LIBRARY University of California Irvine Desiderius Erasmus concerning the Aim and Method of Education UonDon: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. Klassgoto: 50, WELLINGTON STREET. idpjijj: F. A. BROCKHAUS. $em Horfc: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Bombag anO Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. \All Rights reserved] Desiderius Erasmus concerning the Aim and Method of Education by WILLIAM HARRISON ^OODWARD Professor of Education in the University of Liverpool Author of yittorino da Feltre CAMBRIDGE : at the University Press 1904 ADAVLPHO GULIELMO WARD ERASMIANO ORNATISSIMO LB PREFACE. ^ I A HE scope of the present study of Erasmus is J- defined by its title. I have directed attention to one aspect only of his work and personality. That aspect of Erasmus is of profound importance. Indeed it may be reasonably maintained that of all his activi- ties none was more congenial to him, none more characteristic, none of more influence in his own age and subsequently than that which was concerned with Education. Yet although the limitations of the subject have not been lost sight of, it has been, from the nature of it, necessary to take a wider view of the attitude of Erasmus to the problems of his time than a hasty reading of the title of this book might suggest. For it is obviously impossible to understand and to present aright the Erasmian ideal of the fit training of the young unless the presuppositions upon which it rests are duly examined. Thus a brief historical review of the literary life of Erasmus was called for, though it seemed well to make clear the limits of the purpose for which it was compiled. Much that fills so large vi Preface a space in the approved biographies of Erasmus has been in effect ignored, as but remotely affecting the subject of this enquiry. On the other hand I have endeavoured to realise with precision the appeal which Antiquity made to Erasmus and the message which he believed it to convey to the modern world. Compared with this his share in the Lutheran conflict seems to me to be, in a serious appraisement of Erasmus, as * unimportant as it was to himself distasteful. The deepening interest in educational enquiry which marks the present time will, we may confidently hope, extend to the study of the aims and achievements of the educators of the past. Next to the great Italian Masters of the Quattrocento Erasmus makes claim for serious recognition. The actual degree of his influence in Germany and England it is difficult to assess, and writers have differed in their judgments. But if it should be provable that Erasmus left less direct impress upon school organisation or methods than certain of his contemporaries, the reason will be found in the fact that he was on crucial points so far in advance of public opinion, that he took so wide, so truly humanist, a view of the scope of education that in the troubled times of sectarian partisanship his day was not yet. In certain regards we must feel as we study such a work as the De Pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis, contained in English dress in the present volume, that he speaks with a note unexpectedly " modern." As we realise therefrom the depth of Erasmus' conviction of the respect due to the rights of the child we understand, what we may have already suspected, how far a prevalent Preface vii type of criticism of Humanist methods has been based upon ignorance of the facts. It is indeed of the first importance that the student of the history of educational thought should be led to acquaintance at first hand with the men whose doctrines are under discussion. Only upon this condition can the study of the subject be regarded as worthy of serious recognition as an aspect of literary and historical enquiry. In the study of Erasmus the text is the first, the second and the third authority : and I have built up my exposition upon repeated readings of the treatises, prefaces, and letters pertinent to the subject. The range of Erasmian literature is notoriously immense. To distinguish the works which have proved specially prolific of suggestion is scarcely possible. But two may be here singled out as of first rate importance to students of Erasmus. The Letters of Erasmus by Mr F. M. Nicholls carries down the correspondence to 1509: a second volume which is, I am glad to know, to appear very shortly, will include the year 1517. The correspondence of Erasmus so far as it is of bio- graphical interest in a very wide sense is presented in an English version, with most careful apparatus of preface and note. Without necessarily accepting every disputed attribution or date, I can affirm that no more valuable aid to the understanding of Erasmus down to the Cambridge period has yet seen the light, whether in this country or in Germany. The second work to which allusion is made is the analysis of the psycho- logical presuppositions of Erasmus' educational doctrine viii Preface of Dr Hermann Togel, Die padagogischen Anschauimgen des Erasmus in ihrer psychologischen Begrilndung. The author, however, is prone to see everything in terms of Herbartianism, to the detriment of his historical per- ception. I desire to express my obligations to Miss May Allen, Mr John Sampson, University Librarian, and Mr E. Gordon Duff, for kind assistance at different stages of my work. Miss Allen has been particularly helpful in the bibliographical section. THE UNIVERSITY, LIVERPOOL, February i, 1904. CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE v CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE xi PART I. CHAP. I. AN OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF ERASMUS . . i II. CHARACTERISTICS. i. Erasmus and Antiquity 30 2. The Reconciliation of the Antique with the Christian Spirit 39 3. Erasmus and the Ciceronians . . 5 1 4. Erasmus and the Vernacular Tongues . . 60 III. THE EDUCATIONAL AIM OF ERASMUS. i. The General Purpose of Education . . 72 2. The Three Factors of Human Nature . . 77 3. Limitations of the Educational Ideal . . 83 IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF EDUCATION. i. Earliest Care 86 2. Health and Physical Well-being of Young Children 87 3. Home Instruction 9 4. School-life and Home Instruction ... 92 '5. The Qualifications of the Master ... 93 6. The Beginnings of Systematic Instruction . 96 7. Discipline 9^ x Contents CHAP. PAGE V. THE LIBERAL STUDIES. i. The Teaching of Grammar . 101 2. The Choice of Authors in General . . i u 3. Method of Reading an Author . . .115 4. Orators and Oratory . . . . .120 5. Composition in Latin Prose . . . .123 6. History and Historians 128 7. Logic and Philosophy . . . . 133 8. Greek Studies, and the Argument for them . 135 9. Mathematics and Nature Knowledge . .138 10. The Education of Girls ..... 148 u. Moral Training : Character as the Supreme End of Education 154 PART II. VI. The Treatise Z>t the time, and for valuable interest in subsequent years. Apart from teaching, Erasmus was a most industrious student, and in spite of a severe illness contracted through the unhealthiness of his surroundings Paris was noted for its ague and fever he was absorbed in Latin scholarship. He wrote a little handbook on epistolary composition, but we have no other published work from his pen at this period. Erasmus was a poor man, with no resources beyond his earnings as a teacher. He had the tastes and the necessities of a scholar, conscious of considerable powers but at the same time of a bodily condition which rendered him dependent on a certain standard of comfort. He began to cast about for the means of support sanctioned by the custom of the age among men of learning. He wanted a patron, liberal, but not ex- acting. To the scholar of the Renaissance generosity lost all its grace if accompanied by expectation of definite work in return. The patron should be content with the consciousness that it had been permitted him to come to the aid of genius. There is indeed nothing peculiar to Erasmus or to his age in this attitude. A certain Lady of Veer was approached through a friend in the interests of Erasmus. Here was a poor scholar of great promise anxious to establish his position by acquiring the degree of Doctor ; desirous also of enlarging his attain- ments by a sojourn in Italy ; a man of such ability might be counted on to reflect renown upon an enlightened patroness. As all his biographers have admitted, the correspondence