FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND
1498-1500
Mr. Seebohm, in his amiable study of the Oxford Reformers,[39] is
inclined to find the motive of Erasmus' first visit to England in his
desire to pursue his studies, and especially that of Greek, under
circumstances more favourable than he could find elsewhere; but
connecting this visit with his earlier experiences and especially
recalling the struggle for maintenance in which he was just then
engaged, we can hardly fail to find at least suggestions of other
motives. That his visit did, in fact, powerfully influence his study
and his thought there can be little doubt.
[39] Third ed., 1887.
The immediate occasion of the journey, which we may safely place
in the summer or autumn of 1498, was an invitation of young Lord
Mountjoy. Of all the English youths whom Erasmus had known intimately
at Paris, Mountjoy was the favourite. He seems to have been sincerely
attached to his teacher and to have done his part in making easier
for him the rugged path of pure scholarship. Writing from England
to Robert Fisher, another of these young men, who was then in Italy,
Erasmus says[40]:
[40] iii.¹, 12.
"You would have seen me there, too, long since had not Lord
Mountjoy, even as I was girded for the journey, carried me off
to his own England. For whither would I not follow a youth so
cultivated, so gentle, so amiable? I would follow him, so help
me God! to the infernal regions."
The English trip must be regarded in a way as a substitute for the
Italian. He was "girded" for Italy in every way but one. He could not
find the money, and he took this chance of living on that English
generosity of which he had made so successful trial at Paris. Nor
was he in any way disappointed. During the year and a half, perhaps,
of his first visit he was entertained by one and another of the
patrons of English learning, or by some of the English scholars
themselves--for scholarship in England was taking on that character
which it has ever since maintained, of being joined with wealth and
station. This was a type of scholarship so far unfamiliar to Erasmus
and it made its due impression upon him. He liked everything in
England. He writes to Fisher:
"You will ask me how I like your England. Well, if you ever
believed me in anything, my dear Robert, I pray you believe me
in this, that nothing has ever pleased me so much. I have found
here a climate pleasant and healthful, and such cultivation
and learning, not of the hair-splitting and trivial sort, but
profound, exact and classic, both in Latin and in Greek, that
now I feel no great longing for Italy, except for what is to be
seen there. When I hear my friend Colet I seem to be listening
to Plato's self. Who does not marvel at the complete mastery of
the sciences in Grocyn? Was ever anything keener, more profound
or more acute than the judgment of Linacre? Has Nature ever made
a more gentle, a sweeter or a happier disposition than Thomas
More's?"
There is a touch of sincerity about these expressions, in spite of
their conventional form, which is borne out by the whole future
relation of Erasmus to the English group of scholars. For the first
time in his life he forgets to grumble and has no occasion to beg.
[Illustration: THOMAS MORE.
FROM THE DRAWING BY HOLBEIN, IN WINDSOR CASTLE.]
In England, too, Erasmus found himself, for the first time, in
relations with men who he had to confess were his superiors in many
ways. We know nothing of the circumstances of Erasmus' arrival,
but it seems that Mountjoy soon sent him on to Oxford and that he
was received there in a college of Augustinian Canons known as
the College of St. Mary. So far as any place could be called his
English headquarters, this was it. The prior of the college, Richard
Charnock, was far from being the kind of person Erasmus became so
fond of representing as the natural head of a monastic establishment.
He was a cultivated gentleman and sound scholar after Erasmus' own
heart and in the friendliest relations with the most "advanced" of
the early English humanistic scholars. On just what terms Erasmus
lived at St. Mary's is not quite clear. He refers often to the
Prior's "hospitality," but we find him asking Mountjoy to send him
"his money" (_pecunias meas_) at once that he might repay Charnock
his many obligations. Erasmus was very careful in his use of all the
parts of speech except adjectives, and this phrase seems to indicate
on the one hand that he was a boarder at the college, and on the
other that he had some regular understanding with Mountjoy as to a
supply of money.
