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the King of Poland, sent me a letter with a gift of truly Royal value. The Duke of Saxony often addresses letters to me, never without a present oùx adapos xai avròs.'

has been charged, perhaps not altogether without justice, with this kind of adulation; but we ought in fairness to take into consideration his poverty, his dependence for subsistence and for the means of promoting Then follows a list of prelates, including his studies, the usages of the time, and the the Archbishops of Canterbury, Mentz, and language with which it was almost the law Toledo, Tunstall of Durham, Sadolet of to address princes, prelates, and the sovereigns, as may be seen even in Luther's Carpentras, the Bishops of Breslau and Olmutz. Pope Leo in one way gave him imlanguage to the Elector of Saxony, to the portant countenance. Whether it was that Archbishop of Mentz, to the Emperor and the polite Italian retained some covert scorn the Pope. If Erasmus flattered, he receivfor the barbarous Transalpine scholar, or ed ample returns in the same coin: he was that he was immersed in his business, his called the light of the world, the glory of fine arts and his luxury, he had failed to Christendom, and other such titles. We have seen that he was tempted from Eng-wards Erasmus, whom he had encouraged realize the sanguine hopes of favour toland to the Court of Brussels by encouragement from Charles when Archduke of Austria. As Emperor, Charles by no means cast off the illustrious scholar whom he had favoured as Archduke. Erasmus ventured

when Cardinal de Medici. Nevertheless he accepted the dedication of Erasmus's New Testament, a privilege of inestimable value, as a shield behind which the editor retreat

after the battle to Pavia, to urge the Em-ed from all the perilous and jealous charges peror, flushed as he was with his victory, to generous and magnanimous treatment of his captive. Before this Francis I., through Budæus, and with the sanction of Stephen Poncher, Bishop of Paris, had endeavoured to secure him for his rising University of Paris. From time to time these invitations were renewed: Paris, notwithstanding the hostility of the Sorbonne, was jealous of his preference of Germany. Henry VIII. had allowed him to depart from England with reluctance, and would have welcomed him back on almost any terms. The Emperor's brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, paid him the highest court. The Elector of Bavaria made him splendid offers to undertake the Presidency of the University of Ingolstadt. There may be some ostentation in the Epistle of Erasmus, in which he recounts the intimate footing on which he stood with all the Sovereigns of Europe; the letters, the magnificent presents which he had received from princes, from prelates, and from sovereigns :*

of heterodoxy, which were showered upon him by the Lees, the Stunicas, the Caranfrom more bigoted and dangerous adversazas, the Hoogstratens, the Egmonts, and ries, who, trembling at the publication of the New Testament itself, would have suppressed its circulation by calling in question its accuracy and fidelity. Pope Adrian had been the schoolfellow of Erasmus at Deventer: how far the timid and cold old man would have had the courage to befriend him, was scarcely tried during the few offered him a deanery, which he declined; months of his pontificate. Adrian indeed but the pontiff was supposed not to take in good part a letter,* in which Erasmus, most highly to his credit, urged toleration to the followers of Luther, and a wide and spontaneous reformation of the Church. Clement VII. sent him a present of 200 florins, and made him more splendid promises. Paul III. (but this was after his been harassed and frightened, and lured writing against Luther, and after he had into a timid conservatism) had serious From the Emperor Charles I have many let-thoughts of promoting him to the Cardinaters, written in a tone of as much affection as late. He offered him the Provostship of esteem (tam honorifice tam amanter); that I Deventer, worth 600 florins a year. prize them even more than his kindness to me, to which nevertheless I owe great part of my fortune. From King Ferdinand I have as many, not less friendly, and never without some honorary gift. How often have I been invited, and on what liberal terms, by the King of France! The king of England by frequent letters and unsolicited presents is always declaring his favour and singular goodwill. The best of women in this age, his Queen Catherine, vies in this respect with the King her husband.† Sigismund,

* Epist. 1132.

Had Erasmus departed from the world at this time, it had been happier perhaps for himself, happier, no doubt, for his fame. The world might have lost some of his valuable publications, but it might have been spared some, which certainly add nothing

mus; he dedicated to her his tract De Matrimonio.'

