replacer directement devant Érasme, tirer de sa correspondance un tableau fidèle de sa vie, essayer une classification critique de ses ouvrages, en recueillir la fleur, pour les faire mieux connaître et goûter.' M. Feugère has, of course, his own philosophical and religious opinions. He does not conceal them, although he does not obtrude them. But sincerity, good faith, and tolerance are written on every page of his work, which well merits the 'coronation' it received from the French Academy. M. Durand de Laur, in his two large volumes, follows the same lines as M. Feugère, not less conscientiously, if with less literary ability. Pour connaître Érasme,' the author tells us, ' nous l'avons interrogé pour le faire connaître nous l'avons laissé parler lui-même, nous effaçant le plus possible.' The vast amount of material which M. Durand de Laur has brought together is carefully and impartially selected, and is skilfully and commodiously arranged. M. Amiel's small book contains many excellent reflections, and is particularly happy in repelling certain unjust criticisms into which Adolph Müller, notwithstanding his learning and industry, was betrayed by regarding Erasmus from the narrow standpoint of German pietism. But M. Amiel himself is by no means free from prejudices and prepossessions of another an antipietistic-kind. Indeed, the very title of his volume, Un Libre-Penseur du XVIe Siècle,' is sufficient to raise a presumption against it. Erasmus is not a man who can be thus ticketed and disposed of. It is only just to say, however, that the work is better than its title leads us to expect. But, assuredly, M. Amiel imagines a vain thing when he supposes that the object of Erasmus's religious faith was the Dieu des bonnes gens' invoked by Béranger, or the shadowy Deity of Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar. M. de Nolhac's brochure is especially valuable as throwing fresh light on the two years which Erasmus spent in Italy-years which, as we shall hereafter have occasion to observe, were of especial importance in his intellectual development.

To a Cambridge scholar, worthily sustaining the traditions of Bentley and Porson in his University, we are indebted for an admirable monograph on the great Humanist who, for a brief period, was numbered among its professors. To say that Dr. Jebb's Rede Lecture is worthy both of its author and of its subject is to pay it the highest tribute which we can bestow. Of the last volume, which proceeded from the accomplished pen of the late Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, we must speak much less favourably. There are few writers of this age who have exhibited greater literary power than the late Mr. Froude; there are fewer who have made proof of worse judgment,

B 2

judgment, or of more defective scholarship. These Lectures on Erasmus have all the merits and all the demerits of their author's other works. His descriptions are most happy. His portraits are most life-like. His summaries are most brilliant. He abounds in sage sayings, in racy reflections, in caustic criticisms. But of that judicial mind, that breadth of view, that philosophic moderation, which are essential characteristics of a great historian, his pages present no trace. He is everywhere an advocate. It was part of his excellent design to illustrate his theme with extracts from the letters of Erasmus. And as these are much too long for full quotation in his Lectures, he very properly set himself to abridge, compress, and epitomise them. The result is pre-eminently readable. Nowhere has Mr. Froude more felicitously displayed his rare literary skill. But nowhere has he more infelicitously displayed the inaccuracy, happily no less rare in other historians, which was his besetting sin. The meaning of the Latin is constantly missed, Qualifying words are ignored. Sometimes things are attributed to Erasmus directly opposite to what he really wrote; sometimes things of which the original presents no trace at all. It is never safe to assume that Erasmus says what Mr. Froude attributes to him. Mr. Froude observes in his Preface: 'My object has been rather to lead historical students to a study of Erasmus's own writings than to provide an abbreviated substitute for them.' We strongly advise historical students to follow the course thus recommended to them by the late Professor; and in order to enforce the advice we shall from time to time indicate by instances that come in our way how untrustworthy his abbreviated substitute' is. It must not be supposed, however, that these are selected specimens of Mr. Froude's mistakes. They are merely casual samples of his errors,-'thick as dust in vacant chambers,' we may say, for there is scarcely a page free from them.