Through prior Charnock, probably, Erasmus was introduced to the
leading scholars of the University. Among these by far the most
interesting to him was John Colet, a young man of just his own age,
who was living at Oxford as a private or independent teacher. He was
a man of admirable character, of rare acuteness of mind, already well
out of the fogs of mediæval scholasticism which were still clinging
around Erasmus. Colet seems at once to have impressed himself upon
the visitor as a new type. He was, first of all, a man of fine
culture, the son of a Lord Mayor of London, reared in ease and
plenty and given from the outset that wider outlook into the world
of thought which Erasmus was just beginning to get for himself. He
had enjoyed the great advantage of the Italian journey with all that
it implied by the way. He was a theologian, but as far as possible
removed from the quality which had made the very name of theology
hateful in Erasmus' ears. At Paris, as he continually complains,
theology still meant the futile struggle of hair-splitting schools
of a pseudo-philosophy to explain the how and the why of Christian
truth. For the truth itself they seemed to have little comprehension
and little care. New light was coming into theology, as into all
science, through the larger and freer dealing with ancient learning;
but how to connect this learning of antiquity with the present
problems of religion and of life--that was the all-important question
to every serious mind.
That the very clever mind of Erasmus was already fixed on serious
things there can be no doubt. He was thirty years old; he had largely
overcome the mechanical difficulties of the scholar's work. He had
read the vast mass of the Latin classic authors with great diligence
and with profound personal interest. He had had his fling as well as
his trials at Paris. If he had aimed to be merely a classicist he
was well fitted to join the great army of those flippant scoffers
who had already brought discredit upon learning by failing to give
it a serious and a modern content. Learning, divorced from life, was
already beginning to lose its hold upon many circles of European
interest. Every such failure was only another argument given to the
surviving mediæval methods why men should not desert them until
something better had been found.
And if Erasmus was fitted by his training to imitate the gay and
brilliant shallowness of the Italian Humanists, he was perhaps still
more drawn their way by the natural cast of his mind. He liked
bright things and bright people. He was fond of ease and comfort.
His interests were largely bounded by his own personality. He loved
praise and could not endure reproach. He demanded friendship, but
would not be bound by any ties that threatened his own convenience.
His vanity called for continual food, and he often provided it by
protestations of modesty which called forth devoted expressions from
his admirers. The impression of his quality at this time is not a
lovely one, and yet he was plainly more attractive in person than he
is to us in his correspondence. He made friends and, on the whole,
considering his motto, "to love as if thou wert some day to hate and
hate as if thou wert some day to love," he kept them remarkably well.
The English visit was a critical time to Erasmus. His mood in the
months just before had been one of discouragement, just the mood
which might well have turned a man of his tastes and apparent
character into a life of brilliant literary flippancy. A glimpse
into his own reflections on this point is given in the letter[41] to
Mountjoy above quoted, written from Oxford:
[41] iii.¹, 41.
"I am getting on here splendidly and better every day. I
can't tell you how delighted I am with your England, partly
through custom which softens all hard things, partly through
the kindness of Colet and Prior Charnock; for there was never
anything more gentle, sweeter or more lovable than their
characters. With two such friends I could live in farthest
Scythia. What Horace wrote, that even the common people see
the truth sometimes, experience has taught me:--you know his
well-worn saying that things which begin the worst are wont to
have the best ending. What was ever more inauspicious than my
coming here?--and now everything goes better from day to day. I
have cast away all that depression from which you used to see me
suffering. For the rest, I beseech you, my pride, as formerly,
when my courage failed, you supported me with your own, so now,
though mine is not lacking, let not yours desert me."
Erasmus in England found his better self awakening to renewed
courage and exertion. Even before he came over, he had begun to see
that perhaps a solution of his life-problem might be found in a
deliberate rejection of the mediæval method in theology by throwing
it all away and going straight back, first to the original documents
of Christianity themselves, and then to the early commentators on
Christianity who had expounded these documents under the direct
influence of the classic culture. Jerome, especially, seemed to him
worthy of the most careful study and of a new and scientific edition.
