profession, most unwillingly, and re-offered him the post. He gladly bao

Iceived the religious habit.

cepted the offer, aud, having obtained Erasmus remained at Stein for five from his prior and the general of his .miserable years. The life there was order leave of absence, quitted his .altogether unsuited to him. The daily monastery never to return to it. This round of the monastic rule he found was in 1491. Erasmus remained with irksome and unedifying. His fragile the bishop for five years, and during health" valetudo plus quam vitrea " that time received priest's orders. is his account of it was unequal to Then this prelate sent him to pursue the observance of fasting and absti-his studies at the University of Paris, nence. Fish was as poison to him; especially famous for its theological even the smell of it made him ill. A school, and obtained for him a burse bad sleeper, he was often unable to at Montaigu College. Here he fared obtain further repose after once rising almost as badly as at Stein. The place for the night offices; and perpetual in- was insanitary and insalubrious; the somnia preyed upon his health and diet was meagre and unwholesome. spirits. His reason and religion were Decadent scholasticism was the theboth shocked by the much greater at-ology taught; "parietes ipsi mentem tention given to external practices of habent theologicam," Erasmus wrote devotion than to spirituality of mind, thirty years afterwards in his Colloquy or even to the elementary moralities of 'IXOYOQATI'A: the very walls stank of life. The classical and patristic studies it. The theologians, or theologasters to which, from earliest boyhood, he -such is his contemptuous term for had been ardently devoted, were viewed them he describes as endowed with with suspicion and dislike. He had to "the most rotten brains, the most barpursue them, as best he could, at odd barous tongues, the most stupid intimes during the day, or in his en- tellects, the most unfruitful learning, forced vigils at night. His experience the coarsest manners, the spitefullest of the monks was not favorable. Stu- tongues, the blackest hearts." He left pid, ignorant, given to gluttony and the place after twelve months' trial, wine-bibbing, nay, in some cases, dis- bringing away from it as he affirms regardful of their vow of chastity, and in the same Colloquy—nothing but a disposed to bully any one who pre- body full of infection and a very large ferred books to the table-such is in supply of vermin. He went back to substance his account of the monastic Cambrai ill. After a short stay in Holbrethren in general. Two of these, land, he returned to Paris, and lived in however, were of a different tempera- a modest chamber, supporting himself ment: William Hermann, who shared by tuition and devoting all his spare his studies, and Servatius, who after- time to the study of Greek. His repuwards became prior of the convent. tation for scholarship must have been In a letter written to Servatius, when already considerable. He made асholding that office more than a quarter quaintance with eminent men of letof a century later, he gives a singularly ters, among them being Publio Fausto vivid account of his conventual life, Andrelini, the poet-laureate of the dwells upon his utter unfitness for it, French king. And he appears to have and bewails his having been kidnapped had as many pupils as he could ininto it as an irreparable misfortune. struct. Two of them were young EnOf the studies which Erasmus pur-glishmen of noble families: Thomas sued while at Stein, we have no de- Grey, uncle of the Lady Jane who was tailed account; but certain it is that subsequently to obtain such tragic they were unremitting, and procured fame in English history; and William for him a well-merited reputation as an Blunt, afterwards Lord Mountjoy, who excellent Latin scholar. His fame became one of his most devoted and reached the ears of the Bishop of most trusted friends, and who invited Cambrai, who wanted a secretary, and him to England. He accepted the in

vitation, and paid his first visit to this | gland was a turning point in his life. country either at the end of 1497 or the It marks, to use a phrase of Cardinal beginning of 1498. Newman's, his coming out of his shell. Erasmus was now thirty-one. By His reputation had preceded him; and unremitting toil, through evil report through Lord Mountjoy's introduction and through good report; by unswerv-lie was received with open arms by ing fidelity to that ideal of "good some of the noblest and best in this learning" — bonæ literæ which, we country. It was then that he made the may say, he had ever had before him acquaintance of More, Colet, Fisher, since, as a child of four, he began his and Warham, who continued to their studies at Gouda; by that "strong pa- deaths his most devoted friends, and tience which outwearies fate," he had of whom he has left us such admirable at last made good his footing in the portraits in his letters. In the spring world of literature. His long appren- of 1498 he went down to Oxford, ticeship was served. He was recoy-where he found congenial society in nized as a master of his craft, although the little group of Hellenists "intent he had, as yet, published nothing. on high designs, a thoughtful band," Before we accompany him to England, who were the pioneers of the new where the second stage in his career learning in this country. It must be as we are considering it- - opens, let us remembered that both intellectually pause for a moment, and put before and religiously. Europe then formed our readers an admirable page in which one vast republic; and the Latin lanProfessor Jebb has vividly sketched guage, which Erasmus spoke with sinthe outward characteristics of the mangular ease and grace, was the common