of Erasmus with his ally who had the ear of the lady who Scholars and Patrons yielded not very adequately to persuasion leaves an un- pleasant savour. Irritable self-conceit, shameless importunity, perfect indifference to the person importuned, are all in evidence; it is hard to banish a sense of contempt for a scholar who could play so sordid a part. Yet we must remember that Erasmus was by profession a scholar, at a time when scholars had yet, in Western Europe at least, to establish their claim to professional status and respect. His was a career in which no external standards of capacity were so far understood or accorded recognition. The only measure of desert was the scholar's own claim : he was above criticism, for no one but another scholar could test his excellence. Hence the man of Letters in the earlier days of the New Learning was apt to be abnormally sensitive, resenting a judgment upon himself which was less flattering than his own, ever suspicious of lack of appreciation, and filled with a sense of his own serious importance. It was an inevitable stage in the evolution of the scholar's position in the new society. The pedant or the charlatan became in time dis- tinguishable by consent from the man of real power, as standards of merit which were readily understood were slowly formulated with the increasing security of learning. This irritable self-consciousness may be compared with that of the modern actor, or, less aptly, with that of the prophet of a new school in art or music, where, for lack of accepted canons of excellence, criticism is perforce individual and provisional. We understand the sensitiveness of the artist and forgive him if he likes his own criticism best. As regards importunity, Erasmus was conscientiously assured that he had it in his power to add something to the learning of his age. He knew, too, as we also know, that in his begging neither avarice nor ambition of place had part or lot. We can sum up the matter by saying that if Erasmus did not rise above the fashion of his day and the precedents of his class, in the larger view his motives were not wholly unworthy. It proved of no slight import to the 10 First Visit to England, 1499 world that Erasmus should, with whatever importunities, gain what he needed to go on with his studies. In the middle of 1499 Erasmus left Paris to accompany Lord Mountjoy to England. This was the first of several visits to this country and left behind it on the mind of the traveller a most grateful impression. He was welcomed as one of themselves by the group of scholars, with Colet at their head, which centred at Oxford; and in London he was at home with More and Warham. It was, during this winter of 1499, that Erasmus laid the foundation of that affectionate intimacy which united him to More and Colet until their deaths. Undoubtedly his intercourse with these two kindred minds strengthened in Erasmus the determination to devote himself to classical study. Colet urged him further to utilise his attainments in the service of historical theology : and from this time we find frequent reference to such a purpose in the correspondence of Erasmus. Colet, indeed, attracted all that was best in him ; and the peculiar intellectual habit of the Oxford scholar his historical and objective view of knowledge made warm appeal to Erasmus' own literary and scholarly instinct. He was thus able to appreciate to the full the method upon which Colet treated the Pauline Epistles, the subject upon \vhich_he was at that period specially engaged. It is not surprising that he tried to secure Erasmus for Oxford, as a co-worker in the cause which he had so closely at heart. But Erasmus became at once suspicious of an attempt to fetter his liberty. Indefatigable now and always as a student he would only work in absolute freedom. His aims must be of his own choice ; he would pursue them where and how his own waywardness should determine. To overlook this charac- teristic is to misunderstand the man: with him this passion for independence was thoroughly genuine and had in it nothing of mere self-conceit. It is evident from the letters which he ad- dressed to Colet before leaving England that he was still uncertain whither his intellectual tastes would lead him. He The Study of Greek 1 1 did not wish the question to be pre-judged by any one else, not even by Colet. That there existed an intimate relation between sound (i.e. classical) literature and sound (i.e. pre- scholastic) divinity he was already assured. But it was still possible that his dominant interest might lie in the ancient literatures. And in any case it was clear to him that his equipment in learning was wholly inadequate to the task of attacking historical divinity as a scholar should. He had already resolved that "a little more knowledge and a little more power of expressing it " were the pre-requisites of any service which he could render to the world. Whether while at Oxford he spent any time upon Greek we do not know, nor whether he saw Grocyn and Linacre, the pioneers there of the New Learning. But before the end of 1499 he had deter- mined to return to Paris. In February of the following year he was at work there, absorbed in the classics but especially in Greek. " My Greek studies are almost too much for my courage, while I have not the means of purchasing books nor the help of a master." Throughout the spring he was engaged upon the first collection of the Adagia, a compilation of proverbs, maxims and witty utterances drawn from classical authors. It appeared in June 1500 with a dedication to Lord Mountjoy, to whom Erasmus was doubtless indebted for timely help at the period. The book gave evidence of a wide range of reading. His know- ledge of Greek was in spite of difficulties rapidly increasing. About this date he begins to quote it in his letters. He records that he is at work upon Homer " refreshed and fed by the very sight of his words even when I cannot always under- stand him." Driven from Paris by the plague he carried off his books to Orleans, or St Omer, but longed to find himself again at the University where alone books and a teacher were to be had. When he had attained to some moderate com- petency in Greek, " without which the amplest erudition in Latin is imperfect 1 ," he will devote himself entirely to sacred 1 iii. 968 D. Infra, p. 135. 12 Erasmus at Louvain literature. To earn money he edited the De Offidis of Cicero. By this date (1501) Erasmus had acquired a notable power of expression in Latin; both in speech and in writing : and by his industry and his acute observation he had accumulated a store of knowledge upon the material of the language, which was surpassed perhaps by his great predecessor, Valla, alone. He was laying the foundation for his book De Copia Verborum et Rerum, the Similia and an enlarged Adagia. For all that he insists that " he has almost deserted the Latin Muse for the Greek," and that he " would pawn his coat for a codex of an author whom he had not yet read." He began to work at Euripides and Isocrates in July 1 501, and is revelling in his hardly won powers of construing. He tried to compile a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, but gave up the task for lack of sufficient knowledge of the original. At this time, too, we meet with a half-formed project of an edition of the Letters of St Jerome. But in such a task "how large a space must be filled by comment upon the literature, the antiquities and the history of the Greeks 1 ." In 1502 Erasmus removed to Louvain. His travels during the years 1499-1505 throw an interesting light upon one or two aspects of the life of the time. We perceive for instance the real meaning of the constant visitations of the plague, which year after year broke up Universities even in so im- portant a city as Paris, bringing in its train risks and losses of most serious import. Next, the habit of travel in spite of the time and expense involved. Erasmus is constantly on the move. Crossing the Alps is no doubt a grave and costly venture, but a scholar regarded a visit to England, Germany, Switzerland more lightly than he did a century ago. At Louvain, Erasmus was at once pressed to accept the chair of Rhetoric in the University, an offer which with equal promptitude he declined. He had no intention of staying long at Louvain. So far as the scarcity of texts would permit he was absorbed in Greek. He began to prepare