*In the same letter Erasmus urges restrictions on the Press, by which, as Jortin justly observes, he would have been the first to suffer; but he had

+ Queen Catherine was a great reader of Eras-been sorely pelted by personal, and malicious libels.

to his glory. His character, in spite of in- | shall we confine ourselves strictly to those firmities, would have been well-nigh blame- which he published before 1520, as it is less. Though not himself, strictly speak- our object to give a complete view of his ing, to have been enrolled in the noble and literary labours. His Translations from the martyr band of the assertors of religious Greek were made for the avowed purpose freedom and evangelical religion, he would of perfecting his knowledge of that lanhave been honoured as the most illustrious guage: they comprehend several plays of of their precursors and prophets, as having Euripides, some orations of Libanius, aldone more than any one to break the most the whole of Lucian, most of the mobonds of scholasticism, superstition, igno- ral works of Plutarch. His editions, berance, and sacerdotal tyranny, to restore sides some smaller volumes, were of Senethe Scriptures to their supremacy, and to ca the Philosopher, Suetonius, with the advance that great work of Christian civili- Augustan and other minor historians, Q. sation, the Reformation. Curtius, the Offices and Tusculan Disputations of Cicero, the great work of Pliny; at a later period, Livy, Terence with the Commentary of Donatus, the works of Aristotle and of Demosthenes. These editions have indeed given place to the more critical and accurate labours of later scholars, but they are never mentioned by them without respect and thankfulness. If we duly estimate the labour of reading and,

How then had Erasmus achieved his lofty position? What were the writings on which Christendom looked with such unbounded admiration? which made princes and kings, and prelates and universities, rivals for the honour of patronising him? If we can answer this question, we shall ascertain to a great extent the claims of Erasmus to the honour and gratitude of later times. Erasmus may be con-oven with the best aid, carrying through sidered from four different points of view, yet all his transcendent qualities, so seen, may seem to converge and conspire to one common end: I. As the chief promoter of polite studies and of classical learning on this side of the Alps. II. As the declared enemy of the dominant scholasticism and of the superstitions of the Middle Ages, which he exposed to the scorn and ridicule of the world both in his serious and in his satirical writings. III. As the parent of biblical criticism, and of a more rational interpretation of the sacred writings, by his publication of the New Testament, and by his Notes and Paraphrases. IV. As the founder of a more learned and comprehensive theology, by his editions of the early Fathers of the Church. In each of these separate departments, the works of Erasmus might seem alone sufficient to occupy a long and laborious life; and to these must be added the perpetual controversies, which he was compelled to wage; the defensive warfare in which he was involved by almost every important publication; his letters, which fill a folio volume and a half of his Works, and his treatises on many subjects, all bearing some relation to the advancement of letters or of religion.

I. Consider Erasmus as one of those to whom the world is mainly indebted for the revival of classical learning. Here we may almost content ourselves with rapidly recounting his translations and his editions of the great authors of antiquity.* Nor

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the press such voluminous works, without the modern appliances of lexicons, indices, commentaries, and annotations, the sturdiest German scholar of our day might quail beneath the burthen. Erasmus composed some valuable elementary and grammatical works, chiefly for Dean Colet's school; but perhaps among his dissertations that one which exhibits the scholar in the most striking and peculiar light, is his Ciceronianus, a later work. This too prolix dialogue is a bold revolt against the Italian scholars, who proscribed in modern Latin every word which had not the authority of Cicero. There is some good broad fun in the Ciceronian, who for seven years had read no book but Cicero, had only Cicero's bust in his library, sealed his letters with Cicero's head. He had three or four huge volumes, each big enough to overload two porters, in which he had digested every word of Cicero, every variation of every sense of every word, every foot or cadence with which Cicero began or closed a sentence or clause of a sentence. Erasmus not only laughed at but argued with force against this pedantry. The perfection of Latin would be to speak as Cicero would have spoken had he lived in the present day. He dwells on the incompatibility of Ciceronian Latin with Christian ideas and terminology; describes with humour the strange paganisation of Christian notions which the Italians had introduced. It never occurred to Erasmus that

of the works of Erasmus is elaborately wrought out at the end of the article in Ersch and Gruber.

