Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/173

 Protestant Revolt in Switzerland and Engla?id 135 III. The English Humanists : Colet and More Erasmus appears to have first visited England in 1499, when he crossed the Channel with a young English nobleman, Lord Mount joy, to whom he had been giving private instruction in Paris. Erasmus writes : I was staying at Lord Mountjoy's country house, when Thomas More came to see me, and took me out with him for a walk as far as the next village, where the king's children were being educated. When we came into the hall the attendants of the palace were assembled, and in the midst stood Prince Henry, then nine years old, having already something of royalty in his demeanor, in which there was a certain dignity combined with singular courtesy. On his right was Margaret, about eleven years of age, afterward married to James, king of the Scots. Erasmus determined to make a short visit to Oxford, and there received a letter of welcome from Colet. To this he graciously replied : If, most courteous Colet, I recognized in myself anything worthy of the meanest praise, I should indeed rejoice to be praised by you, who are of all men most praised, and whose judgment I regard so highly that your silent esteem would be more agreeable to me than if I were acclaimed and applauded by the whole Forum of Rome. . . . You will find in me a man of slender fortune, or rather of none at all, averse from ambition, most inclined to friend- ship, little skilled indeed in letters, but a most warm admirer of them ; one that religiously venerates goodness in others, but thinks nothing of his own ; who is ready to yield to all in learning, to none in honesty ; simple, open, free, ignorant alike of simulation and of dissimulation ; of a timid but upright character, sparing of words ; a person, in short, from whom, except character, you have nothing to expect. If you, Colet, can love such a man ; if you deem him worthy 263. Eras- mus meets Sir Thomas More and the young Henry VIII (1499). (Slightly condensed.) 264. Eras- mus de- scribes himself. (Slightly condensed.)