IT is convenient to make in this place such further reference as is pertinent to my subject to the literary undertakings of Erasmus, of whom I have before spoken as perhaps the most typical author of his time. In popularity, as far as popularity is to be gauged by extent of circulation, his books were excelled only by the writings of Luther, while the range of their distribution—that is, the extent of the territory reached and the variety of the circles of readers by whom they were welcomed—must have been much in advance of anything attained by the writings of Luther. The direct influence of these last was, for a long time at least, limited to Germany and to the Low Countries, while their principal sale was in the common tongue and among the masses of the people. The writings of Erasmus, in their original Latin form, found their way in the first place to the educated circles of the upper classes, and to the more liberal minded of the ecclesiastics, while the versions in the vernacular which speedily followed, in both authorised and unauthorised editions, were taken up with cordial appreciation by all classes of readers throughout Europe.

It is undoubtedly the case that, while Erasmus always refused to take sides with the Protestants and held himself to be a dutiful son of the Catholic Church, the influence of his writings was a most important factor in bringing about the conditions that made the Reformation possible. Drummond speaks of the Praise of Folly as “the first decisive trumpet-blast summoning the friends of right and learning to gird on their armour, and heralding the advance of that reforming spirit with which the Papal power was destined ere long to engage in deadly and terrible encounter.”[94] It would, however, be outside of the plan of this study to go into the question of the relations of Erasmus to the Reformation, a theme which has been treated with full knowledge and excellent critical judgment in the scholarly biography of Mr. Drummond, and more recently, with less thoroughness, but with no little force and suggestiveness, in the brilliant biographical study of Mr. Froude.

The following are the dates of the more important events in the career of the man who is to be described, not only as a great scholar but as the most successful and influential author of his age. He was born in Rotterdam in 1467, seventeen years after Gutenberg had printed his first book. He was placed as a boy at the school carried on at Deventer by the Brothers of Common Life. The interest taken by this fraternity in the multiplication and circulation of literature, and the importance of its publishing undertakings both during the manuscript period and after the beginning of printing, have already been noted.

In 1485, when he was eighteen years old, Erasmus took vows as a monk of the Order of S. Augustine (the same Order to which, later, Luther belonged), vows from which a number of years afterwards he was released by Pope Leo X. In 1492, through the favour of the Bishop of Cambray, he was enabled to pass some years at the University of Paris, which, though at that time not a little degenerated, was still the leading university of Europe. In 1498, Erasmus made his first visit to England, where he remained nearly two years, chiefly in Oxford, and where he was at once brought into relations with a number of famous men, some of whom became valued friends, such as Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, John Colet, and Sir Thomas More. In 1500, Erasmus, then again in Paris, published the first edition of the Adagia, a collection of proverbs, which became in its subsequent and enlarged issues a very different work from the first small volume.

In 1506, Erasmus made his first visit to Italy, and received at Bologna the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He remained at Venice, in the house of the publisher Aldus, until 1509, and published through Aldus, in 1508, the enlarged edition of the Adagia. In the latter part of 1509 he is again in England, living with his friend More, and publishes the famous satire, The Praise of Folly (Encomium Moriæ).

In 1514, Erasmus makes his first sojourn in Basel, and begins the intimacy with Froben which was to continue during the lifetime of the latter. In 1516, he prints, in Basel, The New Testament in Greek and Latin; this was the first time the complete Greek text had been put into type.[95] In 1517, Erasmus takes up his residence for a time at the University of Louvain, and during the two or three years following, devotes much earnest correspondence to the Lutheran controversies. He is still at Louvain in 1520, but in 1521, at the time of the Diet of Worms, he removes to Basel, where he takes up his abode with his good friend Froben, with whom he remains until Froben’s death in 1527. In 1529, he moves to Friburg, but in 1534, he returns to Basel, where he died in 1536.

The Adagia, the first of the books of Erasmus which brought him into fame, was originally printed in Paris in 1500. Drummond is of opinion that this first edition was put together hurriedly for the purpose of recruiting the exhausted finances of its author by means of a publication which was “sure to sell.”[96] It seems evident that Erasmus considered the receipts from its sale important, but he fails to mention the amount actually realised or the nature of the several publishing arrangements under which it was published. Several references give the impression, however, that the author himself retained the ownership of his Paris edition. He writes in 1504 to Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s, asking the Dean to look up for him the matter of one hundred copies of the Adagia sent to London three years back, for “which he had received no returns.” He understands the copies have all been sold, and concludes, not unnaturally, that “somebody must have got the money.”[97] He makes no later reference to the business, and we may therefore hope that the books were finally paid for.

