Chapter IV (2)

30. We have the imposing testimony of Erasmus himself, that neither France nor Germany stood so high about this period as England. That country, he says, so distant from Italy, stands next to it in the esteem of the learned. This, however, is written in 1524. About the end of the present decennial period we can produce a not very small number of persons possessing a competent acquaintance with the Greek tongue, more, perhaps, than could be traced in France, though all together might not weigh as heavy as Budæus alone. Such were Grocyn, the patriarch of English learning, who died in 1519; Linacre, whose translation of Galen, first printed in 1521, is one of the few in that age that escape censure for inelegance or incorrectness; Latimer, beloved and admired by his friends, but of whom we have no memorial in any writings of his own; More, known as a scholar by Greek epigrams of some merit;[566] Lilly, master of St. Paul’s school, who had acquired Greek at Rhodes, but whose reputation is better preserved by the grammars that bear his name; Lupsett, who is said to have learned from Lilly, and who taught some time at Oxford; Richard Croke, already named; Gerard Lister, a physician, to whom Erasmus gives credit for skill in the three languages; Pace and Tunstall, both men well known in the history of those times; Lee and Stokesley, afterwards bishops, the former of whom published Annotations on the Greek Testament of Erasmus at Basle in 1520;[567] and probably Gardiner; Clement, one of Wolsey’s first lecturers at Oxford;[568] Brian, Wakefield, Bullock, and a few more, whose names appear in Pits and Wood, or even who are not recorded; for we could not without presumption attempt to enumerate every person who at this time was not wholly unacquainted with the Greek language. Yet it would be an error, on the other hand, to make a large allowance for omissions; much less to conclude that every man who might enjoy some reputation in a learned profession could in a later generation have passed for a scholar. Colet, for example, and Fisher, men as distinguished as almost any of that age, were unacquainted with the Greek tongue, and both made some efforts to attain it at an advanced age.[569] It was not till the year 1517 that the first Greek lecture was established at Oxford by Fox, bishop of Hereford, in his new foundation of Corpus Christi College. Wolsey, in 1519, endowed a regular professorship in the university. It was about the same year that Fisher, chancellor of the university of Cambridge, sent down Richard Croke, lately returned from Leipsic, to tread in the footsteps of Erasmus as teacher of Greek.[570] But this was in advance of our neighbours; for no public instruction in that language was yet given in France.

[566] The Greek verses of More and Lilly, Progymnasmata Mori et Lilii,
were published at Basle, 1518. It is in this volume that the
distich, about which some curiosity has been shown, is found:
Inveni portum, spes et fortuna valete, &c. But it is a translation
from the Greek.

Quid tandem non præstitisset admirabilis ista naturæ felicitas, si
hoc ingenium instituisset Italia? si totum Musarum sacris vacasset?
si ad justam frugem ac velut autumnum suum maturuisset? Epigrammata
lusit adolescens admodum, ac pleraque puer; Britanniam suam nunquam
egressus est, nisi semel atque iterum principis sui nomine
legatione functus apud Flandros. Præter rem uxoriam, præter curas
domesticas, præter publici muneris functionem et causarum undas,
tot tantisque regni negotiis distrahitur, ut mireris esse otium vel
cogitandi de libris. Epist. clxix. Aug. 1517. In the Ciceronianus
he speaks of More with more discriminating praise, and the passage
is illustrative of that just quoted.

[567] Erasmus does not spare Lee. Epist. ccxlviii. Quo uno nihil unquam
adhuc terra produxit, nec arrogantius, nec virulentius, nec
stultius. This was the tone of the age towards any adversary, who
was not absolutely out of reach of such epithets. In another place,
he speaks of Lee as nuper Græcæ linguæ rudimentis initiatus. Ep.
cccclxxxxi.

[568] Knight says (apud Jortin, i. 45) that Clement was the first
lecturer at Oxford in Greek after Linacre, and that he was
succeeded by Lupsett. And this seems, as to the fact that they did
successively teach, to be confirmed by More. Jortin, ii. 396. But
the Biographia Britannica, art. Wolsey, asserts that they were
appointed to the chair of rhetoric or humanity; and that
Calpurnius, a native of Greece, was the first professor of the
language. No authority is quoted by the editors; but I have found
it confirmed by Caius in a little treatise De Pronuntiatione Græcæ
et Latinæ Linguæ. Novit, he says, Oxoniensis schola, quemadmodum
ipsa Græcia pronuntiavit. ex Matthæo Calpurnio Græco, quem ex
Græciâ Oxoniam Græcarum literarum gratia perduxerat Thomas Wolseus,
de bonis literis optime meritus cardinalis, cum non alia ratione
pronuntiant illi, quam quâ nos jam profitemur. Caius de Pronunt.
Græc. et Lat. Linguæ, edit. Jebb, p. 228.

[569] Nunc dolor me tenet, says Colet in 1516, quod non didicerim
Græcum sermonem, sine cujus peritia nihil sumus. From a later
epistle of Erasmus, where he says, Coletus strenue Græcatur, it
seems likely that he actually made some progress; but at his age it
would not be very considerable. Latimer dissuaded Fisher from the
attempt, unless he could procure a master from Italy, which Erasmus
thought needless. Epist. ccclxiii. In an edition of his Adages, he
says, Joannes Fischerus tres linguas ætate jam vergente non vulgari
studio amplectitur, Chil. iv. Cent. v. 1.

