His next work on the New Testament came to him at Louvain in 1504.
Walking out one day to the Abbey of Parc, outside the town--a house of White Canons, Erasmus himself being a Black--he came upon a ma.n.u.script in their library, the Annotations of Valla on the New Testament. There was an affinity between his mind and that of the famous scholar-canon of St. John Lateran, who, in spite of his dependence on Papal patronage and favour, had been unable to keep his tongue from asking awkward questions, from inquiring even into the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine. Erasmus read the Annotations and liked their critical, scholarly tone, and the frequent citations of the original Greek. With the characteristic generosity of the age he was allowed to carry the ma.n.u.script away and print it in Paris, with a dedication to an Englishman, Christopher Fisher, perhaps a kinsman of the Bishop of Rochester.
From Paris he wrote to Colet to report progress, saying that he had learnt Greek and was ready to turn to the Scriptures, and asking him to interest English patrons in their common work. By this time Colet himself had become a patron, having been appointed Dean of St. Paul"s.
It is therefore not surprising to find that within a year Erasmus was established in London, living in a bishop"s house, endowed by his old pupil Lord Mountjoy, and rejoicing in the society of the learned friends gathered in the capital. Chief among these was Colet, who lent him ma.n.u.scripts from the Chapter Library of St. Paul"s, and provided a copyist to write out the fruits of his labours, a one-eyed Brabantine, Peter Meghen by name, who acted also as Colet"s private letter-carrier. Meghen wrote a bold, well-marked hand, which is easily recognizable, and in consequence his work has been traced in many libraries. The British Museum has a treatise of Chrysostom, translated by Selling, and written by Meghen for Urswick, afterwards Dean of Windsor and Rector of Hackney, to present to Prior Goldstone of Canterbury. (Urswick was frequently sent on emba.s.sies, and had doubtless enjoyed the hospitality of Christchurch on his way between London and Dover.) At Wells there are a Psalter and a translation of Chrysostom on St. Matthew, which Urswick, as executor to Sir John Huddelston, knight, caused Meghen to write in 1514 for presentation to the Cistercians of Hailes, in Gloucestershire. The Bodleian has a treatise written by him in 1528 for Nicholas Kratzer to present to Henry VIII; and Wolsey"s Lectionary at Christ Church, Oxford, is probably in Meghen"s hand.
But what concern us here are some ma.n.u.scripts in the British Museum and the University Library at Cambridge, written by Meghen in 1506 and 1509 at Colet"s order for presentation to his father, Sir Henry Colet, Lord Mayor of London, and containing in parallel columns the Vulgate and another Latin translation of the New Testament, "per D. Erasmum Roterodamum". Part and possibly all of this work was done by Erasmus, therefore, during this second residence in England in 1505-6. He tells us that he received two Latin ma.n.u.scripts from Colet, which he found exceedingly difficult to decipher; but one cannot make a new translation from the Latin. To the Greek ma.n.u.scripts used on this occasion he gives no clue.
In connexion with this help and encouragement shown by Colet as Dean to a foreign scholar, it is worth while to mention the visit to London in 1509 of Cornelius Agrippa, the famous philosopher and scientist, who had been sent to England by Maximilian on a diplomatic errand, which he describes as "a very secret business". During his stay, which lasted into 1510, he tells us that "I laboured much over the Epistles of St. Paul, in the company of John Colet, a man most learned in Catholic doctrine, and of the purest life; and from him I learnt many things that I did not know". Erasmus was in England at the time of this visit of Agrippa; but unfortunately he makes no allusion to it, neither in his life of Colet, nor in his later correspondence with Agrippa, nor, so far as I know, elsewhere in his works. If he had done so, it might have solved a problem which is very curious in the case of a public man of his fame and position, and of whom so much is otherwise known. From the autumn of 1509, when he returned from Italy and wrote the Praise of Folly in More"s house in Bucklersbury, until April 1511, when he went to Paris to print it, Erasmus completely disappears from view. He published nothing, no letter that he wrote survives, we have no clue to his movements. If it had been any one else, we might almost conjecture that, like Hermonymus, he was in prison. It was just during this period that Cornelius Agrippa was in London. If either had mentioned the other, we should have a spark to illumine this singular belt of darkness.
