PARIS AND HOLLAND
1492-1498
It may well be doubted, especially in view of his later experience,
whether a residence at Paris or at any other university during just
these years of probation would have been more profitable to Erasmus
than his life at Steyn. He had been learning the invaluable lesson
of self-education, and all his life was to be the richer for it. No
doubt he was beginning to be restless under restraint, and thinking,
as any monk had a perfect right to do, of how he might widen his
opportunity.
He says, we remember, that there was no way out of the monastic life
except to become the head of a nunnery, a remark so obviously foolish
that it is worth recalling only to notice how completely his own
experience contradicted it.
The Bishop of Cambrai, planning to go to Italy, wanted a young
scholar of good parts to help him out with his necessary Latin. He
had heard of Erasmus, how we do not know, and invited him to join
his court and make the Italian journey with him. This may well have
seemed to the young man a glorious opportunity. Italy was then,
even more than it has ever been since, the goal toward which every
ambitious youth of scholarly taste naturally turned. Doubtless,
also, in the larger liberty (or bondage) of the great world, his
monastic experience seemed narrow and sordid enough. He calls the
Bishop his god ἀπὸ μηχανῆς. "Had it not been for this deliverance
his distinguished talent would have rotted in idleness, in luxury
and in revelling." Evidently he would have had no reason to dread
the severity of discipline for which he fancied his health was too
delicate. The Bishop made sure of his prize by securing the approval
of the Bishop of Utrecht, in whose diocese the monastery lay, and
also of the prior and the general of the order. The excellent prior
himself had long been convinced that Erasmus and the monastery were
unsuited to each other and had recommended him to take some such
opportunity as now offered.[25] This was the kind of especially
unreasoning beast whom Erasmus says the monks were wont to choose for
their tyrant!
[25] iii.²; 1529-D.
The relation into which Erasmus now entered with the Bishop of
Cambrai was one of the most agreeable that could present itself to
a young scholar. It demanded of him but small services, and those
of a kind most attractive to him, and yet it gave him a sense of
usefulness which saved his self-respect. As a member of the Bishop's
household his living was provided for, and leisure was secured for
the studies toward which he was now eagerly looking forward. Once for
all we have to bear in mind in studying the life of a scholar, that
pure scholarship is never, and never has been, self-supporting. The
only question has been how to provide for its maintenance in ways
least dangerous to its integrity and least offensive to its own sense
of dignity. In our day we are familiar with endowments by which the
earlier stages of the scholar's life are made accessible to talent
without wealth, but in its later stages scholarship is held to a
pretty strict account and is expected to give a very tangible _quid
pro quo_ for all it receives.
In Erasmus' time this dependence of learning upon endowment was
more frankly acknowledged, and might be indefinitely prolonged.
Undoubtedly the easiest form of such dependence was the monastic.
There is no doubt that Erasmus' _de contemptu mundi_ gives a
perfectly fair ideal picture of the normal monastic liberty and
its suitableness for the scholar, but for him this life had also
its dangers and its limitations. Next to the endowment through the
monastery there was provision by private patronage. It had come
to be more than ever before in Europe, the duty and the pride of
all princes, lay and clerical, to devote some part of the revenue
which came from their people to promoting their higher intellectual
interests. Scholars were thought of as a decoration as indispensable
to the well equipped princely court as was the court jester or the
private religious counsellor.
With the progress of a new classic culture, all public documents
were taking on a higher tone and demanded a more highly trained
body of scholars for their preparation. But such a position might
become laborious, too mechanical and professional for men of real
genius. Then there was the alternative of teaching, either privately
in the employ of some rich family, or publicly at a university. In
Erasmus' time we find traces of university freedom, but they were
not significant of the normal condition of things. The university
was a great corporation with a reputation to keep up, and compelled
to preserve at least a decent uniformity in its instruction. A man
of independent genius could hardly have found himself entirely at
his ease there, even if he were able to win one of the endowments
by which to live. We shall see that Erasmus was not attracted by
the university career, and only resorted to the method of private
tutoring when other resources failed.
Another form of endowment of scholarship was through the application
of church foundations to this purpose. Of course this was in a sense
a perversion of trusts, but there were many excuses for it. For one
thing, the ends of religion and of education have always, under
Christianity, been largely identified. Even in our own country, and
down to the present moment, endowments for education have been almost
primarily thought of as made in the service of religion. The prime
function of Christian scholarship has been the maintenance of the
religious tradition. So that, when a man was given a "living" out of
church funds, it was felt that he might properly make use of this
income to carry on his personal studies. Especially if, as a result
of those studies, he produced works of religious edification, the
purpose of the endowment was not thought to be violated. Furthermore,
if with this endowment there were connected distinct duties involving
the "cure of souls," no one was shocked if the scholarly holder of
the "living" hired a lesser talent with a small percentage of the
income to perform these duties, while he himself devoted his leisure
to the higher studies for which he was fitted. Such a living may
fairly be compared to a university scholarship in our day--as in fact
the majority of our American scholarships will be found to have a
religious origin.
It must have required an unusual sense of the fitness of things for
a man of Erasmus' time to decline so easy and so honourable a means
of subsistence. What his own real views on the subject were we shall
have occasion to see later when the temptation comes to him. Enough
to say here that, at least so far as the cure of souls was concerned,
it seemed to him, in his better moments, a scandal that the man
who did the work of a "living" should not receive at least a large
part of its emoluments. Doubtless, also, the sense of confinement,
always an unbearable one to Erasmus, had its part in making a church
benefice unacceptable to him. Another consideration no doubt had its
weight. The mediæval scholar had served the cause of religion by
agreeing in every detail with its traditions as the organised church
handed them to him. The scholar of the Renaissance, though he might
be equally devoted to the religious system, thought of his learning
as something having an independent right to existence, and might well
hesitate to commit himself to such obligations toward the traditional
views of religion as were implied in the holding of a clerical office.
