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The youth's consolation was in his books. His studies he still pursued, if with less freedom and with more interruption from enforced religious ceremonies, with his own indefatigable zeal and industry. Either within or without the cloister he found friends of more congenial minds. William Hermann of Gouda, with whom he entered into active correspondence, indulged in Latin verse-making, which in that age dignified itself, and was dignified by Erasmus, with the name of Poetry. Erasmus wrote a treatise, like other voluntary or enforced ascetics, on the Contempt of the World.' But while he denounced the corruption of the world, it was in no monastic tone; he was even more vehement in his invective against the indolence, the profligacy, the ignorance of the cloister. This dissertation did not see the light till much later in his life. Among the modern authors who most excited his admiration was Laurentius Valla. Not only by his manly and eloquent style, but by the boldness and originality of his thoughts, Valla had been the man who first assailed with success the monstrous edifice of fiction, which in the Middle Ages passed for history. His Ithuriel spear had pierced and given the deathblow to the famous donation of Constantine.

pure, sober enjoyment; pious, intellectual | Praise of Folly' and the Colloquies?' luxury. Erasmus listened, and after some If they did read them, had they no comresistance entered on his probation. His punctious visitings as to the formidable foe visions seemed to ripen into reality; all they had galled and goaded beyond enwas comfort, repose, indulgence, uninter- durance? rupted reading, no rigid fasts, dispensations. from canonical hours of prayer, nights passed in study with his friend, who took the opportunity of profiting (being very slow of learning, and with only some knowledge of music) by the superior attainments of Erasmus. The pleasant peace was only broken by light and innocent pastimes, in which the good elder brothers condescended to mingle. So glided on the easy months; but, as the fatal day of profession arrived, suspicions darkened on the mind of Erasmus. He sent for his guardians; he entreated to be released; he appealed to the better feelings of the monks. Had they been,' he wrote at a later period, good Christian religious men, they would have known how unfit I was for their life. I was neither made for them, nor they for me.' His health was feeble; he required a generous diet; he had a peculiar infirmity, fatal to canonical observance-when once his sleep was broken he could not sleep again. For religious exercises he had no turn; his whole soul was in letters, and in letters according to the new light now dawning on the world. But all were hard, inexorable, cunning. He was coaxed, threatened, compelled. St. Augustine himself (they were Augustinian friars) would revenge himself on the renegade from his Order. God would punish one who had set his hand to the plough and shrunk back. Verden was there with his bland seemingly friendly influence. He would not lose his victim, the sharer in his lot for good or evil, the cheap instructor. Erasmus took the desperate, the fatal plunge. Ere long his eyes were opened; he saw the nakedness, the worse than nakedness, of the land. The quiet, the indulgence, the unbroken leisure were gone. He must submit to harsh, capricious discipline; to rigid but not religious rules; to companionship no longer genial or edifying. He was in the midst of a set of coarse, vulgar, profligate, unscrupulous men, zealots who were debauchees; idle, with all the vices the proverbial issue of idleness. Erasmus confesses that his morals did not altogether escape the general taint, though his feeble health, want of animal spirits, or his better principles, kept him aloof from the more riotous and shameless revels. He was still sober, quiet, studious, diligent. Did any of these men ever read the bitter sarcasms, the bright but cutting wit of the

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So passed about five years, obscure but
not lost. He was isolated except from one
or two congenial friends. With his family,
who seem hardly to have owned him, he
had no intercourse; he was a member of
a fraternity, who looked on him with
jealousy and estrangement, on whom he
looked with ill-concealed aversion,
haps contempt. He was one among them,
not one of them. At that time the Bishop
of Cambray, Henry de Bergis, meditated
a journey to Rome, in hopes of obtaining
a Cardinal's hat. He wanted a private
secretary skilful in writing Latin. Whether
he applied to the Monastery, which was
not unwilling to rid itself of its unconge-
nial inmate, and so commended him to the
Bishop, or whether the fame of Erasmus
bad reached Cambray-the offer was made
and eagerly accepted. He left his friend
Herman alone with regret; and Herman
envied the good fortune of his friend, who
had hopes of visiting pleasant Italy.

At nunc sors nos divellit, tibi quod bene
Sors peracerba mihi,

[vortat,

Me sine solus abis, tu Rheni frigora et Alpes Me sine solus adis,

Italiam, Italiam lætus penetrabis amœnam.'

