October 28.--This is commonly regarded as the birthday of the great
Erasmus, and in one place is mentioned as such by himself, although in
another he says he was born on the 27th. The year of his birth is still
more uncertain; some authorities placing the event in 1465, but the
commonly received date, and that inscribed on his monument at Rotterdam,
being 1467. It was in this city he first saw the light. His mother’s
name was Margaret, the daughter of a physician. He was, as he tells us
himself, a natural son. The relations of his father, Gerard, had opposed
his marriage with Margaret, and having prevailed upon him sometime after
the birth of Erasmus to make a journey to Rome, there persuaded him that
she was dead, and by that representation induced him to enter a
monastery. He is described to have been a person well instructed in the
learning of that age. Erasmus took his father’s name only, according to
what was then the fashion among scholars, turning it into Greek,
Erasmus, or, as it should rather have been Erasmius, signifying
_Amiable_ in that language, as Gerard does in Dutch. To this he prefixed
the other Latin name Desiderius, (in French Didier,) which has been
regarded as having the same signification. His mother was his first
teacher, and at nine years of age he was sent to a grammar school at
Deventer. Here he greatly distinguished himself among his schoolfellows.
Before he had reached his fourteenth year, however, he had lost both his
father and mother; and the guardians in whose charge he had been left
forced him by threats to enter a monastery, and then possessed
themselves of his property. This base treatment was to Erasmus the
source of half a lifetime of difficulties and misfortunes. Hating the
profession which he had been compelled to adopt, and keenly feeling the
injustice of which he had been the victim, he eagerly sought the means
of escape from his present situation. At last he prevailed upon his
superiors to allow him to go to study at the College of Montaigu in
Paris. In this city he supported himself for some years by his exertions
as a teacher,--an occupation which he never liked, but in which it was
his fate to be engaged for a considerable part of his life. His
lectures, however, gradually spread his reputation; and in 1497 he was
induced by some of his pupils from England to visit this country. Here
he was warmly welcomed by many of the most distinguished scholars of the
time: he formed in particular an intimate acquaintance with the
afterwards-celebrated Sir Thomas More; and Warham, Archbishop of
Canterbury, evinced the strongest disposition to patronise him. He soon
after, however, returned to Paris; and then he made a tour through the
principal cities of Italy, visiting in succession Bologna, Venice,
Padua, and Rome. Wherever he appeared he was received as one of the
greatest ornaments of the age. But Erasmus had made up his mind to
return to England; and here, accordingly, he once more made his
appearance in 1506. The great scholar seems, from the time of his first
visit to this country, to have felt a strong attachment to its society
and manners, and had his talents been more liberally remunerated would
probably have made it his permanent abode. Indeed he speaks in one of
his writings of Holland and England as entitled to an equal place in his
affection,--the one as the land of his birth, the other as that of his
adoption. When he came to England, he threw off, he tells us, his
monastic habit, which he had worn till then, finding such a garb was not
fashionable in this country. How long Erasmus remained in England at
this time it is impossible exactly to ascertain; but after having
returned to the continent we find him here again in 1510. The wandering
life which the great scholar appears to have led presents us with a
curious picture of the manners of the time; and the fate of Erasmus, in
his incessant migrations from one part of Europe to another, was only
that of many of his brethren. It was a sort of existence, however, it is
right to remark, which had its pleasures and advantages as well as its
inconveniences; and at an age when the general intercourse of nations
was so irregular and imperfect, travelling was almost the only way by
which inquisitive minds could learn anything of foreign countries. At
the same time the main object for which such peregrinations were
undertaken seems to have generally been to seek for patronage. In
England, Erasmus had nothing to depend upon except the liberality of his
wealthy friends and admirers. Of these the most powerful, and also the
most munificent, was Archbishop Warham, who, in 1511, gave him the
living of Aldington in Kent, and also procured him the appointment of
teacher of Greek at Cambridge. Notwithstanding these benefactions,
however, we find him still engaged in a continual warfare with poverty.
He seems, indeed, to have depended for his subsistence almost entirely
upon the occasional bounty of his friends; and it is painful to peruse
his frequent and earnest solicitations for assistance from one or other
of them. Sometimes he petitions even for a few crowns, or notices his
receipt of that small sum. Perhaps there is a good deal of truth in Dr.
Jortin’s conjecture, that he was but an indifferent manager, and had his
own imprudence to thank for much of what he suffered. One circumstance,
amusingly illustrative both of his propensity to move about from one
place to another and of his inability to take care of himself or of his
property, is his continual supplication to one friend or another to give
him a horse. No sooner does he get one than he loses it, and some other
charitable acquaintance is called upon to take pity upon him and supply
him with another. Erasmus seems to have resided with More during part of
the time he was in England, but not, as has been sometimes affirmed, in
the house which More built for himself at Chelsea, which was only
erected in 1521, whereas Erasmus certainly left this country, to which
he never returned, in 1518. After that he resided principally at Basil,
where, in the society of many friends whom he loved, and whose pursuits
were similar to his own, he employed himself with an industry that has
never been surpassed, in the preparation of a succession of works, which
on the whole may be considered as having placed him, both as a scholar
and as a man of genius, above all his contemporaries. In his latter
years the court of Rome more than once expressed an anxiety to bestow
upon him a Cardinal’s hat, and arrangements would even have been made to
secure him the income necessary for the maintenance of that dignity; but
the old man, satisfied with his fame as a scholar, and with the
competence which the success of his writings had at last procured him,
declined the proffered honour. He died at Basil on the 12th of July,
1536, and was interred with great pomp in that city. His native town of
Rotterdam, however, although it neither received his remains, nor had
been much honoured by his presence while he lived, was so proud of
having given birth to so illustrious a writer, that his statue in bronze
was placed by the authorities in a conspicuous situation in one of their
public places, where it still remains. It is renown enough for
Rotterdam, many have thought, to have produced Erasmus. Perhaps no other
modern has written the Latin language with the grace and elegance of
this accomplished scholar, or shown so familiar a mastery over all its
resources. But his works are distinguished by many other admirable
qualities besides the beauties of their style; by the most playful and
engaging wit, the most natural touches of humour, great powers of
graphic description, and, above all, a pervading spirit of good sense
and philosophic moderation, which doubles the charm of every other
excellence. Those of Erasmus’s writings which are best known, are his
Eulogy on Folly, a production of light satire; his Adages, and
especially his celebrated Colloquies, of the second edition of which,
published at Paris in 1527, it is a remarkable but well authenticated
fact, that there were sold no fewer than 24,000 copies.
[Illustration: Portrait of Erasmus reading.]
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