[570] Greek had not been neglected at Cambridge during the interval,
according to a letter of Bullock (in Latin Bovillus) to Erasmus in
1516 from thence. Hic acriter incumbunt literis Græcis, optanque
non mediocritur tuum adventum, et hi magnopere favent tuæ huic in
Novum Testamentum editioni. It is probable that Cranmer was a pupil
of Croke: for in the deposition of the latter before Mary’s
commissioners in 1555, he says that he had known the archbishop
thirty-six years, which brings us to his own first lectures at
Cambridge. Todd’s Life of Cranmer, ii. 449. But Cranmer may have
known something of the language before, and is, not improbably, one
of those to whom Bullock alludes.

|Mode of teaching in schools.|

31. By the statutes of St. Paul’s school, dated in 1518, the master is to be “lerned in good and clene Latin literature, and also in Greke, iff such may be gotten.” Of the boys he says, “I wolde they were taught always in good literature both Latin and Greke.” But it does not follow from hence that Greek was actually taught; and considering the want of lexicons and grammars, none of which, as we shall see, were published in England for many years afterwards, we shall be apt to think that little instruction could have been given.[571] This, however, is not conclusive, and would lead us to bring down the date of philological learning in our public seminaries much too low. The process of learning without books was tedious and difficult, but not impracticable for the diligent. The teacher provided himself with a lexicon which was in common use among his pupils, and with one of the grammars published on the Continent, from which he gave oral lectures, and portions of which were transcribed by each student. The books read in the lecture-room were probably copied out in the same manner, the abbreviations giving some facility to a cursive hand; and thus the deficiency of impressions was in some degree supplied, just as before the invention of printing. The labour of acquiring knowledge strengthened, as it always does, the memory; it excited an industry which surmounted every obstacle, and yielded to no fatigue; and we may thus account for that copiousness of verbal learning which sometimes astonishes us in the scholars of the sixteenth century, and in which they seem to surpass the more exact philologers of later ages.

[571] In a letter of Erasmus on the death of Colet in 1522, Epist.
ccccxxxv (and in Jortin’s App., ii. 315), though he describes the
course of education at St. Paul’s school rather diffusely, and in a
strain of high panegyric, there is not a syllable of allusion to
the study of Greek. Pits, however, in an account of one William
Horman, tells us, that he was ad collegium Etonense studiorum causa
missus, ubi avide haustis litteris humanioribus, _perceptisque
Græcæ linguæ rudimentis_, dignus habitus est qui Cantabrigiam ad
altiores disciplinas destinaretur. Horman became Græcæ linguæ
peritissimus, and returned, as head master, to Eton: quo tempore in
litteris humanioribus scholares illic insigniter erudivit. He wrote
several works, partly grammatical, of which Pits gives the titles,
and died, _plenus dierum_, in 1535.

If we could depend on the accuracy of all this, we must suppose
that Greek was taught at Eton so early, that one who acquired the
rudiments of it in that school might die at an advanced age in
1535. But this is not to be received on Pits’s authority. And I
find, in Harwood’s Alumni Etonenses, that Horman became head master
as early as 1485: no one will readily believe, that he could have
learned Greek while at school: and the fact is, that he was not
educated at Eton, but at Winchester.

The Latin grammar which bears the name of Lilly was compiled partly
by Colet, partly by Erasmus.

|Few classical works printed here.|

32. It is to be observed, that we rather extol a small number of men who have struggled against difficulties, than put in a claim for any diffusion of literature in England, which would be very far from the truth. No classical works were printed except four editions of Virgil’s Bucolics, a small treatise of Seneca, the first book of Cicero’s Epistles (the latter at Oxford in 1519), all merely of course for learners. We do not reckon Latin grammars. And as yet no Greek types had been employed. In the spirit of truth, we cannot quite take to ourselves the compliment of Erasmus; there must evidently have been a far greater diffusion of sound learning in Germany; where professors of Greek had for some time been established in all the universities, and where a long list of men ardent in the cultivation of letters could be adduced.[572] Erasmus had a panegyrical humour towards his friends, of whom there were many in England.

[572] Such a list is given by Meiners, i. 154, of the supporters of
Reuchlin; who comprised all the real scholars of Germany: he
enumerates sixty-seven, which might doubtless be enlarged.

|State of learning in Scotland.|

33. Scotland had, as might naturally be expected, partaken still less of Italian light than the south of Britain. But the reigning king, contemporary with Henry VII., gave proofs of greater good-will towards letters. A statute of James IV., in 1496, enacts that gentlemen’s sons should be sent to school in order to learn Latin. Such provisions were too indefinite for execution, even if the royal authority had been greater than it was; but it serves to display the temper of the sovereign. His natural son, Alexander, on whom, at a very early age, he conferred the archbishopric of St. Andrews, was the pupil of Erasmus in the Greek language. The latter speaks very highly of this promising scion of the house of Stuart in one of his adages.[573] But, at the age of twenty, he perished with his royal father on the disastrous day of Flodden Field. Learning had made no sensible progress in Scotland; and the untoward circumstances of the next twenty years were far from giving it encouragement. The translation of the Æneid by Gawin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, though we are not at present on the subject of poetry, may be here mentioned in connection with Scottish literature. It was completed about 1513, though the earliest edition is not till 1553. “This translation,” says Warton, “is executed with equal spirit and fidelity; and is a proof that the Lowland Scotch and English languages were now nearly the same. I mean the style of composition, more especially in the glaring affectation of anglicising Latin words. The several books are introduced with metrical prologues, which are often highly poetical, and show that Douglas’s proper walk was original poetry.” Warton did well to explain his rather startling expression, that the Lowland Scotch and English languages were then nearly the same: for I will venture to say, that no Englishman, without guessing at every other word, could understand the long passage he proceeds to quote from Gawin Douglas. It is true that the differences consisted mainly in pronunciation, and consequently in orthography; but this is the great cause of diversity in dialect. The character of Douglas’s original poetry seems to be that of the middle ages in general,--prolix, though sometimes animated, description of sensible objects.[574]

[573] Chil. ii. cent. v. 1.

[574] Warton, iii 111.

|Utopia of More.|

34. We must not leave England without mention of the only work of genius that she can boast in this age; the Utopia[575] of Sir Thomas More. Perhaps we scarcely appreciate highly enough the spirit and originality of this fiction, which ought to be considered with regard to the barbarism of the times, and the meagreness of preceding inventions. The Republic of Plato no doubt furnished More with the germ of his perfect society; but it would be unreasonable to deny him the merit of having struck out the fiction of its real existence from his own fertile imagination; and it is manifest, that some of his most distinguished successors in the same walk of romance, especially Swift, were largely indebted to his reasoning, as well as inventive talents. Those who read the Utopia in Burnet’s translation, may believe that they are in Brobdignag; so similar is the vein of satirical humour and easy language. If false and impracticable theories are found in the Utopia (and perhaps he knew them to be such), this is in a much greater degree true of the Platonic Republic; and they are more than compensated by the sense of justice and humanity that pervades it, and his bold censures on the vices of power. These are remarkable in a courtier of Henry VIII.; but, in the first year of Nero, the voice of Seneca was heard without resentment. Nor had Henry much to take to himself in the reprehension of parsimonious accumulation of wealth, which was meant for his father’s course of government.