But as yet Erasmus was not destined to breathe the air of Italy; the ambitious Prelate's hopes of the Cardinal's hat vanished. Erasmus remained under the protection of the Bishop at Cambray. He was induced to enter into Holy Orders. He continued his studies, and as a scholar made some valuable friendships. At length, after five years, not wasted, but still to him not profitable years, he hoped to obtain the one grand object of his ambition-residence and instruction at one of the great Universities of Europe. Paris, the famous seat of theologic learning, seemed to open her gates to him. The Bishop not only gave permission, but promise of support. The eager student obtained what may be called a pensionate or bursary in the Montagu College. But new trials and difficulties awaited him. The Bishop was too poor, too prodigal, or too parsimonious to keep his word. His allowance to Erasmus was reluctantly and irregularly paid, if paid at all. The poor scholar had not wherewithal to pay fees for lectures, or for the purchase of books; but he had lodging-and such lodging! food, but how much and of what quality! Hear his college reminiscences:*

Thirty years since I lived in a College at Paris, named from vinegar (Montaceto). "I do not wonder," says the interlocutor, "that it was so sour, with so much theological disputation in it; the very walls, they say, reek with Theology." Er. "You say true; I indeed brought nothing away from it but a constitution full of unhealthy humours, and plenty of vermin. Over that college presided one John Standin, a man not of a bad disposition, but utterly without judgment. If, having himself passed his youth in extreme poverty, he had shown some regard for the poor, it had been well. If he had so far supplied the wants of the youths as to enable them to pursue their studies in credit, without pampering them with indulgence, it had been praiseworthy. But what with hard beds, scanty food, rigid vigils and labours, in the first year of my experience, I saw many youths of great gifts, of the highest hopes and promise, some who actually died; some doomed for life to blindness, to madness, to leprosy. Of these I was acquainted with some, and no one was exempt from the danger. Was not that the extreme of cruelty? Nor was this the discipline only of the poorer scholars; he received not a few sons of opulent parents, whose generous spirit he broke down. To restrain wanton youth by reason and by moderation, is the office of a father; but in the

* See the Colloquia, 'Icthyophagia.’

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depth of a hard winter, to give hungry youths a bit of dry bread, to send them to the well for water-and that foetid and unwholesome, or frost-bound! I have myself known many who thus contracted maladies which they did not shake off as long as they lived. The sleepingrooms were on the ground-floor, with mouldy plaister walls, and close to filthy and pestilential latrinæ."

He goes on to dwell on the chastisements to which we presume from his age he was not exposed; but in truth even in this respect monastic discipline was not particular; and here it ruled in all its harshness-a further exemplification of the law of nature, that those who are cruel to themselves are cruel to others; that the proscription of the domestic affections is fatal to tenderness and to humanity.*

It

But Erasmus was forcing his way to celebrity. Even at Paris the young scholar's name began to make itself known in that which in those days had a real and separate existence-the republic of letters. This republic had begun to rival, to set itself apart from, the monastic world, and even from the Church. hailed with generous welcome, and entered into friendly communication with young aspirants after literary distinction. Erasmus, the parentless, without fortune, without connexions, without corporate interests, even without country, began to gather around himself a host of friends, which gradually comprehended almost all the Paris he began to supply his failing remore distinguished names in Europe. In sources by what in our modern academical phrase is called taking private pupils. Paris was crowded with youth from all countries.

A member of the

At a later period we find Erasmus superintending the education of the son of a rich burgher of Lubeck; but England offered the wealthiest and most generous youth. almost royal family of Grey, and the Lord Mountjoy, placed themselves under the tuition of Erasmus. So with Mountjoy began a life-long friendship, which had much important influence, and might have had even more, on his career. It opened

*Rabelais' reminiscences of the Collège Montaigu were not more pleasing. Ponocrates says to Grandgousier, 'Seigneur, ne penses que je l'aye mis au Collège de pouillerie qu'on nomme Montaigu; mieux l'eusse voulu mettre entre les guenaulx de St. Innocent, pour l'enorme cruaulté et villenie que j'y ai cognue; car trop mieulx sont traictés les forcez entre les Maures et Tartres, les meurtriers en la prison criminelle, voyre certes les chiens en vostre maison, que sont ces malautrus au dit Collège.

