Desiderius Erasmus

“ Delighted as he plainly was with everything and everybody in England, better treated than he had ever been in his life, why did not Erasmus take his own advice and settle down there in some regular occupation? So cosmopolitan a genius as his could hardly have dreaded a change of residence; the scholar's home was wherever the sun shone, and certainly never was man more free to follow the bent of his own wishes than was Erasmus. ”

“ But if Erasmus was unlike the 18th century rationalist in that he did not declare war against the church, but remained a Catholic and mourned the disruption, he was yet a true rationalist in principle. The principle that reason is the one only guide of life, the supreme arbiter of all questions, politics and religion included, has its earliest and most complete exemplar in Erasmus. He does not dogmatically denounce the rights of reason, but he practically exercises them. ”

“ The biographer of Erasmus is tempted to draw a somewhat pathetic picture of his last years; an aged man, broken with pain and disappointment, rejected by all parties, without influence in the world, living under continual fear of some unforeseen disaster,—these form, indeed, the elements for a sufficiently mournful description. And yet the end of Erasmus' course was such as he had been deliberately planning for himself all his life long. Isolation from all the various groupings of men upon great public questions had been his avowed ideal, and he had reached it. ”

“ Just as his powerful will compelled his frail and suffering body to do the bidding of his unconquerable spirit, so the literary impulse carried him on to utterances far beyond the capacity of his personality to realise in action. If Erasmus could have lived up to himself, he would have been the greatest of men. Let us in our judgment of him beware lest we make superhuman demands upon him. It is as idle as it is unjust to ask that Erasmus should be both Erasmus and Luther at once. ”

“ He had been born with the hopes of the Renaissance, with its anticipation of a new Augustan age, and had seen this fair promise blighted by the irruption of a new horde of theological polemics, worse than the old scholastics, inasmuch as they were revolutionary instead of conservative. Erasmus never flouted at religion nor even at theology as such, but only at blind and intemperate theologians. ”

“ A man who is always launching opinions must expect to be retorted on. And when these judgments were winged by epigram, and weighted by the name of Erasmus, who stood at the head of letters, a widespread exasperation was the consequence. Disraeli has not noticed Erasmus in his Quarrels of Authors, perhaps because Erasmus’s quarrels would require a volume to themselves. ”

“ In pursuance of our principle not to pretend to know the motive of every act of Erasmus' life, we shall not attempt to give one answer that will fit all cases, but shall venture to be a little Erasmian ourselves and try to view this matter from more than one side.
We shall have done our work but badly so far if we have not made it clear that Erasmus believed in his right to bring all human institutions to judgment at the bar of his own mind and conscience. Nothing which offended his own sense of right could be wholly acceptable to him. ”

“ His correspondence falls off somewhat in volume, but its [Pg 451] style is as fresh and the variety of persons to whom it is addressed continues as great as ever. New friends take the place of those he has lost, and his personal philosophy, always a cheerful one, remains to comfort him to the last. He consoles himself by the friendship of individuals against the slights of parties and their leaders.
The only falling off in Erasmus' productivity during the years from 1530 to 1535 is in the quality of originality. We are no longer to expect a Praise of Folly or a new volume of Colloquies ”

“ That Erasmus whom you used to know is almost a good hunter, a horseman not the worst, and no slouch of a courtier; he knows how to salute more gracefully and smile more sweetly and all this with Minerva against him. How are my affairs? Well enough. If you are a wise man you will fly over here too. Why should a man with a nose like yours grow old in that Gallic dung-heap? ”

“ I desire to have said these things, most excellent Erasmus, in witness of my friendly feeling towards you. I pray that God may give you a spirit worthy of your fame; but if God delays with his gift to you, I beg you meanwhile, if you can do no more, to remain a spectator of our conflict and not to join forces with our opponents, especially not to publish books against me, as I will publish nothing against you. Finally, consider that those who complain that they are attacked under the Lutheran name are men like you and me, in whom much ought to be overlooked and forgiven. ”

“ His powerful friends, the pope, Wolsey, Henry VIII., the emperor, called upon him to declare against Luther. Theological historians from that time forward have perpetuated the indictment that Erasmus sided with neither party in the struggle for religious truth. The most moderate form of the censure presents him in the odious light of a trimmer; the vulgar and venomous assailant is sure that Erasmus was a Protestant at heart, but withheld the avowal that he might not forfeit the worldly advantages he enjoyed as a Catholic. ”

“ He is at his weakest in defending free will against Luther, and indeed he can hardly be said to enter on the metaphysical question. He treats the dispute entirely from the outside. It is impossible in reading Erasmus not to be reminded of the rationalist of the 18th century. ”

“ First, he is
"moved by the countless good qualities of Erasmus, a man of consummate ability in Latin and Greek literature, who adorns our age with his learning and talent like a star, to draw back a little from our general principle. And no one ought to think it strange if in the case of so rare a man and one placed beyond every hazard of genius, we thought we ought to change somewhat of our previous custom. ”

“ Never in my life was I less in concealment, never more openly before the eyes of all men. And meanwhile there were some among those babblers who wrote to Germany that Erasmus was somewhere in hiding,—which I never found out until I got here in [Pg 349] Basel. And again when the emperor was at Brussels with the king of Denmark, and Thomas, cardinal of York, was there as ambassador of the king of England, you know yourself, even if I had kept myself to your house, how much in hiding I should have been ”

“ Erasmus is almost completely transformed into an Englishman, with such distinguished consideration am I treated by very many others, but especially by my incomparable (unicus) Mæcenas, the archbishop of Canterbury,—patron not of me alone, but of all learned men, among whom I hold the lowest place, if indeed I hold any place at all. Eternal God! how happy, how productive, how ready is the talent of that man! What skill in unravelling the most weighty matters of business! what uncommon learning! ”