versions from 1 iii. 67 D (Nicholls, p. 289). His Literary Work 13 Lucian and from Euripides, partly by way of earning money from patrons, partly to supply a need of students. We must remember the extreme scarcity of Greek MSS. and of printed editions during the period preceding the activity of the Aldine Press and the rival houses, of the Giunta, Gryphius and Plantin. There was as yet no printer of Greek texts out of Italy : and Greek copyists were rare. Aldus published the Dialogues of Lucian in 1504 : Erasmus spent much of his time translating from this text. It is not difficult to imagine that Lucian's thrusts at the philosophers of his day appealed peculiarly to Erasmus, who had begun to expend his sarcasms upon the schoolmen. There was, too, much in common between Lucian and his translator in the humour of their outlook upon life and the overflowing wit with which they told what they saw. These months devoted to the Dialogues bore other fruit than the volume of translations of 1506: they rendered possible the Praise of Folly five or six years later. Once more in Paris in 1505, Erasmus resumes communi- cations with his English friends, especially with Colet, now Dean of St Paul's. He sent him one or two of his books in MS., amongst which was the Enchiridion, a simply written "^ manual of Christian conduct, but not the Lucian. The work upon which he was particularly engaged was a new find of which he was very proud, a volume of Annotations on the New Testament by Valla, the first attempt to apply the method of linguistic criticism to Scripture 1 . To Erasmus such a line of enquiry was thoroughly congenial, falling in, as it did, with his conviction of the essential importance of the literary point of view in the study of all ancient documents. As soon as this book was issued from the press (April 1505) Erasmus left 1 The aim of Valla's Notes was to correct errors in the Vulgate by reference to the original Greek. In these Notes we may see the first suggestion of the edition of the Greek Testament with its version and notes which Erasmus published in 1516. 14 Second Visit to England, 1505 6. Paris for another visit to London, on the invitation of Lord Mountjoy. No city in Europe, except Rome, possessed such attraction for Erasmus as London then held out, in the presence there of the well-known group of English scholars, with Colet at their head. Linacre, Grocyn, More and Warham were either in the capital or close at hand. Erasmus it seems looked to receive a sinecure benefice at the hand of the Archbishop. It is significant that the method of approach to this desirable end was the presentation of a version from Lucian to Bishop Fox and a translation of the Hecuba to Warham. During this English visit the University of Cambridge passed a Grace enabling Erasmus to take the degree of Doctor of Divinity, but it is certain that he did not avail himself of it. It is probable that he did not journey either to Oxford or Cam- bridge during the year that he remained in this country. The time seems to have been spent in or near London, much of it in company with More, who joined his guest in translating Lucian. M ore's first published work is contained in the volume of the Dialogues in Latin dress published at Paris by Badius in 1506. Erasmus left England in May of that year to fulfil a project conceived more than ten years before. The position of Erasmus in the world of Letters was already assured. In Louvain, Paris or London, wherever indeed the new light had won its way, his repute was above question. He had undoubtedly command of the best Latin style of his time out of Italy. He was widely read in Roman literature, classical and patristic. Men of position in affairs, in scholarship and in the Church came to him as a friend and adviser. It rested with himself alone to gain fame as a great Teacher in any seat of learning in Europe. But Erasmus knew how much more he had yet to know before he could put forward any such claim. It was borne in upon him with increasing force that he must first make himself known to the The Italian Journey, 1506 15 Italian scholars and sit at the feet of the Greek teachers who even yet had not crossed the Alps. He took with him two pupils and their English tutor, and in July 1506 was well on his way by Paris, Lyons and Savoy. It is characteristic of Erasmus that finding himself for the first time amidst the most striking scenery in Europe he left no word which conveys the impressions which it made upon him. Instead we have a classical lucubration on Old Age, composed, we are told, to while away the tedium of the August days in the High Alps. Only once, in the very last years of his life, did Erasmus record the sensations evoked by great scenery, when the view from the Lake of Constance struck his fancy. At Turin 1 he received the degree of Doctor of Theology, and pressed on, early in September, to Bologna. Thence in November he crossed the Apennines to Florence. We turn hopefully to his correspondence. But what do we find ? Not a word which reveals that he was under the spell of the beauty of the city, that he recognises the dignity of its civic life, the distinction of its architecture and art. He gives us no clue, moreover, to any perception of the living significance of Florence in the history of learning. We may perhaps under- stand that Erasmus might have little feeling for the Heiterkeit of the Italian spirit, and less for the art which expressed it. But as a humanist he knew himself to be on classic ground, where Chrysoloras had taught Greek first in Western Europe, where the great manuscript treasures had been collected, the city of Poggio, of Ficino, of Poliziano. Erasmus made no acquaintances ; he translated more Lucian, and grumbled at his lot. It was a principle with him to refuse to learn or even to recognise vernacular languages. Thus he found himself cut off from intercourse in a society proud of its Tuscan speech. " You speak to a deaf man," he said to Ruccellai, who pressed 1 Upon the Italian journey the indispensable authority is P. Nolhac, ra$me en Italie. 1 6 Erasmus in Italy his Italian upon him: and in Italian as in English he remained dumb to the end. In December Erasmus was again in Bologna, where he was an amazed spectator of the entry of Julius II, a victorious general taking possession of a vanquished city. He now gave up the use of the monastic dress, thus decisively refusing to be longer identified with the obscurantists of the Church. Bologna was favourably circumstanced for Greek studies, and in its University Erasmus made the first of those friendships which were the charm of his Italian sojourn. The year (1507) which he thus spent was of high importance in his intellectual development. He had come to Italy, in his own words, chiefly for the sake of Greek, and found himself amid a circle of noteworthy scholars, with leisure and passable health. Towards the end of 1507 he was in correspondence with Aldus Manutius, the great printer, respecting a new and corrected edition of his versions from Euripides, when he was met by an offer that he should transfer himself to Venice and there prepare for publication a new and larger collection of Adages. At the close of the year Erasmus was installed as a member of the Aldine household, his pupils got rid of and he himself enjoying what could be had nowhere else in Europe, the society of a community of scholars and craftsmen using Greek as their living language. His position in the circle is not very clear. He acted in some capacity as adviser and as assistant to Aldus ; but his time must have been chiefly absorbed by the compilation of the Adagia, which by aid of friends and of books became a wholly new work. Amongst the scholars whom from time to time he may have seen almost daily were John Lascaris, Marcus Musurus and Urban of Botzen, all Greek scholars of the first rank, and engaged in editorial work for Aldus. It is indeed difficult to overstate the debt due from Erasmus to Aldus at this critical stage of his career. Thanks to his friendship Erasmus had gained ex- ceptional facility in Greek, and had definitely entered the Erasmus in Rome, 1509 17 inner circle of Greek scholars. He had formed profitable relations with the greatest publisher of his age, the man who in a true sense rendered Greek learning possible to Western communities. In his preface to the Adagia and in the actual text of the work Erasmus records his immense