England to him, in which, had he chosen, he might have obtained an an honoured domiciliation and a secure maintenance. Mountjoy's first act was to remove him from the pestilential precincts of the college to purer air and doubtless more costly diet. Some time after he settled on his master a pension, which Erasmus held for life. He had an offer of a more promising pupil; he was to cram an unlettered noble youth, the son of James Stanley, Earl of Derby, and so son-in-law to the King's mother, for a bishopric; a bishopric, that of Ely, was ere long obtained. The tutor was to receive 100 crowns for a year's drudgery, the promise of a benefice in a few months, and the loan of 300 crowns till the benefice fell in. But Erasmus, from independence, or thinking that he might employ his time better than in this dull office of teaching perhaps an unteachable youth, declined the flattering proposal.*

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From Paris Erasmus was more than once driven by the plague to the Low Countries and to Orleans. During one of these excursions he made an acquaintance, through Battus, a man of letters, with Anna Bersala, Marchioness of Vere, who lived in the Castle of Tornhoens. The Marchioness, an accomplished woman, settled a pension upon him, and more than once assisted him in his necessities. In his turn Erasmus instructed her son, Adolphus de Vere, and wrote for him the treatise De Arte conscribendi Epistolas.' The pension was somewhat irregularly paid, and Erasmus remonstrated on being left to starve, while his patroness wasted her bounty on illiterate fellows who wore cowls. The allow ance ceased at length, the lady, after having refused the noblest offers, having contracted a low and almost servile marriage. At. Orleans he was received in the house of a wealthy canon and treated with generous kindness. He visited his native Holland too-the air agreed with him; but he could not endure the Epicurean banquets, the sordid and rude people, the stubborn contempt of all polite studies, the total want and the mean jealousy of learning.t

The first visit of Erasmus to England was in 1598. He came at the invitation

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of Mountjoy. Even now the scholar found himself welcomed by some of the highest and most gifted of the land; presents, which became more free and bountiful as he became better known, were showered upon him; he was an object of general respect and esteem. Already began his life-long friendship with More and with Colet, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's. His first impressions on his arrival and reception in England were flattering, even to the atmosphere and climate of the island. He had just emerged, be it remembered, from the unwholesome air of the French capital, and, till rescued by Mountjoy, from the most wretched quarter, and the most wretched lodging in that most wretched quarter of Paris, under frequent visitations too of what was called the plague. He had but exchanged that dreary domicile, still pursued by the plague, for Orleans, for Louvain, and some of the cities of the Low Countries and of Holland, No wonder that he was delighted with the pure, and not yet smoke-laden air of London and its neighbourhood. You ask,' he writes to Piscator, an Englishman at Rome, 'how I am pleased with England. If you will believe me, my dear Robert, nothing ever delighted me so much. I have found the climate most agreeable and most healthful, and so much civility (humanitas, a far wider term), so much learning, and that not trite and trivial but profound and accurate, so much familiarity with the ancient writers, Latin and Greek, that, except for the sake of seeing it, I hardly care to visit Italy.' When I hear Colet, I seem to bear Plato. Who would not admire Grocyn's vast range of knowledge? What can be more subtile, more deep, more fine than the judgment of Linacer? Did Nature ever frame a disposition more gentle, more sweet, more happy, than that of Thomas More?' Of his host Mountjoy, Erasmus is gratefully eloquent: Whither would I not follow a youth so courteous, so gentle, so amiable, I say not to England, I would follow him to the infernal regions.' In another letter, addressed to the socalled Poet Laureate, Andrelini* of Forlì

Life, p. 168; Ersch and Gruber; and the article in Didot's new Dictionnaire Biographique.'

*The Latin poetry of Andrelini is of moderate merit; but, according to Dr. Strauss (in his excellent Life of Hutten, vol. i. p. 102), Andrelini was the author of the famous 'Julius Exclusus,' the most powerful satire of his day, which abounded in such satire. Jortin, we would observe, who knew well Andrelini's writings, thinks him quite incapable of such a work; but More, in his letter to Lee (Jortin, Appendix, ii. p. 686), says positively that it first appeared at Paris, and was attributed

nonsense.

