CHAPTER V

RESIDENCE IN ITALY--THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY"

1506-1509

We have already noted Erasmus' often-expressed desire to visit

Italy. It is the alleged motive of his begging correspondence with

the Marchioness Anna in and about the year 1500. At that time he

professes to have little interest in Italy for its own sake, but

to be yielding to a popular delusion that a doctor's degree was

absolutely indispensable to a scholarly reputation and that an

Italian doctorate was worth more than any other. In England he is

quite satisfied that he has done just as well for his Greek and his

scholarly advancement in general as if he had gone to Italy; yet the

idea of the Italian journey seems never to have left him. It is an

interesting inquiry precisely what the real attraction of Italy to

Erasmus was.

One can easily draw a fancy picture of what ought to have attracted

him. Italy had naturally for the scholar of the Renaissance a

double interest, first as the seat of ancient Roman culture, and

again as the source and spring of that modern revival in which he

himself formed a part. It might well appeal to the instinct of the

antiquarian and the sight-seer, eager to bring visibly before

himself the remains of ancient splendour, the living and vivid

reminders of a mighty past. He might hope to live again in the

charmed atmosphere of Virgil and Horace, to sit amid the scenes

already familiar to him in the glowing pages of Cicero, and to

bring into his mind some more adequate understanding of the vast

achievements he had read of in the pregnant story of Livy or of

Julius Cæsar.

The appeal of Italy, in short, to the historical imagination is,

one would say, perhaps the most powerful that has ever come to a

scholar's mind from that land of enchantment. It was a time, too,

when men's thoughts and activities were turning eagerly to all that

side of the new classical study. For a century and a half, ever

since the days of Petrarch and Rienzi, the treasures of ancient

art, Greek as well as Roman, had been brought to light, gathered

into great collections, and made to do their part in the education

of Europe. The limits of the Eternal City had been turned into one

great treasure-house of precious reminders of former and presages of

a future greatness. The visitor to Rome or to Florence might study

from the originals the choicest forms in which the art of the ancient

world had expressed itself.

It is hard to fancy that Erasmus, in his thoughts of Italy, can

have failed to be drawn by the anticipation of living thus bodily

in the presence of the human world from which he drew his literary

inspiration and toward which all his serious thought went back

as to its natural source. Yet the fact is that neither in the

anticipation nor in the reality of his Italian journey do we find

such reference to these things as would warrant us in thinking that

they formed any essential part of his ideas about Italy. That sense

of an overwhelming grandeur, a something indescribably greater than

all that had come since, which has fallen upon so many an Italian

traveller, seems to have been entirely absent in his case. When

Goethe entered Italy, it was with bated breath and reverent awe at

the stupendous remains of a civilisation whose influence was even

then potent in the lives of men. So far as Erasmus has left us any

witness of himself his mind was occupied solely with the immediate

profit of the moment: his doctor's degree, his new publisher, the

petty comforts and discomforts of daily life.

[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE AND TITLE-PAGE FROM "L'ÉLOGE DE LA

FOLIE," PUBLISHED AT LEYDEN IN 1715.]

Still more curious is his attitude towards that other aspect of Italy

which might have been expected to impress him even more. As a man of

the Renaissance one might have looked to find Erasmus, even before

his departure, in correspondence with some of the lights of the later

Italian Humanism; yet, so far as we know, he went over the Alps a

stranger, except for the slight reputation of his own writings, and

chiefly of the Adages. The enormous activity of all those great

producers in every field of art, who have made the turning-point of

the fifteenth to the sixteenth century one of the great epochs in

human history, seems simply to have escaped his notice. We do not

hear of it as attracting him from the North; when he is in the midst

of it, it finds no echo in his correspondence, and when he leaves

it, there is nothing in his later writing to show that it had greatly

affected him. With the really greatest men of the land he seems not

to have come into any intimate personal relation, and he certainly

avoided here, as he had always done elsewhere, any complication with

political or social movements of any sort.

Our information in regard to the Italian journey and residence is

curiously meagre. In the great collection of Erasmus' letters,

there are but a half-dozen in the three years from 1506 to 1509. M.

Nolhac[67] has published four others written by Erasmus to Aldus, his

printer, but these latter are occupied almost wholly with unimportant

business details. Four of the former group are written from Paris

just after the party had left England and give us only some scattered

hints as to Erasmus' departure for Italy.

[67] P. de Nolhac, _Érasme en Italie, Étude sur un épisode de la

Renaissance, avec douze lettres inédites d'Érasme_, 1888.

The long-sought opportunity came to him in a form which he had once

vowed he would never accept, namely, through an engagement as private

tutor to the two sons of Battista Boerio, the Genoese physician of

King Henry VII. Beatus takes some pains to tell us that Erasmus was

not to teach these youths, but it is not quite clear what else his

function was. They had an attendant (_curator_) named Clyston, whom

Erasmus describes in one of these early letters as the most pleasant,

lovable, and faithful fellow in the world. The lads, too, were, he

says, most modest, teachable, and studious. He has great hopes that

they will fulfil the expectations of their father and reward his own

pains. The voyage across the Channel was a dreadful one, lasting

four days, so that a report spread in Paris that they were lost, and

Erasmus appeared among his friends, he says, like one risen from the

dead. The result was that he was taken with an illness, which he

describes so exactly as to leave no doubt that he had a good clear

case of the mumps.

From Paris the journey was by way of Lyons and the western Alps.

We have a brief account of it in that singular hodge-podge, the

catalogue of his writings, made by Erasmus eighteen years afterward

and sent to John Botzheim of Constance. The story of the journey

there given is only incidental to the account of a little poetical

dissertation[68] on the approach of old age which he wrote on the way

and sent back to Paris to his medical friend, William Cop. Erasmus

was only about forty years old, but he felt himself getting on in

life and declares here his determination to give up the charms of

pure literature and devote the rest of his days to Christ alone.

Most serious men of the Renaissance from Petrarch and Boccaccio down

had had their moments of self-reproach for their over-devotion to

the heathen Muses and perhaps Erasmus' feeling on this point was as

sincere as that of his colleagues. Surely his life up to this time

had not been so frivolously classical as to cause him any deserved

regrets. He represents this poem as written to relieve his mind from

the unpleasantness of his companions, especially the distinguished

Clyston, who was now already as dreadful a being as a few weeks

before he had been charming. While Clyston was alternately brawling

and drinking with an English man-at-arms whom the king had specially

deputed for their protection, Erasmus was, he says, devoting himself

to poetical reflection and composition. Another reference to this

journey is probably found in the well-known colloquy "_Diversoria_,"

in which one of the speakers describes the charms of the French

inns, their cleanliness, their good wines and cookery, and the

great efforts of the landladies and their fair attendants to make

things pleasant for the traveller. All this is then made the more

effective by a counter-description of the swinish customs of the

inns in Germany.[69] Again we have an illustration of Erasmus'

æsthetic indifference. It is not a sufficient answer to say that

joy in outward nature is a purely recent emotion. The whole art of

the Renaissance is the witness that men had long since escaped from

this form of mediæval bondage and were quite able to understand that

they were living in a good world, made for their delight and not

wholly under the dominion of Satan. A journey on horseback across the

Alps! and, so far as we know, this prince of learned men, who could

discourse so eloquently upon every human feeling, had not one emotion

beyond a desire to get across as soon as possible and a lively sense

of the comforts and discomforts of his inns.

[68] _Carmen equestre vel potius Alpestre_, iv., 755.

[69] See page 226.

If a doctor's degree was one of Erasmus' objects in coming to Italy,

he certainly lost no time in fulfilling it. The degree was conferred

on him at Turin September 4, 1506.[70] Erasmus took especial pains to

state in at least four letters that he took this degree to please his

friends, not himself; but made no objection to its immediate use in

his publications. From Turin he went on to Bologna where he proposed

to settle for his own studies, as well as for those of his young

pupils. The country was in a distressing state of confusion and that

of a kind especially offensive to Erasmus. War was bad enough at the

best, but a papal war was a scandal to the name of Christianity, and

a fighting pope was to him a monster of iniquity. He held his pen

quietly enough at the time, but the impression of this pope, Julius

II., leading a campaign for the recovery of Bologna from the French

never quite left him. It served him for a text whenever he felt free

to speak his mind on the subject of war or on the decline of virtue

in the church. A turn in affairs gave Bologna to Julius II. and

furnished to Erasmus the opportunity of seeing the triumphal entry

of the pope into his city. He simply reports the event to Servatius,

his old comrade at Steyn, without mentioning that he had witnessed

it, and only long afterward casually refers to his presence, in the

course of a formal defence against the charge of abusing the papacy.

[70] See the diploma in W. Vischer, _Erasmiana_, Basel, 1876.

"In the passage ... I compare the triumphal entries

(_triumphos_) which, in my presence, Julius II. made first at

Bologna and afterwards at Rome, with the majesty of the apostles

who converted the world by divine truth and who so abounded in

miracles that the sick were healed by their very shadow, and

I give the preference to this apostolic splendour; yet I say

nothing abusive against those [other] triumphs, although to

speak frankly I gazed upon them not without a silent groan."