[575] Utopia is named from a King Utopus. I mention this, because some
have shown their learning by changing the word to Eutopia.

|His inconsistency with his opinions.|

35. It is possible that some passages in the Utopia, which are neither philosophical nor reconcilable with just principles of morals, were thrown out as mere paradoxes of a playful mind; nor is it easy to reconcile his language as to the free toleration of religious worship with those acts of persecution which have raised the only dark cloud on the memory of this great man. He positively indeed declares for punishing those who insult the religion of others, which might be an excuse for his severity towards the early reformers. But his latitude as to the acceptability of all religions with God, as to their identity in essential principles, and as to the union of all sects in a common worship, could no more be made compatible with his later writings or conduct, than his sharp satire against the court of Rome for breach of faith, or against the monks and friars for laziness and beggary. Such changes, however, are very common, as we may have abundantly observed, in all seasons of revolutionary commotions. Men provoke these, sometimes in the gaiety of their hearts with little design, sometimes with more deliberate intention, but without calculation of the entire consequences, or of their own courage to encounter them. And when such men, like More, are of very quick parts, and, what is the usual attendant of quick parts, not very retentive of their opinions, they have little difficulty in abandoning any speculative notion, especially when, like those in the Utopia, it can never have had the least influence upon their behaviour. We may acknowledge, after all, that the Utopia gives us the impression of its having proceeded rather from a very ingenious than a profound mind; and this apparently, is what we ought to think of Sir Thomas More. The Utopia is said to have been first printed at Louvain in 1516;[576] it certainly appeared at the close of the preceding year; but the edition of Basle in 1518, under the care of Erasmus, is the earliest that bears a date. It was greatly admired on the Continent; indeed there had been little or nothing of equal spirit and originality in Latin since the revival of letters.

[576] Of an undated edition, to which Panzer gives the name of editio
princeps, there is a copy in the British Museum, and another was in
Mr. Heber’s library. Dibdin’s Utopia, 1808, preface, cxi. It
appears from a letter of Montjoy to Erasmus, dated 4th Jan. 1516,
that he had received the Utopia, which must therefore have been
printed in 1515; and it was reprinted once at least in 1516 or
1517. Erasm. Epist. cciii. ccv. Append. Ep. xliv. lxxix. ccli, et
alibi. Panzer mentions one at Louvain in December 1516. This volume
by Dr. Dibdin is a reprint of Robinson’s early and almost
contemporary translation. That by Burnet, 1685, is more known, and
I think it good. Burnet, and I believe some of the Latin editions,
omit a specimen of the Utopian language, and some Utopian poetry;
which probably was thought too puerile.

|Learning restored in France.|

36. The French themselves give Francis I. the credit of having been the father of learning in that country. Galland, in a funeral panegyric on that prince, asks if at his accession (in 1513) any one man in France could read Greek or write Latin? Now this is an absurd question, when we recollect the names of Budæus, Longolius, and Faber Stapulensis; yet it shows that there could have been very slender pretensions to classical learning in the kingdom. Erasmus, in his Ciceronianus, enumerates among French scholars, not only Budæus, Faber, and the eminent printer, Jodocus Badius (a Fleming by birth), whom, in point of style, he seems to put above Budæus, but John Pin, Nicolas Berald, Francis Deloin, Lazarus Baif, and Ruel. This was however in 1529, and the list assuredly is not long. But as his object was to show that few men of letters were worthy of being reckoned fine writers, he does not mention Longueil, who was one; or whom, perhaps, he might omit, as being then dead.

|Jealousy of Erasmus and Budæus.|

37. Budæus and Erasmus were now at the head of the literary world; and as the friends of each behaved rather too much like partizans, a kind of rivalry in public reputation began, which soon extended to themselves, and lessened their friendship. Erasmus seems to have been, in a certain degree, the aggressor; at least, some of his letters to Budæus indicate an irritability, which the other, as far as appears, had not provoked. Budæus had published in 1514 an excellent treatise, De Asse, the first which explained the denominations and values of Roman money in all periods of history.[577] Erasmus sometimes alludes to this with covert jealousy. It was set up by a party against his Adages, which he justly considered more full of original thoughts and extensive learning. But Budæus understood Greek better; he had learned it with prodigious labour, and probably about the same time with Erasmus, so that the comparison between them was not unnatural. The name of one is at present only retained by scholars, and that of the other by all mankind; so different is contemporary and posthumous reputation. It is just to add that, although Erasmus had written to Budæus in far too sarcastic a tone,[578] under the smart of that literary sensitiveness which was very strong in his temper, yet when the other began to take serious offence, and to threaten a discontinuance of their correspondence, he made amends by an affectionate letter, which ought to have restored their good understanding. Budæus, however, who seems to have kept his resentments longer than his quick-minded rival, continued to write peevish letters; and fresh circumstances arose afterwards to keep up his jealousy.[579]

[577] Quod opus ejus, says Vives, in a letter to Erasmus (Ep. Dcx.),
Hermolaos omnes, Picos, Politianos, Gazas, Vallas, cunctam Italiam
pudefecit.

[578] Epist. cc. I quote the numeration of the Leyden edition.

[579] Erasmi Epistolæ, passim. The publication of his Ciceronianus in
1528, renewed the irritation; in this he gave a sort of preference
to Badius over Budæus, in respect to style alone; observing that
the latter had great excellences of another kind. The French
scholars made this a national quarrel, pretending that Erasmus was
prejudiced against their country. He defends himself in his
epistles so prolixly and elaborately, as to confirm the suspicion,
not of this absurdly imputed dislike to the French, but of some
little desire to pique Budæus. Epigrams in Greek were written at
Paris against him by Lascaris and Toussain; and thus Erasmus, by an
unlucky inability to restrain his pen from sly sarcasm, multiplied
the enemies, whom an opposite part of his character, its spirit of
temporising and timidity, was always raising up. Erasm. Epist.
Mvxi. et alibi.