And now, making special use of these seven works, while not neglecting other Erasmian literature, and ever keeping before us the text of Erasmus himself,* we will proceed with the task we have undertaken. But first let us survey briefly the age into which Erasmus was born. Undoubtedly he did much to mould his age; as undoubtedly his age did much to mould him. A man's work is done in his time; and, to understand it and him, we must correctly apprehend and appreciate the conditions of his time. The word Renaissance serves to characterise the age of Erasmus as accurately, perhaps, as any one word can. No doubt

*We use the Leyden edition (1703-1706) in ten folio volumes.

that

that word long implied generally, and still implies for many, all the prejudice which so long hung over the medieval period: a blindness to its real greatness, an ignorance of the vast part which it has played in the ethical and intellectual evolution of humanity. Again, in Italy, the Renaissance practically was, to a large extent, a rebirth of Pagan idolatry and sensuality: and we much regret that the late Mr. J. A. Symonds should have done so much to identify this partial aspect of it with the whole. Nor can we wonder that the ill-judged enthusiasm of this accomplished writer should have produced in some minds— and those by no means inconsiderable minds- -a reaction against a movement in whose history he laboured so abundantly. But certain it is that whatever the world lost by the Renaissance— and no gain in the history of our race is unmixed gain—we owe to it that re-awakened interest in the sources of our moral and intellectual life which has so vastly enlarged our mental horizon; we owe to it a true appreciation of the spiritual unity of Western civilization. It was the resurrection not merely of the classical spirit, for good and for evil; it was also-we may say it was still more the resurrection of Christian antiquity: an appeal from the degenerate disciples of Aquinas and Scotus to Christ and His Apostles, to the Martyrs and Doctors of the primitive Church. Again, the movement was not of sudden incidence. No great movement in the world's history ever is. Even at the end of the thirteenth century the medieval order shows signs of exhaustion. From the middle of the fourteenth we may date the beginning of the new era unto which Europe was hastening. Society becomes less and less ecclesiastical. The ideas and principles which had given to the previous centuries their simple and severe greatness, lose vivifying influence. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio have been called, not unjustly, the precursors of the fifteenth-century Aufklärung. A revived interest in antiquity penetrates their writings, like the breath of spring. In them, as in painters like Botticelli, in sculptors like Donatello, we may trace the tokens of the great change even then being wrought in man himself. The effect of the Fall of Constantinople in quickening the new movement into full life may, perhaps, have been overrated. Still we shall not greatly err, if, with Mr. Symonds, we take the seventy-four years between that event and the sack of Rome (1453-1527) as indicating the narrow space of time in which the Renaissance culminated. Within that space the greater part of the life of Erasmus falls. Scholasticism, feudalism, and the religious unity of Europe still existed when he was born in 1467. They had passed away when he died in 1536. His lot was

cast

cast in that interregnum between the old order and the new, the chief characteristic of which was, as Mill has happily expressed it, 'a great breaking loose of the human mind." 'Picture to yourself,' says M. Nisard-in an admirably descriptive passage which we must give in his own fascinating French, for no translation could do it justice-picture to yourself 'cette Europe de la fin du xve siècle et des premières années du xvre, labourée par la guerre, décimée par la peste, où toutes les nationalités de l'Europe intermédiaire s'agitent et cherchent leur assiette sous l'unité apparente de la monarchie universelle de l'Espagne où l'on voit d'un même coup d'oeil des querelles religieuses et des batailles, une mêlée inouïe des hommes et des choses, une religion naissante en lutte de violence avec la religion établie, l'ignorance de l'Europe occidentale se débattant contre la lumière de l'Italie: l'antiquité qui sort de son tombeau, les langues mortes qui renaissent, la grande tradition littéraire qui vient rendre le sens des choses de l'esprit à des intelligences perverties par les raffinements de la dialectique religieuse: du fracas partout, du silence nulle part: les hommes vivant comme des pélerins, et cherchant leur patrie çà et là, le baton de voyage à la main: une république littéraire et chrétienne de tous les esprits élevés, réunis par la langue latine, cette langue qui faisait encore toutes les grandes affaires de l'Europe à cette époque; d'épouvantables barbaries à côté d'une précoce élégance des mœurs: une immense mêlée militaire, religieuse, philosophique, monacale; enfin-car j'ai hâte de quitter cette prétention à resumer une époque dont Dieu seul a le sens aucun lieu tranquille, nulle solitude en Europe où un homme pût se recueillir et se sentir vivre.' (P. 44.)