While it is certain that Erasmus secured considerable sums for the sale of the Adagia, and, later, from the Encomium Moriæ, it is equally clear that during all the earlier portion of his life he was in continued need of money, and in addition to accepting with expectant gratitude presents from various friends, he found occasion for frequent applications for gifts to other friends and to possible patrons. From the point of view of to-day, many of these letters appear to be seriously lacking in the dignity and self-respect which ought to have characterised a great author and an intellectual leader. It would however be very absurd to arrive at a judgment in the matter from the standpoint of the nineteenth century, when from the vantage-ground of an assured copyright protection, authors are able to dictate terms to publishers and readers. In applying to people of wealth for means with which to continue or extend his studies, Erasmus feels evidently that he is asking help not so much for himself personally, as for the literature and scholarship of which he is the representative. It is an appeal for the endowment of research. He appears also to have possessed no capacity for keeping a balance-sheet, or for a business-like management of his resources, and when money did come into his hands, it disappeared very rapidly. It is to be remembered that while he was willing to beg, and was ready for the sake of financial aid to write flattering letters to possible patrons, he appears never to have been willing to sacrifice for the favour of such patrons any measure of conviction or of consistency. On various occasions he put to one side opportunities for gain or for advancement which involved as conditions what seemed to him to be a sacrifice of personal independence or of honestly held opinions. In fact, excepting in this matter of subsidies from patrons, Erasmus may fairly claim to have shown in his career, under very great pressure from various quarters, a clear-headed, well-balanced and courageous independence of opinion and of action that was most exceptional at a time when theological partisanship was bitter to the point of ferocity. It is also to be borne in mind that when, through the satisfactory management of his literary undertakings on the part, first of Aldus, and later and most importantly, of his good friend Froben, Erasmus began to secure from his writings an assured income, the disagreeable subsidy suggestions disappear from his correspondence, although he is still very ready to accept honoraria from appreciative friends. It is certainly not a little to the credit of both Erasmus and his publisher, that there is no single instance in the long correspondence of an application to Froben for moneys, either as “advances” or as loans, or a single complaint about inadequacy of payments. In fact, as specified later, Erasmus criticises Froben for undue liberality to himself.

The first journey to Italy would probably not have been undertaken (or at least not at that time) if it had not been for the friendly help of the Lady of Vere. Froude doubtless, however, sacrifices (and not for the first time) accuracy of statement to dramatic antithesis when he writes: “Without Mæcenas we might have had no Odes or Satires from Horace; without the Duke of Lerma we should have had no Don Quixote; without the Duke of Weimar we might have had no Faust; without the Lady of Vere there would have been no New Testament, no Moriæ, no Colloquies.” This is a kind of reductio ad absurdum, an attempt to make the production of men of creative power depend upon, instead of being merely furthered by, the help of their patrons. But Froude probably does not mean to be taken seriously. He goes on to say: “The patronage system may not be the best, but it is better than leaving genius to be smothered or debased by misery, and when genius is taught that life depends on pleasing the readers at the shilling book-stalls, it may be smothered that way too, for all that I can see to the contrary.”[98] It is not easy to understand to what book-stall influences Froude refers, although we can recall certain strictures of Freeman to the effect that Froude himself attempted to debase history to the level of the readers of “shilling shockers.”

The Paris edition of the Adagia is not the work in the form in which it is now known. When Erasmus, in 1507, took up his abode for a time with Aldus in Venice, he re-wrote and greatly enlarged the book to such an extent as almost entirely to change its character. He tells us that for a large proportion of the new material he was indebted to the suggestions and to the magnificent library of Aldus.[99] He had, he goes on to say, brought with him to Venice little more than a confused mass of materials derived from authors already in print. Aldus and his associates, Laskaris, Marcus Musurus, Aleander, and some even whose names were not known to Erasmus, placed at his disposal many valuable manuscripts which had not before come into print. The number of proverbs collected now amounted to thirty-five hundred, and a vast mass of learning, drawn from the most varied sources, was thus given to the world. Erasmus writes with candid appreciation of the generous encouragement given to a foreigner, in this and his other literary undertakings, by the Italian publisher and his associates.