obligation to Aldus and to his colleagues in searching for MSS. for purposes of the work and in diligent help in interpretation. But it irked Erasmus to feel such obligations; some years later he wrote a spiteful dialogue (the Colloquy upon Sordid Wealth} in abuse of Asulanus, the father-in-law of Aldus and manager of his household. The abuse is vented upon the parsimony of the Aldine table ; but the Italian standard of living was pro- bably as beneficial to Erasmus as it was novel and unpleasant. And in any case we may be certain that he lived there only because he chose to do so. One hopes that there may be some key to the puzzle which has escaped record. Towards the end of the year 1508 as the great Aldine Rhetores Graeci was in process of publication to have a share, however slight, in preparing such a work was no slight privilege to Erasmus he left Venice for Padua, where he attended the lectures of Musurus and mingled in the learned society of the famous University " locupletissimum optimarum discipli- narum emporium," he calls it. He formed a good opinion of the integrity and seriousness of the Paduan humanists. Erasmus had again taken charge of a pupil, a son of James IV of Scotland, the youthful Archbishop of St Andrews. Going by Ferrara and Siena he reached Rome on March i, 1509. Once more, it would be interesting to find in his letters or writings then or subsequently traces of some deep impression made upon him by the ruins of Rome. But there is, in effect, nothing. On the other hand, the dignity of the scholarly society in which he at once took his place, was wholly to his liking. He did not fail to remark, however, the divorce between learned Churchmen and the Christian spirit, which was nowhere more noticeable than in the Rome of Julius II. " Rome," he says, w. 2 1 8 Third Visit to England, 1509 " is nothing but a site strewn with ruins and remains monu- ments of disaster and decay take away the papal See and the papal Court would Rome to-day be more than a name ? " To Erasmus, full of conviction that the genius of Ancient Rome was still the unique force of civilisation, there was no attraction in the picturesqueness of its fallen greatness. The libraries of Rome were open to him, and Cardinals and Secretaries vied with one another in shewing him kindness : though he is, per- haps, a little too anxious to impress his northern friends with the fact. Raphael was at work in the Vatican, Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, and Erasmus may well have seen both of them there. But in the presence of the glowing noon-day of Italian art he remains untouched. Nor do the scenery, the light, the colour, the vegetation of the southern land affect him. He moves through all these things as a student, an observer of human life, seeing much that, apparently, he does not notice, yet, perhaps, also acquiring much that he does not overtly record. But when Erasmus hastened north again in the spring of 1509 to greet the new King Henry of England we know that he went out of Italy a different man. He had come into direct relations with the princes of the Church, and had watched the working of the great ecclesiastical machine, with no enthusiasm but without serious moral repulsion. He had established his own status by acquiring an Italian degree. He had entered into intimate relations with scholars, editors, and publishers, and had been admitted by them to a place in the inner circle of European scholarship. He had gained, what he specially came to gain, a sound working knowledge of Greek. His new edition of the Adagio, proved him to be a learned man and a versatile student of ancient literature ; but Erasmus was now more than that. He was almost alone in the gift of bringing all he learnt to bear upon his view of human life. When he reached England in July, 1509, he brought with him not a little of the practicality of a keen-sighted and Erasmus at Cambridge, 1510 19 accomplished man of the world. This too in the main he owed to Italy. The accession of Henry VIII was regarded, not in England only, as an event of the highest importance to humanity. " What may we not expect from a prince of so extraordinary almost divine a character? How like a hero he appears to us, with what prudence he bears himself, what love he shows for truth and justice, what favour to men of letters If you could but see how wild with joy everyone here is... the very earth dances, the earth flows with milk and honey Our King is ambitious, although not for gold, but for excellence, for fame, for immortality!" It is not easy for us to realise with what sanguine hopes men regarded the advent of the new reign. The culture of Italy, the wealth of Spain, the peaceful arts of trade and exploration were all bound up in the accession of the young king. Erasmus was summoned from Rome to be the representative of the new learning. It was in the same year that Colet worked out his scheme for a great school of St Paul's. In this year also the conflict, significant of a far fiercer struggle, which raged around the person of Reuchlin, was stirred up in Germany. Erasmus found a home at Cambridge, where in 1510 he was made Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, and took up his residence at Queens' College. He seems also to have done a little teaching, public and private, in Greek ; though his success in enlisting interest in the subject was disappointingly small. Apart from this far from exacting occupation Erasmus worked hard during the five years he spent in England. First of all, soon after his arrival he prepared and sent to the Press from More's house in London, the Moriae Encomium or Praise of Folly (1509), that extraordinary satire upon the life of his day which he had conceived and partly worked out during his recent journeys across Europe. The monk, the scholastic theologian, the courtier, the dominant types of mankind in Erasmus' immediate world, are, especially, depicted with keen 2O His Writings upon Education insight and biting sarcasm. Like almost everything that Erasmus wrote, it was a sermon for the times, and a potent solvent of accepted stupidity and pretence. No book of Erasmus had so instant recognition, such striking effect on opinion. Here was a man who not only knew his books, but knew his world not less. Apart from the Praise of Folly, the literary activity of Erasmus lay mainly in two different directions. In the first place he was stimulated by Colet's interest in his new school to a definite concern in education. For four years he was in constant communication with the Dean, guiding him in choice of books and men. Certain important contributions to the work of teaching were made by Erasmus immediately for Colet's behoof. We need only mention here the tract De Ratione Sturtii (of which a version is given in the present volume), which he sent to Colet in 1511. It is based perhaps upon the recollection of his own experience of teaching in Paris and Italy. The work on Latin composition, which he called after a phrase of Quintilian De Copia Rerum et Vei borum, was issued in the same year. This is a very re- markable storehouse of material for rhetorical uses, the product of five-and-twenty years of observation of the style, usages, figures, and sentence-forms of the classical authors. The work deserves much more careful attention than has been devoted to it during the past two hundred years, but the great Latinists of the i6th and lyth centuries owed to it the same debt that Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Budaeus admitted as due from themselves to Valla. Erasmus issued also a small metrical compendium of rules of conduct known by the name of the Cato pro Pueris or Disticha Catonis, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1513. The Contio de Puero Jesu, an Oration in honour of the Child Jesus, was composed for recitation by the scholars of St Paul's. Erasmus was, like Colet, already deeply considering the right methods of training little children and the provision of sound aids to teaching rudiments. Thus in His Writings upon Education 21 1513 at the request of William Lily, the High Master of the school, he revised the little text-book of elementary Latin syntax, intended to supplement the Accidence which had ap- peared a year or two before under Lily's own name. This went through a large number of editions in Erasmus' lifetime ; the Giunta and Aldine Presses, printers at Cracow, at