This rather unpleasing correspondence between two great men,
professing friendship, yet covertly jealous of each other, is not
ill described by Von der Hardt, in the Historia Litteraria
Reformationis. Mirum dictu, qui undique aculei, sub mellitissima
oratione, inter blandimenta continua. Genius utriusque
argutissimus, qui vellendo et acerbe pungendo nullibi videretur
referre sanguinem aut vulnus inferre. Possint profecto hæ literæ
Budæum inter et Erasmum illustre esse et incomparabile exemplar
delicatissimæ sed et perquam aculeatæ concertationis, quæ videretur
suavissimo absolvi risu et velut familiarissimo palpo. De
alterutrius integritate neuter visus dubitare; uterque tamen semper
anceps, tot annis commercio frequentissimo. Dissimulandi artificium
inexplicabile, quod attenti lectoris admirationem vehat, eumque præ
dissertationum dulcedine subamara in stuporem vertat. p. 46.

|Character of Erasmus.|

38. Erasmus diffuses a lustre over his age which no other name among the learned supplies. The qualities which gave him this superiority were his quickness of apprehension, united with much industry, his liveliness of fancy, his wit and good sense. He is not a very profound thinker, but an acute observer: and the age for original thinking was hardly come. What there was of it in More produced little fruit. In extent of learning, no one perhaps was altogether his equal. Budæus, with more accurate scholarship, knew little of theology, and might be less ready perhaps in general literature than Erasmus. Longolius, Sadolet, and several others, wrote Latin far more elegantly; but they were of comparatively superficial erudition, and had neither his keen wit, nor his vigour of intellect. As to theological learning, the great Lutheran divines must have been at least his equals in respect of scriptural knowledge, and some of them possessed an acquaintance with Hebrew, of which Erasmus knew nothing; but he had probably the advantage in the study of the fathers. It is to be observed, that by far the greater part of his writings are theological. The rest either belong to philology and ancient learning, as the Adages, the Ciceronianus, and the various grammatical treatises, or may be reckoned effusions of his wit, as the Colloquies and the Encomium Moriæ.

|His Adages severe on kings.|

39. Erasmus, about 1517, published a very enlarged edition of his Adages, which had already grown with the growth of his own erudition. It is impossible to distinguish the progressive accessions they received without a comparison of editions; and some probably belong to a later period than the present. The Adages, as we read them, display a surprising extent of intimacy with Greek and Roman literature.[580] Far the greater portion is illustrative; but Erasmus not unfrequently sprinkles his explanations of ancient phrase with moral or literary remarks of some poignancy. The most remarkable, in every sense, are those which reflect with excessive bitterness and freedom on kings and priests. Jortin has slightly alluded to some of these; but they may deserve more particular notice, as displaying the character of the man, and perhaps the secret opinions of his age.

[580] In one passage, under the proverb, Herculei labores, he
expatiates on the immense labour with which this work, his
Adages, had been compiled; mentioning, among other difficulties,
the prodigious corruption of the text in all Latin and Greek
manuscripts, so that it scarce ever happened that a passage could
be quoted from them, without a certainty or suspicion of some
erroneous reading.

|Instances in illustration.|

40. Upon the adage, Frons occipitio prior, meaning, that every one should do his own business, Erasmus takes the opportunity to observe, that no one requires more attention to this than a prince, if he will act as a real prince, and not as a robber. But at present our kings and bishops are only the hands, eyes, and ears of others, careless of the state, and of everything but their own pleasure.[581] This, however, is a trifle. In another proverb, he bursts out: “Let any one turn over the pages of ancient or modern history, scarcely in several generations will you find one or two princes, whose folly has not inflicted the greatest misery on mankind.” And after much more of the same kind: “I know not whether much of this is not to be imputed to ourselves. We trust the rudder of a vessel, where a few sailors and some goods alone are in jeopardy, to none but skilful pilots; but the state, wherein the safety of so many thousands is concerned, we put into any hands. A charioteer must learn, reflect upon, and practise his art; a prince need only be born. Yet government, as it is the most honourable, so is it the most difficult of all sciences. And shall we choose the master of a ship, and not choose him, who is to have the care of many cities, and so many souls? But the usage is too long established for us to subvert. Do we not see that noble cities are erected by the people; that they are destroyed by princes? that the community grows rich by the industry of its citizens, is plundered by the rapacity of its princes? that good laws are enacted by popular magistrates, are violated by these princes? that the people love peace; that princes excite war?”[582]

[581] Chil. i. cent. ii. 19.

[582] Quin omnes et veterum et neotericorum annales
evolve, nimirum ita comperies, vix sæculis aliquot unum aut alterum
extitisse principem, qui non insigni stultitiâ maximam perniciem
invexerit rebus humanis.... Et haud scio, an nonnulla hujus mali
pars nobis ipsis sit imputanda. Clavum navis non committimus nisi
ejus rei perito, quod quatuor vectorum aut paucarum mercium sit
periculum; et rempublicam, in qua tot hominum millia periclitantur,
cuivis committimus. Ut auriga fiat aliquis discit artem, exercet,
meditatur; at ut princeps sit aliquis, satis esse putamus natum
esse. Atqui rectè gerere principatum, ut est munus omnium longe
pulcherrimum, ita est omnium etiam multo difficillimum. Deligis,
cui navem committas, non deligis cui tot urbes, tot hominum capita
credas? Sed istud receptius est, quam ut convelli possit.

An non videmus egregia oppida a populo condi, a principibus
subverti? rempublicam civium industria ditescere, principum
rapacitate spoliari? bonas leges ferri a plebeiis magistratibus, a
principibus violari? populum studere paci, principes excitare
bellum?

