called it the Walsingham way.' Little did they CHAP. IX. dream that in another five-and-twenty years the canons A.D. 1514. would be convicted of forging relics and feigning miracles, and the far-famed image of the Virgin dragged to Chelsea by royal order, to be there publicly burned. Then pilgrims were flocking to Canterbury in crowds to adore the relics and to admire the riches of St Thomas's shrine. Little did they dream that in five and twenty years St. Thomas's bones would share the fiery fate of the image of the Virgin, and the gold and jewellery of St. Thomas's shrine be carried off in chests upon the shoulders of eight stout men, and cast without remorse into the royal exchequer!1 1 The colloquy, from which the particulars given in this section have been obtained, is entitled Peregrinatio Religionis ergo. It was not contained in the edition of 1522 (Argent.), but it was inserted probably in that of 1524 (which, however, I have not seen). It was A.D. 1514. Erasmus Channel. CHAPTER X. I. ERASMUS GOES TO BASLE TO PRINT HIS NEW TESTAMENT (1514). CHAP. X. IT was on a July morning in the year 1514 that Erasmus again crossed the Channel. The wind was fair, the sea calm, the sky bright and sunny; but during the easy passage Erasmus had a heavy heart. He had crosses the once more left his English friends behind him, bent upon a solitary pilgrimage to Basle, in order that his edition of the letters of St. Jerome and his Greek New Testament might be printed at the press of Froben the printer. But, always unlucky on leaving British shores. he missed his baggage from the boat when, after the bustle of embarkation, he looked to see that all was right. To have lost his manuscripts-his Jerome, his New Testament, the labours of so many years-to be on his way to Basle without the books for the printing of which he was taking the long journey-this was enough to weigh down his heart with a grief, which he might well compare to that of a parent who has lost his children. It turned out, after all, to be a trick of the knavish sailors, who threw the traveller's luggage into another boat in order to extort a few coins for its recovery. Erasmus, in the end, got his luggage back again; but he might well say that, though the passage was a good one, it was an anxious one CHAP. X. to him.1 A.D. 1514. On his arrival at the castle of Hammes, near Calais, where he had agreed to spend a few days with his old pupil and friend Lord Mountjoy, he found waiting for him a letter from Servatius, prior of the monastery Letter of Stein, in Holland-the monastery into which he had vatius. been ensnared when a youth against his judgment by treachery and foul play. It was a letter doubtless written with kindly feeling, for the prior had once been his companion; but still he evidently took it as a letter from the prior of the convent from which he was a kind of runaway, not only inviting, but in measure claiming him back again, reproachfully reminding him of his vows, censuring his wandering life, his throwing off the habit of his order, and ending with a bribe-the offer of a post of great advantage if he would return. Erasmus return! No, truly; that he would not! But the very naming of it brought back to mind not only the wrongs he had suffered in his youth; the cruelty and baseness of his guardians; his miserable experience of monastic life; how hardly he had escaped out of it; his trials during a chequered wandering life since but also his entry upon fellow-work with Colet; the noble-hearted friends with whom he had been privileged to come in contact; the noble work in which they were now engaged together. What! give up these to put his neck again under a yoke which had so galled him in dark times gone by! And for what? To become perchance the father-confessor of a nunnery! : 1 Eras. Ammonio: Eras. Epist. clix. from Ser CHAP. X. It was as though Pharaoh had sent an embassy to A.D. 1514. Moses offering to make him a taskmaster if he would but return into Egypt. Erasmus alludes to No wonder that Erasmus, finding this letter from Servatius waiting for him on his arrival at the castle of his friend, took up his pen to reply somewhat warmly before proceeding on his journey. His letter lies as a kind of waymark by the roadside of his wandering life, and with some abridgment and omissions may be thus translated : Erasmus to Servatius. Being on a journey, I must reply in but ' few words, and confine myself to matters of the most importance. 6 'Men hold opinions so diverse, that it is impossible ' to please everybody. That my desire is in very deed to follow that which is really the best, God is my witness! It was never my intention to change my 'mode of life or my habit; not because I approved ' of either, but lest I should give rise to scandal. You his youth. know well that it was by the pertinacity of my guardians and the persuasion of wicked men that I was 'forced rather than induced to enter the monastic life. Afterwards, when I found out how entirely unsuited it 'was for me, I was restrained by the taunts of Cornelius Wertem and the bashfulness of youth. . . But it may be objected that I had a year of what is called ""probation," and was of mature age. Ridiculous! 'As though anyone could require that a boy of seventeen, brought up in literary studies, should have attained 'to a self-knowledge rare even in an old man-should A.D. 1514. 'be able to learn in one year what many men grow grey CHAP. X. 'without learning! Be this as it may, I never liked the monastic life; and I liked it less than ever after I Erasmus had tried it; but I was ensnared in the way I have monastic mentioned. For all this, I am free to confess that a man who is really a good man may live well in any 'kind of life. 'I have in the meantime tried to find that mode of living in which I should be least prone to evil. And I 'think assuredly that I have found it; I have lived with 'sober men, I have lived a life of literary study, and 6 hates the life. these have drawn me away from many vices. It has 'been my lot to live on terms of intimacy with men of 'true Christian wisdom, and I have been bettered by 'their conversation. . Whenever the thought has ' occurred to me of returning into your fraternity, it has 'always called back to my remembrance the jealousy ' of many, the contempt of all; converse how cold, how trifling! how lacking in Christian wisdom! feastings 'more fit for the laity! the mode of life, as a whole, ' one which, if you subtract its ceremonies from it, has ' nothing left that seems to me worth having. Lastly, 'I have called to mind my bodily infirmities, now in'creased upon me by age and toil, by reason of which I should have both failed in coming up to your mark, ' and also sacrificed my own life. For some years now I have been afflicted with the stone, and its frequent His ill ' recurrence obliges me to observe great regularity in my habits. I have had some experience both of the 'climate of Holland and of your particular diet and habits, and I feel sure that, had I returned, nothing else could have come of it but trouble to you and death to me. 6 health. |