Two little notes to Servatius at this time are quite in the usual

tone of Erasmian discontent. He says that his principal object in

coming to Italy was to study Greek but "_jam frigent studia, fervent

bella_" "studies are cold, but wars are hot,"--he will endeavour to

fly back again very soon and hopes to see his friend the following

summer. While wars are planning study takes a holiday. He makes an

identical promise to another friend and was probably quite sincere

in fancying that Italy, like every other place he had tried, was a

failure. Evidently he was in trouble about his pupils. Writing to one

of them twenty-five years afterward[71] he says:

[71] iii.², 1397.

"it was the fault of that fellow, whom you nickname the

'_scarabeus_,' not only that I had to leave you sooner than I

had intended, but that the pleasure of our companionship was

so embittered that if I had not been kept by a sense of duty,

I could not have endured that monster for a month. I have

often wondered that your cautious father could have been so

thoughtless as to intrust his most precious treasures to a man

who was scarce fit to keep swine, nay, who was of such feeble

mind that he rather needed a keeper himself."

The whole affair is almost an echo of the trouble with the "old man"

at Paris and would be too trifling for notice were it not almost the

only incident in connection with Erasmus' residence of more than a

year at Bologna which has come down to us. Of course the climate was

bad and especially unsuited to his requirements.

The summer of 1507 found Erasmus still at Bologna. It was an

exceptionally hot season--so he says--and the plague broke out with

violence. It is apropos of this plague and an incident which he

relates in connection with it, that we come once more to the famous

letter, mentioned early in our narrative,[72] in which Erasmus begs

to be released from the obligation of wearing the monastic dress.

The letter is addressed to Lambertus Grunnius, a papal secretary

at Rome, and contains, by way of introduction, that long series of

details about the compulsory entrance into the monastery of a youth

called Florentius, which has been generally accepted as a truthful

narrative of the writer's own experience. We have already followed

the indications of this letter with some care down to the point where

Erasmus was safely invested with the monastic garb and had made up

his mind to make the best of it. At this point, with one of those

jumps so common in his style, he comes to the time of his Italian

visit and continues:

[72] See Introduction.

"Some time afterward it happened that he went into a far country

for the purpose of study. There, according to the French

custom, he wore a linen scarf above his gown, supposing that

this was not unusual in that country.[73] But from this he

twice was in danger of his life, for the physicians there who

serve during a plague, wear a white linen scarf on their left

shoulder, so that it hangs down in front and behind, and in this

way they are easily recognised and avoided by the passers-by.

Yet, unless they go about by unfrequented ways they would be

stoned by those who meet them, for such is the horror of death

among those people, that they go wild at the very odour of

incense because it is burned at funerals. At one time when

Florentius was going to visit a learned friend, two blackguards

fell upon him with murderous cries and drawn swords and would

have killed him, if a lady fortunately passing had not explained

to them that this was the dress of a churchman and not of a

doctor. Still they ceased not to rage and did not sheathe their

swords until he had pounded on the door of a house near by and

so got in.

[73] In another place he says that he changed his dress in Italy

to conform to the custom of the country, iii., 1527.

"At another time he was going to visit certain countrymen of his

when a mob with sticks and stones suddenly got together and urged

each other on with furious shouts of 'Kill the dog! Kill the dog!'

Meanwhile a priest came up who only laughed and said in Latin in a

low voice: 'Asses! Asses!' They kept on with their tumult, but as a

young man of elegant appearance and wearing a purple cloak came out

of a house, Florentius ran to him as to an altar of safety, for he

was totally ignorant of the vulgar tongue and was only wondering what

they wanted of him. 'One thing is certain,' said the young man: 'if

you don't lay off this scarf, you'll some day get stoned; I have

warned you, and now look out for yourself.' So, without laying aside

his scarf, he concealed it under his upper garment."

Such is the cock-and-bull story with which Erasmus, we know not

how many years later, amused the excellent Grunnius as a preface

to his petition for a papal dispensation from the duty of wearing

the monastic dress. It is too silly even for Mr. Drummond, who very

properly says that it is quite too much to believe either that

Erasmus would be in a plague-stricken city when he could get out of

it, or that any Italian could be so blind as not to know a monk from

a doctor! Certainly Erasmus would never wait to be pounded in the

street before finding out what dress he might safely wear. The reply

of Grunnius shows how the whole matter looked at Rome.

"MY DEAREST ERASMUS: I never undertook any commission more

gladly than the one you have intrusted to me and scarcely ever

succeeded in one more to my own mind. For I was moved not

so much by my friendship for you, strong as that is, as by

the undeserved misfortune of Florentius. Your letter I read

from beginning to end to the pope in the presence of several

cardinals and men of the highest standing. The most holy father

was extremely delighted with your style and you would hardly

believe how hot he was against those man-stealers; for greatly

as he favours true piety, by so much the more does he hate

those who are filling the world with wretched or wicked monks

to the great injury of the Christian faith. 'Christ,' he says,

'loves piety of the heart, not workhouses for slaves.' He has

ordered your permit to be made out at once and _gratis_ too....

Farewell, and give Florentius, whom I regard as I do yourself,

an affectionate greeting from me."

However much of truth or of fiction there may have been in this

famous letter, we may be tolerably sure that Erasmus thought of it

very much as he would of his Colloquies, as a piece of literary work

with a purpose at the bottom of it. At the time he sent it, perhaps

1514, his views were well known to the papal circle, and the abuse of

monks was far from unwelcome to the "enlightened" views of a monarchy

as worldly as any in all Europe. Doubtless Erasmus knew his Rome well

enough before he ventured to send such a fulmination as this into the

midst of it.

Of his other occupations at Bologna we know little. He does not

appear to have been a regular student at the famous university, but

rather to have worked by himself and to have got what help he could

from a Greek teacher named Bombasius, with whom he had later some

correspondence.[74]

[74] Beatus Rhenanus, in his brief summary of Erasmus' life,

says: "With the exception of the rudiments, he may truly be said

to have been self-taught. For the journey into Italy ... was

undertaken for the sake of visiting that famous land, not to take

advantage of the professors there. At Bologna he heard no one

of the public lecturers, but, satisfied with the friendship of

Paulus Bombasius ... he devoted himself to his studies at home."

"I never passed a more disagreeable year," he said long afterward;

but we have learned the formula by this time and could hardly expect

any other opinion from him of a year in which he had reached the

goal of his desires, was free from all burdens except the oversight

of two excellent pupils, was at one of the principal seats of

learning, in as good health as usual and working away at several

pieces of composition which he had undertaken of his own free choice.

It is as certain that this was a profitable year to Erasmus as it is

that he profited by those early monastic years of which he affected

later to have only the gloomiest recollections.

If any proof of this were wanting it would be found in the earliest

acquaintance of Erasmus with the famous Venetian printer and

publisher, Aldus Manutius, which begins at the close of the year at

Bologna and was to continue for many years to the great pleasure and

profit of both parties. Erasmus' first request to Aldus, introduced

by plentiful compliments upon his work, is that he will undertake

to reprint the translation of two tragedies of Euripides which had

already been published by Badius at Paris. That unlucky publisher, it

seems, had offered to make a second and better edition, but Erasmus

confides to Aldus his dread that Badius would only patch up old

errors with new ones, and says[75]:

[75] Nolhac, _Érasme en Italie_, Ep. i.

[Illustration: ALDUS P. MANUTIUS.

FROM AN OLD PRINT.]

"I should feel that my productions were on the way to

immortality if they should see the light by the aid of your

types, especially those small ones, the most tasteful of all.

Let it be so done that the volume shall be very small and let

the thing be put through with very slight expense. If it

shall seem good to you to undertake the business, I will furnish

_gratis_ the corrected manuscript which I am sending by this

messenger and will only ask for a few copies to give to my

friends."

He urges Aldus to haste because he may have to leave Italy very soon.

Everything thus points to an entire absence of plan in Erasmus'

mind. His only fixed intention was to go to Rome at Christmas, as he

informs Aldus in his next letter. The great publisher had evidently

agreed to print the tragedies and had made certain suggestions in

regard to readings, which indicate at once how much more than a mere

printer or publisher he was. Erasmus replies with his own views on

the passages in question and with very warm words of admiration

for Aldus. He wants these plays, he says, as New Year gifts to his

learned friends at Bologna, and these include "all who either know

or profess the classic literature." At Rome, also, he will want to

have some little work to recall him to his former acquaintances and

to make new ones; so he begs Aldus for a short introductory note,

which he will leave entirely to his discretion. It is an interesting

comment on Erasmus' relation to the Italian scholars that he should

have needed a publisher's introduction to commend him to them. Will

Aldus be so good as to send him twenty or thirty copies _de luxe_

(_codices estimatos_) for which he will pay in advance, c.o.d. or

in any way Aldus may direct? A singular reference in this letter is

worth noting for the light it sheds upon--I know not exactly what

aspect of Erasmus' character. He says:

"Leave out the epigram at the end of the tragedies. It was

written by a certain young Frenchman, at that time a servant of

mine, whom I had led to believe, by way of a joke, that these

verses ought to be printed, and I had given them to Badius at my

departure in the youth's presence to make him keep on hoping.

But I wonder whatever put it into Badius' head to print them,

for I told the man that I was only playing a joke on the lad."

In both these letters there is shown a studied disrespect for Badius

and an evident effort to gain the good will of Aldus, to whom Erasmus

speaks as to a superior person. "No doubt you will find many errors,

but in this matter I do not even ask you to be cautious."

