one's mind involuntarily. We are compelled to feel that all this story of coercion is carried to extremes; and that in painting the picture he used colors that were entirely too lurid, with the ultimate result that our powers of belief are somewhat strained at times. Much as we ought to admire Erasmus' persistency in maintaining his point of view, we must confess that in this instance our sympathies are with the poor unappreciated guardians.

Again, there is the incident of his boyhood friend Cantelius, whom he admits he loved with youthful ardor; and yet the best he can find to say about him is that he had a "cunning mind, bent ever on self, endowed not with piety but a love of good eating, a glib fellow but very lazy," all of which puts a strain on our credulity. For this "very lazy" monk was not too lazy to spend whole nights with Erasmus studying the classics and improving himself to the utmost of his power and opportunity. Strange enough this, if we accept the dictum of Erasmus. that most of the monks were indolent and stupid and, if not naturally bad, were made so by their training. Much as the present writer admires Erasmus, he is not at all blind to his defects, not the least of which was this unfortunate tendency to exaggeration in writing and speech. But as our genial Autocrat, who could use his mental scalpel as tenderly as the material blade, was wont to remark, "we must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much"; so the defects of our common humanity which we discern in this truly great man serve only to make us the more gentle with him.

The more one becomes versed in following out the mental processes of Erasmus the more convinced he becomes that there were two Erasmuses one the literary, and the other purely personal; and the difficulty arises in having always to distinguish between the two. As a litterateur he was perhaps the greatest, broadest, and most catholic writer of his age; as a man he was narrow, carping, and selfish. These qualities were ever in conflict, and at times present him to us as illogical, inconsistent, and unreasonable. He was never able to keep from injecting his personality into every question, and from treating it as it affected himself. It was thus that he regarded the whole scheme of monastic life, not as an institution that had produced thousands of great and good men, but as a system that had cramped and hindered the development and expansion of his own individuality. He could not eat fish, therefore the monastic life was to be condemned; he could not fast, therefore the monastic life was radically wrong; he could not devote himself uninterruptedly to literary occupations, therefore the life of a monk was calculated to destroy intellectual evolution; his physical limitations were such that he could not conform to the routine which discipline demanded, therefore the requirements of a monastic career were inconsistent with mental progress. Thus he referred everything to himself, and what was bad for him could not be good for anyone. From his own narrow premises he drew universal conclusions; and in the drawing of his conclusions he employed the vast arsenal of his literary weapons to defend

Nisi forte adeo superstitiosus es vt religio tibi sit in amici negotio mendaciolis aliquot abuti." (Eras. Ep. 94.)

the trivial nature of his objections. Call this a temperamental defect, or a constitutional weakness, or what you will; but any skilful neurologist can recognize therein the earmarks of neurasthenia. And surely never was any boy more exposed to the causes which make for neurasthenia-the pre-natal anxiety of his mother, due to her uncertain relations with his father, the early loss of his parents, mental overwork, lack of exercise from sedentary occupation, unfavorable psychic influences due to the uncertainty of his future-all these were well calculated to undermine his nervous poise and lessen his emotional control. Hence his intense likes and dislikes, his morbid sensitiveness, his selfishness, his constant demands for sympathy, his self-centred attitude, his egotism, his readiness to speak ill of his nearest and dearest for some real or imaginary injury, all these and other defects not here mentioned point to the fact that he was a victim of chronic nerve exhaustion, which has been so often the curse of men of genius. With this fact firmly fixed in our minds, we can forgive many things in Erasmus which at first glance seem repellent; and when he treats us to an emotional outburst, as for example, the virulent traducing of his own brother, mentioned on a previous page, we must set it down to a lack of nervous equipoise for which his forbears were really responsible.

CHAPTER IV

MONASTIC LIFE AT STEYN

But we left him on the point of deciding to enter a monastery. After having been sick for a year of what he called a quartan fever, but which when viewed in connection with his subsequent medical history was most probably a chronic pyelitis, made all the worse by his neurasthenic weaknesses, he has finally to make up his mind as to his future career, the monastery or the world, and he elects the monastery of Steyn near Gouda, a house of the Canons Regular of the Rule of St. Augustine. We need not become too indignant at seeing this "boy" immured in a monastery; the facts will not bear this out. This boy, who is represented in the Grunnius letter as about fifteen years old, was in reality twenty-one, well educated, with a keen intellect, and able to marshal facts and arguments to the extent of writing a book. And strange as it may appear, the title of this book was On the Contempt of the World, the first literary result of his monastic life at Steyn. In it he tells how dangerous it is to dwell in the world, how riches should be spurned, how bitter and deadly are the pleasures of the flesh, how vain and fleeting are worldly honors, how death comes to all and cannot be long deferred, how wretched and debased is the world, how happy is a life of solitude, how the highest liberty is to be found not in the world but in retirement, how they who live solitary enjoy a double tranquillity, and subjoins the many pleasures that are to be realized in a secluded existence. Then he tells the young man for whom he is writing this treatise not to be too hasty, but to consider the matter well. He says that no one is forced to make a religious profession, but having once made it cannot draw back.