41. “It is the aim of the guardians of a prince,” he exclaims in another passage, “that he may never become a man. The nobility, who fatten on public calamity, endeavour to plunge him into pleasures, that he may never learn what is his duty. Towns are burned, lands are wasted, temples are plundered, innocent citizens are slaughtered, while the prince is playing at dice, or dancing, or amusing himself with puppets, or hunting, or drinking. O race of the Bruti, long since extinct! O blind and blunted thunderbolts of Jupiter! We know indeed that those corrupters of princes will render account to Heaven, but not easily to us.” He passes soon afterwards to bitter invective against the clergy, especially the regular orders.[583]

[583] Miro studio curant tutores, ne unquam vir sit princeps.
Adnituntur optimates, ii qui publicis malis saginantur, ut
voluptatibus sit quam effæminatissimus, ne quid eorum sciat, quæ
maxime decet scire principem. Exuruntur vici, vastantur agri,
diripiuntur templa, trucidantur immeriti cives, sacra profanaque
miscentur, dum princeps interim otiosus ludit aleam, dum saltit,
dum oblectat se morionibus, dum venatur, dum amat, dum potat. O
Brutorum genus jam olim extinctum! o fulmen Jovis aut cæcum aut
obtusum! Neque dubium est, quin isti principum corruptores pœnas
Deo daturi sint, sed sero nobis.

42. In explaining the adage, Sileni Alcibiadis, referring to things which, appearing mean and trifling, are really precious, he has many good remarks on persons and things, of which the secret worth is not understood at first sight. But thence passing over to what he calls inversi Sileni, those who seem great to the vulgar, and are really despicable, he expatiates on kings and priests, whom he seems to hate with the fury of a modern philosopher. It must be owned he is very prolix and declamatory. He here attacks the temporal power of the church with much plainness; we cannot wonder that his Adages required mutilation at Rome.

43. But by much the most amusing and singular of the Adages is Scarabæus aquilam quærit; the meaning of which, in allusion to a fable that the beetle, in revenge for an injury, destroyed the eggs of the eagle, is explained to be, that the most powerful may be liable to the resentment of the weakest. Erasmus here returns to the attack upon kings still more bitterly and pointed than before. There is nothing in the Contre un of La Boetie, nothing, we may say, in the most seditious libel of our own time, more indignant and cutting against regal government than this long declamation: “Let any physiognomist, not a blunderer in his trade, consider the look and features of an eagle, those rapacious and wicked eyes, that threatening curve of the beak, those cruel cheeks, that stern front, will he not at once recognise the image of a king, a magnificent and majestic king? Add to these a dark, ill-omened colour, an unpleasing, dreadful, appalling voice, and that threatening scream, at which every kind of animal trembles. Every one will acknowledge this type, who has learned how terrible are the threats of princes, even uttered in jest. At this scream of the eagle the people tremble, the senate shrinks, the nobility cringes, the judges concur, the divines are dumb, the lawyers assent, the laws and constitutions give way; neither right nor religion, neither justice nor humanity avail. And thus, while there are so many birds of sweet and melodious song, the unpleasant and unmusical scream of the eagle alone has more power than all the rest.”[584]

[584] Age si quis mihi physiognomon non omnino malus vultum ipsum et
os aquilæ diligentius contempletur, oculos avidos atque improbos,
rictum minacem, genas truculentas, frontem torvam, denique illud,
quod Cyrum Persarum regem tantopere delectavit in principe γρυπὸν
[grypon], nonne plane regium quoddam simulacrum agnoscet,
magnificum et majestatis plenum? Accedit huc et color ipse
funestus, teter èt inauspicatus, fusco squalore nigricans. Unde
etiam quod fuscum est et subnigrum, aquilum vocamus. Tum vox
inamœna, terribilis, exanimatrix, ac minax ille querulusque
clangor, quem nullum animantium genus non expavescit. Jam hoc
symbolum protinus agnoscit, qui modo periculum fecerit, aut viderit
certè, quam sint formidandæ principum minæ, vel joco prolatæ.... Ad
hanc, inquam, aquilæ stridorem illico pavitat omne vulgus,
contrahit sese senatus, observit nobilitas, obsecundant judices,
silent theologi, assentantur jurisconsulti, cedunt leges, cedunt
instituta; nihil valet fas nec pietas, nec æquitas nec humanitas.
Cumque tam multæ sint aves non ineloquentes, tam multæ canoræ,
tamque variæ sint voces ac modulatus qui vel saxa possint flectere,
plus tamen omnibus valet insuavis ille et minime musicus unius
aquilæ stridor.

44. Erasmus now gives the rein still more to his fancy. He imagines different animals, emblematic no doubt of mankind, in relation to his eagle. “There is no agreement between the eagle and the fox, not without great disadvantage to the vulpine race; in which however they are perhaps worthy of their fate, for having refused aid to the hares when they sought an alliance against the eagle, as is related in the Annals of Quadrupeds, from which Homer borrowed his Battle of the Frogs and Mice.”[585] I suppose that the foxes mean the nobility, and the hares the people. Some allusions to animals that follow I do not well understand. Another is more pleasing: “It is not surprising,” he says, “that the eagle agrees ill with the swans, those poetic birds; we may wonder more, that so warlike an animal is often overcome by them.” He sums up all thus: “Of all birds the eagle alone has seemed to wise men the apt type of royalty; not beautiful, not musical, not fit for food; but carnivorous, greedy, plundering, destroying, combating, solitary, hateful to all, the curse of all, and with its great powers of doing harm, surpassing them in its desire of doing it.”[586]

[585] Nihil omnino convenit inter aquilam et vulpem, quanquam id sane
non mediocri vulpinæ gentis malo; quo tamen haud scio an dignæ
videri debeant, quæ quondam leporibus συμμαχιαν [symmachian]
adversus aquilam petentibus auxilium negarint, ut refertur in
Annalibus Quadrupedum, a quibus Homerus Βατραχομυομαχιαν
[Batrachomyomachian] mutuatus est.... Neque vero mirum quod illi
parum convenit cum oloribus, ave nimirum poetica; illud mirum, ab
iis sæpenumero vinci tam pugnacem belluam.

[586] Ex universis avibus una aquila viris tam sapientibus idonea visa
est, quæ regis imaginem repræsentet, nec formosa, nec canora, nec
esculenta, sed carnivora, rapax, prædatrix, populatrix, bellatrix,
solitaria, invisa omnibus, pestis omnium; quæ cum plurimum nocere
possit, plus tamen velit quam possit.