When Erasmus returned to Cambridge in 1511, he was already familiar with the field in which he was going to work; but the precise order in which his scheme unfolded itself, whether the Greek text was his first aim or an afterthought, is not clear, his utterances being perhaps intentionally ambiguous. During these three years in Cambridge he refers occasionally to the "collation" and "castigation" of the New Testament, so that evidently he was engaged with the four Greek ma.n.u.scripts, which, according to an introduction in his first edition, he had before him for his first recension. One of these has been identified, the Leicester Codex written by Emmanuel of Constantinople, which, as already mentioned, was with the Franciscans at Cambridge early in the sixteenth century.
By 1514 he was ready. In the last three years he had completed Jerome and the New Testament, and had also prepared for the press some of Seneca"s philosophical writings, from ma.n.u.scripts at King"s and Peterhouse; besides lesser pieces of work. A difficulty arose about the printing. In 1512 he had been in negotiation with Badius Ascensius of Paris to undertake Jerome and a new edition of the _Adagia_. What actually happened is not known. But in December 1513 he writes to an intimate friend that he has been badly treated about the _Adagia_ by an agent--a travelling bookseller, who acted as go-between for printers and authors and public; that instead of taking them to Badius and offering him the refusal, the knavish fellow had gone straight to Basle and sold them, with some other work of Erasmus, to a printer who had only just completed an edition of the _Adagia_. Erasmus"
indignation does not ring true. It is highly probable that he was in search of a printer with greater resources than Badius, who as yet had produced nothing of any importance in Greek, and would therefore be unable to do justice to the New Testament; and that accordingly he had commissioned the agent to negotiate with a firm which by now had established a great reputation--that of Amorbach and Froben, in Basle.
His attention had perhaps been aroused by a flattering mention of him in a preface written in Froben"s name for the pirated edition of the _Adagia_, August 1513, to which Erasmus was referring in the letter just quoted. Rumour had spread through Europe that Erasmus was dead--it was repeated six months later in a book printed at Vienna--and the Basle circle deplored the loss that this would mean to learning.
There were other reasons for this choice, apart from the excellence of the printers. Erasmus had never been happy in Paris. He had often been ill beside the sluggish Seine, and had only found his health again by leaving it. The theologians were still predominant there, and Louis XII had a way of interfering with scholars who discovered any freedom of thought. Standonck, for instance, the refounder of Montaigu, had had to disappear in 1499-1500. For Erasmus to sit in Paris for two or three years while his books were being printed, would have been at least a penance. But Basle was very different. The Rhine, dashing against the piers of the bridge which joined the Great and Little towns, brought fresh air and coolness and health. The University, founded in 1460, was active and liberally minded. The town had recently (1501) thrown in its lot with the confederacy of Swiss cantons, thereby strengthening the political immunity which it had long enjoyed. Between the citizens and the religious orders complete concord prevailed; and finally, except Paris, there was no town North of the Alps which could vie with Basle in the splendour and number of the books which it produced. This is how a contemporary scholar[21]
writes of the city of his adoption. "Basle to-day is a residence for a king. The streets are clean, the houses uniform and pleasant, some of them even magnificent, with s.p.a.cious courts and gay gardens and many delightful prospects; on to the grounds and trees beside St. Peter"s, over the Dominicans", or down to the Rhine. There is nothing to offend the taste even of those who have been in Italy, except perhaps the use of stoves instead of fires, and the dirt of the inns, which is universal throughout Germany. The climate is singularly mild and agreeable, and the citizens polite. A bridge joins the two towns, and the situation on the river is splendid. Truly Basle is [Greek: basileia], a queen of cities."
[21] Beatus Rhena.n.u.s, _Res Germanicae_, 1531, pp. 140, 1.