Distinctly the most agreeable form of support for the scholar of the
early Renaissance was a regular pension from some rich patron. He had
no need to feel himself humbled by this relation, for he could always
fall back on the pleasant reflection that he was giving back to his
patron in honour quite as much as he received from him in money. In
fact, this was the very essence of such patronage. The relation was
quite different from that of the public official, clerk, secretary,
or what not, hired to perform a definite kind of service. It was a
relation of honour, not to be reduced to commercial terms. The money
given was not paid for the scholar's services; it was given to secure
him the leisure needed for the proper pursuit of his own scholarly
aims. It bound him only to diligence in pure scholarship, not to a
servile flattery of his patron, nor to any direct furtherance of the
patron's ends.
Plainly this system was open to abuses; but so is every relation of
honour between men, and even the more exposed to abuse in proportion
as it calls upon the principle of honour and not upon that of
commercial equivalents. The _quid pro quo_ is the scholar's devotion
to the highest aims of scholarship, and if he fulfils his part to the
best of his ability he may hold up his head in the presence of any
man, even in an age of exclusively commercial standards.
All these forms of support were at one time or another employed by
Erasmus. He seems to have disliked teaching, both public and private,
though the evidence points towards his success, at least in the
latter kind. The cure of souls he never undertook, but was willing to
accept livings, if he were permitted to resign them for a handsome
percentage as pension. Excepting with the bishop of Cambrai he never
stood to any patron in the relation of secretary, clerk, librarian,
or in any other similar form of service. His choice was a good
liberal pension, and as to the _quid pro quo_, there was never in his
case any room for doubt.
Whatever else Erasmus was, he certainly was not lazy. 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? The
answer is twofold: the man must have a profound confidence either in
the greatness of the cause he stands for or in his own surpassing
merit. In Erasmus both these elements of assurance were united.
He always thought and spoke of pure scholarship, when applied to
the advancement of a pure Christianity, as the noblest occupation
of man, and he shared in a high degree that exaggerated sense of
personal importance which is the especial mark of the Renaissance
scholar.
The acceptance of a pension from a private person was, then, the
most untrammelled form of financial dependence which a poor scholar
could assume, and it is the form chosen by Erasmus whenever he had an
opportunity of choice. His first relation to the bishop of Cambrai
was, indeed, intended to be one of actual, definite service. He was
to go with him to Italy as his Latin secretary, and might well feel
that he was to give a fair equivalent for his support. The journey
to Italy, however, was indefinitely postponed. Erasmus says the
bishop could not afford it. Meanwhile the young scholar lived at the
episcopal court until, as the Italian plan seemed to be abandoned,
the bishop gave him money enough to get to Paris. He promised a
regular pension, but it was not forthcoming: "such is the way of
princes."[26]
[26] It was at the same time that he received from the bishop of
Utrecht ordination as priest. Strictly speaking, this ordination
was uncanonical, on account of his defect of birth, but we have
no reason to think that it caused him or anyone else any scruples
until many years afterward, when the point is distinctly covered
in a papal dispensation of 1517.--W. Vischer, _Erasmiana_, pp.
26, 27.
As to further detail of the life of Erasmus with the bishop we are
quite in the dark. Even how long he was there is not clear and is
cheerfully disregarded by most recent writers. It would probably be
safe to conclude with Drummond that it was not more than about two
years and that Erasmus' residence at Paris, therefore, began about
1491 or 1492, when he was about twenty-five years of age. As he had
up to this time consistently complained of every situation in which
he had found himself, we shall be quite prepared to find him making
the worst possible of a manner of life which at the best cannot have
been too attractive to a lover of ease and comfort.
The organisation of the University was such that the instruction was
largely separate from the detail of discipline and maintenance of the
student. Each student lived as he could, sought the teaching of such
masters as suited his immediate purpose, and presented himself for
academic honours whenever he was ready. A student of means lodged at
his own cost in a private house or private Hall, and lived subject
only to the general discipline of the University and the town. For
poor students there existed, as in England, "colleges"--_i. e._,
primarily lodging- and boarding-houses under a stricter oversight.
These colleges were not primarily intended to provide instruction,
a function which was only gradually assumed by them as their
endowments grew to be larger than were needed to provide the ordinary
necessities of living. Their teachers were rather tutors or "coaches"
than men of independent scholarship; their function was to supplement
by repetition and personal attention the public teaching of the more
eminent university professors.
The Collége Montaigu, into which Erasmus entered, was a foundation of
some antiquity, but during the previous generation had fallen into
complete decay, so that nothing was left of it but the buildings.
About 1480 it had taken a new lease of life under one John
Standonch,[27] who devoted himself to its service. As master of the
college he could make something by teaching, and gradually, through
his own activity and that of his fellows, had got together enough so
that he could give lodging and partial board to a certain number of
poor students. By the year 1493 he was thus partially maintaining
over eighty. The rest of their support they got as they could, by
begging or otherwise.
[27] Car. Jourdain, _Index chronologicus chartarum Universitatis
Parisiensis_, 1862, p. 301, n. I cannot quite adopt Mr.
Rashdall's rendering that Master Standonch "took rich boarders
and made them support the '_Pauperes_.'" H. Rashdall, _The
Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_, 1895, i., 512, n.