tongue of both religion and literature. Erasmus was a rather small man, slight, The development of modern dialects, but well-built; he had, as became a Teuton, the consolidation of modern states, and blue eyes, yellowish or light brown hair, above all the disappearance of ecclesiand a fair complexion. The face is a re-astical unity, have long destroyed that

markable one. It has two chief characteris

to

tics-quiet, watchful sagacity, and humor, old cosmopolitanism. But in the time half playful, half sarcastic. The eyes are of Erasmus it still survived. An educalm, critical, steadily observant, with a cated man was everywhere at home. half-latent twinkle in them; the nose is Erasmus was charmed with his new straight, rather long, and pointed; the rip- friends and his new surroundings. pling curves of the large mouth indicate a Sunshine had at last come into his life. certain energetic vivacity of temperament He writes to Mountjoy, "I cannot and tenacity of purpose; while the pose of express how delightful I find this the head suggests vigilant caution, almost England of yours. ..I have got rid timidity. As we continue to study the of all that weariness (tædium) from features, they speak more and more clearly which 99 used to see me suffer; you of insight and refinement; of a worldly yet very gentle shrewdness; of cheerful self- Colet, "Your England is most pleasant mastery; and of a mind which has its to me, for many reasons, and chiefly weapons ready at every instant. But there because it possesses so many men well is no suggestion of enthusiasm, unless it skilled in sound learning; to Robert be the literary enthusiasm of a student. Fisher, England pleases me as no It is difficult to imagine those cool eyes other land has yet pleased me; the kindled by any glow of passion, or that climate I find most agreeable and genial serenity broken by a spiritual strug-healthy, and I have come upon so gle. This man, we feel, would be an intel- much accurate and elegant scholarship, lectual champion of truth and reason; his wit might be as the spear of Ithuriel, and his satire as the sword of Gideon; but he has not the face of a hero or a martyr. (P. 5.)

both Greek and Latin, that I hardly care now to go to Italy, except for the sake of seeing the country;" to Andrelini, that he is becoming quite a man of the world, a fair horseman, and The first visit of Erasmus to En- a tolerable courtier, knowing how to

even

bow gracefully and to smile affably, | VIII.-to whom he had been prewhen he feels least inclined. sented during his visit to England. While at Oxford Erasmus lived with This book, which at once obtained for the learned and pious Richard Char-him a European reputation, was ever nock, prior of a house of his own order his favorite among his works. It is a there. Among the distinguished Greek collection of proverbial sayings from scholars then adorning the university Greek and Latin authors, with comwere Grocyn, whom he describes as ments of his own, always interesting, "master of the whole domain of knowl-often amusing, not seldom pungent. edge;" Linacre, the famous physician, Budæus used to call it "logotheca Mia man of “acute, elevated, and accom- nerve," and M. Amiel happily deplished intellect;" and William Lati- scribes it as "a prodigious monument mer, whose "most attractive purity of of patience and knowledge which only mind and more than virginal modesty a scholar of the Renaissance epoch were united to profound erudition. could undertake." Mr. Froude well observes:

...

...

the beginning of

In December, 1499, Erasmus quitted England and went back to Paris. [This] work was . There he fixed his headquarters during his world-wide fame. Light literature the next five or six years, being howwas not common in those days. The ever frequently absent in search of "Adagia" was a splendid success. Copies books or manuscripts, or on visits to were sold in thousands, and helped a little friends. Nothing is more astonishing to fill the emptied purse again. Light, than the amount of travelling that peo- good-humored wit is sure of an audience, ple accomplished in those days of diffi-none the less for the crack of the lash, now cult communication, squalid inns, and heard for the first time, over the devoted debased coinage. Somewhere about heads of ecclesiastics and ecclesiasticism. 1502 he appears to have been at Lou- It was mild compared with what was to vain, following the theological course follow, but the skins of the unreverend of Adrian of Utrecht, who vainly en-hierarchy were tender, and quivered at the deavored to keep him in that univer- touch. . . . The divines at Paris screamed. The divines at Cologne affected contempt. sity. In 1504 he was entrusted with the duty of delivering at Brussels a Latin oration in honor of the return of Prince Philip from Spain, for which he received fifty pieces of gold. The prince offered him some official position; but he refused. He was not disposed to sell his birthright of independence so hardly vindicated for any mess of pottage, however savory: "Malo servire nulli et prodesse, si queam, omnibus," he writes in one of his letters; and this represents his feeling throughout his life. His only fixed source of income at this time seems to have been a pension of a hundred crowns which had been settled on him by Lord Mountjoy, and which, unlike most of the pensions that he afterwards received, was regularly paid. In 1500 he published the first edition of his " Adages," dedicating it to this generous patron, and pretixing to it some verses in eulogy of the Prince of Wales - afterwards Henry