This was the "great work" to which he refers in his correspondence
with Battus as being interrupted by Battus's trivial demands for some
show-pieces to please their patroness.
Underneath all his thought there lay continually this purpose to
apply his learning to making clearer the ways of God to man. The
Oxford friends were eminently men to strengthen his intention, and
we may feel sure that here was the real source of Erasmus' higher
content in England. Let us try to make acquaintance with them through
Erasmus' own words; and first with Colet, beginning at the point of
their first meeting. In a long letter bearing date 1519, just twenty
years later, and written under the first shock of Colet's death,
Erasmus gives a short but feeling sketch of his friend's life. This
sketch[42] forms the basis of all subsequent treatment of Colet.
[42] iii.¹, 451.
"On his return from Italy he chose to leave his home and go
to Oxford, and there publicly, and without pay, he expounded
all the epistles of Paul. There I began his acquaintance, sent
thither by some divine leading. He was then about thirty years
old, two or three months younger than I. He had never taken
nor tried for a degree in theology and yet there was no doctor
in the place, either of theology or of law, and no abbot or
person of any rank whatever, who did not go to hear him and even
take his note-book along,--a credit alike to the learning of
Colet and to the interest of those hearers, that old men were
not ashamed to learn of a younger one and doctors from one who
was not a doctor. The doctor title was voluntarily offered him
afterward and he accepted it rather to please his friends than
because he really cared for it.
"From this sacred task he was called to London by the favour of
King Henry VII. and made Dean of St. Paul's, president of his
congregation, whose writings he so dearly loved. This is the
highest dignity in England, though there be others with more
ample revenue. This man, as if called to the labour, rather than
to the dignity of the office, restored the decayed discipline
of his congregation and, a novelty in that place, undertook
to preach on every holy day in his own church, besides the
extraordinary sermons which he delivered in the royal chapel and
in various other places. In his preaching he did not take his
subject by fragments from the Gospels or the apostolic letters,
but he proposed some one topic and carried it out to the end
in successive discourses: as for example the Gospel of Matthew,
the Creed, the Lord's Prayer. He preached to crowded audiences
in which were generally to be found the foremost men of the city
and of the royal court.
"The Dean's table, which had formerly under the name of
hospitality degenerated into luxury, he brought within frugal
limits."
The occasion of eating was improved by learned and serious
conversation.
"He delighted especially in friendly discussions, which he often
prolonged until late into the night, but all his discourse was
of learning or of Christ. He often asked me to walk with him and
then he was as gay as anyone, but ever a book was the companion
of our walk and our discourse was still of Christ. He was
impatient of all uncleanness and could not bear to hear language
ungrammatical and defiled with barbarisms. All his household
furniture, his dress, his books, he wished to have perfectly
nice, but did not strive for show. He wore only sad-coloured
garments, whereas priests and theologians there are generally
clad in purple. His outer dress was always of plain woollen,
lined with fur in winter. The whole income of his see he gave
over to his agent to be spent in household matters and gave away
his own ample income for pious purposes."
[Illustration: JOHN COLET.
FROM THE DRAWING BY HOLBEIN, IN WINDSOR CASTLE.]
Then follows an account of the endowment by Colet of the famous St.
Paul's school, to which he gave the best energies of his later years.
"While everyone approved this work, many wondered at his
building a splendid house on the grounds of the Carthusian
monastery near the king's palace at Richmond. He used to
say that he was preparing a retreat for his old age when he
should be unequal to his work or broken by disease. It was his
intention to live there the philosopher's life with two or three
choice friends, among whom he used to count me, but his death
came too soon."