·

(he read lectures on Poetry and Rhetoric | Greenwich, More, inviting him to a pleain Paris), Erasmus takes a lighter tone. sant walk, conducted him to the Royal He talks of his horsemanship- he had Palace at Eltham, where all the royal He had learned children, except Prince Arthur, were under almost become a hunter. to be a successful courtier, and taken up education. Prince Henry was then nine the manners of the great. How could years old, and, even in his boyhood, acAndrelini linger in the filth of Paris? If cording to Erasmus, blended high majesty the gout did not hold him by the foot, let with singular courtesy. On his right was him fly to England.' Then follows a pas- the Princess Margaret, aged eleven, aftersage which has given rise to much solemn wards the wife of James of Scotland; on It seems that in the days of his left the Princess Mary, aged four, at Henry VII., our great-great-great-grand-play: the Prince Edward was still in arms. mothers, at meeting and at parting, indulged their friends and even strangers with an innocent salute. On this usage Erasmus enlarges to his poetic friend in very pretty Latin, and rather pedantically advises him to prefer the company of these beautiful and easy nymphs to his cold and Such writers as Bayle and Gibbon, of course, made the most of this; absurdly enough, but not with half the absurdity of the grave rebuke with which many a ponderous and cloudy wig was shaken among ourselves at this wicked calumny on British matrons.

coy muses.

Yet, it should seem that Erasmus, at his first visit to England, was a pupil rather than a teacher. He was already a perfect master of Latin. In Oxford be found that instruction in Greek, which if Paris could furnish (and this may be doubted, for his friend and rival Budæus had not yet begun to teach) Erasmus was too poor to buy. But in the constant intercourse of England with Italy, some of her scholars had studied under the Greeks, who had fled after the taking of Constantinople and taught Italy, and through Italy, Europe, their peerless language. Among these were W. Groeyn, probably also Linacer, and Lati Grocyn, probably also Linacer, and Lati:

mer.

Prince Henry, whom More had accosted
with some compliment in Latin, addressed
during dinner à short Latin letter to the
foreign scholar, who, as he complained to
More, was taken by surprise, and was not
ready with a reply. Three days after
Erasmus sent him in return a copy of
verses of some length. Of this effusion
England's assertion of her wealth and fer-
tility is no unfavourable example ::

'At mihi nec fontes nec ditia flumina desunt,
Sulcive pingues, prata nec ridentia,
Fæta viris, fœcunda feris, fœcunda metallis,
Ne glorier, quod ambiens largas opes
Porrigit Oceanus, nec quod nec amicius ulla
Cœlum, nec aura dulcius spirat plaga.'
But the king, Henry VII., is the chief
glory of the glorious realm.

'Rex unicum hujus sæculi miraculum,

*

*

*

*

Hoc regnum ille putat, patriæ carissimus esse,
Blandus bonis, solis timendus impiis.'

And so on through many lines of classic adulation, in which Decius, Codrus, Numa, Eneas, and we know not who, are eclipsed by the iron Henry VII. The children have each their meed of flattery, Prince Arthur, Henry, and "the pearl" Marga

It is curious that the poet Skelton, who had not yet fallen upon his proper vein,-inexhaustible, scurrilous, Swift-anti

rita. Under Grocyn Erasmus made rapid progress, and soon after became sufficient master of Greek to translate parts of Libanius, Lucian, Euripides. Gibbon's pointed

sentence that Erasmus learned Greek in Oxford to teach it in Cambridge is undeniably true.

Erasmus had an opportunity of expressing his admiration of England in verse: and this is the most curious, and perhaps the most trustworthy, relation of his adventures during his first visit. When he was at Lord Mountjoy's country-seat near

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by Stephen Poncher, bishop of Paris, to Faustus Andrelinus. The calm, cutting sarcasm, and the spirited Latinity of the Julius Exclusis' are equally masterly. The satire may be read in the Appendix to Jortin, and in the sixth volume of Munch's edition of Hutten, which contains the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum.' It was repeatedly disclaimed by Erasmus.

cipating, doggrel,-and was only known by his grave verses on the fall of the House of York, and had been crowned with the poetic laurel by the University of Louvain, is described as directing Prince Henry's poetic studies—

'Monstrante fontes vate Skeltono sacros.'