Christianity would outgrow the Latin lan- | the homage paid in all quarters to its auguage, and have its own poets, orators, his- thor. The first edition, avowedly impertorians, in Christian languages. The close fect, was printed at Paris in 1500. It was is very curious as bearing on the literary followed by two at Strasburg; it was rehistory of the time. It is a long criticism, printed by Erasmus himself, in a more full which of course gave much offence, of all and complete form at Venice, in 1508. This the Latin authors of the day throughout edition was imitated without the knowledge Europe, of their writings, and of their of Erasmus, by Frobenius, afterwards his style; and as almost everybody wrote in dear friend, at Basil. Seven editions folLatin, it is a full survey of the men of let-lowed with great rapidity, bearing the fame ters of his age. Alas! how many sono- of the author to every part of Christendom, rous names, terminating in the imposing which was now eager for the cultivation of and all-honoured us,' have perished from classical learning. the memory of man, a few perhaps undeservedly, most of them utterly and for ever! Longolius was the only Barbarian admitted to the privilege of Ciceronianism. The tract closes with a ludicrous account of the reception of a civis Romanus, by a club or society of Ciceronians at Rome.

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But the work which displayed to the utmost the unbounded erudition of Erasmus was his Adagia.' The clever definition of a proverb, erroneously attributed to a statesman of our day, the wisdom of many and the wit of one,' does not answer to the 'Adagia' of Erasmus. This book is a master-key to all the strange and recondite sayings scattered about in the classic writers, and traces them to their origin. They are arranged under different heads, in alphabetical order, as 'absurdities,' gance,' 'avarice.' Sometimes he takes one of these sayings for the text of a long dissertation. The 'Adagia' is thus a rich and very curious storehouse of his opinions. On Festina Lente,' he discusses the whole question of printing and the abuses of the Press; on Simulation and Dissimulation,' the Church, the wealth and pomp of the clergy; on Monacho Indoctior,' he brands the ignorance and immorality of the monks; on Dulce Bellum Inexpertis,' the folly and wickedness of war. Nothing displays in a more wonderful degree the vast, multifarious, and profound erudition of Erasmus than this work. Even in the present day, with all our subsidiary aids to learning, the copiousness, variety, and extent of his reading move our astonishment. Not the most obscure writer seems to have escaped his curiosity. In the first edition he complained of the want of Greek books, in the later the Greeks of every age are familiarly cited; the Latin are entirely at his command. Some proverbs were added by later writers; some of his conjectural in terpretations of abstruse sayings have been corrected, but with all its defects it remains a monument of very marvellous industry. The reception of this work displays no less the passion for that kind of learning, and

II. Erasmus was no less the declared opponent, and took great part in the discomfiture of scholasticism, and of the superstitions of the middle ages.

At length Erasmus, that great injured name
(The glory of the priesthood and the shame),
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age,
And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.'

Pope's wild torrent' is not a very happy illustration of the scholasticism which had so long oppressed the teaching of Europe-a stagnant morass' or an impenetrable jungle' had been a more apt similitude. Few, however did more to emancipate the human mind from the Thomism and the Scotism, the pseudo-Aristotelism, which ruled and wrangled in all the schools of Europe. Erasmus fell in, in this respect, with the impatience and the ardent aspirations of all who yearned for better days. In Italy the yoke was already broken: the monks, especially on this side of the Alps, fought hard in their cloistral schools and in the universities, in which they had still the supremacy. But the new universities, the schools founded especially in England out of the monasteries suppressed by Wolsey, or out of ecclesiastical wealth, as by Bishop Fox, or by Colet, who hated scholasticism as bitterly as Erasmus, were open to the full light of the new teaching. Erasmus served the good cause in two ways; by exposing its barrenness and uselessness in his serious as well as in his satirical writings, and by supplying the want of more simple, intelligible, and profitable manuals of education. Against the superstitions of the age, the earlier writings of Erasmus are a constant grave or comic protest, though he was not himself always superior to such weaknesses. In his younger days he had attributed his recovery from a dangerous illness to the intercession of St. Genoveva, to whom he addressed an ode. The saint, it is true, was aided by William Cope, the most skilful physician in Paris. When at Cambridge he made a pilgrimage-it may