The careful analysis of Colet's character which concludes this sketch
is quite different from Erasmus' usual undiscriminating praise of
what suited himself. He presents Colet to us as an eminently human
personage, inclined by nature to all the joys of earthly life, and
yet subduing all lower temptations by the force of his unconquerable
will. He was a man of strongly marked individual opinions, yet
so careful of the feelings of others that he avoided discussion
excepting among friends or when it was forced upon him. At such
times, however, he spoke as one compelled by an inner impulse of
which he was no longer master. In the first interview of which we
have any record, at a dinner at St. Mary's, in Oxford, a discussion
arose on the very speculative question of the meaning of the story
of Cain's sacrifice. Erasmus and an unknown theologian took sides
against Colet[43]:
[43] iii.¹, 42-F.
"'Not Hercules himself can prevail against two' say the Greeks,
but he alone conquered us all. He seemed to be intoxicated
with a sacred frenzy and to utter things more lofty and more
noble than belong to men. His voice took on another sound, his
eyes a different expression, his face and figure were changed;
he seemed to grow larger, and at times to be inspired with a
something divine."
So in this later, more careful account Erasmus refers to Colet's view
of Thomas Aquinas. He himself, it appears, had come to have some
respect for Aquinas and had made various attempts to draw out Colet
on the subject. He had so far failed, but one day, returning again to
the charge, he found Colet's eyes fixed upon him,
"as if watching whether I were in jest or in earnest. But when
he saw that I was speaking from my heart, he cried out, as if
inspired by some spirit:--'Don't speak to me of the man! If he
had not been a most arrogant creature he would not have defined
all things with such boldness and with such haughtiness. If he
had not had something of the spirit of this world, he would not
so have corrupted the whole teaching of Christ with his profane
philosophy.'"
The result was that Erasmus looked more carefully into his Aquinas
and greatly revised his judgment of him.
Remembering that this sketch of Colet was written two or three years
after Luther had nailed his Theses on the church door at Wittenberg,
we may gain from it a good insight into the views not only of Colet,
but of Erasmus as well, upon many of the doubtful questions of the
early Reformation days. Nowhere, perhaps, in Erasmus' writings do we
find more temperate and cautious suggestions. Already we may discern
in clear outline the determining motives of his position in the great
struggle. In his pet abhorrence, the monastic system, Colet went
with him to the point of free criticism of faithless and irreligious
monks, but, like Erasmus himself when he was, so to speak, in the
witness-box, he had nothing to say against the monastic life in
itself. He had little to do with monks and gave them nothing at his
death, but he professed great affection for the life of seclusion and
often declared that he would enter it himself
"if he could find anywhere an order really devoted to apostolic
living. When I was setting out for Italy, he commissioned me
to inquire on this point, saying that he had heard that in
Italy there were some monks really sensible and pious. For he
did not follow the vulgar opinion which calls that 'religion'
which is sometimes only weakness of intellect. He used to say
that he nowhere found greater virtue than among married people,
since they were restrained from falling into many vices by
their natural affections, by the care of children and by their
household duties.
"On this account he was more charitable towards the fleshly sins
of the clergy. He used to say that he hated pride and avarice in
a priest more than if he kept a hundred concubines. Not indeed
that he thought incontinence in priest or monk was a trifling
fault, but that the other vices seemed to him farther removed
from true piety. There was no kind of person more hateful to
him than those bishops who acted more like wolves than like
shepherds, commending themselves to the crowd by their sacred
offices, their ceremonies, their benedictions and indulgences
when really they were heart and soul devoted to this world, to
glory and to greed.
"From Dionysius and the other early Fathers he had learned
certain things which he did not so far adopt as ever to go
against the laws of the church, but yet far enough to make
him less opposed to those who did not approve the worship
everywhere in the churches of images painted or in wood, stone,
bronze, gold and silver. He had the same feeling toward those
who doubted whether a priest openly and plainly wicked could
properly perform the sacraments;--not by any means that he
favoured their error! but in wrath against those who by a life
openly and every way corrupt gave ground for such suspicions.
The numerous colleges, founded in England at vast expense, he
used to say only stood in the way of good learning and were
nothing but so many enticements to laziness. Nor did he have a
very high opinion of the Universities where the all-corrupting
ambition and greed of the professors destroyed the integrity of
all science.