45. But the eagle is only one of the animals in the proverb. After all this bile against those the royal bird represents, he does not forget the beetles. These of course are the monks, whose picture he draws with equal bitterness and more contempt. Here, however, it becomes difficult to follow the analogy, as he runs a little wildly into mythological tales of the Scarabæus, not easily reduced to his purpose. This he discloses at length: “There are a wretched class of men, of low degree, yet full of malice; not less dingy, nor less filthy, nor less vile than beetles; who nevertheless by a certain obstinate malignity of disposition, though they can never do good to any mortal, become frequently troublesome to the great. They frighten by their ugliness, they molest by their noise, they offend by their stench; they buzz round us, they cling to us, they lie in ambush for us, so that it is often better to be at enmity with powerful men than to attack those beetles, whom it is a disgrace even to overcome, and whom no one can either shake off, or encounter, without some pollution.”[587]

[587] Sunt homunculi quidam, infimæ quidem sortis, sed tamen malitiosi,
non minus atri quam scarabæi, neque minus putidi, neque minus
abjecti; qui tamen pertinaci quadam ingenii malitia, cum nulli
omnino mortalium prodesse possint, magnis etiam sæpenumero viris
facessunt negotium. Territant nigrore, obstrepunt stridore,
obturbant fœtore; circumvolitant, hærent, insidiantur, ut non paulo
satius sit cum magnis aliquando viris simultatem suscipere, quam
hos lacessere scarabæos, quos pudeat etiam vicisse, quosque nec
excutere possis, neque conflictari cum illis queas, nisi discedas
contaminatior. Chil. iii. cent. vii. 1.

In a letter to Budæus, Ep. ccli., Erasmus boasts of his παρρησια
[parrêsia] in the Adages, naming the most poignant of them; but
says, in proverbio αετον κανθαρος μαιευεται [aeton kantharos
maieuetai], plane lusimus ingenio. This proverb, and that entitled
Sileni Alcibiadis, had appeared before 1515; for they were
reprinted in that year by Frobenius, separately from the other
Adages, as appears by a letter of Beatus Rhenanus in Appendice ad
Erasm. Epist. Ep. xxviii. Zasius, a famous jurist, alludes to them
in another letter, Ep. xxvii., praising “fluminosas disserendi
undas amplificationis immensam ubertatem.” And this, in truth, is
the character of Erasmus’s style. The Sileni Alcibiadis were also
translated into English, and published by John Gough; see Dibdin’s
Typographical Antiquities, article 1433.

There is not a little severity in the remarks Erasmus makes on
princes and nobles in the Moriæ Encomium. But with them he seems
through life to have been a privileged person.

46. It must be admitted, that this was not the language to conciliate; and we might almost commiserate the sufferance of the poor beetles thus trod upon; but Erasmus knew that the regular clergy were not to be conciliated, and resolved to throw away the scabbard. With respect to his invectives against kings, they proceeded undoubtedly, like those, less intemperately expressed, of his friend More in the Utopia, from a just sense of the oppression of Europe in that age by ambitious and selfish rulers. Yet the very freedom of his animadversions seems to plead a little in favour of these tyrants, who, if they had been as thorough birds of prey as he represents them, might easily have torn to pieces the author of this somewhat outrageous declamation, whom on the contrary they honoured and maintained. In one of the passages above quoted, he has introduced, certainly in a later edition, a limitation of his tyrannicidal doctrine, if not a palinodia, in an altered key. “Princes,” he says, “must be endured, lest tyranny should give way to anarchy, a still greater evil. This has been demonstrated by the experience of many states; and lately the insurrection of the German boors has taught us, that the cruelty of princes is better to be borne than the universal confusion of anarchy.” I have quoted these political ebullitions rather diffusely, as they are, I believe, very little known, and have given the original in my notes, that I may be proved to have no way over-coloured the translation, and also that a fair specimen may be presented of the eloquence of Erasmus, who has seldom an opportunity of expressing himself with so much elevation, but whose rapid, fertile, and lively, though not very polished style, is hardly more exhibited in these paragraphs, than in the general character of his writings.

|His Greek Testament.|

47. The whole thoughts of Erasmus began now to be occupied with his great undertaking, an edition of the Greek Testament with explanatory annotations and a continued paraphrase. Valla, indeed, had led the inquiry as a commentator; and the Greek text without notes was already printed at Alcala by direction of Cardinal Ximenes; though this edition, commonly styled the Complutensian, did not appear till 1522. That of Erasmus was published at Basle in 1516. It is strictly therefore the princeps editio. He employed the press of Frobenius, with whom he lived in friendship. Many years of his life were spent at Basle.

|Patrons of letters in Germany.|

48. The public, in a general sense of the word, was hardly yet recovered enough from its prejudices to give encouragement to letters. But there were not wanting noble patrons who, besides the immediate advantages of their favour, bestowed a much greater indirect benefit on literature, by making it honourable in the eyes of mankind. Learning, which is held pusillanimous by the soldier, unprofitable by the merchant, and pedantic by the courtier, stands in need of some countenance from those before whom all three bow down; wherever at least, which is too commonly the case, a conscious self-respect does not sustain the scholar against the indifference or scorn of the prosperous vulgar. Italy was then, and perhaps has been ever since, the soil where literature, if it has not always most flourished, has stood highest in general estimation. But in Germany also, at this time, the emperor Maximilian, whose character is neither to be estimated by the sarcastic humour of the Italians, nor by the fond partiality of his countrymen, and especially his own, in his self-delineation of Der Weisse König, the Wise King, but really a brave and generous man of lively talents, Frederic, justly denominated the Wise, elector of Saxony, Joachim elector of Brandeburg, Albert archbishop of Mentz, were prominent among the friends of genuine learning. The university of Wittenberg, founded by the second of these princes in 1502, rose in this decade to great eminence, not only as the birthplace of the Reformation, but as the chief school of philological and philosophical literature. That of Frankfort on the Oder was established by the elector of Brandeburg in 1506.

