Pfefferkorn and the Cologne Divines. One of the Letters (Obscurorum Virorum') rather taunts him with this, Erasmus est homo pro se.' But Erasmus could not, from his acknowledged ignorance of Hebrew, mingle in the strife with any authority. He was not only ignorant,' he writes himself, but he had no interest in the dispute.' 'Cabala et Talmud quicquid hoc est, mihi nunquam arrisit,' Epist. Albert. Mogunt. But he made ample compensation after Reuchlin's death by his Apotheosis. Reuchlin is received into heaven, placed by the side of St. Jerome, and duly installed as the patron Saint of Philologists-'0 sancta anima! sis felix linguarum cultoribus, faveto linguis sanctis, perdito malas linguas, infectas

veneno Gehenna,'

The Colloquies' were first printed by Erasmus in 1522, but there had been two imperfect and surreptitious editions in 1518, 1519, which compelled Erasmus to publish a more accurate and complete copy.

ran like wildfire through Europe. They were in every house, every academy, every school, we suspect in almost every cloister. The first indignant remonstrances of the Ecclesiastical censure only acted, as in our days, as an advertisement. On the intelligence of their proscription, a bold printer in Paris is said to have struck off above 20,000 copies of the Colloquies,' thus implying a demand for which the publishers of Scott, and almost of Macaulay, might hesitate to provide, in our days of universal reading. It is difficult, indeed, for us to comprehend the fame, the influence, the power, which in those times, gathered around the name of a scholar, a writer in Latin. Thus far he had ridden triumphant through all his difficulties, and surmounted all obstacles. He was the object, no doubt, of much suspicion, much jealousy, but still more of fear. There had been many attacks upon him, especially on his Theological works, but they had not commanded the public ear; he had rejoined with dauntless and untiring energy, and in general carried the learned with him. Through him Scholasticism was fast waning and giving place to polite letters, to humanities as they were called the cloisters, and more orthodox Universities, might seem almost paralyzed; it might appear as if the world-we might certainly say it of England-was ERASMIAN.

There was one other name, indeed, destined shortly to transcend, in some degree to obscure that of Erasmus. But as yet men had only begun to wonder and stand appalled at the name of Luther; it had not yet concentered on itself the passionate indelible attachment of his countless followers, nor the professed implacable animosity of his more countless foes. Luther had denounced Tetzel and his Indulgences; he had affixed to the walls his famous Theses; he had held his disputations with Eck at Leipsic: but it was not till this the declaration of war startled Christendom year the issuing of the Papal Bull against Luther, the burning the Bull in the streets of Wittenberg.

that

Nothing can show more fully the position held up to this time in Europe by Erasmus, than that all the great Potentates of the Christian world had vied, or might seem to be vying, for the honour of his residence in their dominions. Even in their strife for the empire Charles V. and Francis might appear to find time for this competition. Men of letters are often reproached with adulation to men of high rank and station; it is more often that men of letters are objects of flattery by great men. Erasmus

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