This friendly beginning with Aldus had its immediate consequence for

Erasmus. He gave up his intention--if he had ever had it--of going to

Rome at Christmas, 1507, and we next find him in the early part of

1508 at Venice. He had thrown up the care of the young Boerios, for

reasons, perhaps, connected with his dislike of their attendant, but

certainly without any break with the lads themselves.

The specific purpose of Erasmus in going to Venice was to prepare a

new edition of his Adages, the first edition of which we noted as

made at Paris in 1500. Eight years of continuous occupation with

classic literature, and especially the progress he had meanwhile

made in the study of Greek, had given him an immensely increased

acquaintance with the kind of material he wished to use for this

collection. How far he had prepared the way by correspondence we do

not know; but it would seem that he went at the work at once and kept

on with it very steadily for about nine months. The peculiar nature

of the Adages, a mere collection of disconnected paragraphs without

any natural order or arrangement of any sort, made it possible for

Erasmus to work in a fashion very different from his usual one. It

was simply a question of getting the thing along bit by bit, and so

we find him sending in a daily instalment of "copy" and taking away a

daily batch of proof. The first typographical corrections were made

by a paid proof-reader, then the author corrected, and finally Aldus

himself read the proof, not so much, as he once said in reply to a

question of Erasmus, to ensure correctness as for his own instruction.

We gain from many scattered indications a picture, on the whole

very attractive, of this new activity.[76] It was Erasmus'

first experience as a fellow-worker with anyone, and it had its

uncomfortable aspects of course, or he would not have been Erasmus.

His critics, notably Scaliger, would have it afterward, on the

authority of Aldus himself, that Erasmus was little more than a paid

assistant in the printing-office, and one is at a loss to know why so

honourable an occupation should have seemed an occasion for reviling

him or worth his own while to deny. The obvious refutation lies in

the great amount of work required by the Adages themselves. He must

have been busy enough to refute other charges of Scaliger as to his

laziness. Whatever else he may have been, he was not lazy then nor

at any other time of his life. As to still another accusation we may

perhaps have our doubts. Scaliger says: "While you were doing the

work of half a man, reading [proof?] in Aldus' office, you were a

three-bodied Geryon for drinking."

[76] See the adage _Festina lente_, ii., 405, B-D.

The view of Erasmus at Venice which is reflected in Scaliger's tirade

may have come from the undoubted familiarity of Erasmus' relation

with Aldus and his family. Probably the most vivid conception of

such an early printing-office may be gained to-day by a visit to the

great house of Plantin at Antwerp, now happily preserved by the piety

of the municipality and kept as nearly as possible in the condition

it was in at the time of its great activity but little later than

that of the house of Aldus. It is an ample burgher residence, with

spacious living-rooms and every indication of a generous family life;

but under the same roof and in close connection with the living

apartments are also the rooms devoted to business. The working force

was in an intimate sense the "family" of the publisher, and from the

earliest moment of his arrival Erasmus seems to have formed one in

the Aldine corps. The principal account of this Venetian life is,

unfortunately to be found in the colloquy, "The Rich Miser," one

of the most scurrilous of all Erasmus' writings. The person here

exposed to the biting sting of his humour is Andreas d'Asola, the

father-in-law of Aldus Manutius. He seems to have been the economic

head of the Aldine household and, in some form, a partner in the

business, as were also his two sons, Federigo and Francesco. Erasmus

was received into this family on the same terms, apparently, as other

workers. The household consisted of thirty-three persons. Beatus

represents this arrangement as a kindness to Erasmus, to save him

from going to a hotel and, at all events, he remained a fellow-member

of this clan as long as he stayed in Venice. There was certainly no

compulsion upon him to do so unless he pleased, and common courtesy

ought to have prevented him from holding up to the ridicule of

the world a family and a people to whom, as he elsewhere freely

acknowledges, he owed every kind of assistance in his work and every

personal attention. The principal speaker in the _Opulentia sordida_

is one Gilbertus, who presents himself to his friend Jacobus in such

lean and pitiful guise that the friend inquires whether he has been

serving a term in the galleys. "No," he replies, "I have been at

Synodium, boarding with Antronius." The weather had been for three

months continually cold, so that he was nearly frozen to death; for

the only firewood they had had was green stumps which Antronius

rooted up by night out of the common land. In summer it was worse on

account of vermin, but Antronius never minded that, he was brought up

to it; and besides he was always off trading in everything that would

bring him in a penny of profit. Even on the funerals that went out

of his house he made his gain, and these were two or three at least

in the most healthful year; for he played such tricks with his wine

that some were always dying of the stone. Yet he weakened his wine by

throwing in a bucketful of water every day, and adulterated the meal

of which his bread was made by mixing chalk with it. The son-in-law

Orthrogonus, who stands for Aldus himself, comes in for his share of

abuse for aiding and abetting in this villany. Frequently Antronius

would come home pretending to be very ill and without appetite, and

then the whole family would have to starve on grey peas with a little

oil on them. Finally, however, dinner would be served, but such a

dinner! First a soup of water with lumps of old cheese soaked in

it, then a piece of fortnight-old tripe covered up with a batter of

eggs to cheat the eye, but not enough to deceive the sense of smell,

and, to close, some of the same stale cheese. The luckless boarder

saved his life by having a quarter of a boiled chicken served up with

each meal, but even this was a poor wretched fowl and he was stinted

in his meagre ration. Even his own private fresh eggs were stolen

by the women and rotten ones given him instead, and his own cask

of good wine was broached by the same thieves and drunk up without

remonstrance from the host.

The worst of it was that when they found out that the poor Northerner

was trying to keep soul and body together by buying extra things,

they set a doctor upon him to persuade him not to be such a glutton.

The doctor was a very good-natured fellow and finally compromised on

a supper of an egg and a glass of wine, admitting that he allowed

himself this indulgence, and, as Erasmus testifies, kept himself fat

and hearty on such a diet. The dialogue concludes with good Erasmian

hedging; for the grumbler confesses that if the food had been of good

quality he would have got on very well with the quantity, and, after

all, eating was largely a matter of habit and he, being used to a

different method, simply could not do with this. The final fling at

poor Andreas is to say that his sons, for whom he was doing all this

scraping and pinching, would make up for their scanty fare at home by

throwing their money away in riotous living outside.

Make what allowance we may for the humorous exaggeration of this

tirade, it cannot give us any but the lowest notion of its author's

fineness of feeling. The bit of truth contained in it was probably

that to Erasmus the usual manner of living of the well-to-do Italians

seemed meanly insufficient, while to the Italians his natural demands

seemed those of a glutton and a wine-bibber. Very likely his friends,

in the kindness of their hearts, called in a physician to persuade

him to consider his health by living more as they did. It is simply

the ever-repeated struggle of the Northerner, accustomed to much

animal food and to strong drink, to understand the frugal ways of

the South. Our interest in the whole incident is to notice that here

Erasmus contracted the disease which to his great bodily distress,

but also, it must be admitted, often to his great moral comfort, he

was to carry about with him to his death. He writes from Basel in

1523 to Francesco d'Asola, one of the youths to whom he gives such

a villainous character in his _Opulentia sordida_: "I have not

forgotten our former intimacy, nor would my gravel let me do so if I

would, for I first got it there and every time it comes it reminds me

of Venice." His own explanation of this attack is the badness of his

fare, especially the wine, which, he says, caused two or three deaths

from stone every year in the Aldine family; but we may be permitted

a doubt whether it was not rather due to his own imprudence and his

refusal to adapt himself to the simple manners of the country.[77]

[77] It seems quite clear that Erasmus was a victim to what is

now known as the "uric acid or gouty diathesis," a condition much

more likely to be produced by high living and heavy drinking than

by any such experience as he describes in the _Opulentia sordida_.

The Aldine printing establishment was a kind of literary club-house

for the finer spirits of the Republic, and Erasmus was here

introduced to them all. All were interested in his work and helped

him with manuscripts and suggestions; to such a degree, indeed, that

this was one of the counts in Scaliger's indictment against him.

Such aid may, however, easily be explained by the peculiar nature of

the Adages. Every available source, written, printed, or oral, was

properly laid under contribution for a work which was essentially a

compilation.

Of these men, none was of the first rank as a scholar; they were

the fair representatives of that humanistic generation which had

come into the great inheritance of culture prepared for it by two

previous generations. The early original impulse with its extravagant

individualism had settled down into a calmer, wider, and more

polished method of thought and work. Culture had made its way into

all departments of life and proved its right to exist by useful

service. Of the Venetian scholars we need mention but few. Two

Greeks, Marcus Musurus and Johannes Lascaris, were famous, the one

as a Greek teacher, the other as the literary purveyor of Lorenzo

the Magnificent and, at the time of Erasmus, as ambassador of King

Louis of France to the Republic. Girolamo Aleander, then a man of

twenty-eight, was preparing himself to teach Greek at Paris and, in

fact, went thither in 1508 with letters of introduction from Erasmus.

The two were to meet on another field when Aleander as legate of Leo

X. at the court of Charles V. was to be the chief agent in the papal

policy against Luther and was to reproach Erasmus in bitter terms for

his half-way policy towards the Reformation. Erasmus believed that he

was the author of the attacks of Scaliger, of whom he knew nothing,

and says in this connection that they were co-frequenters at Aldus's

and that he knew him as well as he knew himself.

Everything goes to show that the nine months of the Venetian visit

were months of eager work, relieved by intercourse with men of

genuine culture and of unbroken friendliness. That Erasmus should

have dwelt more upon the petty inconveniences of his life than upon

these weightier things is quite in character. The real monument of

his Venetian days is the great second edition of the Adages, in

substantially their final form.

