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 remind him of his origin, ortus a scorto as his enemies said, impecunious, forced into an Order he did not love, thirsting for a knowledge hard to obtain, seeking it at home or in Paris, where life is fast while his clerical guardian is suspicious and his own temper self-indulgent. Then we are touched by the early struggles of a scholar who loved learning and good living, and neither liked nor acquiesced in the poverty which seemed his destined lot, though we may be offended by his complaints, which are too frequent to be dignified, and his appeals for help, which are too urgent to be compatible with self-respect as we understand it. His pictures of our gracious and spacious England, loved because it is so kind to the stranger-the seclusion and erudition of Oxford, the repose and learned activity of Cambridge, the regal Henry, the magnificent Wolsey, the devout Colet, the genial More, the statesmanlike yet thoughtful Warham, who can rule the Church and yet remember the scholars who serve it,—are of a sort which pleases the reader and which he loves to read. And if he desires first-hand knowledge of the manners and morals of a picturesque day, the miseries of the sea and the comforts of the shore, or the discomforts of continental travel with its strange bedfellows, crowded inns, dirty linen, and unsavoury food; or of the dignified society and refined art of living to be then found in the great Italian cities; or of Rome and Roman society under Julius II, where a warlike Pontiff and cultured Cardinals, the spirit of the Borgia and the temper of the Renaissance, make the capital of Christendom an epitome of the world; or of the hopes, the disappointments, and the sorrows of an editor with a zeal for letters and a passion for praise, who negotiates now with mean and now with open-handed publishers, and stands between three publics, one sympathetic and appreciative, a second suspicious and sore and critical, fearful lest he go too far, and a third exacting and insatiable, determined to compel him to go much further than he wishes; or of the Reforming men and movements, the strange and tempestuous Luther, the audacious and restless Hütten, the moderate and scholarly Pirkheimer, the conciliatory and reasonable Melanchthon, the heroic and magnanimous Zwingli, the learned and large-minded (Ecolampadius,—then he will find this knowledge superabundantly in this vivid and entertaining correspondence.

Yet, if we would know Erasmus, he must be studied in his more serious works, as well as in his letters. There we shall find the clergy of all grades from the friar and the parish priest to the Pope, the superstitions and ceremonies, the pilgrimages and fastings, the distinctions in dress and food, the worship of relics and of Saints,—pilloried and satirised and killed, at least so far as ridicule can kill. And his lighter moods express his graver mind; and unless this mind be known there is no person in history to whom we shall find it harder to be just. He is a proud and a strong man, when questions are at issue for which he supremely cares; but he will seem to us indifferent or vain or weak where