Erasmus was, then, a charity boarder and ought, in all reason, to
have been grateful for even this poor opportunity of enjoying the
privileges toward which he had for years been looking forward as
the summit of his hopes. Yet he can nowhere mention these Parisian
days without the most doleful complaints of his sufferings from
foul air, bad food, and severe discipline. The most famous of these
diatribes occurs in the Colloquy called Ἰχθυοφαγία--"The Eating
of Fish." Erasmus' theme is here the excessive devotion to formal
rules and observances in religion to the sacrifice of more important
things. The eating of fish is only a text on which he hangs extremely
bold and acute criticism of would-be religious persons, who for
their lives would not violate the rules of the Church against the
eating of meat, but were ready on the other hand to run into any
excesses of fleshly dissipation. The speakers are a butcher and a
salt-fishmonger. After they have gone on matching stories for a long
time, the fishmonger suddenly breaks out:
[28] "'Thirty years ago I lived at Paris in a college which has
its name from vinegar (_acetum_).' [The Latin form of Montaigu
was _Mons acutus_.] The butcher answers: 'Well, that is a name
of wisdom! What are you giving us? A salt-fishmonger in such
a sour college? No wonder he's such a keen one at quibbles of
theology! For there, as I hear, the very walls have theological
minds.'
"_Fishm._--'You're right, but all I got there was a body infected
with the worst kind of humours and a plentiful supply of lice. But
let me go on as I began. The college was at that time governed by
John Standonch, a man whose disposition (_affectum_) you would not
condemn, but in whom you would like to see more discrimination. For
you couldn't help greatly approving his regard for the poor, mindful
as he was of his own youth passed in extreme poverty. If he had so
far relieved the poverty of youths that they might go on with honest
study, yet not so far that abundance would have led to extravagance,
he would have deserved praise. But he went into the thing with beds
so hard, food so coarse and so scanty, vigils and work so severe that
within a year the first trial brought many youths of excellent parts
and of great promise, some to their deaths, some to blindness, some
to madness and not a few to leprosy. Some of these I knew myself,
and surely not one escaped danger. Now can't anybody see that that
is cruelty to one's neighbour? And not content with this he put on
(them) hood and cloak and took from them all animal food--and then he
transferred such nursery-gardens as this into far-distant regions.
If every one should indulge his impulses (_affectus_) as far as he
did, the result would be that the like of these people would fill
up the whole world. From such beginnings arose monasteries, which
now threaten both kings and pontiffs. It is a pious deed to boast of
bringing one's neighbour to piety, but to seek for glory by one's
dress or one's food is the part of a Pharisee; it is piety to relieve
the want of one's neighbours, and to see to it that they do not
abuse the generosity of good men by excess, is good discipline. But
to drive your brother by these things into sickness, into madness
and death, that is cruelty, that is murder. The intention to kill
is perhaps wanting, but the murder is there all the same. What
forgiveness shall these men have then? The same as a physician,
who, through notable lack of skill, kills a patient. Does anyone
say:--"but no one forces them into this mode of life; they come of
their own accord; they long to be admitted and are free to leave
when they are tired of it"? Ah! An answer worthy of a Scythian. They
do ask this, as youths who know what is good for them better than a
man of years, full of learning and experience! Thus might one excuse
himself to a famished wolf, after he had drawn him into a trap with
bait. Can one who has put unwholesome or even poisonous food before a
frightfully hungry man excuse himself by saying:--"Nobody compels you
to eat; you have willingly and gladly devoured what was set before
you"? Would he not properly reply:--"You have given me not food but
poison"? Necessity is a mighty weapon; hunger is a terrible torment.
So let them do away with that high-sounding phrase:--"the choice was
free," for he who uses such torments is really using force. Nor has
this cruelty ruined poor men alone; it has carried off many a rich
man's son and corrupted many a well-born talent.'"
[28] _Colloquia Fam._, i., 806.
So Erasmus goes on to tell other details of student-life at Montaigu.
In the depths of winter a bit of bread was given out for food
and they were obliged to draw water from a polluted well. Some
of the sleeping-rooms were on the ground-floor and in such close
neighbourhood to the common resort that anyone who lived there was
sure to get his death or a dangerous illness. Frightful beatings were
inflicted even on the innocent, "in order, as they say, to take the
ferocity out of them,--for so they call a noble spirit,--and break
it down on purpose to make them fit for monasteries. How many rotten
eggs were devoured there! What a quantity of foul wine was drunk!"
And then, having made his fishmonger say all the vile things about
Montaigu that he can think of, Erasmus, true to his nature, begins
to hedge. Perhaps these things have been corrected since, but this
is too late for those who are dead or are carrying about the seeds
of disease in their bodies. Nor does he say all this from any
ill-will to the college, but only to warn against the corruption of
youth through the cruelty of man under the disguise of religion. He
protests that if he could see good results from the monastic life he
would urge everyone to take the cowl. In fact, however, he seldom
goes into a Carthusian house without finding there someone who is
either gone silly or is a regular madman. There can be no doubt that
the rules for the Collége Montaigu published by Master Standonch in
1501 were sufficiently harsh. They were so made in order to check
the abuse of too great freedom for the very young boys admitted to
such foundations. In confirmation of Erasmus' picture of the horrors
of Montaigu we find regularly quoted Rabelais' famous passage[29] in
which the youth Gargantua on his return from Paris combs cannon-balls
out of his hair and thus gives occasion to his father and tutor for
an attack upon this same "college of vermin" as the haunt of cruelty
and wretchedness. When Rabelais wrote this passage he had not yet
been at Paris. It is practically certain that he was acquainted with
the writings of Erasmus, and the conclusion seems obvious that he
borrowed his illustration directly from the _Ichthyophagia_.
[29] _Gargantua_, i., 37. See also H. Schönfeld, "Rabelais and
Erasmus," in _Publications of the Modern Language Association of
America_, viii. 1.
This description of "Vinegar College" has been almost universally
taken as a serious account of Erasmus' own experience in Paris,
and probably it has its foundation of truth. The commonest laws of
sanitary decency are a thing almost of our own day, and not much
more can be said of the principles of proper food and care of the
body. No one could expect much from a charity-school in the fifteenth
century. But these stories must be considered in their context. They
are introduced, not as actual autobiography, but as illustrations
of one of Erasmus' favourite themes, the evils of monasticism, and
especially they are made to bear on an idea which seems to have been
almost an _idée fixe_ with him,--that all the powers of religion
and learning were in league to drive young men into monasteries.