The motto used by Aldus under his famous emblem of the dolphin and the anchor, festina lente, was borrowed from a coin by the Emperor Vespasian, with whom as well as with Augustus, this saying was a great favourite. Erasmus writes in 1508: “If some deity friendly to literature will but favour the truly royal vows of Aldus, I can promise that within a few years the studious will possess, by his work alone, all the good authors there are in the four languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee, in a complete and accurate form, and no one need have any lack of literary material. And then we shall see how many excellent manuscripts there are still hidden, which are either kept back through ignorance, or which are suppressed, owing to the ambition of certain persons who care for nothing except that they may be thought the only wise men. Then, too, we shall know with what prodigious errors existing texts abound which are now considered tolerably correct.... The library of Ptolemy,” he adds, “was contained within the walls of a house, but Aldus is constructing a library which shall have no limits but those of the world.”[100]

In the same volume of his correspondence, Erasmus speaks of himself as having surpassed Hercules, who was unable to grapple with two monsters at once, whereas he has not only brought out at the same time the great edition of S. Jerome and the enlarged edition of the Adagia, but in so doing has overcome the greatest enemy of the works of man, Time, which is devouring its own offspring.[101] In its expanded and final form, the Adagia fills one of the eleven folio volumes which constitute the set of the works of Erasmus. Drummond speaks of it as “a monument of vast learning ... and a rich repository of anecdotes, quotations, and historical and biographical sketches.... It formed an introduction to the Greek and Latin classics, and it furnished eloquent declamations against kings and monks, war and priestcraft. It served the purpose of a dictionary and a grammar, a common-place book, a journal, and a book of travels all in one.”[102] Froude says that “through the Adagia can be traced the spirit of Lucian, so like was the Europe of the fifteenth century to the Europe of the second.”[103] The divines were outspoken in their indignation. They said (again to quote Froude) that the Proverbs of Solomon were enough, without adding the Proverbs of Erasmus. The revised edition of the Adagia was reprinted by Froben in 1513, from the text of Aldus, in an edition rivalling that of Aldus in the beauty of its typography. The two publishers appear to have made a friendly arrangement with each other and with Erasmus to divide between them the market for the writings of their famous friend.

The Praise of Folly (Encomium Moriæ), the book which exceeded the Adagia in its final popularity, and which is possibly the only work of Erasmus that continues to be read, three centuries after his death, was written in 1509. Erasmus was at the time again in England, living in the family of his friend, Sir Thomas More. He mentions in the preface that the plan of the work had taken shape in his mind as he was riding across the Alps on his way from Venice to London, and that it had then occurred to him how odd it was that the wisest and wittiest man he knew should have a name which in Greek signified a fool. In another letter, Erasmus gives a somewhat different account, saying that the first suggestion of the book came from More, and that it was, in part at least, based upon More’s conversations with him at Chelsea.[104] I find record of an edition of this book, which is probably the first, printed in Strasburg in 1511 (three years earlier than the issue in Basel) by a printer named Schürer. The text was revised and added to before the printing in Basel and in Paris. It does not appear what relations, if any, the author had with the printer Schürer, whose name was not again associated with his writings.

The Froben edition, printed in Basel in 1514, included a commentary by Gerard Listrius, a physician of Basel and a trusted friend of Erasmus. The book was reprinted several times by Froben, one of the editions containing the famous illustrations by Holbein. Authorised editions were also published by Aldus in Venice, and by Badius in Paris, while unauthorised issues of the Latin original appeared in Cologne, Lyons, Salamanca, and elsewhere. A number of translations appeared in different parts of Europe, the majority of which were probably unauthorised, although on this point trustworthy information does not exist. In its various forms it possibly secured a larger sale than any book, except the Bible, that had as yet been printed. Erasmus was able to write that kings, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals were delighted with it, and Leo X. read it through from beginning to end.[105] Drummond sums up the volume as “containing in a short compass the author’s whole philosophy of man, all that he ever wrote on the abuses of his times, on the superstitions of monks and the pride of kings;... abounding in wit and eloquence and displaying great knowledge of the world and keen observation of men and things, it has its deep and serious meanings beneath the light satire.” One result of the publication of the Praise of Folly was the prohibition of the writings of Erasmus in many of the universities, including Paris, Louvain, Oxford, and Cambridge, where the ecclesiastical influence controlled. “See what comes of Greek,” cried the clergy.[106]

Drummond assigns as an important reason for the departure of Erasmus from England in 1514, the fact that the Press of England was at the time too far behind the Press of the Continent to permit of the satisfactory printing of important works. The reputation of the scholarly work done by Froben, and the news that he was at work on an edition of S. Jerome, had reached England, and were the means of directing Erasmus to Basel and of bringing about an association that proved of no little importance for both author and publisher. It was on the journey that he met Sebastian Brandt, author of one of the famous works of the century, The Ship of Fools, Wimpfelingus, Listrius, who wrote a commentary on the Praise of Folly, and Beatus Rhenanus, who became a life-long friend.