Formerly [he says] monasteries were nothing other than retreats where good men betook themselves when they were weary of pleasure and vice, or feared the moral contamination when pagans lived with Christians; or else they dreaded the cruel persecutions then raging, and betook themselves to the neighboring mountains, where they lived an angelic life in prayer and meditation. After laboring with their hands and living on the coarsest of food, they spent the rest of their time in reciting the psalms, or in pious reading or conversation, in prayer or works of charity, such as helping the sick and needy, or in other worthy occupations. To be a monk in those days was simply to be a Christian, nor was a monastery anything other than a company of men voluntarily practicing the purest doctrine of Christ. Control over others was conspicuous by its absence, since all were only too eager to advance towards perfection, and there was more need of the bit than the spur. The only reproof was

a friendly and fraternal advice. Now, alas, many monasteries are tinged with the follies of the world, and are no more beyond worldly influences than the human body is beyond the influence of its internal organs. In these there is such a lack of discipline that they are nothing but schools of impiety, in which no one can be pure or good; and their title to the name of religious serves them only to do with impunity what they desire. And it is to such as these, to whom the world would not trust its sculleries, that the affairs of the Church are entrusted. But there is a considerable difference even among those in which religious discipline is still flourishing. One plan of life suits some, another better suits others. So first it behooves you to examine for yourself and select a plan of life which commends itself to your judgment, remembering the saying of St. Paul, "prove all things; hold fast that which is good."

Now, this admirable treatise, part of which we have given above, was written when he was twenty-two or twenty-three, and a monk at Steyn. Jortin calls it a "boyish exercise, and not containing his real sentiments.' Yet it is perfectly in accord with all that he ever said or wrote afterwards, and does credit to his mind and heart. In its style and command of language, its knowledge of the classics, and its understanding of human actions and motives, it shows the most consummate mastery of the art of writing. Moreover, its evident conclusion that the monastic life, for those who had the vocation thereto, was the ideal life, both as affording a refuge from the temptations of the world and as giving opportunities for cultivating the higher and nobler aspirations of man, is a conclusion that cannot be easily gainsaid. That Erasmus realized all this is clear; that he lived up to this ideal, or that he found himself fitted for the life, is nowhere apparent. However, he enjoyed it for the time being, and in the company of William Herman and Servatius Rogerus, two of his fellow monks, he spent the days, and even the nights, over his books, as Beatus Rhenanus informs us.' Like most young men in their Vergilian days, he was beginning to try his literary pinions and occasionally dropped into poetry. In conjunction with William Herman he wrote an Ode to Spring, and later he issued a treatise on the Peace of the Soul. About the same time he wrote and had published a Funeral Oration on Bertha de Heyer, a good lady of Gouda who, like Frau Cotta to Luther, had been good to him after the death of his parents. At Steyn too he made his first essay in controversy in a series of letters to Cornelius Lopsen, sometimes called Cornelius Aurotinus, who was a regular priest at Gouda, and against whom he defended the celebrated Laurentius Valla. Valla was born at Rome about 1406, and was one of the earlier scholars of the Renaissance. On account of his assaults on the Scholastic Philosophy, and his defense of Epicurus, he fell under suspicion of heresy, but was freed from canonical censure by Pope Nicholas V, who admired his learning and ability and who afterwards appointed him a papal secretary and 1I Thes. v 21. LB Vol. IV, col. 1261d-1262a. Eras. Ep. IV.

canon in the church of St. John Lateran. Erasmus had become acquainted with some of his writings in the library of the monastery at Steyn, and thought so highly of him that, some years afterwards, he edited and published his Annotationes in Nouum Testamentum. Valla's influence over him was a lasting, but, perhaps, not entirely a beneficial one, as we shall hereafter have occasion to show. The controversy which Erasmus maintained with Cornelius Lopsen over the merits of Valla is well worth reading, and shows us that even at this early age he could wield a facile pen, with a lightness of touch which did not at all detract from the force of his argument.

There would seem to exist some reciprocal relation between literature and painting, as many painters have excelled in both arts, renowned examples of which fact are furnished in the persons of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. That Erasmus was a painter has lately been emphasized by Maurice Brockwell, who has recently issued a privately printed monograph entitled Erasmus, Humanist and Painter. In this well considered study Mr. Brockwell shows conclusively that while at Steyn Erasmus painted some pictures. His remarks on the subject are deserving of quotation:

His [Erasmus'] preoccupation had been in the main with religion. What, therefore, was more natural than that he should now afford himself mental relaxation by busying himself with painting? We read that in 1484 he painted a picture of "Christ on the Cross, with Mary and St. John." This work is said to have been executed "in the style of the old Dutch Masters" and to have been long in the monastery of Emmaus, called Steyne, near Gouda. It is alleged to have been begun as early as 1484. Dirk Evertsz van Bleijswyck, writing in 1667, was probably the earliest to record such a picture at Delft. Houbraken also informs us of its being in the esteemed cabinet of Prior Cornelius Musius at Delft. Weyerman also tells of it. Martinet and others refer to it as if it were a miniature painted on parchment. Some have urged that it was then "the only remaining one by Erasmus, and more remarkable by its subject than for its artistic qualities." Descamps has recorded that Erasmus retired to this monastery "solely for its library, which was the finest of the century," and that there Erasmus "applied himself at intervals to painting, in which he succeeded and made the same progress as in his other studies." "The merit of his pictures is," he adds, "attested by the artists of the time, but the author does not believe that a single one has escaped from the ruin of that house. One hardly knows to-day where it was built." We are told that it bore the following two-lined inscription, a hexameter and a pentameter, written, and therefore presumably added, by Musius to the painting:

Regarding the authenticity of the triptych, now in possession of Edward A. Faust of St. Louis, Mo., and having on its outer edge the inscription, ERASMUS P. 1501, I do not care to enter, feeling too greatly my deficiencies in such matters to venture an opinion. Prof. P. Smith decides against its being a work of Erasmus, but gives no authority.