Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/537

Rh ERASMUS 517 common tilings he wrote. Hence the spontaneity and naturalness of his page, its flavour of life and not of books. He writes from himself, and not out of Cicero. Hence, too, he spoiled nothing by anxious revision in terror lest some phrase not of the golden age should escape from his pen. He confesses apologetically to Longolius (Ep. 402) that it was his habit to extemporize all he wrote, and that this habit was incorrigible ; &quot; effundo verms quain scribo omnia. But he was quite alive to the beauty of the Ciceronian periods of Bembo, Sadoleto, and Julius von Pfiug, whom ha calls &quot; the three happiest stylists of our day&quot; (Ep. 1370), and &quot;would learn to imitate them, but he is too old.&quot; He complains that much reading of the works of St Jerome had spoiled his Latin ; but, as Scaliger says (Scalig* 2&quot;), &quot;Erasmus s language is better than St Jerome s.&quot; The same critic, however, thought Erasmus would have done better &quot; if he had kept more closely to the classical models.&quot; In the annals of classical learning Erasmus may be regarded as constituting an intermediate stage between the humanists of the Latin Renaissance and the learned men of the age of Greek scholarship, between Pohtiano and Joseph Scaliger. Erasmus, though justly styled by Muretus (Varr. Lectt. 7, 15), &quot;eruditus sane vir, acmultse lectionis,&quot; was not a &quot; learned &quot; man in the special sense of the word, not an &quot; erudit.&quot; He was more than this ; he was the &quot;man of letters,&quot; he first who had appeared in Europe since the fall of the Roman empire. His acquirements were vast, and they were all brought to bear upon the life of his day. He did not make a study apart of antiquity for its own sake, but used it as an instrument of cul ture. He did not worship, imitate, and reproduce the classics, like the Latin humanists who preceded him ; he did not master them and reduce them to a special science, as did the French Hellenists who succeeded him. He edited many authors, it is true, but he had neither the means of forming a text, nor did he attempt to do so. In editing a father, or a classic, he had in view the practical utility of the general reader, not the accuracy required by the guild of scholars. &quot; His Jerome,&quot; says J. Scaliger, &quot;is full of sad blunders&quot; (Scaliy* 2&quot;). Even Julien Gamier could discover that Erasmus &quot; falls in his haste into grievous error in his Latin version of St Basil, though his Latiuity is superior to that of the other translators&quot; (Pref. in Opp. St Bas., 1721). It must be remembered that the commercial interests of Froben s press led to the introduc tion of Erasmus s name on many a title page when he had little to do with the book, c.g, the Latin Josephus of 1534, to which Erasmus only contributed one translation of 14 pages; or the Aristotle of 1531, of which Simon Grynceus seems to have been the real editor. Where Erasmus excelled was in prefaces, not philological intro ductions to each author, but spirited appeals to the interest of the general reader, showing how an ancient book might be made to minister to modern spiritual demands. It has been the fate of Erasmus, as of so many great writers, to be best known to posterity by one of his slightest works. Those who have read nothing else of Erasmus have read his Colloquies. And a wider circle still, who would not care to read the text of the Praise of Fully, know of the book, because of the Holbein illustra tions, which have preserved in general remembrance a Latin jsu-d -esprit which would otherwise have only been consulted by the curious. But Erasmus himself complained of &quot; the caprice of fortune,&quot; which had made his Colloquies his most popular work, a &quot; book full of foolish things, bad Latin, and solecisms&quot; (Ep. adBotz.}. Ths Encomium Morice (Praise of Folly) was composed during his journey from Italy, and written out from his notes in seven days during his stay in Thomas More s house in London. It was not destined for publication, but a copy found its way into the hands of the printers Badius at Paris, and came out in 1512, Within a few months seven editions were called for, and Froben s reprint of 1515, consisting of 1800 copies, was sold in a few weeks. Milton, in 1628, speaks of it as being &quot; in every one s hands &quot; at Cambridge. Of Erasmus s works, mostly hasty pamphlets, squibs, or personal explanations, two are chiefly memorably The Adagia and The Greek Testament. The first edition of the Adagio, (Paris, 1500) was only the germ of the book after wards known under that title. This first edition contained 800 proverbs. The last edition in Erasmus s life-time, 1536, has more than 4000. Duplessts (Bibliogr. parem.} enumer ates 49 editions of the original work, adding that his list is not complete ; and he does not mention the numerous abridgments. It is a mere commonplace-book, or compila tion out of the Greek and Latin classics. The Italian fine writers (Muretus) sneered at it as &quot; rudis indigestaque moles.&quot; But it was just what the public wanted, a manual of the wit and wisdom of the ancient world for the use of the modern. The collection was enlivened by commentary in Erasmus s finest vein. Yet so established was the book in the hands of the public that the Council of Trent, unable to suppress it, and not daring to overlook it, ordered the preparation of a castrated edition. Of Erasmus s Greek Testament the same must be said, viz., that it has no title to be considered as a work of learning or scholarship, yet that its influence upon opinion was profound and durable. It contributed more to the liberation of the human mind from the thraldom of the clergy than all the uproar and rage of Luther s many pamphlets. As an edition of the Greek Testament it has no critical value. But it was the first (Editio Princeps, Basilcce ap. Jo. Frobenium, 1516, folio), and it revealed the fact that the Vulgate, the Bible of the church, was not only a second-hand document, but in places an erroneous document. A shock was thus given to the credit of the clergy in the piovince of literatuie, equal to that which was given in the province of science by the astronomical discoveries of the 17th century. Even if Erasmus had had at his disposal the MSS. subsidia for forming a text, he had not the critical skill required to use them. He had at hand two late Basel MSS., which he sent straight to press, correcting them in places by two others. In four subsequent reprints, 1519, 1522, 1527, 1535, Erasmus gradually weeded out the many typographical errors of his first edition, but the text remained essentially such as he had first printed it. The Greek text indeed was but a subordinate part of his scheme. The principal object of the volume was the new Latin version, the original being placed alongside as a guarantee of the translator s good faith. This translation, with the justificatory notes which accompanied it, though not itself a work of critical scholar ship, became the starting-point of modern exegetical science. Erasmus did nothing to solve the problem, but to him belongs the honour of having first propounded it. For an account of the attacks which this publication, brought on its author, as well as for a notice of his many literary and other controversies, the reader must be referred to some of the special lives of Erasmus. And no man of letters has had more numerous biographers. Beatus Rhenanus prefixed a brief, but pregnant, memoir to his edition of the Opera, Basilete, 1540. The common founda tion of all the modern compilations on the life of Erasmus is the sketch which Le Clerc, while he was superintending the Leyden edition of the works, drew up, and published in the Bibliotheque Choisit, tome 5. Dr Jortin adapted and enlarged Le Clerc in his Life of Erasmus, 2 vols. 4to., Lond. 1748. &quot;Jortin has made,&quot; says Sir W. Hamilton (Discussions, p. 218), &quot;as, with his talents, he could hardly