"While he strongly approved the auricular confession, saying
that nothing gave him such comfort and good feeling, yet he as
strongly condemned its too anxious and frequent repetition.
While it is the custom in England for priests to celebrate
mass almost every day, he was content to do so on Sundays and
holidays and very rarely on other occasions.... Yet he by no
means condemned the practice of those who go daily to the
Lord's table. Although he was himself a most learned man, yet
he disapproved of that painful and laborious learning which,
gathered from a knowledge of all branches and the reading of
all authors, is as it were lugged in by every handle. He always
said that in this way the native soundness and simplicity of the
mind were worn away and men were made less sane and less adapted
to the innocence and to the pure affection of Christianity. He
greatly admired the apostolic letters, but so reverenced the
wonderful majesty of Christ that compared with this the writings
of the apostles seemed to become as it were defiled.... There
are countless things accepted to-day in the universities from
which he greatly differed and which he used to discuss at times
with his intimate friends. With others, however, he concealed
his views for fear of two evils, first, that he would make the
matter worse, and second, that he would ruin his own reputation.
There was no book so heretical that he would not read it
carefully, saying that he often got more profit from it than
from the books of those who make such fine definitions and often
come to worship the leaders of their school and sometimes even
themselves."
In this affectionate, but at the same time discriminating, review of
Colet's life and character we may easily see outlined certain ideals
of Erasmus himself. He admires in his friend a quality of discretion,
which, under some circumstances, might come pretty near to duplicity.
On many matters he had two opinions, one for himself and his intimate
friends, and another for the public. That is a condition of mind that
will do very well so long as the great issues of a dispute are not
brought out into sharp relief. In the times that try men's souls,
when events will no longer bear nice distinctions, but demand that
men shall stand up and be counted--yes or no--on the question of the
hour, then this quality of discretion may be the ruin of a man. It
was toward precisely such a crisis that the affairs of the Christian
Church were rapidly tending when Erasmus learned to know John Colet
in the delightful intercourse of the college at Oxford. Colet had the
good fortune to die (in 1519) before the supreme test came to him.
Erasmus was to spend the best energy of his declining years in the
struggle to live up to the difficult standard of having one opinion
for himself and another for the world.
In the several subjects touched upon in the review of Colet's
opinions we hear plainly the echoes of discussions, growing ever more
intense, upon the secondary issues of the Reformation. Colet approved
of monks, of secret confession, of an elaborate ceremonial, of a
priesthood resting upon divine consecration, and he would not for
the world question the validity of recognised church law. Yet he was
ready to deal fearless blows at faithless monks, at a superstitious
repetition of confession, an overdoing of the ceremonies of worship,
and the worldliness of the parish clergy. He approved of all
learning, but he condemned the application of learning to a fruitless
definition-making.
The first letter we have from Colet to Erasmus is an address of
welcome to England, a graceful little note, as full of flattery as
any of Erasmus' own and of interest to us chiefly as showing that the
visitor had not come to England unknown. He had, it is true, written
nothing of consequence, but Colet had seen some little things of
his at Paris, and Erasmus' acquaintance there with young Englishmen
of high social rank could hardly fail to have carried at least his
name across the Channel. The same impression of a reputation already
grounded is embodied in the well-known story of Erasmus' first
meeting with another Englishman, with whom his relations, at least
by correspondence, were to be still more intimate,--Thomas More.
The incident is told in the life of More by his great-grandson as
follows[44]:
[44] _The Life of Sir Thomas More_, by his great-grandson,
Cresacre More, 1828, p. 93. This life is largely made up from
earlier sources.
"it is reported how that he, who conducted him in his passage,
procured that Sir Thomas More and he should first meet together
in London at the Lord Mayor's table, neither of them knowing
each other. And in the dinner-time, they chanced to fall into
argument, Erasmus still endeavouring to defend the worser part;
but he was so sharply set upon and opposed by Sir Thomas More,
that perceiving that he was now to argue with a readier wit
than ever he had before met withal, he broke forth into these
words, not without some choler:--'_Aut tu es Morus aut nullus_.'
