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ERA other illustrious scholars—Linacre, Grocyn, William Latimer, and Thomas More—all of whom he highly eulogizes. In his correspondence he praises everything about England, its climate and its scholarship, and in a passage of a letter to Andrelini—a passage in which Bayle luxuriates—he flies into raptures at the easy manners and frequent salutes of the ladies—"Mos nunquam satis laudatus. Sive quo venias, omnium osculis exciperis, sive discedas aliquo osculis dimitteris; redis, redduntur suavia," &c. Erasmus made great progress in Greek under Grocyn and others at Oxford. What he learned at Oxford he afterwards taught at Cambridge. On leaving the country he was subjected to pillage, and the gold in his purse taken from him; for Henry VII. had sternly prohibited the exportation of coined moneys. His reputation as a man of letters now rapidly rose, and was second only to that of Reuchlin and Budæus. In 1500 his "Adagia" had been printed in Paris, and its immense and varied learning astonished the literary world. The "Adagia" is a strange repository of wit and learning, showing hearty humour and multifarious erudition. Hosts of proverbial sayings found in the classics are traced and expounded, and the author's own opinions very cunningly interwoven in the commentary. The texts or adages are arranged alphabetically, and neither research nor causticity is spared. The abuses of the church are severely lashed under the head "Simulatio et Dissimulatio," and the ignorance of the monks under the tart proverb, "Monacho indoctior." What keen strokes, too, under "Sileni Alcibiadis," or "Dulce bellum inexpertis." The book, in short, contains the opinions of the author on men and things, reigning vices and follies, the humours and pursuits of the age, the mischiefs of ambition and ignorance, the weaknesses and iniquities of kings and clergy—all told in a trenchant style, gay arid grave alternately, one page laden with ancient wisdom, another groaning under satirical bitterness, and a third sparkling with themes of merriment and ridicule. Two editions were soon published at Strasburg, and it was, in 1508, republished at Venice by Erasmus himself, in a fuller and more accurate form. Several of his smaller tracts had been published, too, by this time; but his income was so precarious that he was forced, in a variety of ways more or less delicate, to solicit funds from friends and patrons. His "Enchiridion Militis Christiani," which had been begun in 1494, was also published, and soon translated into English and printed by Winken de Worde. The work provoked immediate discussion, he for whom it was intended sneeringly saying that there was "more holiness in it than in its author;" Charles V. reading it, and Loyola slighting it. It was the first skirmish of a long polemical campaign. He appears to have been in Paris in 1504, and two years later he again visited England, and was for a brief season at Cambridge under the introduction of Fisher, bishop of Rochester. Next year he left Paris for Italy—the great hope and vision of his life—paused at Turin, and received the degree of doctor of divinity from its university; passed on to Bologna, and leaving it with Pope Julius blockading it, arrived at Florence, and saw at Rome the holy father's martial ovation. Removing to Venice he published, as we have said, a new edition of the "Adagia" at the press of Aldus, and was for a period a corrector in the same distinguished house. At Padua he met a natural son of James IV., king of Scotland, and was much attached to him as his tutor at Sienna. This youth of twenty was devoted to liberal studies, and Erasmus highly praises him in his "Adages."

