Selections from Erasmus | Page 2

VISIT TO LAMBETH (I. pp. 4-5 : i. p.393)
XII. A LETTER TO ALDUS (207 : 204)
XIII. AN INTERVIEW WITH GRIMANI ( :i. p. 461)
XIV. A CONVERSATION AT CAMBRIDGE (237 : 231)
XV. AN ENCOUNTER WITH CANOSSA
XVI. ERASMUS' APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA (296 : 290)
XVII. ERASMUS' RECEPTION AT BASEL (305 : 298)
XVIII. BISHOP FISHER (457 : 446)
XIX. A JOURNEY FROM BASEL TO LOUVAIN (867 : )
XX. ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES (965 : )
XXI. AN EXPLOSION AT BASEL
XXII. ARCHBISHOP WARHAM. I
XXIII. ARCHBISHOP WARHAM. II
XXIV. THE LIVES OF VITRARIUS AND COLET
XXV. COLET AND HIS KINSMAN
XXVI. THOMAS MORE ( :585B)
XXVII. A DISHONEST LONDONER
XXVIII. THE CONDITION OF ENGLISH HOUSES
XXIX. FISHER'S STUDY AT ROCHESTER
NOTES
VOCABULARY
LIST OF PLACE-NAMES
(Of the figures in brackets, the first give the references to my Opus
Epistolarum Erasmi, the second to the late Mr. F. M. Nichols' Epistles
of Erasmus.)
* * * * *
LIFE OF ERASMUS
Erasmus of Rotterdam was born on October 27, probably in 1466. His
father belonged to Gouda, a little town near Rotterdam, and after some
schooling there and an interval during which he was a chorister in
Utrecht Cathedral, Erasmus was sent to Deventer, to the principal
school in the town, which was attached to St. Lebuin's Church. The
renewed interest in classical learning which had begun in Italy in the
fourteenth century had as yet been scarcely felt in Northern Europe,
and education was still dominated by the requirements of Philosophy
and Theology, which were regarded as the highest branches of
knowledge. A very high degree of subtlety in thought and argument

had been reached, and in order that the youthful student might be fitted
to enter this arena, it was necessary that he should be trained from the
outset in its requirements. In the schools, in consequence, little
attention was paid to the form in which thought was expressed,
provided that the thought was correct: in marked contrast to the
classical ideal, which emphasized the importance of expression, in just
appreciation of the fact that thought expressed in obscure or inadequate
words, fails to reach the human mind. The mediaeval position had been
the outcome of a reaction against the spirit of later classical times,
which had sacrificed matter to form. And now the pendulum was
swinging back again in a new attempt to adjust the rival claims.
The education which Erasmus received at Deventer was still in
thraldom to the mediaeval ideal. Greek was practically unknown, and
in Latin all that was required of the student was a sufficient mastery of
the rudiments of grammar to enable him to express somehow the
distinctions and refinements of thought for which he was being trained.
Niceties of scholarship and amplitude of vocabulary were unnecessary
to him and were disregarded. From a material point of view also
education was hampered. Printing was only just beginning, and there
were few, if any, schoolbooks to be had. Lectures and lessons still
justified their name 'readings'; for the boys sat in class crowded round
their master, diligently copying down the words that fell from his lips,
whether he were dictating a chapter in grammar, with its rules of
accidence and syntax, or at a later stage a passage from a Latin author
with his own or the traditional comments. Their canon of the classics
was widely different from ours; instead of the simplified Caesar or
Ovid that is now set before the schoolboy, Terence occupied a principal
position, being of the first importance to an age when the learned still
spoke Latin. Portions of the historians were read, for their worldly
wisdom rather than for their history; Pliny the Elder for his natural
science, and Boethius for his mathematics; and for poetry Cato's moral
distiches and Baptista of Mantua, 'the Christian Vergil.'
In this atmosphere Erasmus's early years were spent; but from some of
his masters he caught the breath of the new life that came from Italy,
and this he never lost. By 1485, shortly after he had left Deventer, both
his parents were dead, and a few years later he was persuaded to enter
the monastery of Steyn, near Gouda, a house of Augustinian canons.

The life there was uncongenial to him; for though he had leisure to read
as much as he liked, his temperament was not suited to the precision
and regularity of religious observance. An opportunity for escape
presented itself, when the Bishop of Cambray, a powerful ecclesiastic,
was inquiring for a Latin secretary. Erasmus, who had already become
very facile with his pen, obtained the post and for a year or more
discharged its duties.
At length in 1495 he persuaded the Bishop to fulfil a desire which he
had long cherished, and send him with a