But, rage or sneer as they would, they had to feel that there was a new man among them, with whom they would have to reckon. From all the best, from Erasmus's English friends especially, the “Adagia 99 had an enthusiastic welcome. Warham, who was soon to be Archbishop of Canterbury, was so delighted with it that he took his own copy with him wherthe author of the " ever he went, and now, though he had met Adagia" in England, perceived his real value for the first time. He sent him money. He offered him a benefice if he would return, and was profuse in his praises and admiration. (P. 47.)

In 1502 Erasmus published another work which much increased his reputation, the "Enchiridion Militis Christiani," or "Christian Soldier's Manual.” Mr. Froude calls it "the finest of Erasmus's minor compositions," a judgment so surprising as to induce a doubt whether Mr. Froude can have really read it. Certainly most men of letters would agree with M. Feugère's account

of it: "livre assez froid et composé de | the reply of Grunnius to Erasmus, treize chapitres peu liés entre eux." took no exception to its statements. To understand the enormous success of It must be remembered that Sir Thomas a work possessing such small intrinsic More's opinion of contemporary momerit, if judged by the standard of nasticism does not seem to have been these days, we must recall the condi- perceptibly higher than Erasmus's. tions of the time in which it appeared. The opening years of the sixteenth The old fervent faith which was at the century were largely devoted by Erasroot of the greatness of the Middle mus to the study of Greek, a study Ages, had grown cold. Theology, so then pursued amid great difficulties. fruitful in the pages of Thomas Aqui-It is not, indeed, correct to say, as pas and Buonaventura, had degener- M. Amiel says, pas de secours, ni ated into the sterile strifes of decadent lexiques, ni grammaires," or as Mr. scholasticism. Devotion had largely Froude says, "No grammars or dic

sunk into a mechanical round of exter- tionaries were within reach." At least nal observances. The "Enchiridion eight Greek lexicons and as many vindicated the claim of Christianity to Greek primers appeared before the end be rationale obsequium, “a reasonable of the fifteenth century, and they were service." It is not easy for us to realize well within reach of students in every the large place which the monks then European country. Teachers too were held in European society. It is still to be had, but they were costly and harder for us to determine the degree bad, so costly and so bad that Erasmus and extent of their degeneracy. The dispensed with them altogether, aud, subject is too vast for discussion here. like Budæus, became his own inWe may, however, be allowed to point structor. He worked with an ardor out that while no one competent to fully meriting his success, and attained appreciate evidence would give cre- to such a mastery over the language dence to the uncorroborated assertions that, as Professor Jebb writes, "No of such persons as Henry VIII.'s "vis- one in Europe, at that time, unless it itors," or Parliamentary draughtsmen, were Budæus, could have written [it] Erasmus is a witness whose personal better." It is well to remember, howtestimony is entitled to much weight. ever, that for Erasmus language was a No doubt it must be received with cau-means, not an end. He was not a tion must be "discounted," if we scholar of the type of Scaliger, of may so speak. His dislike of the Casaubon, of Bentley, of Porson, of monks is as intelligible as it is mani- Heyne, of Orelli. He felt in his innerfest. They had blighted his life. They most being "all the charm of all the did their best to blight the cause for Muses," and, like Virgil, he might which he chiefly lived. Unquestion-have called himself their priest. To ably, he is hard upon them; bitter, vindicate the claims, to diffuse the ironical, abusive-sometimes unjust. But when all due deductions have been made for his hostile prepossessions and of "good letters," was the aim of satirical exaggerations, there is a great his life. And from the first he believed deal left. Take, for example, the fa- that there were two great obstacles to mous letter to Grunnius, which was this educational work the hostility of intended to be read, and which was the monks, intolerant of the light shed read, to Leo X. As Mr. Froude truly by the new learning upon their ignoobserves, "The account which he rance and superstition; and the bigotry gives [there] of monastic profligacy he of theologians who, jealous for the degives deliberately as his own, and he cadent and moribund scholasticism speaks of it as too well known to the with which they had been indoctripope to need further proof." Thenated, denounced that learning as heretpontiff granted the request made in ical. Erasmus felt that, in order to this letter; and, so far as appears from deal effectively with these adversaries,

knowledge, to extend the influencethe civilizing, the humanizing influence

he must obtain a recognized-nay, so months, in the course of which he went

to speak, an official — position.

