done for a set purpose that they may get rid of their remaining copies of the Adages, then it was done most maliciously, for there is no point on which he could do me more harm. I was about to present their books to the bishops; now I salute them emptyhanded, and will likewise be dismissed by them empty-handed. From which we may infer that he had brought with him for distribution among his English friends copies of his new edition of the Adages, which had just been issued by Froben, and for which Erasmus had written a new preface and somewhat revised the text. The commentaries that he mentions as having gone astray with the baggage were undoubtedly manuscript notes on his St. Jerome. We see here a good example of his suspicious nature. He finds delayed the baggage which he had confided to the care of a bookseller's brother whom he had met at the Frankfort book fair, and rushes to the conclusion that this bookseller must have on his hands some unsold copies of the older edition of the Adages which he would like to dispose of before the English public should see the newer edition of which there were copies in Erasmus' baggage. Since we see no more about the mater in his letters, and since he continued to be very friendly with the bookseller, we are permitted to assume that the baggage turned up in due time.

Having no doubt informed some of his Roman friends that he intended visiting Rome after leaving Basle, and having failed to do so, he felt it incumbent on him to allege some reason for his action. He was meditating a stroke of policy that might have far-reaching results to himself personally. Hitherto he had been satisfied to dedicate his works to princes, bishops, and rich patrons for a monetary consideration; now he was going to give to the world his masterpieces, the Epistles of St. Jerome, and the New Testament in Greek, with his own. Latin translation, and accompanied with his own annotations. Now at last was his ambition vaulting upward as he decided to cast aside the mercenary fetters that had up to the present held it down. Like Horace he had long been looking for the time when he could say:

Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.

Here was the opportunity. He decided that he would dedicate these great works to Leo X, the head of the Universal Church. Knowing Erasmus as we now do, we may at least admit the possibility of a wellcalculated plan to avert possible consequences from his own head by thus making the Pope sponsor for these works. He had already succeeded once thus when he made Thomas More father the Praise of Folly, a very doubtful honor indeed, for the loyal Englishman was already involved in bitter controversy on its account. Erasmus was very well aware of the dubious reception which his own personal annotations on these works might receive at the hands of theologians everywhere, a state of things the possibility of which had been well presaged by Dorp in the letter we have already quoted. His personal acquaintance with Leo was of the slightest, and he had yet to devise ways and 10 See pages 317 sqq. Eras. Ep. 332.

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means of accomplishing his desire. Deeming that the constantly changing strata of Roman ecclesiastical circles might have buried his memory completely, he thought it advisable to bring himself freshly to their remembrance by writing them some of his characteristic letters, in which he did not attempt to veil the flattery nor disguise the adulation, stating only that he would not flatter them for worlds. It is strange that such fulsomeness was not disagreeable to men who were otherwise mentally acute and thoroughly adept in the little machinations by which the humble climb to greatness, but such is the fact. We are as often moved by our defects as by our virtues; and Shakespeare grasped this great thought when he put into the mouth of Decius Brutus those lines about Caesar:

But when I tell him he hates flatterers,

He says he does, being then most flattered.

But Erasmus had anticipated Shakespeare by about one hundred years, not only in the thought but in its application, as we shall see by a perusal of some of his letters to Rome on this occasion. He first addressed himself to Raphael Riario, of whom we have already spoken as probably the most powerful Cardinal in Rome, the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, and the cousin of the late Pope Julius II. He had already shown himself well disposed towards the interests of Erasmus; and we have very little doubt that it was through him that Gigli, the Bishop of Worcester, ambassador of King Henry at the Roman Court, had obtained from the late Pope, his uncle, the gift of his Doctor's degree at the University of Turin, as related on a previous page, and the still more appreciated favor of being permitted to hold benefices in spite of his defect of birth. So he addresses him as follows, though lack of space prevents us from reproducing more than a small part of the lengthy letter:

For some time the whole of St. Jerome is being printed, yea, is being born again, a work hitherto so corrupt and mutilated that now it would seem to be not so much restored as produced for the first time. I have corrected it with immense labor, having collated it with many other copies, some of which are very ancient; and adding thereto scholia whereby it may be more easily read. You know how this author is stuffed here and there with matter which thwarts the reader by its obscurity. The Greek and Hebrew I have either restored or corrected. The counterfeit and supposititious books, which chance or some impostor has added thereto, I have not lopped off, but have relegated them to a special volume. etc. This huge work as printed will make about ten volumes, I imagine; and it is printed at such an expense and such an amount of care, that I dare swear no work these twenty years has ever left a publisher's office gotten out with such cost, or in such an elaborate manner. . . . I have expended so much labor on this task that I have almost killed myself, in order to give this new birth to Jerome.