In 1513 the two greatest printers of Basle were in partnership, John Amorbach and John Froben. Amorbach, a native of the town of that name in Franconia, had taken his M.A. in Paris, and then had worked for a time in Koberger"s press at Nuremberg. About 1475 he began to print at Basle, and for nearly forty years devoted all his energies to producing books that would promote good learning; being, however, far too good a man of business to be indifferent to profit. His ambition was to publish worthily the four Doctors of the Church. Ambrose appeared in 1492, Augustine in 1506, and Jerome succeeded. The work was divided amongst many scholars. Reuchlin helped with the Hebrew and Greek, and spent two months in Amorbach"s house in the summer of 1510 to bring matters forward. Subsequently his province fell to Pellican, the Franciscan Hebraist, and John Cono, a learned Dominican of Nuremberg, who had mastered Greek at Venice and Padua, and had recently returned from Italy with a store of Greek ma.n.u.scripts copied from the library of Musurus. Others who took part in the work were Conrad Leontorius from the Engental; Sapidus, afterwards head master of the Latin school at Schlettstadt; and Gregory Reisch, the learned Prior of the Carthusians at Freiburg, who seems to have been specially occupied with Jerome"s Letters.
Amorbach"s sons, Bruno, Basil, and Boniface, were just growing up to take their father"s place, when he died on Christmas Day, 1513. The eldest, Bruno, was born in 1485, and easily paired off with Basil, who was a few years younger. They went to school together at Schlettstadt, under Crato Hofman, in 1497. In 1500 they matriculated at Basle; in 1501 they went to Paris, where in 1504-5 they became B.A., and in 1506 M.A. Bruno was enthusiastic for cla.s.sical studies, and enjoyed life in Paris, where he certainly had better opportunities, especially of learning Greek, than he had at Basle; so his father allowed him to stay on. Basil was destined for the law, and was sent to work under Zasius at Freiburg. The youngest son, Boniface, 1495-1562, also went to school at Schlettstadt; but when his time came for the university, his father preferred to keep him at home under his own eye. He was rather dissatisfied with Bruno, who as a Paris graduate had begun to play the fine gentleman, and was spending his money handsomely, as other young men have been known to do. The vigorous, straightforward old printer had made the money himself by steady hard work, and he had no intention of letting his son take life too easily. So he wrote him a piece of his mind, in fine, forcible Latin.
JOHN AMORBACH TO HIS ELDEST SON, BRUNO, IN PARIS: from Basle, 23 July 1507.
"I cannot imagine, Bruno, what you do, to spend so much money.[22] You took with you 7 crowns; and supposing that you spent 2, or at the outside 3, on your journey, you must have had 4 left--unless perhaps you paid for your companion, which I did not tell you to do. Very likely his father has more money than I have, but does not give it to him; no more do I give you money to pay for other people. It is quite enough for me to support you and your brothers, indeed more than enough.
Then, directly you reached Paris, you received 12 crowns from John Watensne. Also you had 9 for your horse, as you say in your letter. Also 9 more from John Watensne, which I paid to Wolfgang Lachner at the Easter fair at Frankfort; also 15 at midsummer. Add these together and you will see that you have had 52 crowns in 9 months.
Perhaps you imagine that money comes to me anyhow. You know that for the last two years I have not been printing. We are living upon capital, the whole lot of us.[23] I have to provide for my household.[24] I have to provide for your brother Basil, and for Boniface, whom I have sent to Schlettstadt. I ought, too, to do something for your sister: for several sober and honourable men are at me about her, and I do not like to be unfair towards her. So just remember that you are not the only one.
You may take it for sure that I cannot, and will not, give you more than 22 or 23 crowns a year, or at the most 24. If you can live on that at Paris, well: I will undertake to let you have it for some years. But if it is not enough, come home and I will feed you at my table. Think it over and let me know by the next messenger: or else come yourself.
I have been told on good authority that in the town (lodgings, as opposed to a college) one can live quite decently on 16 or at most 20 crowns: also that sometimes three or four students, or more, take a house or a room, and then club together and engage a cook, and that their weekly bills scarcely amount to a teston <1 of="" a="" crown=""> a head. If that is so, join a party like that and live carefully.
Good-bye. Your mother sends her love.
Your affectionate father, John Amorbach.
[22] Bruno, satis admirari non possum quid agas vt tot pecunias consumas.
[23] Consumimus omnes de capitali.
