BOOKS.

ERASMUS.* MUCH has been written, and much, no doubt, will continue to be written, regarding the actors and scenes in the great dramas of the Revival of Learning and the European Revolt against sacerdotal domination, and it is vain to expect unanimity or even charitable agreement on a subject which for over three centuries has furnished a battle-field for theologians, historians, poets, and even satirists, dramatists, and ballad-mongers. It would be idle to expect that even the most candid and painstaking students should concur in their opinions of Henry VIII. and his daughters, of Leo X.,

• Life and Letters of Erasmus. By Professor J. A. Fronde London; Longinans and co. of Luther, Cranmer, or Knox. From this unceasing but perhaps natural conflict of sentiments, the subject of this article has, in a great measure at least, escaped, partly because he has never been sufficiently reviled to warrant the appearance of champions in his defence, partly because much of what he wrote, even his satirical composi- tions, though displaying an insight into human character equal to that of Montaigne, and impregnated with a wit as keen as that of Rabelais, are but rarely in the hands of ordinary readers, and would really prove " e,aviare to the general," but principally because the great majority of the- cultivated have long since made up their minds that he was a laborious student and a brilliant writer, but an effeminate, vacillating, and even cowardly time-server who valued the comforts of life and the bounties of the great far more than the interests of truth and the temporal and eternal welfare of humanity. From these imputations Professor Froude has, we will not say vindicated, but certainly defended, Erasmus with a zeal and ability which do honour to his intellect and sympathies ; and we should have expected no less from a, writer who has made for himself a European reputation for research and impartiality. But as early impressions are seldom, and then with difficulty, abandoned, we fear there- will still be some who will deem Erasmus the counterpart of Sir William Temple as described by Lord Macaulay, and sentence him to herd with the- " cattivo coro

Degli angeli, che non furon ribelli,

Ne fnron fedeli a Dio, ma per se fore."

The Letters of Erasmus, which we sincerely hope Professor Fronde may find time and health to edit in extenso, in many respects strongly resemble those of Cicero (as indeed the writers exhibit many similar points of character and even of eccentricity), and they give the best account attainable not only of the religious and political but of the moral and sociar state of Western Europe during the half-century immediately preceding the Reformation.

From what we know of the Netherlanders of this time, our author is certainly justified in holding that no race—save, perhaps, the Italian—was more likely to produce a vigorous and independent thinker ; but if the "Sieben Berge" of which his mother was a native be the range of hills on the east bank of the Rhine known by that name, he also participated in the Teutonic element, while his levity and. propensity for jesting, even on some very solemn subjects,. would lead us to suspect the presence of a. French ancestor somewhere in his genealogy. Tradition affirms him to have been illegitimate,—a statement which Professor Fronde holds, to be "altogether, or partly, a lie." It has, however, been, generally credited, and is perhaps for that very reason unworthy of acceptance; but if it be true, we must add one name more. to the long roll of able and eminent men who have been born. out of wedlock. Left an orphan while a mere schoolboy, his guardians so mismanaged his little property that no assets were left, and then tried to force him into a monastery. We have his own account of his struggles against entering into the life of religion, in a letter to the Pope's Secretary, but as he gives no dates we are unable to ascertain how long his resistance lasted; eventually he yielded, and became an Augustinian monk. The Prior of his monastery soon dis- cerned that Erasmus was not only morally and intellectually, but physically, unsuited for a ccenobitic life and, knowing the coercion to which he had been subjected, was perhaps moved by remorse. To free him from his vows would have been, ultra vires, but he could grant leave of absence; he therefore recommended him to the Bishop of Cambray, and to the brother of that prelate, the Abbot of St. Bertin. This was to Erasmus his first subjection to the thraldom of patronage, and some will hardly believe that the earliest fosterers of his as yet untried abilities were two "pampered prelates." Some, and especially those who value intellectual acquisitions only when they can be" made to pay," may condemn him for having been for the greater part of his life a dependent on the bounty of Peers and Princes ; but at this time there was. hardly any reading public, and a scholar by profession had to choose between the favour of the great and the struggles of Johnson (and very badly remunerated they were), the life of Savage and perhaps the death of Chatterton. Spenser and Shakespeare, Milton and Tasso, submitted to be patronised and received pecuniary free-gifts, and yet their high

spirit and integrity have never been questioned; and even the haughty Dante gratefully records the liberality of the noble race of Malespina. Has, indeed, patronage ceased altogether in these days of free education, free libraries, and general enlightenment ? Or are not the patrons merely changed and multiplied infinitesimally? The patronage of the Tudor and Stuart periods had its good aide.