Deventer, Vienna, Paris, poured editions on to the market. It survives in a greatly altered form in the Eton Latin Grammar of our own day. The usual title of the book in the i6th century was De Construction* octo Partium Orationis Libellus, The Inslitutum Hominis Christiani, or the Elements of Christian Training, is a Latin metrical version of the greater part of Colet's Cathecyzon, or rudiments of religion, a little manual of faith and conduct, written in simple direct language, which he set forth for use in his school of St Paul's. We may mention two other products of the Cambridge period : the Latin version of Theodore Gaza's Greek Grammar, which we know that Erasmus used at Cambridge, and which was published in Basel (1516) a few months after he left England. To Henry VIII he dedicated (1512) a translation of a treatise of Plutarch (from the Moralia) upon the Distinction between a Flatterer and a Friend ' ; and he completed another from the same source : On the Art of keeping oneself in Health. Both had a certain educational reference. Erasmus, it is evident, revealed at this time a special interest in schools and in- struction. His residence at Cambridge, therefore, with its opportunities for intercourse with Colet, is particularly im- portant from the point of view of the present study of Erasmus in relation to the progress of educational thought and practice. Cambridge, moreover, enabled Erasmus to bring towards completion two great enterprises in the field which he hence- forward claimed to be peculiarly his own, that of the application of scholarship to historical Christianity. I refer to the edition of the Letters of Jerome, and the text of the Greek Testament. The former had been for twenty years the subject to which 22 Erasmus and the Greek Testament Erasmus had always turned with keen interest. Jerome repre- sented for Erasmus all that was most learned, sober, eloquent in Christian theology. To produce an edition worthy of the great Latin Father was an ever-present ambition. Thus on hearing that the printing-house of Froben, at Basel, successor to the great Amerbach, was ready to undertake at their own cost the issue of this favourite child of his scholarship, Erasmus left England (1514) and made his way thither. Between 1514 and 1517 Erasmus can scarcely be said to have had a settled home. The true centre of his interests lay in Basel, where from 1515 onwards Froben and his partners were engaged not only upon the two great works just mentioned, but upon several others from Erasmus' pen. In 1515 the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum appeared in Germany. They were, naturally enough, ascribed to the author of the Moriae Encomium, and the whilom translator of Lucian : though Erasmus was anxious to disown any share in this famous jeu d'esprit, he admits that he never laughed at anything so help- lessly in his life. But he was just now writing the dedication of his two great works to Leo X and Warham, and outwardly was in a serious mood. The Greek Testament, with all its importance as the Editio Princeps of the original text, is still far from being a scholarly recension. Textual criticism of Greek authors was still in an embryo stage. Manuscript sources were very imperfectly known, and the particular codices used by Erasmus were not of importance as authorities. The importance of the edition lies in the motive and method which it reveals. To go back to the origins, that was invariably Erasmus' principle : to get behind the gloss of the grammarian to the plain text of the author, behind the gloss of the dialectic theologian to the actual teaching of the apostolic age. To be afraid of facts was superstition and the denial of the prerogative of human reason. In relation to this general principle we are concerned indirectly, at least, with the attitude of Erasmus tc the monuments of historical divinity. The ' Colloquies ' 2 3 Part of the period to which reference has just been made (1515-1519) was spent at Louvain with visits to London and Brussels. Francis I had in 1515 ascended the French throne, amid such hopes as had been stirred in England a few years ago. The great Budaeus wrote from Paris to Erasmus offering him, apparently on the new king's behalf, a position of dis- tinction and a rich benefice. This offer came to nothing ; but Erasmus accepted (1516) a sinecure post as Counsellor to Charles I of Spain, who became later the Emperor Charles V. Whereupon Erasmus indited for his behoof the Institutio Priticipis Chris tiani, a tract treating of The Duties of Kingship, The work has no very great interest in relation to education in general, but in spite of its inevitably, but reasonably, laudatory tone, it expresses clearly the views which Erasmus and More had in common on government, peace, and the functions of a true king. It was held in high esteem by a man of so practical temper as Sir Thomas Elyot, who urges that it should be " as familiar alway with gentlemen at all times and in every age as was Homer with the great King Alexander or Xenophon with Scipio.... There never was book written in Latin that, in so little a portion, contained of sentence, eloquence, and virtuous exhortation a more compendious abundance." In the same year, 1516, Froben published the famous collection of dia- logues on incidents of daily life and intercourse known as the Colloquies under the title of Colloquiorum Formulae. They had been written by Erasmus from time to time as exercises in the teaching of conversational Latin. Some of them date back to the days of his tutoring work in Paris twenty years previously. In their definitive form in the Basel edition of 1523 they contain Erasmus' riper views on a wide range of topics ; and not a few are directly concerned with his ideas on training and instruction. The whole volume, however, is evidence of Erasmus' method of uniting scholarship with didactic purpose : what was begun as an aid to composition, has developed into a manual of comment on life and conduct. 24 Louvain It was full of satire on obscurantism in the fields of religion and knowledge, and in the changed atmosphere induced by the Lutheran conflict it roused the suspicion of the authorities. The condemation of the Colloquia by the University of Paris, as undermining to the Faith, led to its almost universal adoption as a school book in schools influenced by the Reform. The result was that no book of Erasmus, not even the Maria, had so wide a vogue. It was pirated in every country in Europe. In 1517 Erasmus was busily engaged in advising upon the organisation of the new Collegium Trilingue at Louvain, a school or college intended to establish liberal learning upon an assured footing. Hebrew, Greek and Latin formed the cur- riculum, and scholars of the highest repute were sought for it. It is interesting to note the collocation of the three languages. This had as a fact little or no theological significance. It was due much more to the conception of the philological importance of Hebrew as the primitive language, and of the light which the study of it might throw upon the classical tongues. Erasmus clearly found much to attract him in Louvain at this time. But he met the offer of a chair in the new Collegium with a prompt refusal ; no doubt it was hardly expected that he would accept even a titular responsibility, much as he enjoyed giving advice on the election of the professors and framing the schemes of study. In 1519 he determined to settle in Louvain amongst friends so congenial to his pursuits. For the Univer- sity city was a centre of keen intellectual life, well placed for meeting scholars, and not less so for visits to France, England or the Rhinelands. Moreover it contained several printers of repute, so that about this time we find Erasmus issuing many editions of his smaller works from Louvain. And in spite of piracies his income from publishers must have been con- siderable. The stirrings of the German revolt from Rome opened a new chapter in the career of Erasmus. His attitude to the Beginnings of the Reform 25 earlier controversies of the Reformation has been frequently and elaborately argued, and only indirectly concerns us here. This at least must be said. The Lutheran conflict brought Erasmus much anxiety and no little misfortune during his life. But it is still more certain that it did equal injury to his fame after death, in that it has thrown his master-aims and activity into wrong