PART II. CHAP. V. Christian philosophy than ten pages of St. Augustine'. Of St. Hilary, it is true, he spoke with praise; but in the preSt Hilary. face to his subsequent edition of that father's works, there occurred what was perhaps to the scholastic theologian the most galling passage Erasmus ever wrote,-a passage that roused the doctors of the Sorbonne to a man. It is that wherein he contrasts the reverent and moderate tone in which St. Hilary approaches the mysteries of Christian doctrine, with the fierce and shallow dogmatism and unhesitating confidence shewn by the interpreters of such subjects in his own time. Towards Nicholas de Lyra and Hugo of St. Victor, the two great lights of medieval theology,-whose pages were more diligently studied at Cambridge than those of any other mediaval theologian, Lombardus alone excepted,―he shewed but scant respect. He considered indeed that the errors of De Lyra might repay the trouble of correcting, and of these he subsequently pointed out a large number, and challenged any writer to disprove the arguments whereby he impugned their accuracy; with regard to Hugo however, he declared that his blunders were too flagrant to deserve refutation. But Nicholas de Lyra and Hugo of St. Victor. 1Aperit enim quasi fontes quos. dam, et rationes indicat artis theologica.' Opera, 1 95. Subinde necessitatem hanc [de talibus pronunciandi] deplorat sanctissimus vir Hilarius haudquaquam ignarus quam periculi plenum sit, quam parum religiosum, de rebus ineffabilibus eloqui, incomprehensi bilia scrutari, de longe semotis a captu nostro pronunciare. Sed in hoc pelago longius etiam provectus est divus Augustinus, videlicet felix hominis ingenium, quærendi voluptate, velut aura secundiore, aliunde alio proliciente. Moderatior est et Petrus Lombardus, qui sententias alienas recitans non temere de suo addit; ant si quid addit, timide proponit. Res tandem usque ad impiam audaciam progressa est. Sed veteri bus sit venia, quam precantur, quos hue adegit necessitas. Nobis qua fronte veniam poscemus, qui de rebus longe semotissimas a nostra natura, tot curiosas, ne dicam impias, more. mus quæstiones; tam multa defini mus, quæ, citra salutis dispendium, tel ignorari poterant, vel in ambiguo relinqui ?......Doctrina Christi, quæ prius nesciebat Xoyouaxlar, coepit a philosophie præsidiis pendere: bic crat primus gradus ecclesin ad de teriora prolabentis. Accreverunt opes, et accessit vis. Porro admixta huic negotio Casarum auctoritas, non multum promovit fidei sinceri tatem. Tandem res deducta est ad sophisticas contentiones, articulorum myriades proruperunt. Hine deventum est ad terrores ac minas. Quumque vita nos destituat, quum fides sit in ore magis quum in animo, quum solida illa sacrarum Litterarum cog nitio nos deficiat, tamen terroribus huc adigimus homines, ut credant quod non credunt, ut ament quod non amant, et intelligant quod non intelligunt.' Ibid. 111 693, 696. PART IL the most unpardonable offence of all, in the eyes of the CHAP.. majority of contemporary theologians, was probably the open countenance he gave to that bold heresy of the coldly critical Grocyn, respecting the authenticity of the Hierarchy of Dionysius. Almost alone amid the accepted oracles of the Middle Ages, that plausible forgery, with its half mystic, half Platonic tone, and glowing speculations, inspired the student with a rapture and an ecstasy which the passionless doctrinale of the schoolmen could never awaken,-and of this too, the merciless critic demanded the total sacrifice! It is true that there were some of these views which Erasmus had not as yet put forth, beyond recall, through the press; but it is in every way probable that they were already perceptibly foreshadowed by his tone and conversation; and, if so, we can hardly doubt that, throughout the latter part of his residence at Cambridge, he must have been conscious of a surrounding atmosphere of dislike and suspicion; while it is evident that his sojourn was, in many respects, an irritating and depressing experience. Disap pointed in his main object, he was little disposed to take a favorable view of minor matters. He professed to be scandalized at a university where a decent amanuensis could not be met with at any price'. He disliked the winter fogs'; he mem grumbled sadly over the college ale, which aggravated bis complaint, and was always writing to the goodnatured Ammonius for another cask of Greek wine'. Unable, from his ignorance of their language, to converse with the townspeople, he probably misunderstood them, and, being in turn misinterpreted, encountered frequent annoyances, which led him to denounce them as boorish and malevolent in the mum arbitror. Paneula tantum annotavi, sed insigniter absurda, quo nimirum cautiores redderem eos, qui hujusmodi scriptores summa Liducia nullo judicio legunt.' Ibid. 111 128. 1 Et hie (O Academiam!), nullus inveniri potest, qui ullo pretio vel mediocriter serit at.' Ibid. m 120. Nam hic stivare malim quam hibernare. Ibid, in 112. '—'pro vino bibimus vappam, et CHAP. V. extreme'. When accordingly he took exercise, he seems to PART IL have contented himself either with pacing up and down the Minor urces of dis long walk which skirts the grounds of Queens' College on the other side of the river', or else he mounted the white horse with which Ammonius had generously presented him, and rode round and round the Market-hill. Many a friar in black or in grey, darted, we may be sure, far from friendly glances at the dreaded satirist of his order. Many a staunch conservative eyed askance the foreign scholar, who had come to turn his little university world upside down. Even from action the community of his own order at Barnwell, he received no such flattering attentions as had been paid him by