Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/536

Rh 516 ERASMUS He had been born with the hopes of the Renaissance, with its anticipation of a new Augustan age, and had seen this fair promise blighted by the irruption of a new horde of theological polemics, worse than the old scholastics, inas much as they were revolutionary instead of conservative. Erasmus never flouted at religion nor even at theology as such, but only at blind and intemperate theologians. But though Erasmus while lashing theologians respected theology, he did not cultivate it. He barely acquiesced in church dogma without being compelled to investi gate it. His mind had no metaphysical inclination ; he was a man of letters, with a general tendency to rational views on every subject which came under his pen. His was not the mind to originate, like Calvin, a new scheme of Christian thought. He is at his weakest in defending free will against Luther, and indeed he can hardly be said to enter on the metaphysical question. He treats the dispute entirely from the outside. It is im possible in reading Erasmus not to be reminded of the rationalist of the 18th century. Erasmus has been called the &quot; Voltaire of the Renaissance.&quot;. But there is a vast difference in the relations in which they respectively stood to the church and to Christianity. Voltaire, though he did not originate, yet adopted a moral and religious scheme which he sought to substitute for the church tradition. He waged war, not only against the clergy, but against the church and its sovereigns Erasmus drew the line at the first of these. He was not an anticipation of the 18th century ; he was the man of his age, as Voltaire of his ; though Erasmus did not intend it, he undoubtedly shook the ecclesiastical edifice in all its parts ; and, as Melchior Adamus says of him, &quot; pontifici Romano plus nocuit jocando, quam Lutherus stomachando.&quot; But if Erasmus was unlike the 18th century rationalist in that he did not declare war against the church, but remained a Catholic and mourned the disruption, he was yet a true rationalist in principle. The principle that reason is the one only guide of life, the supreme arbiter of all questions, politics and religion included, has its earliest and most complete exemplar in Erasmus. He does not dogmatically denounce the rights of reason, but he practically exercises them. Along with the charm of style, the great attraction of the writings of Erasmus is this unconscious freedom by which they are pervaded. It must excite our surprise that one who used his pen so freely should have escaped the pains and penalties which invariably overtook minor offenders in the same kind. For it was not only against the clergy and the monks that he kept up a ceaseless stream of satiric raillery; he treated nobles, princes, and kings, with equal freedom. No 18th century republican has used stronger language than has this pensioner of Charles V. &quot; The people build cities, princes pull them down ; the industry of the citizens creates wealth for rapacious lords to plunder; plebeian magistrates pass good laws for kings to violate; the people love peace, and their rulers stir up war.&quot; Such outbursts are frequent in one of his most popular books, The Adagia. These freedoms are part cause of Erasmus s popularity. He was here in sympathy with the secret sore of his age, and gave utterance to what all felt but none dared to whisper but he. It marks the difference between 1513 and 1G69 that, in a reprint of the Julius Exclusus published in 1GG9 at Oxford, it was thought necessary to leave out a sentence in which the writer of that dialogue, supposed by the editor to be Erasmus, asserts the right of states to deprive and punish bad kings. It is difficult to say to what we are to ascribe his immunity from painful consequences. We have to remember that he was removed from the scene early (1536) in the reaction, before force was fully organized for the suppression of the revolution. And his popular works, The Adagia (1500), The Colloquies (1521), had established themselves as standard books in the more easy going age, when power, secure in its un challenged strength, could afford to laugh with the laughers at itself. At the date of his death (1536), the Catholic revival, with its fell antipathy to art and letters, was only in its infancy ; and when times became dangerous, Erasmus cautiously declined to venture out of the protection of the empire, refusing repeated invitations to Italy and to France. &quot; I had thought of going to Besangon,&quot; he said, &quot; ne non essem in ditione Caesaris &quot; (Ep. 1299). In Italy a Bembo and a Sadoleto wrote a purer Latin than Erasmus, but contented themselves with pretty phrases, and were careful to touch no living chord of feeling. In France it was necessary for a Rabelais to hide his free-thinking under a disguise of revolting and unintelligible jargon. It was only in the empire that such liberty of speech as Erasmus used was practicable, and in the empire Erasmus passed for a moderate man. Upon the strength of an established character for moderation he enjoyed an excep tional licence for the utterance of unwelcome truths ; and in spite of his flings at the rich and powerful, he remained through life a privileged person with them. No noble except Eppendorf, young and crack-brained, ever attempted to call him seriously to account for his gibes. But though the men of the keys and the sword let him go his way unmolested, it was otherwise with his brethren of the pen. A man who is always launching opinions must expect to be retorted on. And when these judgments were winged by epigram, and weighted by the name of Erasmus, who stood at the head of letters, a wide-spread exasperation was the consequence. Mr Disraeli has not noticed Erasmus in his Quarrels of Authors, perhaps because Erasmus s quarrels would require a volume to themselves. &quot;So thin- skinned that a fly would draw blood,&quot; as the prince of Carpi expressed it, he could not himself restrain his pen from sarcasm. He forgot that though it is safe to lash the dunces, he could not with equal impunity sneer at those who, though they might not have the ear of the public as he had, could yet contradict and call names. And when literary jealousy was complicated with theological differences, as in the case of the free-thinkers, or with French vanity, as in that of Budseus, the cause of the enemy was espoused by a party and a nation, The quarrel with Budaius was strictly a national one. Cosmopolitan as Erasmus was, to the French literati he was still the Teuton. Dolet calls him &quot;enemy of Cicero, and jealous detractor of the French name.&quot; The only contemporary name which could approach to a rivalry with his was that of Budreus (Bude), who was exactly contemporary, having been born in the same year as Erasmus. Rivals in fame, they were unlike in accomplishment, each having the quality which the other wanted. Budteus, though a Frenchman, knew Greek well ; Erasmus, though a Dutchman, very imperfectly. But the Frenchman Budseus wrote an execrable Latin style, unreadable then as now, while the Teuton Erasmus charmed the reading world with a style which, though far from good Latin, ie the most delightful which the Renaissance has left us. The style of Erasmus is, considered as Latin, incorrect, sometimes even barbarous, and far removed from any classical model. But it has qualities far above purity. The best Italian Latin is but an echo and an imita tion; like the painted glass which we put in our churches, it is an anachronism. Bembo, Sadoleto, and the rest write purely in a dead language. Erasmus s Latin was a living and spoken tongue. Though Erasmus had passed nearly all his life in England, France, and Germany, he spoke not one of those three languages. His conversa tion was Latin ; and the language in which he talked about