perspective in the eyes of his critics and bio- graphers. Erasmus was not a Dogmatist, still less an eccle- siastic or politician, least of all a fighting partisan. He was a scholar, a teacher preparing well-sifted authorities for others to make such use of as the changing needs of the times might demand. Unfortunately for himself he had a keen scent for self-deception in loudly vocal people, and a pretty trick of style in exposing it. But it is true to say that the only region in which he had any thought-out system to offer for guidance of a practical world was the region of Latin scholarship and of education. And Erasmus knew it. His shrinking from partisan declarations was but the recognition of the fact that both in theological dialectic and in ecclesiastico-political fight- ing, the two dominant sides of the Lutheran struggle, he was no expert, and had neither the gifts nor inclinations to become one. So far as ideals went, Lutheran separatism was utterly distasteful to him. He was for his years an old man, of un- certain health ; but Erasmus can only be called a coward by those to whom partisanship is the one note of courage. Louvain did not escape the clouds and thunder of the "great Day of the Lord." Always prone to a restless desire for change, Erasmus persuaded himself that he must go in search of a quieter atmosphere, where pronouncements on the controversy would not be expected of him. This haven of peace he decided that he would best find at Basel under the shelter of the Frobenhaus. There in the spring of 1522 he was welcomed by his old friends, and there he installed himself in the home where he spent the happiest period of his later life. He had now entered upon the last stage of his vigorous 26 Erasmus and Luther and productive career. The Lutheran trouble, indeed, pursued him in spite of his flight from it. He had hoped great things from the election of Adrian VI (1522) as successor to Leo X. For the Archbishop of Utrecht, though as a Pope he was a failure, was a man of very different type to the Borgia, the Rovere, and the Medici. Erasmus had known him well and respected him for his sincere life and his solid intellectual gifts. Through Adrian he was led to take an overt part in the pamphlet warfare now raging. His tract on Free Will set out with excellent temper his view of human nature in relation to the Divine Will. As we should expect, he is not very forcible in taking up a controversial position ; he sees, here as else- where, both sides of the question. But he believed, and had always believed, that the human spirit is by creation not merely capable of, but prone to, a rational and wholesome activity. His spiritual analysis was never deep : Plutarchian, perhaps, in its plain common-sense method. Thus Erasmus was an easy victim to Luther's dialectic : as Luther said of the controversy, " it was as easy as it was disagreeable to confute so superficial a treatise from so profound a scholar." But the duel waxed hotter. Erasmus quickly became " that poisonous serpent Erasmus of Rotterdam." Melanchthon was invoked from Basel to mitigate the harshness of the conflict. But the young man of 24, a scholar no less than his correspondent, saw, what Erasmus was never to see, that the problem of the new age was not to be solved by scholarship alone. The result of it all was that Erasmus drew insensibly nearer to the Roman side. He was ageing rapidly, and was unable to face the illimitable possibilities involved in the collapse of that ancient ecclesi- astical order which meant to him, as we shall see, so much besides itself. His real abiding interests remained steadily to the fore ; he resolutely put aside the controversy, which in its methods absolutely, and in large measure in its aims, was repellent to him. The Basel period (1522-1529) was, therefore, mainly given The ' Ciceronianus ' 27 to literary activity. Of interest in the field of pure scholar- ship we have the Ciceronianus (1528), a dialogue on Latinity in which Erasmus appeals for a living Roman speech fit to be the vehicle of expression for modern needs and practical life. He had begun to interest himself in the discussion as to the limits of Imitation in style in 1526, and had no doubt watched with amusement the controversy on the subject which had arisen in Italy so far back as the day of Poliziano and Cortesius. He ridiculed, with his own peculiar sting, the mere Ciceronian who had reduced Latin to a purely imitative language, relying on the accident of Cicero's vocabulary or usage of inflectional forms. Erasmus' instinct was perfectly right in perceiving that such a canon implied the death of Latin as an instrument for modern life. But though he could appeal to such scholars as Poliziano and Pico, he roused against himself fierce controversialists of the younger type, like Julius Caesar Scaliger and Etienne Dolet, with the whole school of Padua. The unfortunate champion of common-sense was battered by a vituperation which had a truly theologic wealth of epithet and innuendo 1 . The treatise De Recta Latini Graecique Sermonis Pronunciatione, which was regarded as the last word upon the subject of Greek pronunciation, for northern peoples at least, appeared in the same year. His work on Christian Matrimony, Institutio Christiani Matri- jnonii, had, like the De Re Uxoria of Francesco Barbaro written just a century before, a section perhaps in each case the most interesting part of the work on the bringing up of children. This dialogue is our best source for insight into Erasmus' thoughts on girls' education. In 1529 he printed also the De Pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis, the ripest of his educational tracts, which is contained, in an English dress, in the present volume. Meantime he was applying himself still with marvellous energy, under stress of grievous bodily pain, to the origins of Christianity. The 1 Upon the import of Ciceronianism see infra, p. 51. 28 Last Years Paraphrases, or free Latin versions of the Gospels, had been begun at Louvain or Cambridge, and were all published by 1524. They met with signal condemnation at the hands of controversialists of both camps. The works of St Ambrose were printed in the year of Froben's death (1527); the entire works of St Augustine in 1528-9 in ten folio volumes; St Chrysostom in five volumes in 1530. These dates will serve to indicate the untiring industry with which Erasmus kept his printers employed, although Erasmus' actual editing in some cases was but slight. The year of 1532 saw the publication of the great edition of the Comedies of Terence, always Erasmus' favourite classic : this is, perhaps, the most valuable, in a critical sense, of his classical recensions. Froben died in 1527 : his death was a great personal loss to Erasmus, although the work of the printing-house did not slacken. This event, coupled with the spread to Basel and the upper Rhine of the Reformation controversy, provoked once more the wandering spirit in Erasmus. It is not other- wise easy to explain his removal to Freiburg in 1529. For he had been probably happier at Basel than he had been any- where else since he left England in 1514. He had friends, repute, congenial work, and adequate means, in spite of his confessed bad management in affairs. The atmosphere of the city was tolerant yet keen. But he fled to the strongly Catholic Imperial city which stands on the edge of the Black Forest, where the hills sink to the broad plain of the Rhine. There he hoped, he tells us, to find a more peaceful home, where no one would pester him to interest himself in the conflicts of the day. But the Diet of Augsburg sat in the following year (1530), and Erasmus began to moot the project of going still further away from such centres of disturbance, to Italy perhaps, or at least to Burgundy. The old restlessness was not to be laid, and it was steadily aggravated by the nature of his illness. It was no special mark of discontent or irrita- bility, as some biographers represent it, but the revolt of a Death of Erasmus, 1536 29 temper passionately devoted to study against all that seemed to hinder him from the highest level of productive energy. In 1536 he declares Basel to be after all a better residence than Freiburg, and is once more welcomed by the Froben circle, the best friends left to him, for Colet and More, the gracious figures of his brighter time, were already dead. In the very last year of his life he sent