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have been from curiosity rather than faith | their vices with the thrice-knotted scourge, -to our Lady at Walsingham. But his drawing blood at every stroke, and, as it later and more mature opinions he either were, mocking at its prostrate victims. And cared not, or was unable to disguise. The yet of this work twenty-seven editions monks, the authors and supporters of these were published during the lifetime of the frauds, are not the objects of his wit alone, author, and it was translated into many of but of his solemn, deliberate invective. Se- the languages of Europe. The Colloquies' vere argument, however, and bitter, serious were neither less bold nor less popular; satire had been heard before, and fallen on they were in every library, almost in every comparatively unheeding ears; it was the school. We have alluded to the edition. lighter and more playful wit of Erasmus of above 20,000 copies said to have been which threw even the most jealous off their struck off by one adventurous printer; and guard, and enabled him to say things with yet in these Colloquies' there was scarceimpunity which in graver form had awak- ly a superstition which was not mocked at, ened fierce indignation. Even the sternest we say not with covert, but with open bigots, if they scented the danger, did not scorn; and this with a freedom which in venture to proscribe the works which all more serious men, men of lower position in Christendom, as yet unfrightened, received the world of letters, would have raised an with unchecked and unsuspecting mirth. instant alarm of deadly heresy, and might Let the solemn protest as they will, there have led the hapless author to the stake. are truths of which ridicule is the Lydian In the 'Shipwreck,' while most of the passtone. The laughter of fools may be folly, sengers are raising wild cries, some to one but the laughter of wise men is often the saint, some to another, there is a single calm highest wisdom. Perhaps no satire was person, evidently shown as the one true ever received with more universal applause Christian, who addresses his prayers to God in its day, than the Praise of Folly. Let himself, as the only deliverer. In the 'Icthyus remember that it was finished in the ophagia,' the eating of fish, there is a scruhouse of More, and dedicated to one who pulous penitent, whom nothing, not even the was hereafter to lay down his life for the advice of his physician, will induce to break Roman faith. To us, habituated to rich his vow, and eat meat or eggs, but who has English humour and fine French wit, it not the least difficulty in staving off the may be difficult to do justice to the Mo-payment of a debt by perjury. In the riæ Encomium;' but we must bear in mind that much of the classical allusion, which to us is trite and pedantic, was then fresh and original. The inartificialness and, indeed, the inconsistency of the structure of the satire might almost pass for consummate art. Folly, who at first seems indulg ing in playful and inoffensive pleasantry, while she attributes to her followers all the enjoyments of life, unknown to the moroser wise, might even, without exciting suspicion, laugh at the more excessive and manifest superstitions-the worship of St. Christopher and St. George, St. Erasmus and St. Hyppolytus; at indulgences; at those who calculated nicely the number of years, months, hours of purgatory; those who would wipe off a whole life of sin by a small coin, or who attributed magic pow-ing forced his wife and children to take reers to the recitation of a few verses of the ligious vows, and bequeathing the whole Psalms. But that which so far is light, if of his vast wealth to the Order. The other somewhat biting, wit, becomes on a sudden dies simply, calmly, in humble reliance on a fierce and bitter irony, sometimes antici- his Redeemer: makes liberal gifts to the pating the savage misanthropy of Swift, poor, but bequeaths them nothing; leaves but reserving its most merciless and incisive not a farthing to any one of the Orders; lashes for kings, for the clergy, for the car- receives extreme unction and the Euchadinals, and the popes. Folly, from a plea- rist without confession, having nothing on sant, comic merry-andrew, raising a laugh his conscience, and is buried without the at the absurdities of the age, is become a least ostentation. Which model Erasmus serious, solemn, Juvenalian satirist, lashing would hold up as that of the true Chris

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Inquisition concerning Faith' there is a distinct assertion, that belief in the Apostles' Creed (which many at Rome do not believe) is all sufficient; that against such a man even the Papal anathema is an idle thunder, even should he eat more than fish on a Friday. The Funeral' contrasts the deathbed and the obsequies of two men. One is a soldier, who has acquired great wealth by lawless means. He summons all the five Orders of mendicants, as well as the parish priest, to his dying bed. There is a regular battle for him: the parish priest retires with a small share of the spoil, as also do three of the mendicant Orders. Two remain behind: the man dies, and is magnificently buried in the church in the weeds of a Franciscan; hav

tian, cannot be doubted. In 'The Pilgrim- | cion, jealousy. Some with learning, some, age,' not only is pilgrimage itself held up to ridicule, but reliques also; and even the worship of the Virgin. In the letter, which, by a fiction not without frequent precedent, he ascribes to the blessed Deipara,' there is a strange sentence, in which the opinion of Luther, denying all worship of the saints, is slily approved of, as relieving her from a great many importunities and troublesome supplications. The Franciscan Obsequies' is perhaps the finest and most subtle in its satire, which, while it openly dwells only on those who, to be sure of Paradise,