On arriving at Basel, Erasmus plunged at once into the work of Froben’s publishing office. During his first year in Basel, in addition to revising his Encomium Moriæ, and preparing for the press successive editions of the Adagia and the De Copia (Book of Similes), he gave arduous labour to the S. Jerome, the investment in which he shared with Froben, and to another great undertaking, a complete edition of the works of Seneca. He also began a series of translations from Plutarch, and, a little later, undertook the editorial work on the Froben edition of the New Testament. In 1515, while on a third visit to England, Erasmus wrote his treatise on the Education of a Christian Prince (Institutio Principis Christiani), which was printed by Froben in the year following. The prince on whose behalf the essay had been prepared, and to whom it was dedicated, was Charles of Austria, the Arch-duke of Burgundy, then a lad of fifteen, who was afterwards known to history as the Emperor Charles V. Erasmus had visited Brussels in 1513, and, while there, had been appointed a Councillor to the young prince. The treatise is spoken of by biographers as sound in counsel and wholesome in tone, but as possessing no very distinctive importance, and Erasmus himself speaks slightingly of it. The essay written by Erasmus for the guidance of the future emperor will naturally be compared with the more famous treatise of Machiavelli, The Prince, which was composed at about the same time, probably in 1516. The Prince was prepared for the private use of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and was not designed for publication. It was put into print in Florence about 1520, and despite the harsh criticisms that have been brought upon it for what in modern times would be termed its “Machiavellian” morality, it is to-day, nearly four centuries after its publication, considered as belonging to the world’s literature.

In 1515, Erasmus took time from his literary work to interest himself in behalf of his friend, the learned and high-minded Reuchlin, the greatest Hebrew scholar of the age. Reuchlin had fallen under the persecution of the Dominicans, led by the ignorant and bigoted Hochstraten, for his opposition to the diabolical proposal to destroy all existing Hebrew literature, the Scriptures alone excepted. He had defended himself in a book entitled The Eyeglass (Speculum Oculare), and on a mandate being issued by Hochstraten to burn this, Reuchlin had appealed from the Inquisition to the Pope.[107] The Bishop of Speyer, to whom Leo committed the case, gave judgment in favour of Reuchlin, and imposed on his enemies perpetual silence, a sentence which proved difficult of execution. Reuchlin was condemned by the Universities of Mayence, Erfurt, Louvain, and Paris, although there were at the time professorships of Hebrew both in Louvain and in Paris. The matter, in some fashion, was again brought before the Pope. Erasmus made an earnest and eloquent appeal to the Pope on behalf of his friend, and the support of the Emperor Maximilian was also secured for the aged scholar who had done so much to bring honour upon the cause of learning in Germany and in Europe. The Pope finally confirmed the previous decision in favour of Reuchlin, a decision which rescued from the status of heresy, in which it had been placed by the Dominicans and the learned Faculties of the universities above specified, the language of the Hebrew Scriptures and the literature of the chosen people of God. Reuchlin’s books were rescued from the ban and their learned author was saved from the risk of the stake. He continued to teach Hebrew in Tübingen and in Ingolstadt, and published in 1520, in Stuttgart, the first Hebrew Dictionary issued in Germany. In the appeal made to the Pope by Erasmus, he is shrewd enough to emphasise the importance of the collaboration rendered by Reuchlin in the preparation of the S. Jerome, a work which had been fitly spoken of as an enormous service rendered to the Church, and which the Pope himself had specially commended.