The Bishop of Cambray, though a benevolent and well- meaning man, was cold in manners, formal, and suspicions, particularly as regarded the moral propriety of his youthful pro- teges. He soon discerned that Erasmus was unfit for the duties of secretary, or, indeed, for an official position of any kind ; and certainly there is much in his character which reminds us of Dickens's notorious Harold Skimpole. He therefore allowed Erasmus to proceed to Paris, assigning him a pension which that careless and convivial genius deemed by no means ample or even sufficient. So few of his letters are dated, that it is impossible to say how many years he abode in this capital ; but we know that he added to what he deemed his scanty pension by tuition, and thus won the friendship and assistance of three of his pupils, Lord Monntjoy, the Hon. Thomas Grey, and a Dutch magnate, the Prince of Veer, as well as of the wife of the last, Anna Bersala. From Mountjoy (who was by no means the "blood-stained Mountjoy" of Irish patriotic literature, but perhaps an ancestor) he enjoyed a pension all his life, and frequently received large sums from Grey and the Prince and Princess of Veer. This is the more note- worthy, as at this time he had published nothing, though from early boyhood be had been an unwearied writer, princi- pally, however, in Latin verse, and of the fugitive species. Some advanced thinkers of democratic views may well marvel for what end these aristocrats, who "neither toiled nor spun," could have studied under the supervision of an as yet obscure scholar ; but though we will not say that if there had been no Mount joy or Veer there would have been no Erasmus, yet very probably there would have been but a very little, or perhaps a very bad Erasmus. In 1500, at the request of Mountjoy, he visited England, his not understanding our language being no impediment to social intercourse, for English gentlemen did not then consider conversation in Latin "bad form ;" and from his praises of our country and people, we may wonder that he did not take up his abode among us permanently. However, he revisited our land repeatedly. On his return to Paris, he published his first work, the Aclagia, a production of no great originality, being in fact a mere collection of pro- verbs, maxims, and such quotations as had struck his fancy, but always marked by fine taste and sound judgment. In 1507 he was able to realise his with to visit Rome, and while passing over the Alps composed his Latin poem, "Dc Incom- modis Senectutis," in which we find much of fancy, variety, invention, and sometimes even beauty, but no deeper or grander poetic qualities ; indeed, he seems to have had no idea of the sublime or majestic either in thought or scenery. Rome does not appear to have suited him long, and we soon find him again in England, where he taught Greek at Cambridge and composed his most vernal kable and popular work, The Praise of Folly. In this brief but wonderfully able book, written in the style of his favourite Lucian, to whom he seems in- debted in no small degree, Folly is introduced pleading her own cause, and asserting her pre-eminence in human affairs, so far at least as this world is concerned, by showing that an overwhelming majority of mankind engage themselves with foolish ardour in foolish pursuits and, as a rule, arrive at suc- cess by foolish means. Naturally, he does not spare the monastic orders, who were his pet aversion, and inveighs against the wealth and luxury of the dignified clergy and the temporal power of the Papacy with the fire and vigour of Dante.

We may here notice a small book of practical religion, the Encheiriclion Militis Christiani, which Mr. Drummond has carelessly translated "The Christian Soldier's Dagger ;" not considering that the Greek word f-/xErpAaa means also a manual or hand-book, an error from which Mr. Froude's scholarship has saved him. This little book was probably the archetype of Sir Richard Steele's Christian Hero, which is not so much read now as it deserves to be.

Though Erasmus translated into Latin many portions of Plutarch, Lucian, and Euripides, yet these can hardly be deemed of much value when we reflect that Greek learning was then in its infancy, that books were few and dear ; and that he had not the advantages which more recent scholars have enjoyed. His edition of Terence gives but little infer. mation, but his great importance in the eyes of scholars rests upon his editions of the New Testament in Greek with a Latin translation and notes with brief paraphrases, and of the works of St. Jerome. The first edition of the former contains some errors and much that even at the present day might be considered audacious criticism, and was therefore fiercely attacked by Lee, who was subsequently Archbishop of York, and more learnedly and mildly by the Spanish Divines Stunica and Carranza, but into this controversy it would be out of place to enter. In later editions many errors disappeared, but the doctrinal views of Erasmus, whatever may be thought of their justice, are certainly not those of the Church of Rome, and were condemned by the Sorbonne, while most of his writings were inserted in the list of books pro- hibited to be read by true believers.

His treatise on the pronunciation of Latin and Greek alone would have vindicated for Erasmus high rank as a philologist, and is now generally admitted to be founded on just principles ; but any attempt to introduce uniformity in this matter will probably fail, being opposed to national vanity and self-will as well as to what are humorously called the "traditions of our great Public Schools."

Some of the shorter treatises of Erasmus are well worthy of notice, as they deal with topics which are still in the air, and may well be discussed, though we do not anticipate anything like a satisfactory solution. Such are his essays on Clerical Celibacy, on Vows, Pilgrimages, the Adoration of Relics and Images, the undue multiplication of Fasts, Vigils, and Saints' Days, and his defence of Reuchlin, who had promoted the study of Hebrew. These, however, would, to be properly edited, require a copious body of notes and an amount of research which, we fear, would be but inadequately com- pensated.

The Querela Pacis is a diatribe on the follies and calamities of war, in which Erasmus carried his "peace-at-any-price" views to an impracticable, if not an unreasonable, extent, holding that even self-defence can rarely if ever justify an appeal to arms.

The Familiar Colloguies will be always admired by those who appreciate true humour and keen observation of men and manners, and carefully studied by such as desire to contemplate a lifelike picture of the civilisation and state of society in Western Europe in the sixteenth century. Originally a tiny pamphlet, it was enlarged greatly in his subsequent edition ; but, as Erasmus could not avoid being sly and sarcastic, the adherents of Medirevalism soon scented heresy, and the book was prohibited to the faithful.

In some features of character Erasmus seems to have resembled Pope. Being unduly sensitive to censure, and hence prone to quarrelling and recrimination, he became involved in many controversies which, with prudence, he could have avoided. Professor Fronde has so ably and logically defended him against the charges of vacillation and cowardice regarding religious controversy that most candid readers of his lectures will probably be convinced by his arguments; but it would he no easy matter to decide to what religious denomination, if now alive, be would give his adhesion. He always declared himself a Roman Catholic; but that Church virtually, though not perhaps formally, had cast him out. A Lutheran he assuredly was not, much less a Calvinist, and the violent political zeal of the English Non- conformist bodies—we except the Methodists—would to him have been hateful. We may say of him as of Milton, " Magis habuit quod fugeret quam quod sequeretur."

If genius be, as it has been defined, "the united powers of a great intellect turned by accident in some specific direction," Erasmus may most justly claim this possession, and as to narrate the history or comment on the writings of a great man requires a. due portion of this quality, a candid posterity will readily assign to Professor Fronde what three centuries have already awarded to Erasmus.