Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/535

Rh answer, together with the nomination to the deanery of Deventer, the income of which was reckoned at 1500 ducats. This nomination was accompanied with an intima tion that more was in store for him, and that steps would be taken to provide for him the income, viz., 3000 ducats, which was necessary to qualify for the cardinal s hat. But Erasmus was even less disposed now than he had been before to barter his reputation for honours. His health had been for some years gradually declining, and disease in the shape of gout gaining upon him. In the winter of 1535-6, he was confined entirely to his chamber, many days to his bed. Though thus afflicted he never ceased his literary activity, dictating his tract On the Purity of the Church, and revising the sheets of a translation of Origen which was passing through Froben s press. His last letter is dated 28th June 1536, and subscribed &quot; Eras. Rot. fegra manu.&quot; &quot; I have never been so ill in my life before as I am now, for many days unable even to read.&quot; Dysentery setting in carried him off 12th July 1536, in his 69th year. By his wall, now preserved in the library at Basel, he left what he had to leave, with the exception of some legacies, to Boniface Amerbach, Johann Froben s son-in- law, partly for himself, partly in trust for the benefit of the aged and infirm, or to be spent in portioning young girls, and in educating young men of promise. He left none of the usual legacies for masses or other clerical pur poses, and was not attended by any priest or confessor in his last moments. Erasmus s features are familiar to all, from Holbein s many portraits or their copies. Beatus Rhenanus, &quot; Summus Erasmi observator,&quot; as he is called by De Thou, describes his person thus : &quot; In stature not tall, but not noticeably short ; in figure well built and graceful ; of an extremely delicate constitution, sensitive to the slightest changes of climate, food, or drink. After middle life he suffered from the stone, not to mention the common plague of studious men, an irritable mucous membrane. His complexion was fair ; light bhie eyes, and yellowish hair. Though his voice was weak, his enunciation was distinct; the expres sion of his face cheerful; his manner and conversation polished, affable, even charming.&quot; It was this delicacy of stomach, and not pampered appetite, that made him loathe fish, and be fastidious as to his wine. His highly nervous organization made his feelings acute, and his brain inces santly active. Through his ready sympathy with all forms of life and character, his attention was always alive. The active movement of his spirit spent itself, not in following out its own trains of thought, but in outward observation. No man was ever less introspective, and though he talks much of himself, his egotism is the genial egotism which takes the world into its confidence, not the selfish egotism which feels no interest but in its own woes. He says of himself, and justly, &quot; that he was incapable of dissimula tion&quot; (Ep. 1152). There is nothing behind, no pose, no scenic effect. It may be said of his letters that in them &quot; tota patet vita senis.&quot; His nature was flexible without being faultily weak. He has many moods and each mood imprints itself in turn on his words. Hence, on a superficial view, Erasmus is set down as the most inconsistent of men. Further acquaintance makes us feel a unity of character underlying this susceptibility to the impressions of the moment. His seeming inconsistencies are reconciled to apprehension, not by a formula of the intellect, but by the many-sidedness of a. highly impressible nature. In the words of Nisard, Erasmus was one of those &quot; dont la gloire a et6 de beaucoup comprendre, et d affirmer pen.&quot; This equal openness to every vibration of the environ ment is the key to all Erasmus s acts and words, and among them to the middle attitude which he took up towards the 515 great religious conflict of his time. The reproaches of party assailed him in his life-time, and have continued to be heaped upon his memory. He was loudly accused by the Catholics of collusion with the enemies of the faith. His powerful friends, the pope, Wolsey, Henry VIII., the emperor, called upon him to declare against Luther. Theological historians from that time forward have per petuated the indictment that Erasmus sided with neither party in the struggle for religious truth. The most moderate form of the censure presents him in the odious light of a trimmer ; the vulgar and venomous assailant is sure that Erasmus was a Protestant at heart, but withheld the avowal that he might not forfeit the worldly advan tages he enjoyed as a Catholic. When by study of his writings we come to know Erasmus intimately, there is revealed to us one of those natures to which partisanship is an impossibility. It was not timidity or weakness which kept Erasmus neutral, but the reasonableness of his nature. It was not only that his intellect revolted against the narrowness of party, his whole being repudiated its clamorous and vulgar excesses. As he loathed fish, so he loathed clerical fanaticism. Himself a Catholic priest &quot;the glory of the priesthood and the shame&quot; the tone of the orthodox clergy was distasteful to him ; the ignorant hostility to classical learning which reigned in their colleges and convents disgusted him. In common with all the learned men of his age, he wished to see the power of the clergy broken, as that of an obscurantist army arrayed against light. He had employed all his resources of wit and satire against the priests and monks, and the super stitions in which they traded, long before Luther s name was heard of. The motto which was already current in his life-time, &quot; that Erasmus laid the egg and Luther hatched it,&quot; is so far true, and no more. Erasmus would have suppressed the monasteries, put an end to the domina tion of the clergy, and swept away scandalous and profit able abuses, but to attack the church or re-mould received theology was far from his thoughts. And when out of Luther s revolt there arose a new fanaticism that of evan gelism, Erasmus recoiled from the violence of the new preachers.- &quot; Is it for this,&quot; he writes to Melanchthon (Ep. 703), &quot;that we have shaken off bishops and parties, that we may come under the yoke of sucn madmen as Otto arid Farel 1 &quot; Passages have been collected, and it is an easy task, from the writings of Erasmus to prove that he shared the doctrines of the Reformers. Passages equally strong might be culled to show that he repudiated them. The truth is that theological questions in themselves had no attraction for him. And when a theological position was emphasized by party passion it became odious to him. In 1521 he writes (Ep. 572) that he had not yet had time to read Luther s pamphlets, so offensive to his refined taste was their coarse vulgarity and exaggerated tone, as he had found on looking into them. In the words of Drurn- mond, &quot;Erasmus was in his own age the apostle of common sense and of rational religion. He did not care for dogma, and accordingly the dogmas of Rome, which had the consent of the Christian world, were in his eyes preferable to the dogmas of Protestantism From the beginning to the end of his career he remained true to the purpose of his life, which was to fight the battle of sound learning and plain common sense against the powers of ignorance and superstition, and amid all the convulsions of that period he never once lost his mental balance.&quot; Erasmus is accused of indifference. But he was far from indifferent to the progress of tho revolution. He was keenly alive to its pernicious influence on the cherished interest of his life, tho cause of learning. &quot; I abhor the evangelics, becaxise it is through them that literature is everywhere declining, and upon the point of perishing.