live the life of a scholar at some continental university, was probably the future floating indistinctly before him." This is still more unlikely than his former guess, because we have just seen that he refused the chance to stay at Oxford; and, during the course of his life, the same offers of university positions and emoluments were often made to him, and invariably refused, except in the case of the University of Louvain in Brabant, where he frequently stayed on account of its rich library, but where he never occupied a permanent teaching position.

But he had a plan of life, thought out no doubt, in the long watches of the night, and day by day growing and ripening in his fertile mind. All that we have seen and learned of his thoughts and aspirations points indubitably to the fact that his settled plan was to create, produce, and distribute to the world the riches of his own mind. Hitherto he had been a disseminator of the ideas of others; now he was to be the disseminator of his own.

CHAPTER XI

THE "ADAGIA"

Up to this time Erasmus had written nothing especially worthy of note, and whatever reputation for learning and accomplishments he may have acquired must have been gained by him through his personal contact or correspondence with those who now began to admire him. It will clarify this phase of the matter if we run over briefly what little he had already published and given to the world. In sending a list of his works to John Botzheim in 1523, he states that there was no kind of verse at which he had not tried his hand, resembling in this the majority of writers, who in youth furtively woo the Muse of poesy. It was at Paris that he first gained courage to play the rôle of poet:

3

For there [he says] was published by some friends of mine1 my heroic poem in the style of mixed tetrameter, dedicated to Fausto Andrelini, with whom I had recently struck up a friendship. After that, I wrote one in hendecasyllabic metre to Robert Gaguin, a man at that time of considerable influence in Paris, in addition to another which I wrote for him in alternative Glyconic and Asclepiadic metre. Besides these things, I published a poem, De casa natalitia pueri Iesu, and what else I wrote at that time is hard to remember. But many years before I had written a Sapphic Ode on Michael the Archangel, not of my own volition, but urged thereto by the entreaties of a certain great man who was the parish priest of a church dedicated to St. Michael. Although I had so restrained my pen that the effusion might pass for prose, yet he did not dare to make use of it because it was so poetical, he said, that it seemed to be written in Greek. Such was the miserable state of those times. And although I had spent much labor on the thing, this liberal fellow on receiving it offered me enough money to buy a pint of wine, a present worthy of the poem itself. I gave him thanks for his boundless liberality, but I refused the gift on the pretext that it was more than my poor effort deserved.'

If we add to the above the Sylua odarum, which he put through the press for his friend William Herman in 1497, and which contains some poems of his own as well, we shall have mentioned everything of note

In 1496, though it was printed without date, Antoine Denidel of Paris being the publisher.

Eras. Ep. I, p. 3, 1. 22.

that he had so far written. Nothing in any of these trifles, as he was fond of calling such things, was of sufficient merit to attract to him any amount of public notice; so we are forced to the conclusion which we have here reached, that he arrested the attention of people by his marvelous conversational powers, his pleasing manners, his ready wit, and his great and unusual learning. We may fairly assume that he talked as he wrote, pouring out the riches of his mind in a constant stream of classic allusion, witty phrasing, sparkling comment on men and things, possessing in addition a rare faculty for recalling the choicest and most appropriate anecdotes to illustrate and elucidate his meaning, and to send it home most efficaciously to the minds of his hearers. Nothing eluded his eye or escaped his memory, that memory which Colet termed "pertinacious," which could retain and reproduce a whole conversation, or even a discourse, almost word for word.

He lengthened his stay in England until after the Christmas holidays, and it must have given him extreme pleasure to witness the old-fashioned celebration of Christ's birth, with everything clad in the traditional holly and ivy, and the ceremonies attendant on the mistletoe meeting him everywhere he turned. And that he was not forgotten by the good will of his friends in that happy and holy season we may assume from the fact that he was leaving England with a goodly sum of money, the gift probably of his many admirers there. Unfortunately, when he reached Dover" to embark for Boulogne, this money was confiscated by the customs-officers, under a law of the land which forbade the taking of money, beyond a certain fixed sum, out of the country. We may surmise that the customs-officers knew no Latin, and we are aware that Erasmus knew no English, so that any attempt on his part to explain the circumstances of the case was foredoomed to failure. This loss was a terrible blow to him, for he needed the money badly to pay his debts in Paris. He never forgot it, and there were few of his friends whom he failed to make cognizant of his misfortune, for we find Beatus Rhenanus telling the story to the Emperor Charles V, forty years afterwards."

On landing at Boulogne he set out at once for Tournehem to find Batt, who meant both sympathy and assistance for him in his great loss. Batt received him with open arms, and he spent in his company two busy days, relating over and over again his English experiences and his plans and ambitions for the future. From here he wrote to Mountjoy an account of his treatment by the officials at Dover, which letter is unfortunately lost; but we have one written to Mountjoy, ostensibly by Batt but in reality by Erasmus, in which the matter is gone into again. with tiresome iteration. He does not ask Mountjoy for money, but at least the latter shall not for a moment remain in doubt that he needs some. Another reason for the letter is to remind Mountjoy that Erasmus had appreciative friends awaiting him on his return from England; and since the letter shows quite a touch of Erasmian shrewdness we will give it as it stands:

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January 27, 1500.