As before in his recollections of Deventer and Steyn, so now here
in his memories of the Collége Montaigu, this spectre still, after
thirty years, haunts his imagination. He forgets that he was enjoying
the fruits of the devotion and self-sacrifice of the founders and
interprets all their actions by this same governing motive. He had
called his schools "_seminaria_" for monks; now he calls his Paris
college a "_plantarium_" for the same kind of a crop.
In fact, these early studies at the University were full of profit to
Erasmus. He was at the centre of the best culture of the earlier time
and the reviving spirit of the new classic learning was beginning
to make itself felt. In his references to this experience it suited
his purpose and his disposition always to throw contempt upon his
teachers and upon all learning except that which seemed to him to
reflect the glory of antiquity. Indeed, if he had been forced to
content himself with the dry quibbling of the "Scotist" theologians
who were still the dominant party at Paris, he would have found
himself in dreary company enough. But we find no reason to think
that there was any compulsion upon him to take any teaching he did
not like. Greek had already begun to make its way as an attainable
subject at Paris, and Erasmus was beginning to feel the charm which
this, the choicest vehicle of human expression, was to exercise upon
his whole life.
His first Paris residence was interrupted by illness, in consequence
of which he returned for a time to the bishop of Cambrai. The bishop
seems to have been willing to keep him indefinitely at his court,
but not to have provided for his further maintenance elsewhere.
With restored health Erasmus was back again at Paris and now, for
the first time, on a really independent footing. For the moment
he ceased to consider the question of patronage and began to give
lessons to private pupils. Beatus, unquestionably prompted by Erasmus
in all details, says that "the Englishmen at the university could
find no one among the professors of liberal study in the whole place
who was able to teach more learnedly or accustomed to teach more
conscientiously." And then he goes on to make a comparison between
this youth and the two best-known professors of literature at the
time in Paris. One of these, Faustus Andrelinus, was evidently a type
of the gay, reckless spirits who found in classic study an enjoyment
purely intellectual and who used its moral standard as an excuse for
all looseness of life. His manner of teaching was "popular" to the
point of flippancy, designed rather to catch the applause of the
crowd than to merit the approval of the learned. It is to Erasmus'
credit that he did not allow his classic enthusiasm to carry away
his judgment of this person. The other teacher, Gaguinus, was a
more serious scholar, but not so far advanced and not yet regularly
teaching publicly.
So it appears that, in spite of his doleful stories, our scholar had
as usual been making the most of his time, and we come now happily
to a point where evident facts and the testimony of other men can
be made use of to show his growing value and power. There seems
little reason to doubt that he was now a distinctly popular figure
in academic circles. He was in steady demand as a private tutor for
young men who could afford to pay well for his services. Among such
youths Englishmen, then as ever since, were naturally most prominent,
and it is through this relation to English pupils at Paris that
the way was opened for Erasmus to many of the most interesting and
important connections of his later life.
During this second Paris residence, Erasmus evidently got into some
rather serious scrape, of which we get only vague suggestions in
his correspondence. What it was and precisely the nature of the
charges it brought upon him we cannot say. It seems to have had some
connection with his relation to a mysterious personage, who has
been supposed to be almost every possible person from the bishop
of Cambrai down. Froude, in his hit-or-miss fashion, suggests that
this person, whom Erasmus always refers to as _senex ille_, was the
aged Marquis of Veere in Holland, son of a bastard of Duke Philip of
Burgundy. Unfortunately for this theory, the Marquis of Veere was
already dead and is of interest to Erasmus only on account of his
charming widow, who at about this time begins to dawn on his horizon
as a possible patroness. Beatus tells us with a word that Erasmus
after his Montaigu experience went over (_emigravit_) to a certain
noble Englishman who had with him two noble youths, of whom Beatus
thinks Lord Mountjoy was one. This Mountjoy was certainly a pupil and
afterward a faithful friend of Erasmus, and we have references to the
"old man" in letters to Mountjoy which show plainly that the young
nobleman was a confidant of the writer in the Paris unpleasantness,
whatever that may have been. The same is also true of the other
English youth whom Erasmus now met and learned to love, Thomas Grey,
son of the Marquis of Dorset. An extract from a letter to him will
give us an indication of how our scholar had got on in the art of
vigorous expression. The letter[30] is dated at Paris, 1497 (?),
and was evidently written soon after the trouble of which the old
man is the alleged cause. It begins with extravagant expressions of
affection for Grey. "Of the whole race of men none is dearer to me
than you." He would have written him earlier, but dreaded to open up
again the wound which he was just hoping would begin to heal.
[30] iii.¹, 18-B.
"Nothing is more intolerable," he goes on, "than abuse in
return for kindness. Would that I might drink so deep of the
waters of Lethe that that old man and his insults might wholly
flow forth out of my mind. As often as I think of him I not
only fall into a rage, but I marvel that so much poison, so
much envy, treachery and faithlessness could dwell in a human
breast. So help me God! when I think of the scoundrelly soul of
that man, the Poets, men so keen, so eloquent, in describing
human nature, seem to me either never to have seen poison
of this sort or to have been unequal to its description. For
what panderer so false, what ruffian so boastful, what old man
so ill-conditioned, or what monster so envious, so full of
bitterness, so ungrateful, have they ever dared to depict, as
this old humbug, who even sets up for a pietist and invents fine
names for his very vices? You bid me not to be distressed, and
indeed, my dear Thomas, I am bearing the thing patiently when
you think how horrible it is. So unexpected misfortunes can
but grieve one. How ever could I, in return for my frankness,
my kindnesses, my faithfulness, my almost brotherly affection,
expect from a man so venerable as he appeared, so noble as
he boasted himself to be, so pious as he pretended, such
extraordinary abuse? I supposed it to be basest ingratitude not
to return favour for favour. I had read that there was a kind
of men whom it was safer to offend than to oblige by kindness.