Whereto Sir Thomas readily replied, '_Aut tu es Erasmus aut
diabolus_,' because at that time he was strangely disguised, and
had sought to defend impious positions...."
[Illustration: HENRY VIII. AND HENRY VII.
FRAGMENT OF A CARTOON BY HOLBEIN, IN POSSESSION OF THE
DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE.]
This story plainly implies a considerable degree of reputation for
both persons concerned, but as More was at most twenty years old and
known only as a very bright young student at the time of Erasmus'
arrival, we are compelled either to give up the story or to place
it some years later and suppose that Erasmus did not meet More at
all during his first visit. This latter supposition, however, is
quite impossible, since Erasmus speaks plainly of More at this time
as among his most valued friends. The author indeed prefaces the
anecdote with the statement that the two scholars had long known and
loved each other and that their affection "increased so much that he
[Erasmus] took a journey of purpose into England to see and enjoy his
personal acquaintance and more entire familiarity,"--most of which
lacks support in known facts.[45] We can only accept so much of it
as implies previous acquaintance by correspondence, and that may
well have taken place while Erasmus was at Oxford and More in London
working with as much zeal as he could command at his preparation for
the bar. If we strip off the decorations and suppose the meeting to
have occurred during some visit of Erasmus in London from Oxford,
this very pretty story is not altogether improbable. At all events
it strikes the key-note of a friendship which was to last as long as
life. The disparity in age (eleven years) was more than made up by
the great activity and originality of More's mind and the singular
charm of his engaging personality. During this first visit to England
we have no specific record of Erasmus' relations with More, except
this one anecdote of the dinner and another of a visit paid by the
two friends to the children of King Henry VII. at the royal villa of
Eltham, near Greenwich. Erasmus' account of this visit, given many
years afterward,[46] is an explanation of how he came to write an ode
to the young prince. He was dragged into it, he says, by Thomas More,
who came to him while he was staying at Lord Mountjoy's in Greenwich
and invited him to take a walk for pleasure into the neighbouring
village.
[45] The earliest known letter of Erasmus to More (iii.¹, 55), a
mere note, bears date Oxford, Oct. 28, 1499. It refers to former
correspondence, and Mr. Seebohm, anxious to save the anecdote
of the dinner, is inclined to imagine an even earlier date and,
of course, a place other than Oxford. My impression is that the
date is correct, that Erasmus heard of More first at Oxford, then
began to correspond with him, and out of this correspondence
saved only the little note in question.
[46] In _Catalogus omnium Erasmi Rot. lucubrationum ipso autore.
Basil_, 1524, i., _ad init._
"There all the royal children were being educated, with the
exception of Arthur the eldest.... In the centre stood Henry,
a boy of nine, but already with a certain regal bearing, that
is a loftiness of mind joined with a singular courtesy of
demeanour. At his right was Margaret, then about eleven, who
afterward married James, king of Scotland. At his left Mary,
a child of four, was playing, and Edmund, a babe, was carried
in his nurse's arms. More and his friend Arnold, having paid
their respects to the lad Henry, under whose reign Britain
now rejoices, offered him some writing--I know not what. I,
expecting nothing of this sort and having nothing to offer,
promised that I would prove my devotion to him in some way and
at some time or other. Meanwhile I was vexed with More, because
he had given me no warning and especially because the youth sent
me a note at dinner, challenging my pen. I went home, and though
the muses, from whom I had long been divorced, were hostile to
me, I produced an ode in three days. Thus I avenged the affront
and patched up my chagrin. It was a task of only three days and
yet a task, for it was several years since I had read or written
any poetry."
This rather silly tale is of interest only as giving the first
hint of any connection of Erasmus with the English royal family, a
connection not wholly without influence on his future. If More was
playing a joke on his friend, as has been generally assumed, it was
certainly a very poor one. Other indications of Erasmus' occupations
in England are found in a famous letter to his former teacher in
Paris, Faustus Andrelinus. It is a merry letter to a merry fellow and
must not be taken too seriously.[47]
[47] iii.¹, 56.