[24] Habeo prouidere domui meae.
No answer came back, and on 18 August John Amorbach wrote again. Think of a modern parent waiting a month for an answer to such a communication and getting none! It might quite well have come. But posts were slow and uncertain; and when he wrote again, the father"s righteous indignation had somewhat abated. It was not till 16 October that Bruno replied, but with a very proper letter. He was a good fellow, and knew what he owed to his father. After expressing his regrets and determination to live within his allowance in future, he goes on: "There is a man just come from Italy, who is lecturing publicly on Greek. I have so long been wishing to learn this language, and here at length is an opportunity. I have plunged headlong into it, and with such a teacher I feel sure of satisfying my desires, which are as eager as any inclinations of the senses. So please allow me to stay a few months longer, and then I shall be able to bring home some Greek with me. After that I will come whenever you bid me." Next summer he did return and settled down to work in the press. It was well worth while, even for a scholar who was eager to go on learning, and was inclined to grudge time given to business: for with Jerome beginning and all the scholars whom we mentioned coming in and out, Amorbach"s house in Klein-Basel became an "Academy" which could bear comparison with Aldus" at Venice. It was worth Boniface"s while, too, to take his course at Basle under such circ.u.mstances; especially as in 1511 John Cono began to teach Greek and Hebrew regularly to the printer"s sons and to any one else who wished to come and learn. It is worth noticing that not one of these young men went to Italy for his humanistic education.Amorbach"s partner, John Froben, 1460-1527, was a man after his own heart: open and easy to deal with, but of dogged determination and with great capacity for work. He was not a scholar. It is not known whether he ever went to a University, and it is doubtful whether he knew any Latin; certainly the numerous prefaces which appear in his books under his name are not his own, but came from the pens of other members of his circle. So the division came naturally, that Amorbach organized the work and prepared ma.n.u.scripts for the press, while Froben had the printing under his charge. In later years, after Amorbach"s death, the marked advance in the output of the firm as regards type and paper and t.i.tle-pages and designs may be attributed to Froben, who was man of business enough to realize the importance of getting good men to serve him--Erasmus to edit books, Gerbell and Oecolampadius to correct the proofs, Graf and Holbein to provide the ornaments. For thirteen years he was Erasmus" printer-in-chief, and produced edition after edition of his works, both small and great; and whilst he lived, he had the call of almost everything that Erasmus wrote. It is quite exceptional to find any book of Erasmus published for the first time elsewhere during these years 1514-27. A few were given to Martens at Louvain, mostly during Erasmus" residence there, 1517-21, one or two to Schurer at Strasburg, one or two more to a Cologne printer; but for one of these there is evidence to show that Froben had declined it, because his presses were too busy. It is pleasant to find that the harmony of this long co-operation was never disturbed. Erasmus occasionally lets fall a word of disapproval; but what friends have ever seen eye to eye in all matters?
When Froben died in October 1527 as the result of a fall from an upper window, Erasmus wrote with most heartfelt sorrow a eulogy of his friend. "He was the soul of honesty himself, and slow to think evil of others; so that he was often taken in. Of envy and jealousy he knew as little as the blind do of colour. He was swift to forgive and to forget even serious injuries. To me he was most generous, ever seeking excuses to make me presents. If I ordered my servants to buy anything, such as a piece of cloth for a new coat, he would get hold of the bill and pay it off; and he would accept nothing himself, so that it was only by similar artifices that I could make him any return. He was enthusiastic for good learning, and felt his work to be his own reward. It was delightful to see him with the first pages of some new book in his hands, some author of whom he approved. His face was radiant with pleasure, and you might have supposed that he had already received a large return of profit. The excellence of his work would bear comparison with that of the best printers of Venice and Rome. Six years before his death he slipped down a flight of steps on to a brickwork floor, and injured himself so severely that he never properly recovered: but he always pretended that the effects had pa.s.sed away. Last year he was seized with a serious pain in his right ankle, and the doctors could do nothing except to suggest that the foot should be taken off. Some alleviation was brought by the skill of a foreign physician, but there was still a great deal of pain in the toes. However, he was not to be deterred from making the usual journeys to Frankfort (in March and September for the book-fairs) and rode on horseback both ways. We entreated him to take more care of himself, to wear more clothes when it was cold; but he could not be induced to give in to old age, and abandon the habits of a vigorous lifetime. All lovers of good learning will unite to lament his loss."