There are two things [he wrote to the Marchioness of Vere] which I have long felt to be absolutely necessary for this: one is that I should visit Italy, in order that the renown of that country may invest my poor learning with some little authority; the other that I should take my doctor's degree. Both things are really absurd. "Non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt," as Horace tells us, nor will "the shadow of a great name" make me one whit the more learned. But we must com

ply with the humor of these times, when
no one is accounted learned-I do not say
by the common people, but by those who
are the recognized chiefs of learning-
less he is styled "magister noster" and
that, too, in spite of the prohibition of
Christ.1

un

to Cambridge, where he delivered a few lectures on Greek, and received the degree of B.D. The greater part of the time he now spent in England was passed in the society of More and Grocyn. He saw also much of War ham, - now appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and one of the worthiest occupants of that illustrious sce, — who ever showed him the warmest, or, to use his own phrase, the most paternal regard.

Another of his friends was

Dr. Baptista Boerio, or Boyer as ho was called in England, the celebrated physician of Henry VII. The doctor was about to send his two sons, Giovanni and Bernardo, to Italy. He invited Erasmus to accompany them, not exactly as a tutor, but as director of their studies. Erasmus gladly accepted

These words were written in 1500. It was not until six years later, that the invitation. They left England in the opportunity of fulfilling his longcherished aspiration of visiting Italy presented itself to Erasmus. Towards the end of 1505 he came to England for a second time,2 and stayed some six 1 Ep. XCII. We will give the original Latin and Mr. Froude's abridged translation side by side:

Duo quædam perne- If I am to continue cessaria jamdudum sen- this work I must visit tio, alterum ut Italiam Italy. I must show my

adeam, quo scilicet ex loci celebritate doctrinunculæ nostræ nonnihil auctoritatis acquiratur;

can be counted learned,

the middle of June, 1506, a royal courier (caduccator) accompanying them. After being tossed about in the Channel for four days, they landed at Calais and proceeded on their way.

Erasmus remained in Italy for three pleasant and fruitful years. He first spent three weeks at Turin, where he took the degree of doctor of divinity. Thence he went to Bologna, where the self there to establish my personal conse- young Boerios were to pursue their quence. I must acquire studies at the university, then in the the absurd title of Doc-fulness of the reputation which it has alterum ut Doctoris no- tor. It will not make men mihi imponam, in- me a hair the better, but never wholly lost. Here he made the eptum quidem utrum- as times go, no man now acquaintance of the celebrated scholar que. Neque enim, ut despite of all which Scipio Fortiguerra di Pistoia, better Christ has said, unless known by the Greek name of Carterohe is styled Magister. machos, and contracted an intimate (P. 75.) friendship with a hardly less distinguished Hellenist, Paul Bombasio friendship unbroken until Bombasio's tragic death at the siege of Rome in 1527. One of the first sights which greeted Erasmus in Bologna was the triumphal entry of Julius II. into the city. "I like to picture him to myself, in the great street there," writes M. Nisard, "well wrapped up in his furs,

inquit Horatius, statim animum mutant qui trans mare currunt, neque me vel pilo doctiorem magni nominis umbra fecerit; verum, ut nunc tempora sunt, ita morem geras, quando nunc non dicam vulgo, sed etiam iis qui doctrinæ principatum tenent, nemo doctus videri potest, nisi magister noster appelletur, etiam vetante Christo, Theologorum Principe.

It will be noted that in the one place where Mr. Froude endeavors to keep close to the original he fails to write English -an unusual fault in him. "A hair the better" is not English, and would be unintelligible without the Latin.

Mr. Froude writes (p. 78): "He was undoubt edly in England in 1501 or 1502." There is no evi

a

dence whatever that Erasmus was in England in those years, and it is most improbable that he was. A few lines lower we read, "It is equally certain that he was at Bologna in 1504." As a matter of fact it is beyond question that he was not at Bológna until 1506.