“ So far Erasmus had stood in an attitude of studied neutrality. We have to gather from his emphasis and from the undercurrent of his eloquence our impression as to the side on which his sympathies really lay. If the world could only have stood still long enough for his wise and cautious suggestions to affect the parties, all might yet have been well. Unhappily for the Erasmians of all times, the world moves, and it does not move strictly according to rule. ”

“ Oh! my dear Erasmus, if you could only see how wild with joy everyone here is, how they are congratulating themselves on having such a prince, how they pray for nothing more earnestly than for his life, you could not help weeping for joy. The very air is full of laughter, the earth dances, everything flows with milk and honey and nectar. Avarice slinks away far from the people; generosity scatters wealth with lavish hand. Our king is eager, not for gold, not for gems and precious stones, but for virtue, glory, and immortality. ”

“ In the annals of classical learning Erasmus may be regarded as constituting an intermediate stage between the humanists of the Latin Renaissance and the learned men of the age of Greek scholarship, between Angelo Poliziano and Joseph Scaliger. Erasmus, though justly styled by Muretus (Varr. Lectt. 7, 15) “eruditus sane vir, ac multae lectionis,” was not a “learned” man in the special sense of the word—not an “érudit.” He was more than this; he was the “man of letters”—the first who had appeared in Europe since the fall of the Roman empire. ”

“ In Italy a Bembo and a Sadoleto wrote a purer Latin than Erasmus, but contented themselves with pretty phrases, and were careful to touch no living chord of feeling. In France it was necessary for a Rabelais to hide his free-thinking under a disguise of revolting and unintelligible jargon. It was only in the Empire that such liberty of speech as Erasmus used was practicable, and in the Empire Erasmus passed for a moderate man. ”

“ Budæus then goes on to say that he has little to do with court affairs, but that if Erasmus likes it, he may well promise himself a fine position in Paris.
"Immortal gods! what an honour for you! what a splendid fortune in the judgment of all learned men, to be summoned into a distant land by the greatest and most illustrious of kings on the sole recommendation of your learning!... As far as one can guess, he desires to be the founder of a splendid institution, so that in the future, quite otherwise than in the past, liberal learning may seem to be a thing of profit." ”

“ One is apt to think of Erasmus as a wanderer, and with good [Pg 49] reason, but after all he had little of the typical Bohemian in him. He was, it is true, a poor youth, but his poverty was always a comfortable poverty. There was nothing, apparently, to prevent him from taking his staff in his hand and making his way on foot, if need were, as many another poor scholar had done, to the goal of his desires. That was Luther's method of seeing Italy, under a very different impulse. ”

“ Who is not being taught by Erasmus? In whom does not Erasmus reign?—I mean, of course, among those who have a true love of letters. For I am glad enough and I reckon it among the gifts of Christ, that there are many who do not approve of you. By this test I discern the gifts of a loving from those of an angry God, and I congratulate you that while you are most acceptable to all good men, you are equally disliked by those who would like to be thought the only great ones and the only ones to be accepted. ”

“ As for what I can give in return, I will strive, as far as this little talent and this manly strength of mine may go, that future ages shall know my Mæcenas and shall marvel that one woman at the ends of the earth strove to revive by her benevolence the cause of letters corrupted by the ignorance of the unskilled, cast down by the fault of princes, neglected through the indolence of men; that she would not suffer the labours of Erasmus, deserted by splendid promise-makers, despoiled by a tyrant, buffeted by all the blows of fortune, to fall away into poverty. ”

“ Still Erasmus cannot help fancying himself abused. He was charmingly treated; no duties were pressed upon him; everybody flattered him and coddled him to his heart's content. He had a capital chance to read all the "good literature" he wished, for Cornelius soon came to regard him as a kind of private tutor and kept him at it whole nights long, much to the injury, he says, of his poor little body. "After all," thought Erasmus, "this was what the selfish fellow wanted me here for." In a few months the friends had thus read through the principal Latin authors ”

“ The impulse to produce was in him an irresistible one. All he asked was opportunity, and the several patrons who, from time to time, contributed to his support must have felt that on his side the point of honour was fully met. One other consideration will perhaps help us to understand the exact feeling of Erasmus in entering upon what seems to us, perhaps, a condition of personal dependence. How, we may ask, could any man have that confidence in his own talent which would assure him against the dread that after all he might prove a bad investment? ”

“ On the other hand, the [Pg 9] communities in which the brethren had established themselves had come to value them as examples of piety and types of a virtue which did not tend to separate men too widely from the life of the world.
Now all this would seem to point precisely in the direction towards which all the thought of Erasmus naturally turned. Of the two early instructors who chiefly impressed him, Hegius and Sintheim, the latter was certainly of the Brethren. The school of Deventer, while probably not directly under their control, was profoundly influenced by them. ”

“ Another friendship dating from this period was that with Servatius, a fellow-monk and afterward prior of Steyn. No one of Erasmus' correspondents seems to have stood nearer to his heart. The group of letters addressed to him, probably just before and just after the writer had left the monastery, show a warmth of affection and a real desire for affection in return which bear every mark of sincerity. Even long after their ways had parted for ever Erasmus writes to Servatius with a respect which has no tinge of bitterness in it. ”

“ With this cheerful and practical specimen of the gay Italian Humanism of the day our scholar corresponded with great freedom. Ammonius was not troubled by Erasmus' dread of place-holding, and was frankly enjoying the sunshine of the court. He seems to have advised Erasmus to try his fortune also in London. Erasmus replies:
"As for your serious advice that I should pay my court to Fortune, I acknowledge the true and friendly counsel, and I will try it, though my mind rebels against it most strongly and predicts no good and happy outcome. ”