The edition of the New Testament, edited by Erasmus at the instance of Froben, was based in part upon the previous labours of Laurentius Valla, to whom must be given the honour of having been the first to attempt a revision of the text by a comparison of authorities. In fact, some time before beginning work on his New Testament, Erasmus had edited for Froben a volume containing the annotations of Valla. In April, 1515, Beatus Rhenanus writes to Erasmus from Basel: “Froben wants you to place in his hands your proposed edition of the New Testament, and promises that he will give for your work as much as anybody.”[108] A sentence so worded, written by one literary man to another, has quite a modern sound, giving the impression that several publishers were prepared at this time to bid against each other for the editorial service of the first scholar of Europe. As a fact, however, such a work as was projected could at this time have been undertaken in but three or four places, while only two or three publishers possessed the knowledge, the enterprise, or the plant requisite for its production. The New Testament with the Erasmian notes might have been printed in Paris, as far as the facilities for Greek type were concerned, but the influence of the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne was entirely unfavourable to the presentation to the public of any critical or analytical work on the Scriptures, and it was very difficult, if not impracticable, for a university publisher to handle successfully a work in the department of theology, of which the Sorbonne disapproved. Koberger of Nuremberg had publishing facilities adequate for such an undertaking, but Koberger appears to have associated himself with the more conservative group of Catholic scholars, and to this group the Testament of Erasmus, with its critical notes, seemed to be a very dangerous innovation.

The result showed that there was ground for their misgivings, as the Testament of Erasmus was to prove of most vital service to the cause of the Reformation, although the learned editor himself was at the time regarded with suspicion, if not with enmity, by the larger number of Protestant leaders. There remained the Press of Aldus; the Venetian would unquestionably have been very ready to take charge of the book, and his Press possessed at the time larger facilities for the printing of Greek than could be offered by Froben, or than existed outside of Venice. Erasmus appears, however, to have decided that for the purposes of this work Basel was a better centre of distribution than Venice, and it was doubtless the case that a much larger circle of readers could be looked for in Switzerland, Germany, and other regions to be conveniently reached from Basel, than was to be found in the market more immediately at the command of Venice.

Notwithstanding the very large investment of skilled labour and of money that the New Testament called for, the publication proved a financial success. A second edition was required within three years, making a total printing, up to 1519, of 3300 folio copies. In this second edition the text was largely altered and the volume was fortified with a papal brief, a copy of the Nicene creed, and an engraving of the Trinity, which ought, as Drummond remarks, to have proved effectual in protecting the work against charges of heresy. Above the letter of the Pope is printed a quaint device, a woodcut representing the victorious Germans under Arminius overthrowing the legions of Varus, and accompanied by an inscription, Tandem, vipera, Sibillare desiste. The insertion of this German device with its motto was probably the work of the printer. The purport of it could hardly be considered as complimentary to an Italian Pope. Froude, in commenting upon the great popular interest in the book, says that 100,000 copies were speedily sold in France alone,[109] but I can find no evidence in the records of the printing of any such number, and I think that Froude must have been misled by some general reference to its wide distribution.

There is not space here to consider the long series of controversies provoked by the publication of the Testament of Erasmus, a volume which undoubtedly contained the first text approximating to correctness that Europe had as yet known. As before stated, the text was utilised by Luther as the basis of his own all-important German version, although in the bitterness of the disappointment on the part of the Lutherans that they had not secured the adherence of the great scholar, they appear never to have made any very specific acknowledgment of the enormous service rendered to the cause of the Reformation, as well by his scholarship as by his courage. On the side of the Church, the murmurings were many and soon became bitter. Accusations were heard of heresy and Arianism. Erasmus had departed from the version of the Vulgate, and had substituted comparatively pure Latin for the monastic barbarisms, and he had even, it was said, charged the Apostles with writing bad Greek. He had had the temerity to correct a number of texts in such a way as materially to alter their meaning, and he had omitted altogether the testimony of the “Three Witnesses” in the first Epistle of John. This unfortunate verse, after being accepted by the Protestants on the strength of its retention by Luther, and of the later and more scholarly authority of the editors of the King James version, was finally condemned as an interpolation by the revisers under Victoria, who were thus in a position, after an interval of three and a half centuries, to bear testimony to the accurate scholarship and the editorial boldness of Erasmus. It is to be regretted, on the ground of the consistency of Erasmus, that he was induced, in a later edition, to restore this text (I John, v. 7).