From Venice Erasmus moved in the early autumn to Padua, the

university city of the Venetian territory. His immediate business

there was to take charge of a pupil, the young illegitimate son of

King James IV. of Scotland. This amiable youth, Alexander by name,

was already, at eighteen, burdened with the title of Archbishop of

Saint Andrews. He had come to Italy to study, and was commended to

Erasmus by his father to receive instruction in rhetoric. Erasmus

once uses him as an illustration of near-sightedness: "he could see

nothing without touching his nose to the book." Yet he was a most

clever fellow with his hand. Writing in 1528 to his Nuremberg friend

Pirkheimer about certain alleged manuscript forgeries, Erasmus tells

a pretty tale of Alexander, which shows a very pleasant relation

between them:

"he once showed me a printed book which I knew for certain I

had never read; but in the numerous marginal notes I recognised

my own handwriting. I asked him where he had got the book. 'I

acknowledge the writing,' I said, 'but the book I have never

read nor had in my possession.' 'Oh, yes,' he replied, 'you read

it once, but you have forgotten it; otherwise where did this

writing come from?' Finally, with a laugh, he confessed the

trick."

Marcus Musurus, his acquaintance at Venice, was here at Padua the

best friend and helper of Erasmus. He was in full activity as

professor of Greek, and though we have no record of any regular

instruction to the visitor, it is certain that Erasmus applied to him

for many details of his own work and held him always in grateful

memory. Indeed his short residence of but a few weeks at Padua seems

to have been an exception to the rule of tediousness. He refers to

Padua afterwards as the seat of a more serious scholarship than was

to be found at other Italian university towns. The formation of the

League of Cambrai between King Louis XII. of France, Pope Julius II.,

the Emperor Maximilian, and the King of Spain against the republic

of Venice broke up the quiet circle of Paduan scholars. Troops of

the allies began to make their appearance in Venetian territory

and Erasmus, reluctantly he says, was forced to move southward. He

travelled in the suite of the boy-archbishop, stopping first at

Ferrara, where he met a choice circle of resident scholars, among

whom was the young Englishman, Richard Pace. It was at Pace's house

that he was presented to the Ferrarese Humanists. A very pretty

little story is recalled by one of them, Cœlius Calcagninus, who in

writing to Erasmus in 1525 reminds him of their meeting in Ferrara,

and gives him a brief account of the other scholars whom he had met

there.

"We were talking," he writes, "of Aspendius the harp-player, and

the question came up as to the meaning of _intus canere_ and

_extra canere_, when you suddenly drew forth from your pouch a

copy of your Adages, just printed at Venice. From that moment I

began to admire the genius and learning of Erasmus, and scarce

ever have I heard mention of his name without recalling that

conversation almost with reverence. My witness is Richard Pace,

that man most learned himself and by nature made to be the

promoter of the studies of the most learned men."

Only a few days were spent at Ferrara and still less time at Bologna.

The party reached Siena at the very end of 1508 or the beginning

of 1509, and there settled definitely for the work of the young

archbishop. We have a very engaging picture of Erasmus as a teacher

of rhetoric in his comments upon the Adage, "Thou wast born at

Sparta; do honour to it."[78] He represents his pupil as a model of

all the virtues and gives us again an insight into his method of

teaching. It is always the same which he had himself employed in

learning, the method of persistent practice in repeating and writing

the language itself. A style was to be formed only by becoming

absolutely familiar with the classic model.

[78] ii., 554.

Yet the life at Siena, serene and charming as it may have been

for the pupil, was, if we may judge by his expressions in other

connections, more or less a bore to the master. He liked to think of

himself as an authority on the art of teaching, but he seems always

to have regarded teaching as being, for himself, an interruption to

the higher interests of his life. After a few weeks he was restless

again, and begged permission of his pupil to go on alone to Rome.

[Illustration: CARDINAL REGINALD POLE.

FROM "ERASMI OPERA," PUBLISHED AT LEYDEN, 1703.]

It is easy for a modern to picture the charm which the Eternal City

with its countless memorials of the ancient world must have exercised

upon a man whose life was devoted to the study of that world, who

spoke and wrote its language, and who drew from it almost the whole

material of his intellectual occupation. None of the biographers of

Erasmus has been quite able to resist the temptation to tell what

he must have thought and felt in this august presence; but candour

compels us to say that his own witness on this point is as meagre as

can well be imagined. Only one or two scattered expressions give us

any reason to think that his impressions of Rome were at all of the

kind they ought in all reason to have been. It was the pontificate of

Julius II., a man indeed chiefly devoted to the political interests

of his great place, but also an eager patron of art and learning,

doing his part in the attempt, never quite successful, to make Rome

a real centre of culture. What was true of the pope was true also

of that group of great prelates who formed around him a court more

splendid and not less worldly than that of any purely temporal ruler.

Say what one may and, in all truth, must say of the corruption and

scandal of the Roman institution, it was a life of immense activity

and, for a thinking man, one of great interest. Rome was alive with

building; painting and sculptural decoration were being carried to a

height unheard of in human history. The ancient monuments were, it is

true, fast disappearing to make room and to furnish material for new

construction, but enough was left to give the interested traveller

abundant suggestion of what had been. That Erasmus saw and, after

his fashion, noted these things is certain; but he felt no impulse

to dwell upon them or to speak of them to others. His life during

this first[79] visit at Rome was more completely that of the literary

traveller and sight-seer than it had ever been anywhere. There is no

pretence that he busied himself with study or with composition. So

far as he had any aim it seems to have been to make acquaintance with

men of his own kind and their patrons,--nor is there the slightest

room for suspicion that in making these connections he had in view

any ulterior advantage to himself. His best introduction was the book

of Adages, by this time widely known and everywhere justly welcomed

as a monument of vast learning, immense industry, and an originality

of thought not less noteworthy.

[79] There seems to be no sufficient reason to accept, as

Drummond does, a previous trip of Erasmus to Rome during his

residence at Bologna.

Perhaps the most intimate companion of these Roman days was Scipio

Carteromachos, a Tuscan scholar, with whom Erasmus had made

acquaintance at Bologna, and for whom he expresses unusual regard.

"He was a man," he writes, "of curious and accurate learning, but so

averse to display that unless you called him out you would swear that

he was quite ignorant of letters." They had met again at Padua, and

now lived for awhile at Rome apparently in the greatest intimacy,

sharing the same bed at times, though this it would seem was not

an unusual proof of friendship with Erasmus. Through Carteromachos

he was introduced to many others, scholars of the same type and

frequenters of the papal court. The result was that he found himself

brought into relation with the most distinguished Roman circle. He

makes the most of this fact afterward in defending himself from the

charge of unfaithfulness to the papal cause, and there would seem

to be no room for doubt that he was at least a well tolerated guest

of the men who were giving the tone to the ruling society of the

capital. He claims intimate acquaintance with Tommaso Inghirami, the

most popular preacher of the city, the type of religious orator who

gave scandal to the more serious by garnishing his oratory rather

with classic allusion and quotation than with proofs and texts

of the Bible. In his treatise on a false purity of style called

_Ciceronianus_, Erasmus gives us a choice specimen of this kind of

preaching.[80]

[80] i., 993, 994.

He says that he was urged by his learned friends at Rome to attend

the discourse of a famous pulpit orator whose name he would rather

have understood than expressed. The subject was the death of Christ.

Pope Julius II. himself was present, a most unusual honour, and with

him a great crowd of cardinals, bishops, and visiting scholars. The

opening and closing parts of the discourse, longer than the real

sermon itself, were occupied with praises of Julius, whom the orator

called

"'Jupiter Optimus Maximus, brandishing in his all-powerful right

hand the three-forked fatal thunderbolt and by his nod alone

doing what he will.' Everything that had happened in recent

years, in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Africa, Greece, he

declared had been done by the will of that man alone. All this

was said at Rome, by a Roman, in the tongue of Rome, and with

the Roman accent. But what had all this to do with Julius, the

high-priest of the Christian religion, the vicar of Christ, the

successor of Peter and Paul?--or with the cardinals and bishops,

the vicegerents of the other Apostles? As to the topic he had

undertaken to treat, nothing could be more solemn, more real,

more wonderful, more lofty, or more suited to kindle emotion.

Who, though he were endowed with but a very common kind of

eloquence, could not with such an argument have drawn tears from

men of stone? The plan of the discourse was this:--first to

depict the death of Christ as sad and then by a change of style

to describe it as glorious and triumphant--in order, of course,

that he might give us a specimen of Cicero's δεινώσεως, by which

he was able to carry away the emotions of his hearers at will.

"HYPOLOGUS:--Well, did he succeed?

"BULEPHORUS:--For my part, when he was working his hardest upon

those melancholy feelings which the rhetoricians call πάθη, to

tell the truth I was more inclined to laugh. I did not see a

person in that whole concourse one whit the sadder, when he was

piling up with the whole force of his eloquence the unmerited

sufferings of the innocent Christ. Nor, on the other hand, did

I see anyone the more cheerful when he was wholly occupied with

showing forth His death to us as triumphant, praiseworthy, and

glorious....