I did not believe, until I had learned it by experience, that
it was far more dangerous to do good to evil men than evil to
good men. For when the ungrateful rascal found that he was under
greater obligations to me than he could repay, he turned his
attention away from literature, which he had been wretchedly
tormenting up to that time, and bent all his energies to ruining
me with his infamous tricks. And when he despaired of doing this
by his actions (_laboribus_) he sought to crush me with his
tongue steeped in the poison of hell, and he did it, too, as
far as he could. That I am alive at all, that I have my health,
I ascribe to my books, which have taught me to give way to no
storm of fate. It is a blow to a man thus born to crime to find
that he does but little harm.
"But not satisfied with raging against me with such fury when
I was present, he pursued me when I had fled from him and,
out of hatred to me, rages against you, the dearest part of my
soul--rages, I say, with that most terrible of human weapons,
with slander. O poison of snakes, worse than any aconite,
than any froth from the fangs of Cerberus! That a monster
like this should gaze upon the fair light of the sun, should
breathe,--nay! poison the vital air! That our common earth
should bear such a disgrace! The imagination of the Poets was
never able to conjure up a mischief so horrible, so pestilent,
so accursed that this monster would not easily surpass it. For
what Cerberus, what Sphinx, what Chimæra, what Tisiphone, what
hobgoblin can rightly be compared with this evil thing which
_Gothia_ [?] has lately spewed out upon us? What scorpion, what
viper, what basilisk has its poison handier? Venomous things
seldom give forth their poison except when irritated. Lions
repay kindness with kindness; dragons grow gentle under kind
treatment; but this old man is made mad by good-will. There is a
poisoned soul for you!
"Now that you may see how solid is my proof; if one marks
carefully his savage face, the whole habit of his body, does
not one seem to see as it were the very image of all vices? And
herein is the wisdom of Nature to be praised, that she has pent
this soul of deformity in a fitting body. Beneath the bristling
forest of his eyebrows lurk his retreating eyes with their
savage gaze. A brow of stone, that in his evil doing no blush
of shame may ever be seen. His nostrils, filled with a grove of
bristles, puff out a polypus. His cheeks are drooping, his lips
livid, his voice belched out rather than breathed out--such is
the man's impotence--you would think him barking rather than
speaking. His twisted neck, his crooked legs--nothing that
Nature has not branded with some stigma. So we brand criminals
and malefactors; so we hang a bell upon a biting dog; so we mark
a vicious ox by the hay bound about his horns.
"To share my learning with this base monster! for his sake
to waste so much time, talent and energy! If this had gone
for naught, I should be less wretched, for now I see that I
have sown the dragon's teeth and they are springing up to my
destruction."
This is about one half of the letter. It is evident that Erasmus was
in good training for the choicest specimens of personal abuse which
he was later to produce. The remainder of the letter is filled with
flattery of young Grey laid on with as liberal a hand as was the
abuse of the unfortunate "old man." The burden of this part of the
letter is to console Grey for being still under the power of his
tormentor, and to urge him to new effort and to self-reliance in his
studies. Out of the confusion of vague references and later surmises
as to who this unpleasant being was, one can get a certain unity
and form such conjecture as one will. It seems probable that he was
some Englishman of mature years and of good family who had been sent
over to Paris as a guardian for the two young noblemen, Mountjoy and
Grey; that he had engaged Erasmus as tutor, to live at their lodgings
and to include himself in his instruction; that some cause, perhaps
some looseness of morals on Erasmus' part, had brought them to a
quarrel, in consequence of which Erasmus was forced to throw up his
engagement. On the other hand, it is clear that no father would have
intrusted his son to such a monster of physical and moral deformity
as is here described. Just what Erasmus means by saying that "Gothia"
was responsible for him I cannot make out. The whole episode is
interesting only as throwing light on the development of our scholar
in his style and his character.
That Erasmus, eager and diligent student as he surely was, did not
entirely escape the allurements of the Latin Quarter is plain from
later references of his own. Probably he is referring to some such
experiences in a letter[31] written about this time to the friend
whom Mr. Froude jauntily calls William Gauden, and who is the same
William Hermann of Gouda to whom we have already alluded. This
William had evidently written him a reproachful letter, but we do
not learn clearly the grounds of his reproof. Erasmus ascribes his
irritation to the tattling of some enemy and beseeches him at great
length to trust rather his own personal knowledge and his memory
of their lifelong friendship than any such calumny. He represents
himself as plunged in the depths of misery. He would rather die than
endure longer the burden of such a life. It is not life at all; it
is mere existence. Doubtless this is mostly rhetoric, but the true
state of the writer's mind seems to come out in a passage in which he
refers to certain definite persons well known to the receiver, though
obscure to us. The upshot of his gloomy reflections is:
[31] iii.¹, 13.
"This is the kind of a moral atmosphere (_moribus_) we have to
live in; and so we have to follow that saying of Chilo: 'So love
as if thou wert one day to hate, and so hate as if thou wert one
day to love.'"
This letter illustrates well traits of Erasmus which were to become
very marked in his future work. He was already showing that joy in
the idea of being persecuted which later seems to have reacted on his
memory of his earliest years. It flattered his vanity to think that
men cared enough about him to abuse him, and such abuse gave him an
added claim upon the devotion of his friends. His nature demanded
affection and admiration, and he was ready to repay them in kind, so
long as he thereby incurred no lasting or burdensome obligation.