That Erasmus did possess the courage of his convictions was evidenced by the character of the notes appended to the volume. I have space for but a single instance. In commenting upon the famous text, Matt. xvi. 18, “Upon this rock will I build my church,” he takes occasion to deny altogether the primacy of Peter, and to express his surprise that words undoubtedly meant to apply to all Christians should have been interpreted as applying exclusively to the Roman Pontiff; and this is said, it should be remembered, in a volume dedicated to the Pope.[110]

In 1524, Erasmus completed his Paraphrase of the New Testament, which was also printed by Froben. Drummond speaks of this book as of no great intrinsic importance, but says further, that no other of his productions gave such universal satisfaction, or so entirely escaped criticism. An English version was printed in London under the authority of the author, and the work was so highly appreciated in England that a copy was ordered to be placed in every parish church beside the Bible.[111]

It had been the hope of Erasmus that the reformation of the Church, the necessity for which he so fully recognised, was to be brought about by the advancement of sound learning and the diffusion of the Scriptures. By this means, as he believed, the superstitions of the monks and their followers would be dissipated, the corruptions of the Church would be purged, and the unity of christendom be preserved. To the production of literature planned to further this great purpose, Erasmus had devoted a lifetime of arduous and scholarly toil, and to his books he added the influence of an enormous and far-reaching correspondence. It was also to the initiation and inspiration of Erasmus that must be credited not a few of the great undertakings of his earnest friend Froben, “the publisher of high ideals,” undertakings which, with hardly an exception, had for their purpose the enlightenment and development of a perplexed world. The final work of the Reformation was to be done under other leaders than Erasmus, and the results were to be brought about by other means than the publication of correct texts, scholarly commentaries, or even of satires upon monkish abuses. But the wit, learning, and intellectual force of Erasmus, brought to bear, in part through his correspondence, and in part through the Presses of Froben, Badius, and Aldus, exerted a wider influence and played a much greater part in the long contest against the rule of monkish superstition than was understood at the time, or than has, in fact, been fully recognised until a comparatively recent period.

In 1519, Erasmus completed for Froben an edition of Cyprian, planned as a companion to the Jerome, and an edition of Cicero’s Offices, a book which, as before mentioned, the list of no scholarly publisher could be without. In 1518, Froben published for his friend the Familiar Colloquies, which became, next to the Praise of Folly, the best known work of Erasmus, and which is accepted by his biographers, as expressing, perhaps more directly and comprehensively than any other of his writings, his personal opinions, prejudices, feelings, and preferences. Drummond says of it: “The established fame of the author, the intrinsic merits of the work itself, its adaptation to the times, the pungent epigrams which glittered on every page, and, perhaps not least, the suspicions of heresy which began to be whispered round, all contributed to secure for it an immense circulation.”[112] Froude writes: “The Colloquies are pictures of his own mind, pictures of men and things which show the hand of an artist in the highest sense, never spiteful, never malicious, always delightful and amusing, and finished photographs of the world in which the author lived and moved.”[113] The book was translated into nearly every European tongue. The authorised editions were many and profitable, and the unauthorised, still more numerous. One printer in Paris took advantage of a report that the University was about to condemn the work, to print no less than twenty-four thousand copies.[114] From this edition the author appears to have derived no advantage. He bears patiently enough the financial injury caused by the unauthorised issues, but becomes justly indignant when a Dominican friar publishes an “expurgated edition” from which are eliminated or “corrected” the passages bearing hardly upon the monks, of which there were not a few. The work was finally condemned by the Sorbonne, and it had the honour, somewhat later, of being placed by the Inquisition in the first class of prohibited books.[115]

In 1523, Erasmus published through Froben the first complete edition of the writings of S. Hilary, a work which, owing to the great corruption of the manuscript, cost him, as he tells us, enormous labour, and which was also for the publisher a very costly undertaking. The account books of Froben have, unfortunately, not been preserved, but it is probable from the references in his correspondence, that the Hilary, undertaken at the instance of Erasmus, brought upon him a loss. This was followed in the same year by an enlarged edition of his Method of True Theology, in which Erasmus draws a laboured comparison between the pains of authors and those of mothers, remarking that some of the former are like bears, which bring forth mere lumps of flesh and then are compelled to lick their cubs into shape.[116]

In 1524, Erasmus published his famous treatise on Free Will, in which he defined clearly his relations to the Lutheran movement. In so far as this movement represented a protest and revolt against the many abuses that had crept into the Church, Erasmus had found himself in cordial sympathy with it, and, in fact, by no one had these abuses been set forth more graphically and more boldly than by himself. His criticism of the corruption and the evils of the Romanists had been so keen and so unsparing that the Protestants could not understand why he did not join hands with their leaders and break altogether with Rome. Erasmus was prevented from taking this course by two considerations: he did believe in a Church Universal, and he did not believe in the Lutheran doctrines. Condemned as a heretic by many of the Roman ecclesiastics, he was stamped by the Protestants as a coward and a time-server. To the student of to-day, it would appear that the course taken by him was the result of honest and consistent conviction, and gave evidence of a higher and more discriminating courage than would have been evidenced by an acceptance of the cardinal’s hat that was waiting for him in Rome, or of the leadership in a popular cause which was proffered from Wittenberg. The treatise on Free Will was the statement of Erasmus of the grounds on which he was unable to accept the conclusions of Luther.