to the press the Ecclesiastes, a significant work, so reasonable, and, in the best sense, Evan- gelical in tone, on the Office of the Christian Preacher, followed by his edition of Origen. Working " till death itself wrested the pen from his hand," he ended his strenuous life on July 12, 1536. CHAPTER II. CHARACTERISTICS. i. ERASMUS AND ANTIQUITY. IT is a proof of the intimate relation which subsisted between the Revival of Learning and the social milieu which rendered it possible, that a hundred years intervened between the residence of Chrysoloras at Florence and the beginnings of Greek studies in Paris or Oxford. The formative epoch of the Renaissance, the Quattrocento, was over before the northern peoples were fit to receive it, or were able to assimi- late it, and reproduce it in the special shape which the history and genius of each nationality determined. Of the various factors, differing in origin and character, which constitute the movement to which we give the title of Renaissance, the impulse to revive the form and the spirit of the antique world was but one. In Italy by virtue of causes readily intelligible this factor of the Renaissance filled a larger space and had subtler effects than in northern countries. One reason for this difference is, no doubt, that the undue self- consciousness, with the consequent artificiality and affectation, which mark the Italian Revival, had, so to say, worn through to the surface before the translation of the new ideal of culture beyond the Alps. For in Italy itself, by the time that the fifteenth century had reached its close, the more vigorous minds had already shed, or were shedding, the encumbrance of mere imitativeness. In language, in art, in building, in Tke Function of Antiquity 3 1 literary form and in political thought, a truly new world had begun to arise. Amid the vast material which the past century had heaped together with such industry and enthusiasm the genius of Da Vinci, of Machiavelli and Michelangelo was busy sorting and re-ordering ; not now with the purpose of re-erect- ing in patient obedience the monuments of antiquity, but to create a dwelling for the modern spirit. Now it was the fact that Germany and Western Europe were socially and politically a hundred years behind Venice or Florence, that enabled them to receive the impulse of the Renaissance at the stage when its true vitalising force began to stand out from the immaturities of its early development. The career of Erasmus covers exactly this period of tran- sition. His powerful intellect, of a markedly objective and receptive type, was well-fitted to be the instrument of conveying and interpreting a many-sided movement of the human spirit. Like the Revival itself, he too passed through as an ardent student, perhaps, must always pass his period of idolatry, of imitation, of conscious affectations. The years of his youth and early manhood partly coincided with the reign of scholar- ship of that type. But with him also this was but a stage in development. Gradually the New Learning became to him an instrument of life, actual and modern ; a thing of use, to be adapted to intelligible needs, a source of illumination amid the hard experiences of ordinary men. In his maturity Erasmus showed himself a man of practical aims, with whom wisdom and scholarship were means to social well-being. It is the problem of Erasmus' personality to determine the relative place occupied in it, first by religion and next by humanist impulse, and to understand the nature of the recon- ciliation at which he arrived. Neither of these two currents of interest was at any time in his life operative to the exclusion of the other. But it is true to say that up to the time of quitting Stein in 1493, at the age of 26 or 27, his pre-occu- pations had been in the main with religion ; and that for the 32 Erasmus and Antiquity next twenty years, a stage in his development even more critical, he was absorbed in the study of the ancient literatures. It would be impossible to account for the unexpected evidences of mediaeval sentiment and ways of thought even in the maturity of his powers, when the monastic concept of life had become wholly abhorrent, had we not before us the fact of the contented life which for ten years he led as an Augustinian monk. In the same way the intensity of his first humanist enthusiasm may explain certain odd inconsistencies in his view of the place to be filled by the antique in the modern world. That it is impossible to "classify" Erasmus was reluctantly admitted by his friends and by his enemies long before he died ; it has remained impossible ever since. His personality indeed is more complex than his contemporaries knew. But the Age itself was a strange conflict of Old and New, -of un- reconciled forces, of methods and of aims alike uncertain. And the receptivity of Erasmus' nature made it inevitable that he should reflect the contradictions which indeed his training and environment worked into the fibre of his spiritual self. The presumptions involved in the Christian ideals of Erasmus will be touched upon later. We must here estimate the significance to him of the concept of antiquity which he found current amongst humanists when (about 1493) he sur- rendered himself first to their influence. From the writings of Italian scholars he found that the ancient civilisation was treated as the living heritage of their nation. It was in no sense regarded by them as an extinct order. On the contrary, it was a Golden Age, an ideal yet real past, worthy to evoke both patriotic pride and eager imitation. In this ancient culture the share of Rome was to the humanist by far the more important. The function of the scholar was to bring home to the citizen of Florence and Milan that Cicero, Vergil and Augustus belonged to him : that in that notable epoch were conceived and in large part realised the highest ideals of culture, of social order, of justice, of peace, and, not least, of Antiquity a Golden Age 33 human personality. To some scholars, indeed, like Vittorino, the absence of Christian faith was an indelible blur upon the picture ; to Beccadelli, to Valla, or to the Roman Accademia, there was no blur. The language of Rome was the perfection of all speech ; the various literary forms elaborated in the Augustan age were the ideals of all composition ; in sculpture, architecture, military art, in agriculture and all technical crafts the Roman practice, if we could completely understand it, would prove the absolute standard for all time. There was no doubt in the mind of the Humanist that in the literature of Greece and Rome was contained all knowledge useful to man in each department of his life. To reproduce the antique order seemed the inevitable corollary from such an argument ; but, as Italian Popes and Princes failed to respond to the ideal sufficiently to induce political self-effacement, the dreams of scholars were restricted to restoring the realm of ancient know- ledge, literature and art. How did this strike Erasmus ? Let us remember carefully the social environment in which Erasmus lived. The constant factors of his experience were unceasing wars, pliague, famine, gross vice, coarseness, cruelty, political tyranny, indifference to spiritual and intellectual light. In the stir and movement of the sense of nationality he per- ceived an inevitable hindrance to order and peace : local character, ambition, languages, were so many barriers to unity of culture, to progress through intercourse, to amelioration of common life. The Church instead of commanding respect as the symbol of a world-order, was debased, ignorant, and a source of danger. The New Learning, then, opens to him a window from which he looks out upon another world. Like the Italians he recognises in it a Golden Age of humanity. Its notes of distinction were, first, its universality: government and order were then secured to mankind : there was one law and uniform 'justice : war was impossible. Again, language was one, with free intercourse thereby opened between all peoples ; whilst Learning laboured under no obstacles of race w. 3 34 Erasmus and Antiquity and speech. It was co-extensive with civilisation, the true Humanitas. Next, the material conditions of life were favour- able even to the poorest. The dignity of the City, the prosperity of the country, were such as no one might realise in the France or Germany of his day. Lastly, the