[Illustration: HOLBEIN'S STUDIES FOR THE HANDS OF ERASMUS.]
These singular contradictions of Erasmus' nature are most clearly
brought out in his early correspondence with his friend Battus, a
young man whom he met at Cambrai, and who became tutor to the son of
the Marchioness of Veere. In connection with Battus, also, we learn
to know Erasmus for the first time as a suitor for patronage. The
Battus letters, some score in number, cover the period just before
and just after his first trip to England, that is, about the year
1500. We are to think of him at this time as firmly fixed in his
determination to be a scholar and, to this end, to get to Italy as
soon as ever it might be possible. He wanted to take his doctor's
degree there, and thought of Italy as a scholar's paradise. But to
gain this great privilege he was not prepared for every sacrifice.
One is apt to think of Erasmus as a wanderer, and with good
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. Probably nothing would have done so much to chase
away the megrims that were always pestering him. He would have had
less reason to complain of his digestion and his bad sleeping--but
if he could not have complained he would, perhaps, have been
unhappier still. Meanwhile, he had to have books, he must eat only
just such food as seemed to suit him, he kept a horse, and could
not think of a journey without at least one servant and two horses.
Italy seemed indefinitely far away. Private tutoring was a slippery
source of revenue; frequent visitations of the plague scattered his
pupils and he had to cast about him for ways and means. There were
two resources: a place with an income and, presumably, with duties
attached to it, or a patron. For obvious reasons, he preferred the
latter.
Battus, his dear Battus, was pretty comfortably fixed at the castle
of Tournehens on the island of Walcheren, the residence of the
Marchioness of Veere. He was a good fellow and might be counted on
to do his friend a good turn. We have Erasmus, then, in the Battus
letters in an entirely new character,--as the flatterer of the great
for his own personal advantage. The earliest indication of relations
with the marchioness is in a Paris letter[32] to Battus, which begins:
[32] iii.¹, 27-F.
"I can quite understand, Battus, best of men, how surprised you
are that I don't fly to you at once, now that our affair has
turned out so much better than either of us dared to hope. But
when you know my reasons you will cease to wonder and will see
that I have consulted your advantage no less than my own. I can
hardly tell you how delighted I was at your letter. Already I am
seeing visions of a happy life with you. What freedom to chatter
away together! How we will live in common with our Muses! I just
long to be free from this hateful slavery. 'Why then hesitate?'
you say. You will see that I do so not without reason. I had not
expected your messenger so soon. There are some little sums due
me here, and you know very little is a great thing for me. I
have unfulfilled obligations with certain persons, which I could
not leave without injury. I am just beginning a month with the
count; I have paid my room-rent," etc.
Then follows an account of some troubles about certain manuscripts
and money lost by unsafe messengers, and then he returns to the
subject of the marchioness.
"I don't need to urge you, dear Battus, for I know your
loyalty and your affection, to consider at once my profit and
my dignity. I am not a little in dread of a court and I am
very conscious of my unlucky star. I rejoice greatly that the
Lady is so favourably disposed towards me, but what says the
_antistes_? what hope does he offer? Was ever anything colder? I
would rather you had named a fixed sum than talked about a great
one. I will not remind you of Vergil's line
"'_... varium et mutabile semper,
Fœmina ..._'
for I count her not among common women, but among those of manly
quality (_viragines_). Yet how many are there in that place
who care for my writings? or is there anyone who does not hate
learning altogether? My whole fortune depends upon you. But
if--which Jove forbid!--the affair should fall out contrary to
both our wishes,--you, burdened with debt as you are, will be
worse off in that respect, and what help, pray, can you be to me?
"I will not admit that your zeal for me is any hotter than mine
for you; but I am sure we ought to take the greatest care not to
be too eager in this matter. I write this not as having changed
my opinion or as being fickle in my intentions, but to rouse
your watchfulness; for we are both in the same position. Now if
I hadn't so high an opinion of your loyalty, your prudence and
your carefulness that, when I have turned the thing over to you
I feel that I can sleep on both ears, I might be alarmed at this
beginning of the business as at a very unfavourable omen. They
have sent me a two-for-a-cent hired nag and an allowance for the
journey that is just about nothing at all. Now, my dear James,
if the beginning is so cold will the end be likely to boil? When
will there be a more honourable or more fitting chance for you
to ask a favour in my name than now, when they will have to get
me away from this city and from such favouring circumstances?
With such a pittance I could hardly come on foot; how should I
manage it on horseback and with two companions? If the affair
is to be paid for with my Lady's money, as I suppose, this
beginning doesn't suit me; but if it is at your expense, I like
it still less, for it would not only be unfair, but it would
have to be done with borrowed money. What is more unlike the man
you have always taken me for, than to come flying at the first
nod and especially under such conditions? Who wouldn't think
me either a greenhorn or a knave or at any rate in the last
extremity? Who wouldn't despise me? If I weren't so awfully fond
of you, Battus, my dear fellow, so that to live with you would
repay me for any inconvenience, these things might turn me from
my plans; but they don't move me in the least. I am only warning
you to keep up my dignity with all diligence. Now you ask my
opinion and here it is:--I will arrange my affairs here, collect
my writings and settle up my business. Meanwhile you will be
copying out what I send you. Write me, by the lad who they say
is shortly coming hither to study, precisely how the land lies;
then, when you have copied the Laurentius, send by the same lad
who brings it--I mean Adrian--an allowance for the journey and
some very definite statement; an allowance, mind you, suitable
for me. I can't come at my own expense, dead broke as I am,
and it is not right that I should leave my present fair enough
position. Besides I want you to send me a better horse, if you
can. I am not asking for a splendid Bucephalus, but one that a
respectable man would not be ashamed to ride; and you understand
that I need two horses, for I am determined to bring my servant
and I intend this second horse for him. You will easily persuade
my Lady of all this. You have an excellent case and I well know
you are clever enough to make a good case out of the very worst.