Erasmus then re-entered Rome as if for life. Pope Julius and several of the cardinals—among them cardinal de Medicis—afterwards Leo X.—paid him some flattering attentions. The pope released him from his monastic vows, and he cheerfully put on the black dress of the seculars. But he could not find a home in the ecclesiastical metropolis, and he left for England. Henry VIII. was now upon the throne, and as prince of Wales he had the previous year sent a Latin invitation to the illustrious scholar. Mountjoy also urged him, and promised him the patronage of Warham, archbishop of Canterbury. On his arrival in 1510, he rested at Canterbury, and visited the shrine of à Becket, then took up his abode in the Augustinian convent, and composed or concluded in More's house his popular satire "Morias Encomium" (Praise of Folly). It had been his meditation in his journey from Rome over the Alps and down the Rhine; and he took bitter revenge upon the usage he got at the Italian capital, by describing the scenes he saw, the conversation he heard, and the society into which he happened to be thrown as a stray waif. This work echoes with sarcastic laughter, and Folly herself describes the follies of men without partiality certainly, but sometimes, it must be confessed, without discrimination. His raillery occasionally confounds the seeming and the real; and to make a jest of all pursuits and all the aspects of life, was not the best way of exposing hypocrisy and holding integrity up to admiration. Tragedy often lies beneath scenes which, on the surface, have a comic aspect, and sorrow crouches behind laughter. This tractate was also translated into English. It was dedicated to More, who possessed a kindred humour, and the chancellor defended the scholar against some of his assailants, who were moved to great wrath by his pictures of ecclesiastical manners and absurdities. During his stay in England, King Henry showed Erasmus some attentions, and Erasmus loyally returned the compliment by some dedications. Wolsey made him empty promises; but through the influence of Fisher, chancellor of the university of Cambridge, he was appointed Margaret professor of divinity, and afterwards professor of Greek, and had lodgings in Queen's college. His success was not great—at least, his emoluments were small; and he complains of the malt liquor and bad wine as inducing or exacerbating fits of gravel. Warham's liberality was now bestowed upon him, and Erasmus has made a long, elaborate, and hearty eulogy on his patron, to be found in his note upon 1 Thess. ii. 7. The archbishop gave him the living of Adlington, near Ashford in Kent; and he was collated March 22, 1511. But he soon resigned—"he could not feign to feed a flock whose tongue he knew not." He appreciated and enjoyed the friendship of Sir Thomas More and Colet—men of kindred pursuits and sympathies. Dean Colet had the benefit of his advice in founding his famous school of St. Paul's, and he composed for this institution his "De Copiâ Verborum." Erasmus quitted England in 1514, and repaired to Brabant, to the court of Charles, archduke of Austria, from whom he received the title of honorary counsellor, with an annual salary of two hundred florins, and a canonry at Courtray, which he soon resigned on a pension secured from its funds. A bishopric in Italy was also promised him; but he never got it, as the patronage lay with the pope, and not with the Austrian archduke. The canons of Stein invited him to resettle among them; but Servatius their prior received a rebuff not easily forgotten—reprimanding their secularity and hollowness, their formality and Jewish punctiliousness.

At Basle, his head-quarters for many years, Erasmus busied himself with the preparation of his New Testament, which appeared from the press of Froben in 1516. It was the earliest published New Testament, for though the Complutensian text was printed in 1514, it did not appear till 1522. He seems to have had only five manuscripts, and he even translated into Greek six verses of the last chapter of Revelation from the Latin version, his manuscripts being deficient. The work was done in about nine months, certainly most undue haste. A second edition appeared in 1519, and a third in 1522, in which appeared for the first time the famous disputed clauses about the three witnesses, 1 John v. 7; a fourth edition came out in 1527, and a fifth in 1535, all from the press of Froben. The Received Text, or that of the Elzevirs, was founded upon Stephens and Beza; Beza following largely Stephens' third edition, and it being derived to a great extent from the fifth of Erasmus. Two other excursions he seems to have made to England in 1515 and 1517. He had no home, nor ties of kindred, but could travel wherever curiosity, or health, or literary friendships, or the hope of collating MSS. invited him. Francis I. asked him to fix his residence in France. Budæus his rival also pressed him; but he respectfully declined. In 1524 appeared the "Colloquies," dedicated to his godson, young Froben. These dialogues are free conversations on many peculiarities of the Romish church, assailing fasts and indulgences, celibacy and scholasticism, images and saintworship, and holding them up to ridicule. The sensation created was immense, the book sold by thousands, and was not only in many schools, but in everybody's hands. It raised many enemies to its author, enemies not slow in attack, nor sparing in vengeful vituperation. In 1528 was published the "Ciceronianus," written against some Italian scholars, including even Sadolet and Bembo, who scrupled to use a Latin word or phrase unless it had been sanctioned by the usage of Cicero. These purists and pedants richly deserved the castigation which they received. Julius