level of attainments, scientific, artistic, or political, was infinitely in advance of anything that had been reached in subsequent ages. In literature the supreme heights had been gained in the oratory, poetry, and philosophy of Greece and Rome. It was possible to hope for a gradual recovery in favoured lands of the wisdom and content which the ancient world enjoyed from the Indus to the Atlantic. Whether the modern world could attain to the standard of culture reached by the ancients was doubtful. That it should surpass it was hardly conceivable, though Erasmus had his sanguine moments. In any case the way to progress lay through the study of the great past. No doubt the remoteness in time of the Roman empire, and, still more, the lack of critical knowledge of its history and inner life conduced to easy idealisation. Still we must re- cognise it is worth repeating whence came the impulse to such belief: from a desire, never dormant, for a time when men's lives might be passed in peace and order, and human well-being rest on the sure basis of enlightenment. It is, however, a misreading of the man to ascribe to him the dream of a mere reproduction of the Roman world either as a political or as a social system. Of the two factors which render such an ideal to us unthinkable, Christianity and the spirit of nationality, Erasmus gave its due weight to the first alone. But that factor he realised to the full. His own keen sense of reality saved him from the affectation of neo-paganism in any of its forms. In such revivals he saw only a futile attempt to resuscitate a dead body ; whereas his aim was to unite and reconcile the ancient spirit with the new. Now the relative place to be given to each of these two elements varies partly with the stage of his development, Its Application to Modern Europe 35 partly with his mood, or the precise object with which he writes. We cannot formulate a consistent doctrine from his writings or his practice. But the uniform belief of his working life may be thus expressed. A thorough study of ancient literature could, as nothing else, enlarge knowledge and elevate human motives. Acquaintance with the history and political writings of Greece and Rome would tend to raise the standard of government and to stimulate patriotic duty. By widening men's interests, by the application of arts long since lost, by abolishing war, by encouraging reason and illumination, society would be lifted on to a new plane and this could only be effected by harking back to the wisdom stored in the historic past. He believed, also, that Christian doctrine could not be rightly understood without a rich acquaintance with the thought amid which it first grew up. Finally, as the ancient world held the key to the amelioration of the present, no education of the young was possible which was not built upon Greek and Roman models and administered through classical literature as its chief instrument But we must not forget that the classical civilisation was not, to Erasmus, merely a past. He was unable to view it as a purely historical phenomenon. It was an ideal to be defended or to be criticised: and modern progress signified approximation to that ideal, or at least to such aspects of it as were reconcileable with the Christian spirit. Here comes in the limitation of his outlook to which allusion has been made above ; his blindness to the true mark of modern history, the function of nationality. In his pas- sionate desire for the fruits of peace he sees only in national aspirations so many forces making for war and exclusion. When he concerns himself with current politics it is mostly with unwillingness and fitfully : he longs in his heart for a republic of enlightenment which knowing no country shall be coterminous with humanity. There is no question that in this ideal of a universal order we have also one principal clue to the dread with which he 32 36 Erasmus and Antiquity regarded the Lutheran revolt. If to the barriers of political system and of vernacular languages were added an aggressive spiked fence of national churches and theologies, what hope was left for the peaceful advance of mankind? The centri- fugal force of the Reformation dismayed Erasmus : for it boded a rude awakening from his dream of the priceless gift which the spirit of the ancient world was offering to the new. And this was a humanity bound together, in one faith and one culture, by the bond of universal peace. The appeal which Antiquity made to Erasmus thus rested, in large part, upon its aspect as a social ideal. But its attrac- tion can only be fully accounted for by a relation still more intimate: the special sympathy which he felt for the intellectual and moral temper of the old civilisation. In other words Erasmus found in Antiquity not only a social ideal, but the very pattern of his own personal attitude to thought and action. The spirit of Erasmus was, as has been said, of the type which moves freely only amidst ideas capable of easy verification and clear statement ; mostly of a concrete order, of direct human interest, of definite applicability to life and action. It is probable that Erasmus had little poetical feeling his criticism of the Choruses of the Greek drama alone implies as much 1 nor do we find in him serious evidence of historical imagination. But we mus describe him as conspicuously deficient in all that concerns philosophical speculation, and mental analysis that passes below the surface of thought or morals. Thus he is never really at home with Plato; the earlier philosophers have no attraction for him. 1 Erasmus is speaking of his versions of the two plays of Euripides (1506): 'in no other instance does antiquity appear to me to have played the fool so much as in this sort of choruses, in which eloquence was debased by an excessive affectation of novelty, and in aiming at verbal miracles all grasp of reality was lost.' The whole passage should be read : Nicholls,. Epistles, pp. 431 2. In 1507 Erasmus' knowledge of Greek was still slight, and the chorus of a Greek play was beyond him. The Mental Attitude of Erasmus 37 The great mediaevalists, with their gropings after a profound unifying concept in knowledge, were not properly appraised by him, or by any humanist. The dogmatic aspects of theology, particularly as they became drawn into the whirlpool of the Lutheran controversy, were repellent to him. Yet he often speaks as do all humanists of philosophia and sapientia. But in these words he is in effect referring to Cicero, Seneca, or Plutarch. " Philosophy " meant primarily to Erasmus and the Italians (Ficino, Pico and Sadoleto are notable exceptions) the clear self-evident working morality current in the best minds of the period between Caesar and the Antonines. In the same way, " doctrine " was the historic faith set out in the Gospels, and the social conduct based upon it. There is no trace of mysticism in his attitude towards religion : the quality is wholly alien from his temperament. Hence it was not difficult for him to reconcile the best moral teaching of the old world with Christianity, and to regard literature as, in skilful hands, a practical guide to action. In this he took up the ordinary humanist position. The tolerance towards others, the calm and reasonable judgment of ourselves, the hopeful estimate of humanity, which he found in Plutarch, were peculiarly characteristic of his objective way of regarding human nature. Then it is noticeable that of the Greek poetic or speculative spirit, in its deeper sense, Erasmus has little or nothing. Lucian and Plutarch he knows well. The world of Pythagoras, Aeschylus or Plato is all but closed to him. The practical wisdom of the Roman statesman-moralist is that which is most congenial to his temperament, and coincides most nearly with his outlook upon life. Reading Antiquity with these limitations the entire culture of the ancients struck him as marked by the same intelligi- bility, the same restraint. In politics as in literature there was a corresponding concreteness and absence of elusive generals. As contrasted with mediaeval conceptions in which abstractions played so large and to Erasmus so irritating a part, he found 38 Erasmus and Antiquity the antique world singularly actual, definite and realisable. There is no doubt that his instinct was sound so far as it con- cerned Roman thought. It would even be true to say that such Aristotelian phrases as that of men v