If Erasmus was fortunate in his printer, he was still more fortunate in the friend and confidant whom he found awaiting him at Basle, Beat Bild of Rheinau, 1485-1547, known then and now as Beatus Rhena.n.u.s, one of the choicest spirits of his own or any age. His father was a butcher of Rheinau who left his home because of continued ravages by the Rhine which threatened to sweep away the town. Settling in Schlettstadt, a free city of the Empire near by, he rose to the highest civic offices, and sent his son to the Latin school under first Crato Hofman and then Gebwiler. Beatus was contemporary there with Bruno and Basil Amorbach, and staying on longer than they did, rose to be a "praefect" in the school, which a few years later, according to Thomas Platter, had 900 boys in it. This number seems large for a town of perhaps not more than four or five thousand inhabitants; but it was equalled by the school at Alcmar in the days of Bartholomew of Cologne, and by Deventer, as we have seen, it was far surpa.s.sed. In 1503 Beatus went to Paris, and there overtook the Amorbach boys who had two years" start of him; becoming B.A. in 1504 and M.A. in 1505, a year before Bruno. After his degree he stayed on in Paris as corrector to the press of Henry Stepha.n.u.s for two years; and then returning home engaged himself in a similar capacity to Schurer at Strasburg, also giving a hand with editions of new texts.
In 1511, attracted by the fame of the good Dominican, John Cono, he went to Basle to work for the elder Amorbach and take lessons under Cono with the sons. When Erasmus came, Beatus at once fell under his spell, and subordinated his own projects to the requirements of his friend"s more important undertakings.
That indeed is Beatus" great characteristic throughout his life. He was well off, for his father "by the blessing of G.o.d on his ingenious endeavour had arisen to an ample estate"; and thus the son was not obliged to seek reward. He gave himself, therefore, unstintingly to any work that needed doing for his friends, editing, correcting, supervising; and usually suppressing the part he had taken in it. His own achievements are nevertheless considerable. The bibliographers have discovered sixty-eight books in which he had a capital share; and though a large number of these appear to be mere reprints of books printed in France or Italy--the law of copyright in those days was, as might be expected, uncertain--, there is a residue in which he really did original work: some notes on the history and geography of Germany which he composed, and editions of Pliny"s Natural History, Tacitus, Tertullian and Velleius Paterculus--the latter having an almost romantic interest from the fortunes of the ma.n.u.script on which it is based. A measure of the confidence which Erasmus subsequently reposed in both his judgement and his good faith is that in 1519 and 1521, when he had decided to publish some more of his letters, he just sent to Beatus bundles of the rough drafts he had preserved, and told him to select and edit them at his discretion.
A sketch of Beatus, written at his death by John Sturm of Strasburg, the friend of Ascham, gives a picture of the life he led at Schlettstadt during his last twenty years: the plain, simple living in the great house inherited from his father, without luxury or display, attended upon by an old maidservant and a young servant-pupil, given to friends but not allowing hospitality to infringe upon his work, lapped in such quiet as to seem almost solitude; the daily round being dinner at ten, in the afternoon a walk in his gardens outside the city walls, and supper at six. Gentle and accommodating, modest and diffident in spite of his learning, reluctant to talk of himself, and slow to take offence--it is no wonder that he held the affections of his friends. Well might Erasmus liken him to the blessed man of the first Psalm, "who shall be as a tree planted by the waterside."
We have seen Beatus" enthusiasm for queenly Basle. Of his native town he was not so proud; though it has good Romanesque work in St. Fides"
church and rich Gothic in the minster, and though Wimpfeling had just built a beautiful Renaissance house with Italian designs round its bay window and medallions of Roman Emperors on the pilasters. The school, too, was famous throughout Germany; and Lazarus Schurer had started a creditable printing-press. Yet to Beatus the minster is only "rather good, but modern", the Dominicans" house "mediocre", the nuns"
buildings "unhealthy", the people "simple and resourceless, as you would expect with vine-growers, and too fond of drinking". "There is nothing remarkable here", he says, "but the fortifications; indeed we are a stronghold rather than a city. The walls are circular, built of elegant brick and with towers of some pretensions." What pleased him as much as anything was that the ramparts were covered in for almost the whole of their length, and thus afforded protection to the night-guards against what he calls "celestial injuries".