In 1526, the Dean and Faculty of the Theological School of Paris came together to consider the erroneous, scandalous, and impious propositions contained in the book by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, called Familiar Colloquies, and decided that the reading of the same should be prohibited. The prime mover in this censure was the Chancellor Bedier, who was for many years the persistent opponent of the liberal-minded publisher, Robert Estienne. The writings of Erasmus had secured a considerable circulation in Spain, the editions which were sold there being at the outset supplied from Basel and from Paris. Later, unauthorised issues of the Latin version were printed in Salamanca, and the Enchiridion and the Colloquies were both printed also in Spanish translations. The Dominicans and Franciscans attacked furiously both the books and their author, but the authority of the Archbishop of Seville, directed probably by the favourable influence of the Emperor, was sufficient for a quarter of a century to prevent the books from being formally condemned. Their titles finally appear in the Index of the Inquisition in 1550 (see the chapter on Plantin).

In 1527, there came to Erasmus a great loss in the death of his trusted friend Froben. “I bore with calmness the death of my brother,” writes Erasmus, “but I cannot endure the loss of Froben. He was a true friend, so simple and sincere, that even if he had wished to conceal anything, it was so repugnant to his nature that he would have found it impossible, so ready to do good to all that he was glad to confer a favour even where it was not desired, which made him an easy prey to thieves and impostors.... To me his kindness was unbounded. What plots would he not lay, what occasions would he not seek, to force some present, upon me! nor did I ever see him better pleased than when he had prevailed upon me, either by artifice or by entreaties, to accept one ... nor did I ever find more use for my rhetoric than to invent pretexts for declining the munificence of my publisher without giving umbrage to my friend: for I could not bear to see him disappointed.... He paid bills for me before I suspected it, nor could he be prevailed upon by any entreaties to take back the money ... and this kind of contest went on between us continually ... but I am sure all his family will bear witness that I availed myself of his kindness very moderately. Whatever labours I undertook for him I undertook for the love of learning. Considering that he gave up his whole life to the advancement of such labours, avoiding no fatigue by day or night, but esteeming it a sufficient gain if a good author came into the hands of the public with due dignity, how could I prey upon a man thus minded? Sometimes, when he showed to me and to other friends the first pages of some great author, how he danced for joy, how his face beamed with triumph! You would have thought he was already reaping in the greatest abundance the fruits of his labours and expected no other reward.... Within these few years, how many volumes, and in what noble type, have issued from Froben’s office.... He has refrained from having anything to do with controversial tracts, from which no small profits have been made by others, lest he should bring useful learning into disrepute.... He was bent on printing Augustine to equal the splendour of the Jerome, notwithstanding the discouragements of myself and other friends, and he was wont to say that he desired no longer life than would suffice to finish Augustine, of which he saw the completion of the first and second volumes only. It was a pious wish, and the spirit by which he was animated was deserving of immortality.... He leaves wife, children, friends, the whole city, all who knew him or his work, bitterly to lament his loss.... Gratitude demands that we give our hearty support to the printing-office of Froben, which is to be continued, so that what he has so well begun may ever improve and develop.”[117] This letter is certainly most honourable both to the writer and to the man whose faithful work is thus commemorated, and the friendship between the two men forms an interesting and characteristic episode in the long history of the relations of publishers and authors.