"Not to make more words about it, this Roman talked in such

a very Roman fashion that I heard nothing about the death of

Christ. And yet, because he was so eagerly striving after a

Ciceronian diction, he seemed to the Ciceronians to have spoken

marvellously. Of his subject he said hardly a word; he seemed

neither to understand it nor to care for it. Nor did he say

anything to the point nor rouse any emotion. The only reason

for praising him was that he spoke like a Roman and recalled a

something of Cicero. If such a discourse had been delivered by a

schoolboy to his mates it might have been praised as an evidence

of a certain talent; but on such a day, before such an audience,

and on such a topic, I pray you, what sense was there in it?"

Among the cardinals two are especially mentioned as friendly to our

traveller, Raffaelle Riario, nephew of Julius II., and the Venetian

Grimani. If we may trust Erasmus' allusions, he was in the way of

frequently going in and out at the houses of great men, but his

character as a man of letters, whom it was their pride and pleasure

to favour, seems to have been strictly maintained. In the great

throng of followers of a princely establishment, one wandering

scholar more or less made no great matter, and it would not do, from

the words "hospitality" and "familiarity" to argue any very close

personal intimacy.

What strikes one most forcibly is the almost total absence of

anything like discussion on public affairs. The only topic on which

Erasmus thinks it worth while to make any report is classical

studies, and on this he gives us only brief detail. There is no

indication that this visit to Rome had any decisive influence upon

Erasmus' attitude towards the Church. That was already determined.

Nothing could be more distinct than his declarations in the

Enchiridion and now, quite recently, in the Adages. Rome could hardly

fail to furnish him with new suggestions and illustrations, but it

was as far from forcing him into any new attitude of opposition as it

was from so influencing Luther on his visit a year later. Both saw

many things which startled and shocked them, but Erasmus had already

reached the limit of his critical development and Luther had hardly

as yet begun to formulate his criticism of the Roman institution.

The only exception to the rule of exclusion from public affairs is

found in the invitation of Cardinal Riario to write a dissertation

on the subject of the proposed war against Venice. It was a most

ticklish commission, and Erasmus' solution of it was more than

Erasmian. He wrote two treatises, one for the war and the other

against it, that those who were to pay their money might have their

choice. He put more heart into the second, he says, but the advice

of the first was followed. Both these treatises were lost, he tells

us, by the treachery of some person. There was an unfounded rumour

that the grim old soldier-pope, finding Erasmus' sentiments against

war very little to his taste, sent for the author and warned him in

future to let politics alone; but it is highly improbable that if

Erasmus had had an interview with the pope, even under so untoward

circumstances, he would have failed to make some mention of it.

Yet it would be far from true that Erasmus lived in Rome with his

eyes shut. Numerous little allusions to Roman and Italian traits in

his later writings show that he was here, as everywhere, very much

of a human being, keenly alive to what was going on about him and

mindful of its use on future occasions.

The young archbishop was soon recalled to Scotland, and four years

afterward he met his death, fighting bravely by his father's side

on the fatal field of Flodden. Before leaving Italy he desired to

see Rome, and in his company Erasmus, who had meanwhile returned to

Siena, went back again as learned guide and companion. They seem to

have gone southward as far as Naples, but to have made only a flying

visit even in Rome. Erasmus remained there after his pupil had left,

and it is during this final visit that the question of a permanent

residence begins to be discussed.

As to the possibility or probability that Erasmus would definitely

settle at Rome, there is room for difference of opinion. If one may

judge from his own allusions there was no country, in which he made

any considerable stay, which did not at one time or another occur

to him as a possible residence for his declining years, and on this

general principle, why not Rome as well as another place? Our study

of his character up to this point, however, should lead us at once to

understand that, of all places in the world, Rome was least suited

to his peculiar genius. Although he was quite capable of defending

both sides of any argument, he could not be happy where he must

either do this all the time or else commit himself without reserve

to the dominant tone of a society which would eventually absorb him

completely. Furthermore, the almost inevitable condition of a Roman

residence was the holding of an ecclesiastical office and this,

no matter how high it might be--the higher in fact the worse--was

as far as possible from the line of Erasmus' ambition. Beatus says

he was offered the very high function of papal penitentiary, with

a hint that this might be a stepping-stone to higher dignities.

When we consider the kind of official places filled by many of the

Italian humanists, such an offer does not seem improbable. Less clear

is one's feeling about a proposition made by the Venetian Cardinal

Grimani that Erasmus should attach himself to his personal following

and, presumably, continue to live the life of an independent scholar.

Erasmus' account of his interview with the cardinal is worth while

for us because of its many details. It was written in 1531, after the

death of Grimani, and is given in a letter[81] apropos of a reference

to the cardinal's services to the cause of letters, especially in

maintaining so large and valuable a library.

[81] iii.², 1375 A-D.

[Illustration: CARDINAL PETER BEMBO.

FROM "ERASMI OPERA," PUBLISHED AT LEYDEN, 1703.]

"When I was at Rome I was invited once and again by him, through

Pietro Bembo, if I am not mistaken, to an interview with him,

and though I was at that time very averse to seeking the company

of great men, I at last went to his palace more from shame than

from desire. Neither in the courtyard nor in the vestibule did

the shadow of a human being appear. It was the afternoon hour.

I gave my horse to my man and went up alone, found no one in

the first hall, nor in the second, and still on to the third,

finding not a door closed and wondering at the solitude. Only

in the last did I find one man, a Greek physician I believe,

with shaven head, guarding the open door. I inquired what the

cardinal was doing. He replied that he was within talking with

some gentlemen, and as I said no more he asked what I wished.

'To make my compliments to him,' I said, 'if convenient, but as

he is not at leisure, I will call again.' Then, as I was about

to go and was looking out of the window, the Greek returned to

me and waited to see if I had any message for the cardinal.

'There is no occasion to interrupt his conference,' I said; 'I

will come again soon.' Finally he asked my name and I gave it

to him. When he heard it he rushed in before I knew it and soon

coming out said I was not to go away and I was summoned at once.

As I came in the cardinal received me not as a cardinal and such

a cardinal might receive a man of the lowest condition, but as

a colleague. A chair was set for me and we talked more than two

hours, during which he did not permit me to take off my hat.

For a man at the very height of fortune his graciousness was

marvellous. Among the many things he said about study, showing

that he had then in mind what I learn he has since done about

his library, he began to urge me not to leave Rome, the nurse

of genius. He invited me to share his palace and the enjoyment

of all his fortunes, adding that the warm and moist climate of

Rome would suit my health, and especially that part of the city

where he had his dwelling, a palace built by a former pope who

had chosen the site as being the most healthful in the city.

After we had had considerable discussion he sent for his nephew,

who had just been made archbishop, a youth of an almost divine

disposition. As I started to rise he forbade me, saying:--'It is

becoming for the pupil to stand before the master.' At length he

showed me his library of books in many tongues.

"If I had known this man earlier I should never have left a

city which I found favourable to me beyond my deserts. But I

had already arranged to go and matters had gone so far that I

could hardly have remained honourably. When I said that I had

been summoned by the king of England, he ceased to urge me, but

begged me over and over again not to suspect him of not meaning

what he had said nor to judge him according to the usual manners

of courtiers. With difficulty I got away from the conference;

but when he was unwilling to detain me longer, he laid it upon

me with his last words that I should see him again on the

subject before I left the city. I did not return, unhappy man

that I was, lest I should be overcome by his kindness and change

my mind. But what can one do against the fates!"

This interview was held at the last moment of Erasmus' stay in

Rome, before his departure for England. His account makes it clear

that he had not known Grimani before, so that we cannot reckon him

among Erasmus' Roman patrons. Nor can we give too much weight to

the promises of employment. From the connection in which Erasmus

introduces the story it seems quite probable that the cardinal had

some idea of making use of him in connection with his library; but

the great scholar had no fancy for being anybody's librarian. His

laments that he had not listened to Grimani's proposition may safely

be treated as conventional.

From Rome Erasmus journeyed rapidly by way of Bologna, through

Lombardy, over the Splügen Pass to Chur, Constance, and Strassburg,

where he took ship on the Rhine for Holland. We hear of him at

Louvain and Antwerp and then in England early in July, 1509. What

was the fruit of his nearly three years in Italy? He had perfected

himself in Greek, as far at least as he needed to go for the

purposes he had most at heart. He was Doctor Erasmus, and needed no

longer to feel himself overshadowed by the superior display of some

inferior talent. He had given to the world in his Adages a great and

serious work, which was welcomed with the greatest approval by those

most competent to judge. He had seen for himself something of the

life of that people which had done most to bring pure learning to

honour. Finally he had made personal connections within the world of

scholars, which were likely to be of great future service to him.

It would be most interesting if we could perceive with any

distinctness the direct effect of this experience upon Erasmus'

literary production, but such effect cannot be traced in any

instructive way. There are of course references to Italy to be found

henceforth in many of his writings, but it would be too much to say

that the Italian visit was in any way epoch-making for his literary

character. Literature was not a thing of nationalities; it was

cosmopolitan, and the scholar was as much, or as little, at home in

one place as in another. The genius of Erasmus ripened slowly and

naturally, following the lines of its early choice and moving on

without noteworthy interruption to its highest achievement.

Still, few biographers have failed to fancy a connection of cause

and effect between the Italian impressions of Erasmus and the famous

satire, in which almost at once on his arrival in England he gave

free rein to his criticism of church and society. Certainly his

illustrations in the Praise of Folly point often to abuses which he

might have seen and felt in Italy. His direct attacks upon popes and

cardinals can hardly fail to have gained an added point from his

observation at first hand. What is not clear is that such stimulus to

his reforming zeal was anything more than incidental.