One reason that we know Beatus so well is that his library has survived almost intact, as well as a great number of letters which he received. At his death he left his books to the town of Schlettstadt; and there they still are, forming the major and by far the most important part of the town library. It is a wonderful collection of about a thousand volumes, some of them extremely rare; many bought by him in his Paris days, some presents from friends sent or brought from far with dedicatory inscriptions. Hardly a book has not his name and the date when he acquired it, or other marks of his use. But they have not yet come to their full usefulness, for there is no adequate catalogue of them. In many cases their direct value has pa.s.sed away.
No one wishes to read the cla.s.sics or the Fathers in the texts current in the sixteenth century; yet behind printed books lie ma.n.u.scripts, and from examination of ma.n.u.scripts on which printed texts are based, we can gather many useful indications to throw light on the tradition of the cla.s.sics, the gradual steps by which the past has come down to us. Besides such texts there are mult.i.tudes of original compositions of Beatus" own period, books of great value for the history of scholarship; many of them requiring to be dated with more precision than is attainable on the surface. It will be a signal service to learning when a trained bibliographer takes Beatus Rhena.n.u.s" books in hand and gives us a scientific catalogue.
These were some of the friends who were in Basle when Erasmus first began to think of sending his work there to be printed. By the summer of 1514 the preliminary negotiations had been satisfactorily concluded and he set out. The story which he tells of his arrival is well known.
Amorbach was now dead; so he marched into the printing-house and asked for Froben. "I handed him a letter from Erasmus, saying that I was a familiar friend of his, and that he had charged me to arrange for the publication of his works; that any undertaking I made would be as valid as if made by him: finally, that I was so like Erasmus that to see me was to see him. He laughed and saw through the joke. His father-in-law, old Lachner, paid my bill at the inn, and carried me off, horse and baggage to his house."
He was not at first sure whether he would stay: he might get the work better done at Venice or at Rome. But the attractions of the printer"s house and circle were not to be resisted; and gradually, one after another, the books which he had brought were undertaken by Froben, a new edition of the _Adagia_, Seneca, the New Testament, Jerome. The way in which the printing was carried out ill.u.s.trates the critical standards of the age. Erasmus was absent from Basle during the greater part of the time when Seneca was coming through the press; and the proofs were corrected by Beatus Rhena.n.u.s and a young man named Nesen.
Under such circ.u.mstances a modern author would feel that he had only himself to thank for any defects in the book. Not so Erasmus. He boils over with annoyance against the correctors for the blunders they let pa.s.s. The idea that so magnificent a person as an editor or author should correct proofs had not arisen. It was the business of the young men who had been hired to do this drudgery; and all blame rested with them. So far as the evidence goes, it was the same all through Erasmus" life. In the case of one of his most virulent apologies (1520) he says that he corrected all the proofs himself; but from the stress he lays on the loss of time involved, it is clear that he regarded this as something exceptional, and not to be repeated. With the _Adagia_ published by Aldus (1508) he says that he cast his eye over the final proofs, not in search of errors, but to see whether he wished to make any changes. But in the main his books, like everybody else"s, were left to the care of others.
The fact is that in the splendour of the new invention of printing, the possibilities of accompanying error had not been realized. In just the same spirit the idea went abroad that when a book had been printed, its ma.n.u.script original had no value. We have seen how Erasmus was allowed to carry off the ma.n.u.script of Valla from Louvain to Paris. Aldus received codices from all parts of Europe, sent by owners with the request that they should be printed; but no desire for their return. In 1531 Simon Grynaeus came from Basle to Oxford and was given precious texts from college libraries to take back with him and have published. Generosity helped to mislead. To keep a ma.n.u.script to oneself for personal enjoyment seemed churlish. If it were printed, any one who wished might enjoy it. That any degeneration might come in by the way, that the printed text might contain blunders, was not perceived. The process seemed so straightforward, so mechanical; as certain a method of reproduction as photography. But the human element in it was overlooked. _Humanum est errare_.