If she refuses to do this--well then, I pray you, how will she
ever give a pension if she would refuse my travelling expenses?
Now, then, you understand why I had to postpone our writing, as
I said at the beginning, and I am sure you will approve it. I
have told you how to keep up my dignity and all you have to do
is to push the thing as fast as you can. I'll not be napping
here; do you keep on the watch there."
This letter is one of the most important revelations of Erasmus'
methods of providing for himself. Battus, his friend, had apparently
held out to him a prospect of nothing less than a regular settlement
at the court of the Marchioness Anna. Erasmus speaks especially of a
settled life of study, with Battus as the chief attraction. But he is
not going to give himself away too easily. He admits that he is at
the end of his resources, but it would never do to let my Lady know
this. His cue is to raise his own value in her eyes. So he delays,
on the plea of important engagements; he reminds Battus that his
stake in the affair is the same as his own--though one hardly sees
why--and he urges him to caution lest he seem too eager in his suit.
He flatters him with praise of his eloquence and with expressions of
entire confidence. It is not a guileless youth whom we meet here, but
a man of the world, conscious of himself to the point of morbidness,
and yet willing to go pretty far along the road of sycophancy to the
great.
The journey to Tournehens took place in the winter of 1497. In his
account of it in a letter[33] to Mountjoy, Erasmus figures himself
as the especial victim of hostile gods. He might have been Hannibal
crossing the Alps, so magnificent is his language. Even the testimony
of the oldest inhabitant is not omitted in proof of the terrors of
the way. It is worth noticing that the gorgeous spectacle of trees
encrusted with ice, the deep-drifted snow, the castle gleaming in
a complete icy shroud, roused in Erasmus no sense of beauty or
of grandeur. He was occupied solely with his own discomforts and
describes all this as so much evidence of a malignant fate.
[33] iii.¹, 5.
"We reached the princess Anna of Veere but just alive. What
shall I say of the gentleness, the kindness, the liberality of
this woman! I am aware that the exaggerations of fine writers
are wont to be suspected, especially by those who have some
skill at such things; but I beg you to believe that I exaggerate
nothing;--nay rather that the truth goes beyond my skill.
Nature never brought forth a being more modest, more clever,
more spotless, more kindly. To put it all in one word:--her
kindness to me was as far beyond my merits as the malice of
that old scamp was contrary to my deserts. She, without any
effort of mine, loaded me with as many kindnesses as he, after
my endless kindness to him, heaped insults upon me. And Battus,
dear fellow,--what shall I say of him, the simplest and most
affectionate soul in the world! Now at last I really begin to
hate those ingrates. To think that I should have been the slave
of those monsters so long!"
We seem to have here a reference to his _bête noire_, the Paris
persecutor, with whom Mountjoy was in some way associated.
The same tone of extreme laudation is kept up in a short and hurried
letter[34] sent back to Battus from Antwerp on his way home. He
has evidently been well treated, but is not yet at his ease about
future favours from the lady. "I will fly back," he writes, "as
soon as ever I can, if the gods permit." The remaining letters of
this correspondence may belong to a later period, but will serve
here to show how Erasmus continued his suit. While he is exhausting
the language of flattery about his fair patron, he makes mysterious
allusions to possible checks upon her liberality. She is in trouble;
there are demands made upon her by unworthy persons. Finally it
appears that she married someone quite below her station. The burden
of Erasmus' song is that Battus ought to get ahead of these other
claimants on the lady's bounty and make sure of his case before it
is too late. One letter[35] shows downright ill-temper towards his
dear friend, which he partly excuses on the ground of continued
ill-health. Battus, it seems, had been urging him to write something,
probably as an equivalent for favours to come. He replies:
[34] iii.¹, 6.
[35] iii.¹, 46.
"I hope to die if I ever in my life so hated to write anything
as I did those trifles, nay, those Gnathonisms, which I have
written for my Lady, for the Provost and for the Abbot. I know
you will say this is my ill-temper; but you won't say that,
Battus, if you think of my condition or if you consider how
hard it is to force the mind to the writing of a great work,
and how much harder yet, when it is all in a glow, to have it
called off to other and trifling things. Because you haven't
tried this yourself you fancy that my mind is always in perfect
order, always on the alert, as yours is when you are enjoying
the greatest possible leisure. Don't you understand that there
is no worse burden than a mind wearied by writing, and don't
you think I am doing enough here to satisfy those whose favours
I enjoy? You are asking me for bales of books, but you don't
help me to get the leisure which the writing of books demands.
It isn't enough for you if I shall some day immortalise our
friendship and the favour of my Lady by my books, but I must
be writing you six hundred letters every day. It is now a year
since you promised me money and meanwhile you send me nothing
but hopes: 'I don't despair, I will push your case with all
zeal.'--This sort of thing has been crammed into my ears too
long; it makes me sick. And finally you lament the hard fortune
of your mistress. You seem to me to be ailing with another's
sickness. She neglects her fortune; you feel the pain! She fools
and trifles with her N. and you snarl out: 'She hasn't anything
to give.' Well! the only thing I see clearly is that if she
gives nothing for these reasons she will never give anything,
for reasons of this sort are never wanting to the great. How
little it would be, with such vast wealth, fairly running to
waste, to send me two hundred francs. She has plenty to keep
those cowled whoremongers, those low-lived wretches,--you know
whom I mean,--but she has nothing to provide leisure for a man
who might write books worthy to live--if I may brag a little
of myself. She gets into many a tight place, but it's her own
fault, if she prefers to keep that pretty fellow rather than
a grave and serious man, as becomes her age and sex. If she
doesn't change her mind I foresee still greater troubles;--and
yet I am not writing in anger against her, for indeed I love
her as I ought, considering what she has done for me. But, come
now, how can it hurt her fortune if I get two hundred francs?