|Resistance to learning.|

49. The progress of learning, however, was not to be a march through a submissive country. Ignorance, which had much to lose, and was proud as well as rich, ignorance in high places, which is always incurable, because it never seeks for a cure, set itself sullenly and stubbornly against the new teachers. The Latin language, taught most barbarously through books whose very titles, Floresta, Mammotrectus, Doctrinale Puerorum, Gemma Gemmarum, bespeak their style,[588] with the scholastic logic and divinity in wretched compends, had been held sufficient for all education. Those who had learned nothing else could of course teach nothing else, and saw their reputation and emoluments gone all at once by the introduction of philological literature and real science. Through all the palaces of Ignorance went forth a cry of terror at the coming light--“A voice of weeping heard and loud lament.” The aged giant was roused from his sleep, and sent his dark hosts of owls and bats to the war. One man above all the rest, Erasmus, cut them to pieces with irony or invective. They stood in the way of his noble zeal for the restoration of letters.[589] He began his attack in his Encomium Moriæ, the praise of folly. This was addressed to Sir Thomas More, and published in 1511. Eighteen hundred copies were printed, and speedily sold; though the book wanted the attraction that some later editions possess, the curious and amusing engravings from designs of Holbein. It is a poignant satire against all professions of men and even against princes and peers; but the chief objects are the mendicant orders of monks. “Though this sort of men,” he says, “are so detested by everyone, that it is reckoned unlucky so much as to meet them by accident, they think nothing equal to themselves, and hold it a proof of their consummate piety, if they are so illiterate as not to be able to read. And when their asinine voices bray out in the churches their psalms, which they can count, but not understand,[590] then it is they fancy that the ears of the saints above are enraptured with the harmony;” and so forth.

[588] Eichhorn, iii. 273, gives a curious list of names of these early
grammars: they were driven out of the schools about this time.
Mammotrectus, after all, is a learned word: it means, μαμμοθρεπτος
[mammothreptos], that is, a boy taught by his grandmother; and a
boy taught by his grandmother means one taught gently.

Erasmus gives a lamentable account of the state of education when
he was a boy, and probably later: Deum immortalem! quale sæculum
erat hoc, cum magno apparatu disticha Joannis Garlandini
adolescentibus operosis et prolixis commentariis enarrabantur! cum
ineptis versiculis dictandis, repetendis et exigendis magna pars
temporis absumeretur; cum disceretur; Floresta et Floretus; nam
Alexandrum iter tolerabiles numerandum arbitror.

I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that Erasmus was
certainly born in 1465, not in 1467, as Bayle asserts, whom Le
Clerc and Jortin have followed. Burigni perceived this; and it may
be proved by many passages in the Epistles of Erasmus. Bayle quotes
a letter of Feb. 1516, wherein Erasmus says, as he transcribes it:
Ago annum undequinquagesimum. But in the Leyden edition, which is
the best, I find, Ego jam annum ago primum et quinquagesimum.
Epist. cc. Thus he says also, 15th March, 1528: Arbitror me nunc
ætatem agere, in quo M. Tullius decessit. Some other places I have
not taken down. His epitaph at Basle calls him, jam septuagenarius,
and he died in 1536. Bayle’s proofs of the birth of Erasmus in 1467
are so unsatisfactory, that I wonder how Le Clerc should have so
easily acquiesced in them. The Biographie Universelle sets down
1467 without remark.

[589] When the first lectures in Greek were given at Oxford about 1519,
a party of students arrayed themselves, by the name of Trojans, to
withstand the innovators by dint of clamour and violence, till the
king interfered to support the learned side. See a letter of More
giving an account of this in Jortin’s Appendix, p. 662. Cambridge,
it is to be observed, was very peaceable at this time, and suffered
those who liked it to learn something worth knowing. The whole is
so shortly expressed by Erasmus that his words may be quoted.
Anglia duas habet Academias.... In utraque traduntur Græcæ litteræ,
sed Cantabrigiæ tranquillè, quod ejus scholæ princeps sit Johannes
Fischerus, episcopus Roffensis, non eruditione tantum sed et vitâ
theologicâ. Verum Oxoniæ cum juvenis quidam non vulgariter doctus
satis feliciter Græcè profiteretur, barbarus quispiam in populari
concione magnis et atrocibus convitiis debacchari cœpit in Græcas
literas. At Rex, ut non indoctus ipse, ita bonis literis favens,
qui tum forte in propinquo erat, re per Morum et Pacœum cognitâ,
denunciavit ut volentes ac lubentes Græcanicam literaturam
amplecterentur. Ita rabulis impositum est silentium. Id. p. 667.
See also Erasm. Epist. ccclxxx.

Antony Wood, with rather an excess of academical prejudice,
insinuates that the Trojans, who waged war against Oxonian Greek,
were “Cambridge men, as it is reported.” He endeavours to
exaggerate the deficiencies of Cambridge in literature at this
time, as if “all things were full of rudeness and barbarousness;”
which the above letters of More and Erasmus show not to have been
altogether the case. On the contrary, More says that even those who
did not learn Greek contributed to pay the lecturer.

It may be worth while to lay before the reader part of two orations
by Richard Croke, who had been sent down to Cambridge by Bishop
Fisher, chancellor of the university. As Croke seems to have left
Leipsic in 1518, they may be referred to that, or perhaps more
probably the following year. It is evident that Greek was now just
incipient at Cambridge.

Maittaire says of these two orations of Richard Croke: Editio
rarissima, cujusque unum duntaxat exemplar inspexisse mihi
contigit. The British Museum has a copy, which belonged to Dr.
Farmer; but he must have seen another copy, for the last page of
this being imperfect, he has filled it up with his own hand. The
book is printed at Paris by Colinæus in 1520.

The subject of Croke’s orations, which seem not very correctly
printed, is the praise of Greece and of Greek literature, addressed
to those who already knew and valued that of Rome, which he shows
to be derived from the other. Quin ipsæ quoque voculationes Romanæ
Græcis longe in suaviores, minusque concitatæ sunt, cum ultima
semper syllaba rigeat in gravem, contraque apud Græcos et
inflectatur nonnunquam et acuatur. Croke of course spoke Greek
accentually. Greek words, in bad types, frequently occur through
this oration.

Croke dwells on the barbarous state of the sciences, in consequence
of the ignorance of Greek. Euclid’s definition of a line was so ill
translated, that it puzzled all the geometers till the Greek was
consulted. Medicine was in an equally bad condition; had it not
been for the labours of learned men, Linacre, Cop, Ruel, quorum
opera felicissime loquantur Latinè Hippocrates, Galenus et
Dioscorides, cum summa ipsorum invidia, qui, quod canis in præsepi,
nec Græcam linguam discere ipsi voluerunt, nec aliis ut discerent
permiserunt. He then urges the necessity of Greek studies for the
theologian, and seems to have no respect for the Vulgate above the
original.