"I, too, in England have gone ahead not a little. 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? But then your
gout--bad luck to it, saving your presence!--keeps you away.
And yet if you knew the delights of Britain, Faustus, you would
hurry over here with winged feet, and if your gout wouldn't
let you, you'd pray to be turned into a Daedalus. Why, just
to mention one thing out of many: the girls here have divine
faces; they are gentle and easy-mannered. You'd like them better
than your Muses. Besides, there is a fashion here which can't
be praised enough. Wherever you go everyone kisses you, and
when you leave you are dismissed with kisses; you come back,
the sweets are returned. Someone comes to see you--your health
in kisses! he says good-bye--kisses again! You meet a person
anywhere,--kisses galore!--so wherever you go everything is
filled with these sweets. If you, Faustus, should just once
taste how delicious, how fragrant they are, you would long to
travel in England, not like Solon, for ten years only, but to
the end of your days. The rest we will laugh over together, for
I hope to see you very soon."
Two other Englishmen, both his seniors by some years, became
friends of Erasmus during this first visit,--William Grocyn and
Thomas Linacre. Grocyn was primarily a scholar and teacher, versed
especially in Greek. Linacre was a physician of the highest repute in
his day, and identified with the whole future of medical science in
England through his foundation of the London College of Physicians.
Both had studied in Italy and there had put themselves under
the influence of the leading personages in the later humanistic
generation. Both had become skilled in Greek learning, and were doing
their parts, each in his own way, to further the advancement of Greek
study in England. Grocyn was probably teaching Greek at Oxford when
Erasmus came thither, and so far as he ever acknowledged obligations
to any teacher, the younger man admits the great profit he derived
from this riper talent. In regard to Linacre he notes especially a
severe and painful accuracy which was, probably, the reason why he
left so little behind to attest his scholarship. He could not satisfy
his own exacting standards. With both these men Erasmus seems to have
lived on terms of affectionate intimacy. There are indications that
they were at times rather tired of his persistent begging, but this
did not interfere with their friendly interest, which ended only
with their lives.
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. That the idea was not a strange one to him
is clear from many indications. Especially was it forced upon him
by a suggestion from Colet that he might stay on at Oxford and join
him in what seemed then likely to be his life-work of expounding
the fundamental documents of Christianity upon the "new" basis of
science and common sense. What Colet's arguments were on this point
we can only guess from a reply of Erasmus, but they seem to have been
such as would come naturally from one scholar to another in whom
he thought he recognised a spirit kindred to his own. Colet lived
in that new world of thought which was the old, and saw before him
the mission of clearing away the mediæval rubbish that had piled up
in the long interval between the really old theology of the Greek
Fathers and the new thought of his own times. And here he seemed to
have found the man of all others best fitted to help him--young,
learned in the language and filled with the spirit of the ancients,
free from all ties of family or home and, apparently, deeply serious
in his interest in religious things. Colet had had a test of his
quality in several active discussions on points of theology, which
had brought out at once his learning and his desire for truth even at
the sacrifice of his own less well-considered opinions. Erasmus had
shown a docility in revising his judgments in very marked contrast
to his firmness when dealing with other opponents. The difference
was, that in facing Colet he found an opponent who was using his own
weapons with equal skill and even greater courage. In the letter
of Erasmus declining to remain at Oxford we hear nothing of the
question of ways and means. It is impossible that it should not
have been in his mind, but there is every reason to suppose that
it did not influence his decision. The only trustworthy patron he
had yet found was an Englishman; there was a chance of a university
appointment, and, failing this, the prospect of private pupils was
better in England than anywhere else. We are told _ad nauseam_ of a
considerable money loss which he suffered on leaving England. So that
we are sure almost beyond a doubt that his reasons for declining what
must have been a very tempting proposition were somehow connected
with his larger scholarly ambitions. [48]Of course he makes as much
as possible of his own modesty: Colet "is (to quote Plautus) asking
water of a rock." How should he have the face to teach what he has
never learned; how warm the frost of others when he himself was all
of a shiver with fear? He praises Colet for his courage and zeal in
the cause of the "ancient" theology as against the "new-fangled
race of theologians, who spend their lives in mere arguments and
sophistical quibbling." Not that he altogether condemns these
studies, for he approves of every kind of study,
[48] _Ep. ad Coletum_, v., 1263-1264.