It was the same with the New Testament as with Seneca. When the form of the work had been decided upon--a Greek text side by side with Erasmus" translation, and notes at the end--two young scholars, Gerbell and Oecolampadius, were installed in charge of the book. For the Greek Erasmus had expected, he tells us, to find at Basle some ma.n.u.script which he could give to the printers without further trouble. But he was annoyed to find that there was none available which was good enough, and he positively had to go through the one that he selected from beginning to end before he could entrust it to his correctors. In addition to this he put into their hands another ma.n.u.script, which had been borrowed from Reuchlin; presumably to help them in case they should have any difficulty in deciphering the first. However, after a time he discovered that they were taking liberties, and following the text of the second ma.n.u.script, wherever they preferred its reading: as though the editing were in their own hands. He took it from them and found another ma.n.u.script which agreed more closely with the first. For the book of Revelation only one Greek ma.n.u.script was available; and at the end five verses and a bit were lacking through the loss of a leaf. Erasmus calmly translated them back from the Latin, but had the grace to warn the reader of the fact in his notes.
As to the translation, an interesting point is that it is modified considerably from the translation which he had made in 1505-6, and is brought closer to the text of the Vulgate. In the second edition of the New Testament, March 1519, he explains in a preliminary apology that he had changed back in this way in 1516 from fear lest too great divergence from the Vulgate might give offence. But the book was on the whole so well received that he soon realized that the time was ripe for more advanced scholarship. His earlier version was the best that he could do, in simplicity of style and fidelity to the original.
Accordingly in 1519 he introduced it with the most minute care, even such trivial variations as _ac_ or _-que_ for _et_ being restored. The transformation was not without its effects. Numerous pa.s.sages were objected to by the orthodox; as for example, when he translates [Greek: logos] in the first verse of St. John"s Gospel by _sermo_, instead of _verb.u.m_, as in the Vulgate and the edition of 1516.
The New Testament appeared in March 1516, dedicated by permission to the Pope; in the following autumn came Jerome, in nine volumes, of which four were by Erasmus, dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury: and thus the Head of the Church and one of his most exalted suffragans lent their sanction to an advancement of learning which theological faculties in the universities viewed with the gravest suspicion.
Erasmus had now reached his highest point. He had equipped himself thoroughly for the work he desired to do. He was the acknowledged leader of a large band of scholars, who looked to him for guidance and were eagerly ready to second his efforts; and with the resources of Froben"s press at his disposal, nothing seemed beyond his powers and his hopes. Wherever his books spread, his name was honoured, almost reverenced. Material honours and wealth flowed in upon him; and he was continually receiving enthusiastic homage from strangers. He saw knowledge growing from more to more, and bringing with it reform of the Church and that steady betterment of the evils of the world which wise men in every age desire. In all this his part was to be that of a leader: not the only one, but in the front rank. He enjoyed his position, feeling that he was fitted for it; but he was not puffed up.
In his dreams of what he would do with his life, he had ever seen himself advancing not the name of Erasmus but the glory of G.o.d. In his later years he became impatient of criticism, and resented with great bitterness even difference of opinion, unless expressed with the utmost caution; to hostile critics his language is often quite intolerable. But the spirit underlying this is not mere vanity. No doubt it wounded him to be evil spoken of, to have his pre-eminence called in question, to be shown to have made mistakes: but the real ground of his resentment was rather vexation that anything should arise to mar the unanimity of the humanist advance toward wider knowledge. Conscious of singleness of purpose, it was a profound disappointment to him to have his sincerity doubted, to be treated as an enemy by men who should have been his friends.
Into the discord of the years that followed I do not propose to enter.
They were years of disappointment to Erasmus; disappointment that grew ever deeper, as he saw the steady growth of reform broken by the sudden shocks of the Reformation and barred by subsequent reaction.
