Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/534

Rh 514 ERASMUS was Lutheran.&quot; For his constant journeys he required two horses, one for himself and one for his attendant. And though he was almost always found in horse-flesh by his friends, the keep had to be paid for. For his literary labours and his extensive correspondence he required one or more amanuenses. He often had occasion, on his own business, or on that of Froben s press, to send special couriers to a distance, employing them by the way in col lecting the free gifts of his tributaries. Precarious as these means of subsistence seem, he pre ferred the independence thus obtained to an assured position which would have involved obligations to a patron or professional duties which his weak health would have made onerous. He accepted the diploma of D.D. from the theological faculty at Louvain, but declined an offered professorship, saying &quot;he did not like teaching.&quot; The duke of Bavaria offered to meet this objection by dispens ing with teaching, if he would only reside, and would have named him on these terms to a chair in his new university of Ingolstadt, with a salary of 200 ducats, and the rever sion of one or more prebendal stalls. The archduke Ferdi nand offered a pension of 400 florins, if he would only come to reside at Vienna. Adrian VI. offered him a deanery (JEp. 859), but the offer seems to have been of a possible and not an actual deanery. Offers, flattering but equally vague, were made from France, on the part of the bishop of Bayeux, and even of Francis I. &quot;Invitor amplissimis conditionibus; offeruntur dignitates et episcopa- tus; rexessemsi juvenis es$Qm&quot;(Ep. 735). Erasmus declined all, and about the end of the year 1520 settled permanently at Basel, in the capacity of general editor and literary adviser of Froben s press. He had a house of his own in Louvain, and as a subject of the emperor, and attached to his court by a pension, it would have been convenient to him to have fixed his residence there. But the bigotry of the Flemish clergy, and the monkish atmosphere of the university of Louvain, overrun with Dominicans and Fran ciscans, united for once in their enmity to the new classical learning, inclined Erasmus to seek a more congenial home in Basel. Here a fresr spirit reigned, and here he had already formed several fast friendships. But that which had most influence upon his choice was the fact that Basel had been made, by two enterprising publishers, Froben and Johann Amerbach, the centre of the German book- trade. The arrival of Erasmus was an event in Basel. He had a public reception, and received addresses on the part of the bishop and clergy, the municipality, and the university. But to Froben his arrival was the advent of the very man whom he had long wanted. Froben s enter prise, united with Erasmus s editorial skill, raised the press of Basel, for a time, to be the most important in Europe. The death of Froben in 1527, the final separation of Basel from the empire, the wreck of learning in the religious disputes, and the cheap paper and scamped work of the Frankfort presses, gradually withdrew the trade from Basel. But during the eight years of Erasmus s co-opera tion the Froben press took the lead of all the presses in Europe, both in the standard value of the works published and in style of typographical execution. Like some other publishers who preferred reputation to returns in money, Froben died poor, and his impressions never reached the splendour afterwards attained by those of the Estiennes, or of Plantin. The series of the Fathers alone contains Jerome (1516-18), Cyprian (1520), Pseudo-Arnobius (1522), Athan- asius (Latin, 1522), Hilarius (1523), Irenams (Latin, 1526), Ambrose (1527), Augustine (1528), Epiphanius (1529), Chrysostom on St Matthew (Latin, 1530), Basil (Greek, 1532, the first Greek author printed in Germany), and Origen (Latin, 1536). In these editions, partly texts, partly translations, it is impossible to determine the respec tive shares of Erasmus and his many helpers. The prefaces and dedications are all written by him, and some of them, as that to the Hilarius, are of importance for the history as well of the times as of Erasmus himself. Of his most important edition, that of the Greek text of the New Testament, something will be said further on. In this &quot;mill,&quot; as he calls it, Erasmus continued to grind for eight years, from his 53rd to his 61st year, getting through in that time an amount of literary labour to which most men in robust health would scarcely have proved equal. Besides his work as editor, he was always writing himself some book or pamphlet called for by the event of the day, some general fray in which he was com pelled to mingle, or some personal assault which it was necessary to repel. He was himself painfully conscious how much his reputation as a writer was damaged by this extempore production. &quot; An author,&quot; he says, &quot; should handle with deliberate care the subject which he has selected, should keep his work long by him and retouch it many times before it sees the light. These things it has never been my good fortune to be able to do. Accident has determined my subject for me. I have written on without stopping, and published with such precipitation that changed circumstances have often compelled entire re- writing in the second edition&quot; (Ep. ad Botzhem.}. He was the object of those solicitations which always beset the author whose name upon the title page assures the sale of a book. He was besieged for dedications, and as every dedication meant a present proportioned to the cir cumstances of the dedicatee, there was a natural tempta tion to be lavish of them. Add to this a correspondence so extensive as to require him at times to write forty letters in one day, &quot; I receive daily,&quot; he writes, &quot; letters from remote parts, from kings, princes, prelates, and men of learning, and even from persons of whose existence I was ignorant.&quot; His day was thus one of incessant mental activity, and he had acquired the power of working with such rapidity that J. C. Scaliger, one of his detractors, says (Orat. 2 pro Cicerone) that he had been told by Aldus that Erasmus did more work in one day than others did in two. Under the heading &quot; Herculei Labores,&quot; in The Adayia, he hints at the immense labour which this com pilation had cost him. But hard work was so far from breeding a distaste for his occupation, that reading and writing grew ever more delightful to him (literarum assi- duitas non modo mihi fastidium non parit, sed voluptatem ; crescit scribendo scribendi studium). In 1527 Johann Froben died, and the disturbances at Basel, occasioned by the zealots for the religious revolution which was in progress throughout Switzerland, began to make Erasmus desirous of changing his residence. He selected Freiburg in the Breisgau, as a city which was still in the dominion of the emperor, and was free from religious dissension. Thither he removed in April 1529. He was received with public marks of respect by the authorities, who granted him the use of an unfinished residence which had been begun to be built for the late emperor Maximilian. Erasmus proposed only to remain at Freiburg for a few months, but found the place so suited to his habits that he bought a house of his own, and remained there six years. A desire for change of air he fancied Freiburg was damp, rumours of a new war with France, and the necessity of seeing his Ecclesiasles through the press, took him back to Basel in 1535. He lived now a very retired life, and saw only a small circle of intimate friends. It was now that a last attempt was made by the papal court to enlist him in some public way against tha Reformation. On the election of Paul III. in 1534, he had, as usual, sent the new pope a congratulatory letter. After his arrival in Basel, he received a complimentary