In the dedication, Skelton is named even with higher praise, as the one light and glory of British letters. Erasmus of course spoke from common report, for he knew nothing of English. His conversation with the royal family must have been in Latin.*

* Erasmus had heard of Dante and Petrarch, though, as we shall hereafter see, he knew nothing of Italian: but England, he said, had vernacular poets who rivalled those celebrated Italians.

The first visit of Erasmus to England of the Iphigenia.' Under the patronage was closed by an amusing, to him by no of Bishop Fisher of Rochester, Chancellor means pleasant, incident. Henry VII.'s of the University, Erasmus now visited political economy had rigidly prohibited Cambridge, but at present only for a short the exportation of coined money. The time. He is said, on doubtful authority, rude Custom House officers seized twenty to have received a degree. It is not impounds, which poor Erasmus was carrying probable that this visit to England was away, the first fruits, and in those days to connected with the hope of raising funds him of no inconsiderable value, of English for that which had been the vision of his munificence. There is a bitterness in his youth, the day-dream of his manhood—a natural complaints, not quite accordant journey to Italy. To Italy accordingly, with the contempt of money which he during the next year, he set out from Paris. often affects, but was too needy to main- He had undertaken the charge of two sons tain.* of Boyer, a Genoese, physician to Henry VII.; they were gentle, manageable youths,

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Before the second visit of Erasmus to England (nearly seven years after, 1505-6) he had become, not in promise only, but in common repute, the greatest Transalpine scholar. Reuchlin was now his only rival; but Reuchlin's fame, immeasurably height ened by his persecutions and his triumph over his persecutors, and by his vindication through the anonymous authors of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,' was chiefly confined to Hebrew learning, to which Erasmus had no pretence. Budæus, no doubt, surpassed him in Greek, not one in Latin. The first, very imperfect, edition of his Adagia,' at the vast erudition of which the world wondered, had appeared in 1500. In 1504 he had been summoned to deliver a gratulatory address at Brussels, in the name of the Estates of the Low Countries, to their sovereign, Phillip the Fair, on his return to that city from Spain. The second English visit, like the first, was short. He was introduced by Grocyn to Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. On that occasion he presented Warbam with a copy of his translation of Hecuba' of Euripides into Latin verse, with an iambic ode and dedicatory epistle. Warham received him with great kindness, and made him a present; but as Grocyn and he returned across the Thames, the present, on examination, turned out to be of but moderate amount. The wary archbishop had been too often imposed upon by needy students, and thought it not unlikely that the same work, with the same dedication, had been offered to others before himself. After his return to Paris, Erasmus, rather indignant, and to exculpate himself from such base suspicion, sent the work, in print, to the archbishop, and added to it a version

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but their attendant, who had the care of their conduct, was rude, troublesome, impracticable. The connexion soon came to an end. Erasmus, no doubt, had hoped to find Italy the pleasant and peaceful sanctuary of arts, letters, religion; in every city scholars pursuing their tranquil avocations under the patronage of their princes, quiet universities opening their willing gates to students from every part of Christendom, the wealth of the Church lavished well-stocked libraries, the higher Churchmen, the Chief Pontiff especially, in a court of enlightened men, whose whole thought was the encouragemeut of letters, and by letters the advancement of sound religion. He found Italy convulsed, ravaged, desolated with war, and at the head of one of the most ferocious, most rude, most destructive of the predatory armies, was the Pope himself Turin was his first resting-place; and at the University of Turin, after a residence of some months, he obtained, what was then a high honour, the degree of Doctor. He passed to Bologna. Hardly had he arrived there when he heard the thunders of the Pope's forces, with Julius himself at their head, around the beleaguered city. He retired to Florence. He returned to Bologna in time to see the triumphant entrance of the Pope into the rebellious city. He made an excursion, for a third time, to Rome, where he again (in March, 1508) beheld the gorgeous ovation of the martial Pontiff. The effect of this spectacle on the pacific mind of Erasmus, as he poured it forth in a dissertation added to his Adaiga' (printed at Venice during the next year), will hereafter demand our attention. On the more restless and turbulent mind of another reformer, himself not averse to the glorious feats of war, its revolting incongruity with the character of the Vicar of the Prince of Peace wrought with more fatal and enduring influence. Read Hutten's vigorous verses In tempora Julii :

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