I have not yet decided, but will do so when I have heard from

you, to whom I shall dedicate it. I owe everything to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he deserves that every page of mine should celebrate his praise, but, on the other hand, I plainly see how appropriate it would be that the prince of all theologians should be consecrated to the prince of all Pontiffs; nay, more, that all good literature should flourish again under the auspices of him by whom peace, the foster-mother of literature and study, has been restored to humanity. I know that no little commendation will accrue to my Jerome from the name of Leo; and I also know that the dedication of my studies on this great man to the Pontiff will contribute to his honor. But I will speak of these things with you personally, and with greater care and detail. Meanwhile, I beg you in any event to continue to be the same patron to Erasmus that I ever found you to be when I was at Rome. If any occasion should arise in which you would not feel indisposed to make use of the services of such an insignificant client as myself, especially with the Archbishop of Canterbury, I will show you that, whatever else may be lacking, fidelity and diligence assuredly will not.1

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In a very similar strain he addresses Cardinal Grimani on the same subject, sounding him on the advisability of the dedication to the Pope, and adroitly showing at the same time that he was not lacking a patron of lofty position to whom to dedicate his works, should he deem it inexpedient to dedicate them to Leo:

Moreover, it seemed to me to be very appropriate that this greatest theologian should come forth under the happy auspices of this greatest Pope, so restored that he would seem never to have been hitherto published at all; and that the most learned of all writers should appear to the world with the commendation of him whose family has furnished to us so many illustrious literary lights. For as it would happen that, on account of the authority of so distinguished a Pope, much splendor and dignity would accrue to St. Jerome, so, in like manner, a large accession of glory would inure to Leo from the celebrity of so eminent a doctor. And, in truth, I cannot see how in any other way I can better consecrate to immortality his glorious deeds. Therefore to him will I consecrate this newborn Jerome, especially if your wish commends my judgment. For in a way I had almost decided to dedicate it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom I owe everything. Although I know very well that he would willingly and joyfully yield whatever of glory there might be in it to the Roman Pontiff, yet his mind is set on it. But I will so couple his memory with the praise of Leo, the best with the greatest, the Primate with the Pope, that in this way it will be better both for my Jerome and for the fame of my Maecenases. . . . London, May 15, 1515.' Whether these two Cardinals acquiesced in his design of dedicating the works to the Pope and advised him to do so, we are unable to say; 11 Eras. Ep. 333.

12 Ibid., 334, 11. 145 sqq.

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but we do know that he did not wait for a reply from them, for, with the impatience that characterized him whenever he wanted anything very urgently, only a few days afterwards he wrote his famous letter to Pope Leo X, from which we will take a few excerpts, its length precluding complete reproduction here. Drummond seems to have been surprised that

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The daring satirist, who had not scrupled to attack the Pontiffs themselves for their degeneracy from the example of the Apostle whose successors they professed to be, addressed Leo in a more servile tone than might have been expected, telling him he surpasses the rest of mankind in majesty as much as men surpass the brutes.1 We really cannot see any good reason for Drummond's surprise in the matter, for Erasmus was considerable of a tufthunter and made very little attempt to hide the fact. The servile tone of his language to the Pope is due either to hypocrisy or to the manner of the age, as a certain amount of adulation is visible in all the correspondence of his contemporaries. And though such a tone was common to the men of those days, we must not assume that the recipients of this form of flattery were any the more gullible on that account. On the contrary, though they dealt out to each other honeyed superlatives, they were none the less hardheaded and suspicious of compliment. So that when Erasmus tells the Pope that he "outshines the glory of his Medicean ancestors," and then makes the statement that "by the splendor of those accomplishments by which you cast its former brilliancy into the shade you render it the more illustrious," we are apt to picture in our imagination the Pope as just then paying more attention to the glaring paradox contained in the above statement than to the expressed compliment. Likewise, when he says that "would it were permitted me to fly and kiss your most blessed feet," we may easily assume that Leo took this figure of speech for what it was worth and no more. And then Erasmus goes on:

I behold and I hear everywhere where the Christian world extends the highest and the lowest congratulating themselves on this great Pope. And while all do this most appropriately, to none is it more fitting than to those who are endowed with a zeal for true piety and choice literature; because, in the first place, that noble Medici family, which, by the immortality of its name, will live forever, and to which the world owes Leo, has ever been the nurse and ornament of men illustrious by their probity and learning. From this family, as from a Trojan horse, so many noble men eminent in every sort of learning have in a few years sprung, so many Ciceros, Vergils, Platos, Jeromes, that even this omen alone ought to inspire the studious with the supreme hope that Leo has been given to the world by the providence of the Supernal Power, so that under him all the eminent virtues and all the fine arts may again flourish.

At this point the Pope must have begun to perpend the ultimate drift 18 Erasmus, Vol. I, p. 265.