Such is the abstract and brief chronicle of the time of Erasmus. His career in it seems to fall into four well-marked divisions, which we may term respectively the spring, summer, autumn, and winter of his intellectual life. The first extends from his birth in 1467 to his visit to England in 1497 or 1498, -a protracted and inclement spring. In these thirty years of unremitting toil and unbroken trouble was sown the seed of light which was to blossom so luxuriantly in the second period, closing with his return from Italy in 1509. In the next ten years we see him gathering in the fruit of his labours, reaping an abundant harvest of fame and influence throughout Europe. From 1520, when Luther's revolt opens a new chapter in the world's religious history, he falls gradually into the sere, the yellow leaf.' It is a time of blighted hopes, of decaying influence, of withered reputation: and the winter of his discontent-if we may borrow another phrase from Shakespearegrows sadder and gloomier until his death in 1536.

6

Erasmus's start in life was marred by his birth's invidious

bar."

bar.' The romantic story of Gerhard de Praet and Margaret. Brandt is tolerably well known, and supplied a theme for the pen of a versatile novelist, in a work which is still popular, The Cloister and the Hearth.' Mr. Charles Reade, however, possibly out of consideration for the feelings of the British public, thought well to represent these lovers as secretly married. And Mr. Froude, whose motive we cannot even conjecture, hints that they perhaps were so. As a matter of fact, however, there is no ground for disbelieving the story current from the time of Erasmus to our own, that the union of his parents was not hallowed by matrimony and that he was the illegitimate fruit of it. His father was a man of good reputation and of unusual ability; a fair Latin and Greek scholar, and well versed in jurisprudence. His mother, save for her one fault, was of honest manners and of edifying life.' They had wished to marry. The obstacle was that Gerhard's parents, anxious that he should enter the ecclesiastical state, refused their consent. Gerhard, therefore, Erasmus tells us, 'did as desperate people are wont to do, and secretly ran away (fecit quod solent desperati, clam aufugit '). He betook himself to Rome, and there earned his living by copying manuscripts, an occupation in which he was extremely skilled (manu felicissima'). Soon his parents, wishing to put Margaret altogether out of his head, sent him a false story of her death. In despair he took priest's orders. On returning to Holland, he discovered the deceit that had been practised upon him. But he remained faithful to the sacred vows he had undertaken, and did not renew his former relations with her 'nec ille unquam tetigit eam.' The child who had been born in his absence received his name of Gerhard, which means beloved.' 'Desiderius,' Professor Jebb remarks, 'is barbarous Latin for that, and Erasmus is barbarous Greek for it. . . . The combination, Desiderius Erasmus, is probably due to the fact that he had been known as Gerhard Gerhardson. It was a singular fortune for a master of literary style to be designated by two words, which both mean the same thing, and are both incorrect.'

Gerhard and Margaret devoted themselves to the education of their boys-the usual account is that they had an elder son, Peter; and when Erasmus was four years old, he was put to school at Gouda, whence he was shortly sent to Utrecht, with a view to his becoming a chorister in the cathedral there. But, having no voice, he was removed at nine to Deventer, where among his schoolfellows was Adrian of Utrecht, afterwards Pope under the title of Adrian VI. The Deventer school was unusually good for those days-Hegius of Westphalia, a Hel