The later productions from the pen of Erasmus may be briefly noted: A treatise on the Confessional, which appeared in 1524, and which, with characteristic boldness, contains a scathing exposure of the evils of the institution; an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, printed at about the same date; a series of devotional addresses and brief commentaries, in 1524 and 1525; a treatise on the use and abuse of the tongue, in 1525; the Institution of Christian Matrimony, in 1526; the Christian Widow, in 1527, written in compliment to Maria, sister of Charles V., whose husband, the King of Bohemia, had been killed shortly before; an edition of Irenæus, in 1526 (Irenæus had not before been printed, and the work of Erasmus had, therefore, to be done from manuscripts); an edition of Ambrose, in four volumes, in 1527; an essay on the correct pronunciation of Latin and Greek, in 1528; an edition of Seneca (of whom he speaks as a pagan saint), in 1529; the concluding volumes of the great S. Augustine, in the same year; the works of S. Chrysostom, in 1530 (this contains a Latin translation and a memoir); the Apopthegms of the Ancients, in eight books, in 1531; the works of S. Basil, in 1532; and, finally, Ecclesiastes, a treatise on the preacher, in 1534. This was the last book completed by the busy scholar, but his correspondence continued active until his death, which occurred in July, 1536. A number of the larger works mentioned in the above brief summary, such as the S. Augustine and the S. Chrysostom, were prepared for the press with the co-operation of others, but even these represented very considerable labour on the part of the responsible editor, and it is not easy to understand how, dyspeptic invalid that he was, he was able to find the time and the strength for such continuous and such arduous labour. Nearly all of the books of the last nine years were printed in the Froben Press, which was being successfully carried on by Jerome Froben, the eldest son of its founder, with the aid of his friend Boniface Amerbach. Erasmus had, in 1529, on the ground of the increasing bitterness of the Protestant feeling in Basel, given up with no little regret his home in that city, and had removed to Friburg. His intercourse with the Frobens continued unbroken, however, and Jerome Froben was with him at the time of his death.

I have given a fuller reference to the literary undertakings of Erasmus than might seem to be warranted by the general purpose and proportion of my narrative. I had, however, thought it desirable to present with some detail the record of the publishing relations of some representative author of the time, and the career of Erasmus rendered him, on a number of grounds, the most distinctive author for my purpose. His commanding position and world-wide celebrity as a scholar, his relations with men of note and of learning in Protestant as well as Catholic circles, the wide circulation secured for his writings, a circulation absolutely without precedent in the history of the world’s literature, and, finally, his close association with the most famous publishers of their time, two of whom, Aldus and Froben, must take rank with the most famous publishers of any time—all these considerations unite to make the experience of Erasmus, as an author, one of exceptional interest in the history of publishing undertakings. To the above summary must be added the important detail that Erasmus was the first author, after the invention of printing, to secure a large and continued return from the sales of his writings. From the time of Gutenberg on, payments had been made by publishers to the scholarly editors whose services were utilised in preparing for the press the editions of the classics and the Fathers, to whose works the earlier publishing undertakings were with rare exceptions restricted. There is record also of the publication before the close of the fifteenth century and early in the sixteenth, chiefly in Paris, of occasional volumes of original writings. Few of these, however, were addressed to what we should call the general public, and before the time of Erasmus there is no record of an author’s making money by the sale of original productions. While the correspondence and diaries of Erasmus have been preserved, I find no mention of any accounts, and, in fact, he was not the kind of a man who would have been likely to trouble himself with such details as account-books. Unfortunately, the records of Froben’s business have disappeared, and we have no means of ascertaining the precise amounts paid to Erasmus by his publishers, either for his editorial services or for royalties on his books. Drummond is, however, of opinion that these receipts were very considerable. Erasmus spent from year to year considerable sums in journeys, in books and manuscripts, and in other ways, although during the years of his sojourn in the house of Froben, his actual living expenses must have been moderate. He had no property, the small inheritance from his father having been dissipated by his guardians. In addition to the income from his books, he had, after 1507, a pension of sixty pounds settled on him by Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury; there was, for a time at least, a pension from Lord Mountjoy; and a pension of some smaller amount (I have not been able to find the exact figures) from the Emperor Charles V. after 1523. Froude estimates his income from pensions in 1529 at four hundred florins.[118] He also received from time to time various presents of money from his wealthy English friends, such as Colet, More, Warham, and the Lady of Vere, and from Popes Leo X., Adrian VI., and Clement VII. According to Froude, he had no capacity for taking care of money, and however much he received, he was always in need. In his earlier years he found occasion, in fact, to write not a few applications for money, in a style of appeal which strikes the reader of to-day as entirely unbefitting for a man of his character, education, and intellectual distinction. It was, indeed, not until his association with Froben had made clear to him that his writings possessed commercial value, that he was able to shake off the feeling of dependence upon the purses of patrons. With his earlier books, his first thought appears to have been to utilise the appreciation of them by his friends as a means of securing gifts. After Froben had shown him that by proper management the books could be made to secure from the appreciation of the public at large good returns for the author, the letters of Erasmus became free from the repeated suggestions concerning gifts and financial aid which formed a disagreeable feature of much of the earlier correspondence.

It was not the least of the important services rendered by Froben that he was able to further the development of a spirit of independence on the part of the greatest author of his time, and to rescue him from the demoralising influences of literary patronage.