Throughout it all he never lost his faith in the spread of knowledge, and gave his energies consistently to help this great cause. He produced more editions of the Fathers, either wholly or in part: Cyprian, Arn.o.bius, Hilary, Jerome again, Chrysostom, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Lactantius, Alger, Basil, Haymo, and Origen; the last named in the concluding months of his life. The storms that beat round him could not stir him from his principles. To neither reformer nor reactionary would he concede one jot, and in consequence from each side he was vilified. He was drawn into a series of deplorable controversies, which estranged him from many; but of his real friends he lost not one. It is pleasant to see the devotion with which Beatus Rhena.n.u.s and Boniface Amerbach comforted his last years; never wavering in the service to which they had plighted themselves in the enthusiasm of youth.
The chance survival of the following note enables us to stand by Erasmus" bedside in his last hours. It was written by one of the Frobens, possibly his G.o.dson and namesake, Erasmius, to Boniface Amerbach, and it may be dated early in July 1536, perhaps on the 11th, the last sunset that Erasmus was to see. "I have just visited the Master, but without his knowing. He seems to me to fail very much: for his tongue cleaves to his palate, so that you can scarcely understand him when he speaks. He is drawing his breath so deep and quick, that I cannot but wonder whether he will live through the night. So far he has taken nothing to-day except some chicken-broth. I have sent for Sebastian . If he comes, I will have him introduced into the room, but without the Master"s knowledge, in order that he may hear what I have heard. I am sending you this word, so that you may come quickly."Erasmus" last words were in his own Dutch speech: "Liever Got".
No account of Erasmus must omit to tell how he laboured for peace.
Well he might. In his youth he had seen his native Holland torn between the Hoeks and the Cabeljaus, the Duke of Gueldres and the Bishop of Utrecht, with occasional intervention by higher powers. Year after year the war had dragged on, with no decisive settlement, no relief to the poor. One of his friends, Cornelius Gerard, wrote a prose narrative of it; another, William Herman, composed a poem of Holland weeping for her children and would not be comforted. _Dulce bellum inexpertis._ War sometimes seems purifying and enn.o.bling to those whose own lives have never been jeoparded, who have never seen men die: but not so to those who have known and suffered. Throughout his life Erasmus never wearied of ensuing peace; and for its sake he reproved even kings. In 1504 he was allowed to deliver a panegyric of congratulation before the Archduke Philip the Fair, who had just returned from Spain to the Netherlands; and after sketching a picture of a model prince, inculcated upon him the duty of maintaining peace.
In 1514 he wrote to one of his patrons, brother of the Bishop of Cambray, a letter on the wickedness of war, obviously designed for publication and actually translated into German by an admirer a few years later, to give it wider circulation. In 1515 the enlarged _Adagia_ contained an essay on the same theme, under the t.i.tle quoted above: words which, translated into English, were again and again reprinted during the nineteenth century by Peace a.s.sociations and the Society of Friends. In 1516 he was appointed Councillor to Philip"s son, Charles, who at 16 had just succeeded to the crowns of Spain. His first offering to his young sovereign was counsel on the training of a Christian prince, with due emphasis on his obligations for peace. In 1517 he greeted the new Bishop of Utrecht, Philip of Burgundy, with a "Complaint of Peace cast forth from all lands", _Querela Pacis vndique profligatae_. And besides these direct invocations, in his other writings, his pen frequently returns upon the same high argument. For a brief period in his life it seemed as though peace might come back.
Maximilian"s death in 1519 followed by Charles" election to the Empire placed the sovereignty of Western and Central Europe in the hands of three young men, who were chivalrous and impressionable, Henry and Francis and Charles: only the year before they had been treating for universal peace. If they would really act in concord, it seemed as though the Golden Age might return, and Christendom show a united face against the watchful and unwearying Turk. But though the sky was clear, the weather was what Oxfordshire folk call foxy. Strife of nations, strife of creeds cannot in a moment be allayed. Suddenly the little clouds upon the horizon swelled up and covered the heaven with the darkness of night; and before the dawn broke into new hope, Erasmus had laid down his pen for ever, and was at rest from his service to the Prince of Peace.