prior Charnock at Oxford; and there were probably not a few of the members who thought it was quite time that their truant brother was back at Stein. With ordinary prudence, his income must have more than sufficed for his wants; he received from his professorship over thirteen pounds annually; he had been presented by Warham to the rectory of Aldington in Kent; and, though non-resident, he drew from thence an income of twenty pounds, to which the archbishop, with his usual liberality, added another twenty from his own purse. To these sums we must add an annual pension of a hundred florins from Fisher, and a second pension, which he still continued to receive, from his generous friend, lord Mountjoy. His total income, therefore, 1 Nisi vulgus Cantabrigiense inhospitales Britannos antecedit, qui cum summa rusticitate summam malitiam conjunxere.' (Quoted by Fuller). Wright and Jones, Queens' College, p. 14. Ascham, English Works (ed. Bennett), p. 77. An exception to Warham's practice, and a deviation from Erasmus's principles, honorable, under the circumstances, to both. See Knight, pp. 158-60. Jortin, 56; Knight, p. 159; Opera, 11 1528-9. The statements in the text are, of course, made under the supposition that these sums were actually paid and that the recipient was not too heavily mulcted by those through whose hands the moneys passed. In a letter written some seventeen years later, he says:-E duabus Anglie pensionibus debentur quotannis plus minus ducenti floreni, sed ea pecunia ad me pervenit accisa, nonnunquam usque ad quartam partem, interdum et intercipitur.' in 1292. He was however one of the few foreigners who in the heavy tax imposed on the clergy in 1522 was allowed to pay only as natives did. Burnet-Pocock, 1 53. To the notice of those who hold up this age to our admiration, as one of rough but honest virtues, I would commend the fact that, at no period in our natyral PART IL could scarcely have been less than £700 in English money of CHAP. T At last the plague, which had long been hovering in the distance, again made its appearance at Cambridge. The university sought safety in flight, and Erasmus was left almost alone. It was then that, in his last Cambridge letter to Ammonius, he gave full vent to his distress and despondency. For some months past,' he writes, I have been living the life of a snail in its shell, stowing myself away in college, and perfectly mum over my books. The university is a solitude; most are away through fear of the plague, though even when all are here, I find but little society. The expense is past enduring; the gain, not a farthing. Believe me, as though I were on my oath: it is not five months since I came back and I have spent sixty nobles, while I have received only one from my pupils, and that not without much protesting and declining on my part. I have decided not to leave a stone unturned this winter, and in fact to throw out my sheet-anchor. If this succeeds, I will build my nest here; if otherwise, I shall wing my flight,-whither I know not history, not even after the Restoration,-have we more frequent evidence of contemptible swindling and corrupt practices pervading all classes. In consequence of this, a grace had already been passed for dispens ing with the ordinary lectures, and those in divinity and sophistry, until the feast of St Leonard's, Baker, MSS. xxx 173; Cooper, Annals, 1 295. 2. Nos, mi Ammoni, jam menses aliquot plane cochleæ vitam vivimus, domi contracti conditique mussamus in studiis. Magna hie solitudo: ; absunt pestilenti metu plerique, quanquam quum adsunt universi, tum quoque solitudo est. Samptze Certum est his hibernis mensitas The last glitapse of Frasinus at СПАР. У. . Such then is the final glimpse that we gain of Erasmus PART II. at Cambridge:-it is that of a solitary, isolated scholar, prematurely old with anxiety and toil, weighed down by Cambridge physical suffering, dejected by disappointment, and oppressed with debt; rarely venturing beyond the college gates, and then only to encounter hostile or indifferent glances; while all around there waited for him an invisible foc,-the pestilence that walketh at noon-day; often by night, in his study high up in the south-west tower, 'outwatching the Bear' over the page of St. Jerome, even as Jerome himself had outwatched it many a night, when transcribing the same pages in his Bethlehem cell, some eleven hundred years before. Then winter came on, and, towards the close of each shortening day, Erasmus could mark from his window the white fogs rolling in from the surrounding marshes, reminding him of the climate he most of all disliked,-the climate of his native Holland; while day after day, the sound of footsteps, in the courts below, grew rarer and rarer. At last the gloom, the solitude, the discomfort, and the panic, became more than he could bear; and, one night, the customary lamp no longer gleamed from a certain casement in the south-west tower. And when the fear of the plague was over, and the university returned, it was known that Erasmus had left Cambridge; and no doubt many a sturdy defender of the old learning said he was very glad to hear it, and heartily hoped that all this stir about Greek, a ›d St. Jerome, and errors in the Vulgate, was at an end. It would be obviously unjust to interpret the hasty expressions used by Erasmus, when embittered by a sense of 28, 1511, and the reply of Ammonius Latin verse, and to the great amusement of both scholars had made the first syllable in pullulare short. By the expression, quod huc me contuli, Erasmus must therefore refer to his return after one of his journeys to London, which he appears to have visited more than once during his residence at Cambridge; I have accordingly translated the words agreeably to this sense. |