Eras. Ep. IV.

James Batt to the most noble William Mountjoy:

The return of my Erasmus was most anxiously awaited and desired by me; not that I grudged him to you, but that I love him so well. I could not but feel much pained when he told me about that bitter misfortune of his, of which I had a foreboding. What did I not fear for him? How often did I dream very serious dreams about him? And I was even anxiously pondering on his affairs at the moment when his letter was handed to me. However the matter turns out, I rejoice. I rejoice, my Lord, that I behold again so sweet a part of my soul, even though despoiled and harassed; although I do not love him so fatuously that I would not prefer him to have remained safe and sound with you rather than have been restored to me plundered and robbed with such contumely. Immortal God! cannot even poetry and literature be safe from such harpies? The fact that he was a philosopher saved Plato from the inhabitants of Aegina when he was on trial for his life. The monstrous Phalaris himself is said to have used his physician, Pythagoras the philosopher, and also Stesichorus the poet, with the greatest kindness and liberality. But what is the use of repining about such a hopeless affair at this late day? We must bear, not blame, what we cannot change; and I feel that I ought to be ashamed to be so depressed, when he bears the calamity with buoyant and undiminished courage. Oh, what a wonderful thing is that philosophy of his which he has always preached and practised! I should have been the one to soothe his grief with gentle words; but he, laughing, bids me dry up my tears and be of good cheer. He declares that he is not sorry that he went to England; and that the loss of the money was not without the greatest profit to him, because he made friends there whom he prefers to the riches of Croesus. We spent two nights together. Good heavens, with what affection he told me, in his most eloquent manner, of the kindness of Prior Richard, of Colet's erudition, and of More's suavity of speech; so much so that if it were permissible I myself would crave the pleasure of beholding such learned and generous souls. And you, Mountjoy, he so depicted, from head to foot, as the saying is, that though I was earnestly desirous of your affection before, now in manifesting my love towards you I will not yield to Erasmus himself, who yet loves you more than his very eyes. So far is he from holding it against you that he deplored in my presence the trouble you had had with him, in taking on yourself much labor and expense for his sake. Finally, when he was departing, he bade me again and again to write to you as often as possible; and although I shrank from so doing on account of your great learning and my own ignorance, yet that I might not seem to be lacking in duty, I send you this letter, such as it is, which if it do not offend you, I will often repeat. May God grant that I may soon enjoy your nearer acquaintance, some hope of which Erasmus holds out. For your great kindness and generosity towards my Erasmus I am under an immense obligation to you, and will ever so consider myself. For

I hold myself more indebted to anyone who does a favor to him than if he conferred it on myself.

I pray that your most noble lady, your very good father-in-law, and the rest of your family may enjoy the blessing of health. From Tournehem Castle, February, 1500."

We feel that Erasmus wrote or dictated this epistle, though we cannot prove it; but any man, after reading five or six of his letters, will hardly fail to recognize both the style and the Latinity, which were peculiarly his own.

On reaching Paris he at once plunged into literary work, being, no doubt, rested, stimulated, and inspired by his English visit. He was thirsting for fame, and felt the creative spirit strong within him. The example of those great souls whom he had just left on the other side of the Channel was spurring him on to show that he was indeed worthy of the meed of praise they had so lavishly accorded him. So he cast around for subjects to be treated which would exhibit his profound learning and, at the same time, show that his writings were just as attractive as his conversation.

The subject which he chose for his first book came to him naturally enough, for it was the result of his dwelling on the compliments to his erudition, and the openly expressed admiration that he had encountered in England for his marvelous facility in quoting the classic proverbs, that put it into his head to compose a work wherein he might show to his English admirers and the whole learned world, in compact form, but at greater length, his wonderful capacity in this direction. He admits that this is so in the preface to the book itself, where he says to Mountjoy, to whom he dedicated it:

I was induced to undertake the work, partly at your kind urging, together with the flattering entreaties of Prior Richard . . . and partly by the hope that my labor, if not a source of glory to the author, might be profitable and gratifying to its readers to those surely who are disgusted with a commonplace style of conversation, and are desirous of a more graceful and polished mode of expression. . . .3

And so he wrote his Adages, the task taking him about two months to complete, which will give us some idea of the celerity with which he worked. He exacted tribute of books and manuscript codices of the writers of antiquity from all his friends, and we have some of his notes to Gaguin begging the loan of Macrobius, Quintilian, and George of Trebizond. In his feverish anxiety to finish the work he must have eaten little and slept less, and he did not permit even a slight illness to deter him, as he informed Lord Mountjoy. In his dedication to the latter, he enters at some length on what he conceived to be the nature, form, and function of an adage, a real, concise, and complete definition of which caused him some difficulty. The best he could devise, and this only after issuing several editions, was: "A celebrated saying, Preface to first edition, § I.

'Ibid., 120.