"but taken by themselves, with no admixture of more refined
and ancient letters, they seem to make a man a conceited and
disputatious fellow--whether they can ever make him a wise man,
let others decide. For they seem to exhaust the mind with a kind
of crude and barren subtlety; there is no sap in them, nor any
real breath of life.
"I am not speaking against learned and approved professors of
theology, for I look up to them with the greatest respect, but
against that mean and haughty herd of theologians who think
all the writings of all authors are worth nothing compared to
themselves. When you, Colet, went into the fight against this
unassailable horde that, so far as in you lay, you might restore
that ancient and pure theology, now overgrown with their thorns,
to its early splendour and dignity, you took upon yourself, so
help me God!--a task in many ways most admirable, most loyal to
the name of Theology itself, most wholesome for all studious men
and especially for this blooming University of Oxford--but, I
don't conceal it, a task full of difficulty and of opposition.
Yet you will overcome the difficulty with your learning and
your industry, and your great soul can afford to overlook the
opposition. There are, too, among those theologians not a few
who are both willing and able to help such honest efforts as
yours. Nay, there is no one who would not join hands with you,
since there is not a doctor in this famous school who has not
listened most attentively to your lectures on St. Paul, now
going on for the third year....
"I am not wondering that you should take upon your shoulders a
burden to which you may be equal, but that you call me, a man
of no account whatever, to share in so great an enterprise. For
you ask me--nay you urge upon me, that as you are lecturing
upon Paul so I, by expounding the ancient Moses or the
eloquent Isaiah, should strive to rekindle the studies of this
school--chilled, as you say, by these long months of winter."
He goes on to protest his unfitness for the task and especially to
defend himself against the charge that he had given Colet reason to
believe he might accept his suggestion.
"Nor did I come hither to teach poetry or rhetoric, which have
ceased to be agreeable to me since they ceased to be necessary.
I refuse the one, because it does not accord with my plans, the
other because it is beyond my powers. You blame me wrongly in
the one case, my dear Colet, because I have never had before me
the profession of so-called secular literature, and you urge me
in vain to the other, because I know that I am unequal to it.
Besides, if I were never so fit, I could not do it, for I must
soon go back to my deserted Paris."
We seem to find here a suggestion that Colet had laid before him two
propositions,--one that he might become a teacher of the classic
literature in which he was already a master; the other that he should
join with himself in setting the meaning of Scripture free from the
absurd trammels which the scholastic methods of interpretation had
laid upon it. Either of these tasks, with a reasonable prospect of
support and the delightful intercourse of academic life, would, one
must suppose, have been a supreme attraction for Erasmus. The only
possible explanation of his refusal is his dread of putting his neck
into any yoke whatever, no matter how easy it might be. A possible
suggestion of this motive is found in the somewhat enigmatic sentence
that "poetry and rhetoric had ceased to interest him since they had
ceased to be necessary." This may have meant that literature in
itself was important to him only as a means of livelihood, and since
he was, at least temporarily, provided for, he did not care to teach
it at Oxford. Literature was henceforth to be a means to the higher
end of redeeming theology, the _regina disciplinarum_, the "queen of
sciences," from her present degradation. But for this latter work he
was not as yet prepared. If we ask why he did not choose to continue
his preparation under the very favourable conditions at Oxford, we
may perhaps find a partial answer in his deep-seated dislike of the
work of teaching. He could talk beautifully about it, but it seems
pretty clear that he always hated it. So Oxford lost a professor, but
the world gained a man.