[Illustration: ERASMUS. "FOLLY" AS PROFESSOR.

HOLBEIN'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY."]

In all the earlier writing of Erasmus we have noted especially the

quality of the moral preacher. Whatever he touched took on inevitably

the tone of exhortation. And this same quality continues to appear

in all his work, whenever the subject rises, even ever so little,

above the level of mere grammatical detail. One ought to have this

prevailing seriousness of purpose especially in mind in coming to

such a piece of work as the Praise of Folly.[82] Of all Erasmus'

writing, none was and is more widely known than this. It is called a

satire and was intended to make men laugh. Erasmus had to apologise

for it, as he did for most things he wrote, and in the introductory

epistle to his dear More he apologises in advance for allowing

himself so lively a diversion. There can be no doubt that the men

of his day were vastly amused by it. It had for them the charm that

always belongs to literary references to familiar types and figures,

especially if these references are couched in colloquial phrase.

Erasmus was tolerably sure of his audience, and could count upon

applause from every class for the amusement it got out of his

criticism of all other classes of men. Yet it is a little difficult

for one of us to raise more than an honest smile at this elaborate

fooling. After all, one feels the sermon underneath, and pays his

tribute to the author, not primarily as a humourist, but as a man of

sense who lightens his style a little, to be sure, yet remains all

through plainly conscious of his mission. If one seeks an analogy,

one may say, perhaps, that the Praise of Folly is about as funny as

an average copy of Punch.

[82] iv., 405-503.

Erasmus' account of the origin of the Μωρία is as trifling as in

the case of most of his works. He tells More that he thought it out

during his journey from Italy to England in 1509, and he put it

into form at More's house in London soon after. The title, Μωρίας

ἐγκώμιον, he explains as a pun on More's name, the humour of it

being that More was "as far from the thing as his name was near it."

The book is written under the form of an oration, a _declamatio_

the author calls it, delivered by Folly in person to an imaginary

audience made up of all classes and conditions of men. Folly is a

female, and this is quite in harmony with most of Erasmus' references

to the sex. She wears cap and bells as her academic garb and brings

to the lecture-room her attendant spirits, Self-love, Flattery,

Oblivion, Laziness, Pleasure, Madness, Wantonness, Intemperance,

and Sleep. Folly is the offspring of Wealth and Youth, born in the

Fortunate Isles, where all things grow without toil, and nursed by

the jovial nymphs, Drunkenness and Ignorance.

The oration begins by Folly commending herself as indispensable to

the well-being of men. Their very existence is owing to her, for no

man would put his head into the halter of marriage if he thought it

over carefully beforehand as a wise man would; and no woman would

marry if she carefully considered the sorrows of childbirth. Marriage

therefore is owing wholly to Madness, the companion of Folly. But no

woman, having once experienced the pains of child-bearing, would ever

submit herself to them again but for another of Folly's ministers,

Oblivion, who comes in thus to save the race. From this first example

we can see how Erasmus plays with the meaning of the word "folly." It

is quite impossible to define it by any one term which would cover

his numerous variations, but we may see plainly from the start that

it is very far from being what we mean, in plain modern English, by

the word "foolishness." It comes nearer to the meaning we find in

Shakespeare of "innocent" or "thoughtless." "Folly" is the opposite

of studied calculation for a mere material end. It is the impulse by

which men perform their noblest actions. It is imagination, idealism,

sacrifice of self for others. Nowhere does Erasmus lay down any such

general definition as this, but his examples show that some such

meaning was in his mind, and the Folly whom he allows to praise

herself is therefore really a very praiseworthy person. She hates the

materialism of the Philistine--the cool, calculating merchant-spirit

which would reduce life to a thing of dollars and cents--and she

finds her illustrations of what is noble pretty nearly where an

optimistic philosopher of modern times would find them.

The happiest times of life, says Folly, are youth and old age, and

this for no reason but that they are the times most completely under

the rule of folly, and least controlled by wisdom. It is the child's

freedom from wisdom that makes it so charming to us; we hate a

precocious child. So women owe their charm, and hence their power,

to their "folly," _i. e._, to their obedience to impulse. "But if,

perchance, a woman wants to be thought wise, she only succeeds in

being doubly a fool, as if one should train a cow for the prize-ring,

a thing wholly against nature." A woman will be a woman, no matter

what mask she wear, and she ought to be proud of her folly and make

the most of it.

In dealing with Friendship, Folly first reminds her hearers that

every man has his faults and plenty of them, and that everyone is

all too keen in spying out the faults of others and forgetting his

own. But now there could be no such thing as friendship "were it not

for that which the Greeks so beautifully call εὐήθεια, and which may

be translated 'folly' or 'good nature.'" Here Erasmus himself makes

"_stultitia_" the equivalent of "_morum facilitas_." And not the

relation of friends merely, but of husband and wife, ruler and ruled,

scholar and tutor, all human relations, in short, are made tolerable

by this rule of human kindness. And as the blindness of love to

others makes human life bearable, so Self-love, one of Folly's

intimates, is the indispensable aid to happiness, since if a man were

continually ashamed of himself, of his person, his country, he would

never rise to any worthy action. Courage is the very inspiration of

Folly, and the proof is the stupid bungling of great thinkers when

they try to do things. Socrates could not make a political speech,

and showed his wisdom by declaring that a wise man ought to keep out

of public business. Plato's famous saying: "happy the state that

is ruled by a philosopher, or whose ruler is given to philosophy,"

is false, for history shows that there were never more unfortunate

states than those so governed. Theorisers, in short, have ruined what

they undertook to manage, but states have been saved by such divine

folly as that of Quintus Curtius, who, possessed by some demon of

vainglory, sacrificed himself to the infernal gods. Wise men would

condemn such acts, but the pens of eloquent men have glorified them.

Strange as it may seem, even the virtue of prudence is owing to folly,

"for the wise man goes to the books of the ancients and gets out

of them nothing but wordy discussions, while the fool, grappling

with the world in hand-to-hand conflict, learns, if I mistake

not, the true prudence." "Modesty and fear are the two great

obstacles to the understanding of affairs; but Folly, being

hindered by neither of these, blushes at nothing and attempts

everything."

[Illustration: A THEOLOGIAN. A COUNCIL OF THEOLOGIANS.

HOLBEIN'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY."]

The wise man thinks of reason only and leaves all the passions to

Folly, but when this kind of thing has its perfect work, as among the

Stoics, then you have left

"not so much a man as a new kind of god that never yet

existed anywhere and never will; or rather, to say it plainly,

a marble image of a man, dull and almost devoid of human

sensibility; a man who measures everything by the line, never

makes any mistakes himself, but has the eye of a lynx for the

least failings of others. That's the kind of a beast your truly

wise man is!"

But who has any use for such a creature? Who would have him for a

ruler, a general, a husband, a friend?

"Who would not prefer one taken out of the very midst of the

crowd of fools, who being a fool himself would know how to

command and obey fools, who would be agreeable to his kind,

namely, the great majority of men, pleasant to his wife, merry

with his friends, a lively table-companion, a good-tempered

comrade, in short a man '_qui nihil humani a se alienum

putet_'--'who holds nothing human foreign to himself.'"

This comes as near a definition of his "_stultus_" as any hinted at

by Erasmus. In this sense the book might have been called "the praise

of human nature," for "wisdom" is treated systematically as meaning

something contrary to natural human instinct. Such over-wise wisdom

embitters life, but folly makes it sweet and precious.

"Now, I think, you see what would happen if men were wise all

the time. Faith! we should have need of another clay and another

Prometheus for a potter. But I, Folly, sometimes by ignorance,

sometimes by thoughtlessness, sometimes by forgetfulness

of evils or the hope of good, and scattering the sweetest

pleasures, so comfort men in the greatest misfortunes that

they are not glad to die even when the measure of the Fates is

fulfilled and life has actually left them. The less reason they

have to cling to life the more they rejoice in living, so far

are they from being wearied with its burden."

Real misery is to be out of harmony with Nature--shall we call man

miserable because he cannot fly like the birds, nor walk on all fours

like beasts? "We might as well call a war-horse unhappy because he

doesn't know grammar and cannot eat pie." So Erasmus goes on, in

extravagant praise, to glorify Nature as contrasted with Art. That

life alone is happy which comes near to Nature, as that of bees and

birds; the nearer these natural creatures are brought to the life of

man, the more they degenerate. Of all men the happiest are those we

call "_moriones_," "_stultos_," "_fatuos_," "_bliteos_"; they have no

fears, no ambitions, neither envy nor love. They are always merry;

everyone likes them and pets them; the very beasts recognise in them

a kind of sacred being. Princes cannot live without them, and value

their plain-speaking more than the flatteries of their counsellors.