In seven hours she will never know it. The whole business comes
to this: that we get the money out of her, if not in cash, then
from her banker, so that I can draw it here at Paris. You have
been writing letters and letters to her in this affair, asking,
hinting, going round about; but what could be more useless? You
ought to have watched your chance, gone at it carefully and
then put it through boldly; now the same thing has got to be
done, but too late. I hope to die, but I believe you might have
carried it through as I wish, if you had only taken hold of
it with more spirit. You can be a little more pushing in your
friend's cause without offending my modesty.... Good-bye, my
dear Battus, and take in good part what I have written, not in
temper nor in a panic, but as to the man who is the very dearest
of all men to me."
Another letter,[36] written from Orleans after his return from
England, begins with similar references to some misunderstanding and
goes on to the most barefaced of all Erasmus' begging efforts. Here
occurs his first appeal for a church living, and this plainly not as
a makeshift, but as the beginning of a regular speculation in livings:
[36] iii.¹, 86.
"Then persuade her to look out for some church living for me so
that when I come back I may have a quiet place to devote myself
to my books. And not this only; give her some reason, the best
you can make up for yourself, why she should promise me the
first of the many livings she has. A pretty good one if not the
best, and one that I can change for a better whenever it turns
up. Of course I know there are many seeking for livings, but say
that I am a man apart, one whom, if she compare him with all
others, etc., etc.--you know your good old way of pouring out
lies for your Erasmus. See to it that your Adolphus writes the
same things, most seductive petitions namely, at your dictation.
Keep it up until the promise of a hundred francs be fulfilled
and if possible let it be handed over to your Adolphus, so
that if,--which Heaven forbid!--any accident should take away
the mother, I may get it from the son. Put in at the end that
I have complained in my letters that I am suffering as Jerome
often complains he suffered, from loss of eyesight and that I
look forward to beginning to study as Jerome did with ears and
tongue alone. Persuade her, with what elegant words you can,
that she send me some sapphire or other gem that is good for
strengthening the eyes. I would have written her myself what
gems have this power, only I haven't my Pliny by me; do you find
out for yourself from your medical man."
We have but one letter[37] from Erasmus to the lady of his hopes.
It was written after his return from England and is an excellent
illustration of the type of literature it represents. It is really
an essay in classical composition, with its object, the getting of
money, partly concealed under the cover of literary digression.
This was probably the kind of thing which Erasmus liked to call
_nugæ_ and which he affected to consider a waste of time. He begins
with a fantastic allusion to three other Annas, the sister of Dido,
the mother of Samuel, and the grandmother of Jesus. These have all
been sufficiently lauded by great writers. He will now proceed to
add her as a worthy fourth to the list. We may spare ourselves his
fulsome eulogies of the woman whom he has treated in his letters to
Battus with something pretty close to contempt, and will quote only
a specimen. He has shown how the great men of antiquity favoured the
scholars of their day:--
[37] iii.¹, 83.
"But I, thou muse of mine, would not change thee for any Mæcenas
or any Cæsar. 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. Go on then, as thou hast begun. My
writings, thy foster-children, stretch forth suppliant hands to
thee and beseech thee by the fortune which thou spurnest when
favourable and bearest bravely when hostile, by their own ever
hostile fates, against which they stand by thy favour alone,
and by the love of that excellent queen--I mean the ancient
Theology--whom the divine Psalmist (as Jerome interprets) says
stood at the right hand of God, not in foul rags as she is now
seen in the fooleries of the sophists, but in golden vestments,
girt with varied colours, to whose recovery from the mould all
my vigils are devoted."
Then he becomes more explicit: two things he must have,--the trip to
Italy and the doctor's degree, both of them really follies; he says:
"for it is quite true, as Horace tells us, that no one changes
his intellect by running over the sea, and the shadow of a big
word will not make one a hair's breadth more learned; but one
must fit one's conduct to the times as they are and nowadays, I
will not say the vulgar, but even those who are at the very top
of learning, think no one can be truly a learned man unless he
is called "_magister noster_," though Christ himself, the prince
of theologians, forbids it. In former times no one was called
"_doctus_" because he had bought the title of Doctor, but they
were called Doctors who by putting forth books had given evident
witness of their learning."
A very apt and pretty comment on the doctor-fabrication of our own
day and land.
He concludes with certain definite statements as to the work he
has in hand, which show that in spite of all his complaints he was
going steadily on with his studies and with his production as well.
They show further that he was perfectly sincere in his declarations
that he needed money in order that he might do a kind of work from
which he could hope for little pecuniary profit excepting in the
form of payment for dedications. The Veere episode throughout is
full of mysteries. We have no means whatever of knowing how long it
went on, how often, or for how long periods, Erasmus was a guest at
Tournehens, nor how much help he actually received from his noble
patroness. The only date which clearly connects this correspondence
with other events is a reference in the letter to the Marchioness to
the anniversary of his departure from England, and that is, on other
accounts, extremely uncertain. We may safely guess, however, that
this connection covers several years just before and just after 1500.
Battus died in 1502 and by that time the Lady Anna had contracted
a marriage "_plusquam servile_." The letter[38] which tells these
facts was written the same year at Louvain, whither Erasmus says he
had fled from the plague. He complains that he has little chance of
earning anything there and yet says he had declined an offer of a
place to teach made to him by the magistrates. "I am wholly devoted
to the study of Greek and have not been playing with my work; for I
have got along so well that I can write fairly in Greek whatever I
wish to say, and that _ex tempore_."
[38] iii.², 1837. The approximate date is fixed by a reference
to the death of the Bishop of Besançon, Francis Busleiden, on the
twenty-third of August, 1502, in whom Erasmus says he had the
highest hopes.