Turpe sanè erit, cum mercator sermonem Gallicum, Illyricum,
Hispanicum, Germanicum, vel solius lucri causa avide ediscat, vos
studiosos Græcum in manus vobis traditum rejicere, quo et divitiæ
et eloquentia et sapientia comparari possunt. Imo perpendite rogo
viri Cantabrigienses, quo nunc in loco vestræ res sita sunt.
Oxonienses quos ante hæc in omni scientiarum genere vicistis, ad
literas Græcas pertugere, vigilant, jejunant, sudant et algent;
nihil non faciunt ut eas occupent. Quod si contingat, actum est de
fama vestra. Erigent enim de vobis tropæum nunquam succumbuturi.
Habent duces præter cardinalem Cantuariensem, Wintoniensem, cæteros
omnes Angliæ episcopos, excepto uno Roffensir summo semper fautore
vestro, et Eliensi, &c.

Favet præterea ipsis sancta Grocini et theologo digna severitas,
Linacri πολυμαθεια [polumatheia] et acre judicium, Tunstali non
legibus magis quam utrique linguæ familiaris facundia, Stopleii
triplex lingua, Mori candida et eloquentissima urbanitas, Pacei
mores doctrina et ingenium, ab ipso Erasmo, optimo eruditionis
censore, commendati; quem vos olim habuistis Græcarum literarum
professorum, utinamque potuissetis retinere. Succedo in Erasmi
locum ego, bone Deus, quam infra illum, et doctriná et famâ,
quamquam me, ne omnino nihili fiam, principes viri, theologici
doctores, jurium etiam et medicinæ, artium præterea professores
innumeri, et præceptorem agnovere, et quod plus est, a scholis ad
ædes, ab ædibus ad scholas honorificentissime comitati perduxere.
Dii me perdant, viri Cantabrigienses, si ipsi Oxonienses stipendio
multorum nobilium præter victum me non invitavere. Sed ego pro mea
in hanc academiam et fide et observantia, &c.

In his second oration, Croke exhorts the Cantabrigians not to give
up the study of Greek. Si quisquam omnium sit qui vestræ reipublicæ
bene consulere debeat, is ego sum, viri Cantabrigienses. Optime
enim vobis esse cupio, et id nisi facerem, essem profecto longe
ingratissimus. Ubi enim jacta literarum mearum fundamenta, quibus
tantum tum apud nostrates, tum vero apud exteros quoque principes,
favoris mihi comparatum est; quibus ea fortuna, ut licet jam olim
consanguineorum iniquitate paterna hæreditate sim spoliatus, ita
tamen adhuc vivam, ut quibusvis meorum majorum imaginibus videar
non indignus. He was probably of the ancient family of Croke. Peter
Mosellanus calls him, in a letter among those of Erasmus, juvenis
cum imaginibus.

Audio ego plerosque vos a litteris Græcis dehortatos esse. Sed vos
diligenter expendite, qui sint et plane non alios fore comperitis,
quam qui igitur linguam oderunt Græcam quia Romanam non norunt.
Cæterum jam deprehendo quid facturi sint, qui nostras literas odio
prosequuntur, confugiunt videlicet ad religionem, cui uni dicent
omnia postponenda. Sentio ego cum illis, sed unde quæso orta
religio, nisi è Græciâ? quid enim novum testamentum, excepto
Matthæo? quid enim vetus? nunquid Deo auspice a septuaginta Græcè
redditum? Oxonia est colonia vestra; uti olim non sine summa laude
a Cantabrigia deducta, ita non sine summo vestro nunc dedecore, si
doctrina ab ipsis vos vinci patiamini. Fuerunt olim illi discipuli
vestri, nunc erunt præceptores? Utinam quo animo hæc a me dicta
sunt, eo vos dicta interpretemini; crederetisque, quod est
verissimum, si quoslibet alios, certe Cantabrigienses minime decere
literarum Græcarum esse desertores.

The great scarcity of this tract will serve as an apology for the
length of these extracts, illustrating, as they do, the
commencement of classical literature in England.

[590] Numeratos illos quidem, sed non intellectos. I am not quite sure
of this meaning.

|Unpopularity of The monks.|

50. In this sentence Erasmus intimates, what is abundantly confirmed by other testimony, that the mendicant orders had lost their ancient hold upon the people. There was a growing sense of the abuses prevailing in the church, and a desire for a more scriptural and spiritual religion. We have seen already that this was the case seventy years before. And in the intermediate period the exertions of a few eminent men, especially Wessel of Groningen, had not been wanting to purify the doctrines and discipline of the clergy. More popular writers assailed them with satire. Thus everything was prepared for the blow to be struck by Luther; better indeed than he was himself; for it is well known that he began his attack on indulgences with no expectation or desire of the total breach with the see of Rome which ensued.[591]

[591] Seckendorf, Hist. Lutheranismi, p. 226. Gerdes, Hist. Evang.
sæc. xvi. renovat. vols. i. and iii. Milner’s Church History, vol.
iv. Mosheim, sæc. xv. et xvi. Bayle, art. Wessel. For Wessel’s
character as a philosopher, who boldly opposed the scholastics of
his age, see Brucker, iii. 859.

|The book excites odium.|

51. The Encomium Moriæ was received with applause by all who loved merriment, and all who hated the monks; but grave men, as usual, could not bear to see ridicule employed against grave folly and hypocrisy. A letter of one Dorpius, a man, it is said, of some merit, which may be read in Jortin’s Life of Erasmus,[592] amusingly complains, that while the most eminent divines and lawyers were admiring Erasmus, his unlucky Moria had spoiled all, by letting them see that he was mischievously fitting asses’ ears to their heads. The same Dorpius, who seems, though not an old man, to have been a sworn vassal of the giant Ignorance, objects to anything in Erasmus’s intended edition of the Greek Testament, which might throw a slur on the accuracy of the Vulgate.

[592] ii. 336.

|Erasmus attacks the monks.|