How much pleasure comes in this world from hobbies! One man delights

in hunting, with all its absurd ceremonies; another has a rage for

building; others are chasing after new inventions, hunting for a

fifth essence. Others take to gaming and go to ruin with it, but

Folly is not quite clear whether to claim these as her children or

not. She has no doubt, however, about those who show their folly

by superstitious observances in religion, and here, it will be

observed, Erasmus' definition of folly gradually shifts. From this

point on it begins to slide over into a meaning something more nearly

like what we should be inclined to give it. Folly herself cannot be

consistent when she comes to religious fraud. Self-deception is a

very useful and pleasant thing, but no gentleness of judgment is due

to those

"who hug the silly though pleasant persuasion that if they see a

wooden or painted Polyphemus-Christopher, they will not die that

day; or who salute a statue of St. Barbara with a fixed formula

of words if they get home safe from a battle; or, if they call

upon Saint Erasmus on certain days with candles and prayers,

fancy that they will soon get rich. Now they have invented a

George-Hercules, like a new Hippolytus, and come precious near

worshipping the very horse of him, decked out with breastplates

and ornaments." "But what shall I say of those who flatter

themselves so sweetly with counterfeit pardons for their crimes,

who have measured off the duration of Purgatory without an error

as if by a water-clock, into ages, years, months, and days like

the multiplication-table?... Now suppose me some tradesman,

or soldier, or judge, who by paying out a penny from all his

stealings, thinks the whole slough of his life is cleaned out at

once--all his perjuries, lusts, drunkennesses, all his quarrels,

murders, cheats, treacheries, falsehoods, bought off by a

bargain and bought off in such a way that he may now begin over

again with a new circle of crimes!... And isn't it much the same

thing when the several countries claim for themselves each its

special saint with his special function and his special forms of

worship?--as, for example, this one is good for the toothache,

that one helps women in travail, another restores stolen

property; this one shines upon shipwreck and that one takes

care of the flocks and so on--for it would be too long a story

to go through the whole list. There are some that are good for

more things than one and of these especially the virgin mother

of God, to whom the mass of men now pay more honour than to the

Son."

And yet after all, the things men get from the saints are only the

appurtenances of Folly.

The world is full of fools, yet the priests are glad to get them all

for their own profit.

"But if some hateful wise man were to arise and say what is

true:--'to live well is the way to die well; you will best get

rid of your sins by adding to your money hatred of vice, tears,

vigils, prayers and fasting, and a better life; the saint will

help you if you imitate his life'--I say if a wise man were to

come prating such stuff as this, how much happiness he would

destroy and what trouble he would bring upon mortals!"

There is no class of fools to whom Erasmus pays his respects with

heartier good will than to those whom he calls "grammarians." Folly

claims these for her choicest sons. Nothing could be more wretched

than their profession were it not for their foolish self-esteem and

the skill with which they make others have as good an opinion of them

as themselves. The pettiness of their aims, the nastiness of their

schoolrooms, the tumult of their pupils, are all concealed by the

friendly aid of Folly, who makes them believe themselves "rulers of a

kingdom as great as that of Phalaris or Dionysius."

[Illustration: EVERYONE HAS HIS HOBBY. PILGRIM FOLLY. "FOLLY"

CONCLUDES HER LECTURE.

HOLBEIN'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY."]

"What a joy if they find out who was the mother of Anchises

or discover some little word unknown to the vulgar, for

instance, '_bubsequa_' (a cowherd), '_bovinator_' (a brawler),

'_manticulator_' (a cut-purse), or dig up somewhere a piece of

an old rock, cut with worn-out letters--by Jove! what bragging,

what triumphs, what glorification! as if they had conquered

Africa or taken Babylon."

The grammarians enjoy nothing so much as rubbing each other's

back--unless it be roundly abusing each other.

The quibblings of the philosophers are among Folly's choicest

products, and from these she runs on naturally to Erasmus' especial

black beasts, the scholastic theologians. Quite in the spirit of the

_Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_, but more decently, he enumerates the

problems which, so Folly says, chiefly interest them,--

"whether there was any instant of time in the divine generation?

whether there was more than one 'filiation' in Christ? is it a

possible proposition that the Father could hate the Son? Could

God have taken the form of a woman, a devil, an ass, a squash,

or a stone? How the squash would have preached, done miracles,

hung upon the cross? What would Peter have consecrated if he had

celebrated the Eucharist while Christ was still hanging on the

cross? etc."

Not the eyes of Lynceus, which could see through a stone wall, could

penetrate the refinements of these people. And these difficulties are

all increased by the multitude of the schools,

"so that one might sooner get out of a labyrinth than out of

the windings of Realists, Nominalists, Thomists, Albertists,

Occamists, Scotists. And these not all by any means, only the

chief of them. In them all there is so much learning, so much

refinement, that I should say the very apostles themselves

would have to be of another spirit if they were compelled to

discuss these matters with this new race of theologians. Paul

knew something about faith; but when he says 'faith is the

substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,'

that is far from being a definition fit for a _Magister_; and

though he knew well enough about charity, his definition and

division of it in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter

to the Corinthians was by no means good dialectics." "The

apostles knew the mother of Jesus, but which of them has shown

as philosophically as our theologians have done, how she was

preserved from the sin of Adam? Peter received the keys, and

from one who would not have given them to an unworthy keeper,

but I doubt whether he ever reached the subtilty of knowing

how one who has no knowledge can hold the keys of knowledge."

"The apostles worshipped, but in spirit, following simply that

apostolic rule:--'God is a spirit, and they that worship him

must worship him in spirit and in truth'; but it does not appear

that it was revealed to them that an image drawn with a crayon

on the wall was to be worshipped, provided only it have two

fingers held upright, hair flowing, and three rays in the halo

about its head. For who can understand these things unless he

has ground out six and thirty years in the study of physics and

the superhuman notions of Aristotle and the Scotists?

"Meanwhile the actual words of the apostles are utterly

neglected. While they keep up their fooleries in the schools,

they fancy that, like Atlas in the poets, they are holding up

the tottering Church with their syllogistic pillars, and what

joy they take in moulding and remoulding Scripture according to

their will as if it were made of wax; yet their own conclusions,

if a few schoolmen have subscribed to them, they think more

weighty than the laws of Solon or the decretals of popes, and

like censors of the world, if anything does not square to the

line with their conclusions implicit and explicit, they declare

as by an oracle 'this proposition is scandalous; this is lacking

in reverence; this smacks of heresy; this hasn't the right

sound.' So that, by this time, neither Baptism, nor Gospel, nor

Paul, nor Peter, nor St. Jerome, nor Augustine--nay, not even

the most Aristotelian Thomas himself, can make a man a Christian

unless the reckoning of these bachelors be added."

The same method of direct denunciation, with no special reference

to the main thesis of Folly, is pursued in the case of the monks,

or "religious," both titles false, Erasmus says, for the greater

part of them are as far as possible from religion, and there is no

kind of men whom you are more apt to meet in all places. They pride

themselves upon their ignorance, carry the psalm-books they cannot

read into the churches, and bray out their words as if they could

thereby please the ear of God. Some of them crowd the taverns,

waggons, and ships, showing off their poverty and filth and howling

for alms. Yet the merry knaves try to pass themselves off as living

the life of the apostles.

"What a joke it is that they do all things by rule, as it were

by a kind of sacred mathematics; as, for instance, how many

knots their shoes must be tied with, of what colour everything

must be, what variety in their garb, of what material, how many

straws' breadth to their girdle, of what form and of how many

bushels' capacity their cowl, how many fingers broad their

hair, and how many hours they may sleep. Now who cannot see

what an unequal equality this is, when there is such a variety

of persons and tastes? and yet with all this nonsense, they not

only make light of others, but come to despise one another, and

these men who profess apostolic charity make a terrible row at a

dress girded in another fashion or at a colour a little darker

in shade. Some of them are so very 'religious' that they wear no

outer garment but one of hair-cloth, with soft linen underneath;

others on the contrary wear linen without and woollen within.

Others again would as soon touch poison as money, but meanwhile

make free with wine and women. They are all trying not to agree

in their manner of life; none of them to follow the example of

Christ, but all to be different one from the other....

"The greater part of them have such faith in their ceremonies

and human traditions that they think one heaven is not reward

enough for such great doings, never that the time will come when

Christ shall set all this aside and claim his rule of charity.

One will show his belly stuffed with every sort of fish; another

will pour out a hundred bushels of psalms; another will count

up myriads of fasts and make up for them all again by almost

bursting himself at a single dinner. Another will bring forward

such a heap of ceremonies that seven ships would hardly hold

them; another will boast that for sixty years he has never

touched a penny except with double gloves on his hands; another

wears a cowl so greasy and filthy that no sailor would think it

decent. Another will boast that for eleven lusters he has led

the life of a sponge, always fixed to the same spot; another

will display his voice hoarse with much chanting; another a

drowsiness contracted from solitary living; another a tongue

palsied by long silence. But Christ will interrupt their endless

bragging and will demand:--'whence this new kind of Judaism?

One law and that my own I recognise, and that is the only thing

I hear nothing about. In that day I promised openly and using

no twisted parables, the inheritance of my Father, not to cowls

and prayers and fastings, but to deeds of love.' And yet no one

dares reproach those people, who belong, as it were, to another

commonwealth--and especially the Begging Friars, because they

know everybody's secrets through what they call 'confessions.'"

Erasmus more than hints that the friars had ways enough of playing

fast and loose with the secrets confided to them, and, running

together his assaults upon the schoolmen and the monks, shows up the

scholastic preaching of the friars by some excellent specimens.

"I myself have heard one distinguished fool--I beg his pardon,

a scholar I would say--who, in a famous sermon on the mystery

of the Holy Trinity, in order to show his uncommon learning and

please the ears of the theologians, took a quite new method,

namely from the letters, syllables, and discourse itself and

then from the agreement of nouns and verbs, of adjective and

substantive, to the great admiration of some, but causing others

to grumble in the words of Horace: 'what is all this rot about?'