'Dying, put on the weeds of Dominic, Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised,'

in its covert sarcasm, was an exposure of the whole history of the Order, and, with somewhat contemptuous repect for the holy founder, scoffs even at the Stigmata, and lashes the avarice and wealth of this most beggarly of the begging fraternities. He thus galled to the quick this powerful brotherhood, who had provoked him by their obstinate ignorance, and became still more and more his inveterate and implacable foe. We could fill pages from his various writings of denunications against these same enemies of sound learning and true religion.

III. Erasmus was the parent of biblical criticism. His edition of the New Testament first opened to the West the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul in the original Greek. Preparation had been made for the famous Complutensian Edition, but it had not yet appeared to the world. For its age, in critical sagacity, in accuracy, in fidelity, in the labour of comparing scattered and yet unexplored manuscripts, the New Testament of Erasmus was a wonderful work the best and latest of our biblical scholars-Tischendorf, Lachmann, Tregelles-do justice to the bold and industrious pioneer who first opened the invaluable mines of biblical wealth.

like Lee, with pretensions to learning, fell upon it with rabid violence; but Erasmus had been so wise, or so fortunate, as to be able to place the name of the Pope, and that Pope Leo X., on the front of his work; and under that protecting ægis fought manfully, and with no want of controversial bitterness on his side, against his bigoted antagonists. The names of these adversaries have sunk into obscurity, though Lee became Archbishop of York, and was, according to his epitaphwe fear his sole testimony,-a good and generous man.* But to the latest times theological learning acknowledges the inestimable debt of gratitude which it owes to Erasmus.

But it was not only as editor, it was as interpreter also, of the New Testament that Erasmus was a benefactor to the world. In his Notes, and, in his invaluable Paraphrases, he opened the sense, as well as the letter, of the long-secluded, if not long-sealed, volume of the New Testament. He was the parent also of the sound and simple, and historical exposition of the sacred writings. He struck boldly down through the layers of mystic, allegoric, scholastic, traditional lore, which had been accumulating for ages over the holy volume, and laid open the vein of pure gold-the plain, obvious, literal meaning of the Apostolic writings. Suffice it for us to say, that Erasmus is, in a certain sense, or rather was in his day, to the Church of England the recognised and authenticated expositor of the New Testament. The translation of the Paraphrases, it is well known, was ordered to be placed in all our churches with the vernacular Scriptures. Nor was there anything of the jealousy or exclusiveness of the proud scholar in Erasmus. His biblical studies and labours were directed to the general diffusion, and to the universal acceptance of the Scriptures as the rule of Faith. Neither Luther nor the English Reformers expressed themselves more strongly or emphatically on this subject than Erasmus-'the sun itself should not be more common than Christ's doctrines.'

It was no common courage or honesty which would presume to call in question the impeccable integrity, the infallible authority of the Vulgate, which had ruled with uncontested sway the Western mind * Compare More's letter to Lee upon his attack for centuries, to appeal to a more ancient on Erasmus. More had known Lee's family, and and more venerable, as well as more trust-castigate the presumption of Lee in measuring Lee himself in his youth; but he scrupled not to worthy, canon of faith. To dare in those himself against the great Scholar. In the last letdays to throw doubt on the authenticity of ter, after alluding to Pope Leo's approbation of the such a text as that of the Three Heavenly New Testament, he adds, Quod ex arce religionis Witnesses,' implied fearless candour, as summus ille Christiani orbis princeps suo teɛtimonio cohonestat, id tu Monachulus et indoctus et rare as admirable. Such a publication was obscurus ex antro cellulæ tuæ putulentâ linguâ looked upon, of course, with awe, suspi- conspurcas.-Jortin, Appendix, ii. p. 689.

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