"At last he got the thing down so fine, that he showed as

plainly as any mathematician could chalk it out, that the

mystery of the whole Trinity is expressed in the rudiments of

grammar. This most highly theological person sweat away for

eight months over that speech, so that the whole sight of his

eyes ran into his wits and he is now as blind as a mole; but the

creature cares naught for his eyesight and thinks his glory very

cheaply bought.

"Then I have heard another, an octogenarian and such a

theologian that you would think Scotus had been born again in

him. He set out to explain the mystery of the name of Jesus

and showed with marvellous subtilty that in those letters lay

concealed whatever could be predicated of him. For a word that

is inflected with but three cases is evidently the image of the

divine Trinity. Then because the first case, _Jesus_, ends in

_s_, the second, _Jesum_, in _m_, the third, _Jesu_, in _u_,

beneath this fact there lies an unspeakable mystery, the three

letters indicating, of course, that he is the beginning, middle,

and end. Still there remained a mystery more obscure than all

this, according to the principles of mathematics: he so divided

the word Jesus into two equal parts that the third letter was

left alone in the middle; then he showed that this was called by

the Hebrews _syn_ and that _syn_ in the language, I believe, of

the Scots [_Scotorum_], means _sin_, and hence it was plainly

demonstrated that Jesus was he who should take away the sin of

the world."

The assault on the friars ends with some amusing criticism of their

manner of public speaking, which they seem to have acquired by

misapplying and exaggerating the good principles of rhetoric they

have somehow picked up here and there.

As to secular princes and courtiers, Folly borrows from the oration

of "her friend Erasmus" to Duke Philip, and adds little to the

commonplaces of criticism upon their wild and reckless living and

their disregard of the good of their subjects. She carries her

argument along from secular to clerical princes and finally reaches

the pope, to whom she pays her respects in this monumental passage:

"Those supreme pontiffs, who stand in the place of Christ, if

they should try to imitate his life, that is his poverty, his

toil, his teaching, his cross, and his scorn of this world, or

if they should think of the meaning of 'pope,' that is 'father,'

or even of 'most holy,' what position in the world could be

more dreadful? Who would buy it with all his resources, or,

when he had bought it, would defend it by sword and poison

and every violence? What joys they would lose, if once wisdom

should get hold of them! Wisdom, say I? nay, even a grain of

that salt Christ tells us of. What wealth, what honours, riches,

conquests, dispensations, taxes, indulgences, horses, mules,

guards, pleasures, they would lose!... and in their place they

would have vigils, prayers, fasts, tears, sermons, study, groans

and a thousand other painful toils of the same sort.

"And we ought not to forget that such a mass of scribes,

copyists, notaries, advocates, promoters, secretaries,

mule-drivers, grooms, money-changers, procurers, and gayer

persons yet I might mention, did I not respect your ears,--that

this whole swarm which now burdens--I beg your pardon--honours

the Roman See, would be driven to starvation. This would be an

inhuman and an abominable deed, but still more execrable would

it be that those chief princes of the Church and true lights of

the world should be reduced to scrip and staff. As it is now,

if there is any work to be done, it is left to Peter and Paul,

who have plenty of leisure for it; but if there is anything of

show or of pleasure, they keep that for themselves. And so it

happens that, through my assistance, there is scarce any class

of men who live more jovially and less burdened with care. They

think they are fulfilling the rule of Christ if they play the

part of bishops with mystical and almost theatrical decorations,

ceremonies, titles of benediction, of reverence, of sanctity,

with blessings and cursings. Doing miracles is quite antiquated

and out of date; to teach the people is hard work; to interpret

the holy scripture is a matter for the schools; praying is

tedious; shedding tears is a wretched business fit for women; to

be poor is base; to be conquered is dishonourable and unworthy

of him who will scarce allow the greatest of kings to kiss his

blessed feet; to die is unbecoming and to be lifted on a cross

is infamous."

The end of the Μωρία is an attempt on Folly's part to support her

case by references to authority, and especially, of course, to the

classics and to Scripture. It is laboured, and neither very ingenious

nor very amusing. The joke-machine goes a little hard at this stage

of its progress--yet the solid seriousness of the author's purpose

is as clear here as anywhere. In his references to Scripture he

cannot resist the temptation to give a parting fling at the foolish

interpretations which it was the most important work of his life to

correct. For instance, he makes Folly say:

"I was myself but lately present at a theological

discussion--for I often go to such meetings--when someone asked

what authority there was in Holy Writ for burning heretics

instead of convincing them by argument. A certain hard old

man, a theologian by the very look of him, answered with great

scorn, that the apostle Paul had laid down this law when he

said '_hereticum hominem post unam et alteram correptionem

devita_'--'avoid an heretic after one or two attempts to

convince him.' And when he had yelled out these same words over

and over again and some were wondering what had struck the man,

he finally explained '_de vita tollendum hereticum_'--'the

heretic must be put out of life.' Some burst out laughing, but

there were not wanting some to whom this commentary seemed

perfectly theological."

An opportunity for Erasmus to express his usual detestation of war

is furnished by his references to the papal warfare, which seemed to

him the most unjustifiable of all forms of military action. Indeed

one may fairly say that in this year, 1509, Erasmus had clearly in

mind and had already given expression to the views which were to

form the ground-work of the Reformation. This was the year before

Luther's journey to Rome, and Erasmus himself was just fresh from

the impressions of an Italian residence. The worldly lives of

clergymen, from pope to friar, the burden of monastic vows, the

ignorance of theologians and their scholastic backers, the wickedness

of indulgences, the follies and superstitions of saint-worship,

the cruel weight of ceremonies which had no support in any worthy

authority--all these things were as boldly pointed out by Erasmus in

1509 as ever they were to be shown by any reformer of a later day.

The Praise of Folly carried his proclamation into a thousand hands

that would never have touched the more sober, but not more serious,

criticism of less broadly human critics.

Naturally the Praise of Folly called forth a certain criticism from

individuals belonging to some of the classes attacked. To this

criticism Erasmus replied only by renewed and more bitter comment

in the same spirit. Quite different, however, was the admonition he

received from his excellent friend, Martin Dorpius of Louvain, and

different to correspond was the spirit of his reply.[83] He addresses

Dorpius throughout as a sincere man and scholar, whose view had

been obscured by the misunderstandings of others; in fact, when you

came to the bottom of it, of one man, by whom is doubtless meant

the unhappy scapegoat, Nicholas Egmund. Dorpius had disapproved the

_Moria_ chiefly on account of what seemed to him its flippant tone

and the tendency it must have to excite hostility against really

good and valuable things. Erasmus defends himself on the ground that

the flippancy is only apparent, a mere lightness of touch to commend

the serious purpose underneath. He had been bitterly abused, but he

abuses no man; on the contrary, he has taken great pains to avoid any

personal attack or even an attack upon any class of men as such.

[83] _Epistola apologetica ad Martinum Dorpium Theologum_, ix., 1.

"I had in view no other object in the _Moria_ than I have had in

other works, but used only a different method." He mentions specially

the _Enchiridion_, the _Institutio Principis_, and the Panegyric

on Philip of Burgundy, serious works enough in all conscience. He

gives the familiar story of the composition and first publication

of the book. He had just returned from Italy, ill and worn out by

the journey. He was at More's house and began to play with the idea

of the _Moria_, not with any intention of publication, but just to

while away the time.[84] He showed his friends what he had written,

only that he might enjoy his laugh the better in company. They liked

it, and not only urged him to finish it, but sent it over to Paris,

and there it was printed, but from corrupt and even mutilated copy.

How displeasing it was Dorpius may judge from the fact that within a

few months it was reprinted seven times in different places. "If you

think this was a foolish performance on my part, I shall not deny it."

[84] He says elsewhere that More was the cause (_auctor_) of his

writing the book. iii.¹, 474-D.

Yet it has been approved by the most famous theologians, men of the

highest character and learning, "who have never been more friendly

with me than since its publication, and who like it far better than I

do." He would give their names and titles were it not that this might

expose them to the abuse of

"those three theologians or rather, when you come to that, of

_that one_." "If I should paint him in his true colours no one

could wonder that the _Moria_ is displeasing to such a man; nay,

I should be sorry if it did not displease such people, though it

does not suit me either. Yet it comes the nearer to pleasing me

because it does not suit such characters as that."

If Dorpius could only look into his soul he would see how many things

Erasmus has _not_ touched upon, lest he give offence, and lest he say

anything indecent or seditious.

Our analysis of the _Moria_ is well sustained by Erasmus' attempt

here to show that by _stultitia_ he does not mean mere human

foolishness. "There is no danger that any person will here imagine

that Christ and the apostles were really fools." They only had a

certain element of weakness common to all humanity, and which,

compared with the eternal wisdom, may well seem not altogether wise.

The tone of the whole defence is admirably calm, and shows a sincere

regard for Dorpius, though, like certain islanders, he does need to

have a joke explained now and then.

Erasmus did not exaggerate the immense and immediate popularity of

the _Moria_. Our bibliography enumerates forty-three editions in

the author's lifetime, and it has been translated and reprinted

since then an infinite number of times. Holbein amused himself

by decorating the margin of his copy with these rude but clever

wood-cuts which have come to be the permanent types of the various

orders of Erasmian fools.