Erasmus was both a good boy and good scholar, and his master's favourite pupil, it was impossible to pass scathless through the ordeal. In after years he did all he could to mitigate a system the savage cruelty of which was so abhorrent from his gentle nature;1 and he quotes with approval the witty invention of an English gentleman, who, in order to make his son at once a scholar and a marksman, had a target painted with the Greek alphabet, and every time that the little archer hit a letter, and at the same time could name it, he was rewarded with a cherry.2 This was an effectual plan for teaching "the young idea how to shoot ;" and to the same kindly method we owe alphabets of gingerbread or sugar, which even in the nursery awaken the pleasures of taste, and make little John Bull, if not a devourer of books, at least very fond of his letters.

On the whole, however, it was a happy time which he spent at Deventer. His mother, who had accompanied him at first, watched over him with anxious tenderness; and he had attached companions, such as William Hermann. And he could play. From his Colloquies we gather that he was up to bowls, and leap-frog, and running, though not so fond of swimming. Then the Issel was famous for its fish, and he not only knew how to ensnare the finny tribe, but when bait was scarce he had a plan for bringing the worms aboveboard, by pouring over their lurking-places water in which had been steeped walnut-shells. Above all, the noble passion of learning had been awakened, and every day was bringing some new knowledge under the best instructors his native land could offer, when a great desolation overtook him. In his thirteenth year, as he himself says-although for reasons already mentioned we incline to think that he was somewhat older-the plague, then perpetually wandering over Europe, came to Deventer. It carried off his mother.

1 De Pueris Instituendis, published in 1529. See especially Opp. i. 485 et seq.

* Opp. i. 511.

It seized and destroyed many of his friends. At last it depopulated the house where he lodged, and in his grief and terror he fled to his father, at Gouda. But soon this refuge also failed. The death of Margaret had such an effect on Gerrit, whose heart was half broken already, that he immediately sickened and soon felt himself dying. He had by this time saved up enough to complete the education of his sons, and this, along with the care of the lads themselves, he entrusted to Peter Winkel and two other neighbours; and then the priest, in whom little of the facetious Gerrit survived, finished his sorrowful career-another instance that there are false steps which life can never retrace, and wrongs which repentance cannot remedy.

Erasmus was now very anxious to go to some university, but the guardians showed no great zeal in settling the affairs of the orphans. A note addressed to Magister Petrus Winkel, and undated, must have been written at this time, and is probably the earliest specimen of its author's epistolary style.

"I fear that our property is not likely to be soon realized, and I trust that you will do your utmost to prevent our being injured by delay. Perhaps you will say that I am one of those

who fear lest the firmament should fall. You might laugh at my apprehensions, if the cash were already in the coffer; but, far from being sold, the books have still to go to the auctionroom, or find a purchaser. The corn has still to be sown from which our bread is to be baked; and meanwhile, as Ovid says, 'on flying foot the time flits past.' In an affair like this I cannot see the advantage of delay, Besides, I hear that Christian has not returned the books which he had borrowed. Let his tardiness be overcome by your importunity."

We have no doubt that this is the note to which Erasmus elsewhere refers as having been, written to his guardian by a youth of fourteen.3 If so, it exhibits a precocious talent for business, where, perhaps, we would rather

3 Florentio decimum quartum annum agenti, quum illi scripsisset aliquanto politius, respondit severiter, ut si posthac mitteret tales epis tolas, adjungeret commentarium: ipsi semper hunc fuisse morem, ut plane scriberet, et punctuatim, nam hoc verbo usus est."-Opp.iii. 1822.

have seen the bashfulness of the schoolboy; but to one who carries a bar sinister on his shield the battle of life is very hard, especially at the beginning; and to this poor youth the world's experiences were becoming somewhat bleak. Like other hunted creatures, his utmost sagacity was needed for self-defence, and he had too much reason to distrust the tutorial trio. In other respects the letter is an admirable composition,1 and interesting as indicating thus early his turn for proverbial philosophy and love of classical quotation. But neither good Latin nor lines from Ovid could make it palatable to the receiver. He wrote back to his ward that, if he continued to send such figurative effusions, he must subjoin explanatory notes. For his own part, he always wrote plainly and "to the point"-punctuatim.

Instead of the university, Erasmus was sent to a monkish school at Bois le Duc (Hertogenbosch); from which, after an irksome and unprofitable durance of nearly three years, the plague allowed him to escape. Returning to Gouda, he found that by the death of one of their number his guardians were reduced to Winkel the schoolmaster, and a mercantile brother. They had but a sorry account to give of their stewardship; and Erasmus warned his brother that a desperate attempt would assuredly be made to force them into a convent, as the shortest way of winding up the trust and closing the account. Both agreed that nothing could be more alien from their present mood of mind, the elder confessing that he had no love for a religious life, the younger being intent on that scholarship which convents could not give. "Our means may be small," he said; "but let us scrape together what we can, and find our way to some college. Friends will turn up; like many before us, we may maintain ourselves by our own industry, and Providence will aid us in our honest endeavours." "Then," said the other, "you must be spokesman." Nor was t long before the scheme was pro

It will be found in Knight's "Life of Erasmus," Appendix, p. iv.

pounded. In a few days Mr. Winkel called; and, after an ample preface, full of affection for them both, and dwelling on all his services, he went on, "And now I must wish you joy, for I have been so fortunate as to obtain an opening for both of you amongst the canons regular." As agreed, the younger made answer, thanking him warmly for his kindness, but saying that they thought it scarcely prudent, whilst still so young, to commit themselves to any course of life. "We are still unknown to ourselves, nor do we know the vocation which you so strongly recommend. We have never been inside of a convent, nor do we know what it is to be a monk. Would it not be better to defer a decision till after a few years spent in study?" At this Mr. Winkel flew into a passion : "You don't know what you are? You're a fool. You are throwing away an excellent opportunity, which I have with much ado obtained for you. So, sirrah, I resign my trust; and now you are free to look where you like for a living." Erasmus shed tears, but stood firm. "We accept your resignation, and free you from any farther charge." Winkel went away in a rage; but, thinking better about it, he sought the assistance of his brother, who, not being a schoolmaster, was less in the habit of losing his temper. Next day they invited the young men to dinner. It was beautiful weather; they had their wine taken out to a summer-house in the garden, and under the management of the balmy and blandiloquent merchant all went smooth and merry. At last they came to business, and so engagingly did the man of money set forth the life of poverty-so bright were the pictures of abstinence and seraphic contemplation which he drew over his bottle of Rhenish -that the elder brother was quite overcome. Pretending to yield to irresistible argument, he entered the convent; but he was a thorough rogue, and carried his rascality into the cloister. He cheated even the monks, and with his scandalous misconduct, drinking and stealing, proceeded from bad to worse, and henceforth disappears from history. Erasmus,

vespers, and spent the intermediate time in idle lounging and scurrilous jesting. Long afterwards, when invited to return, Erasmus wrote to the prior that his only recollections of the place were "flat and foolish talking, with"out any savour of Christ, low ca"rousals, and a style of life in which, "if you stripped off a few formal observances, there remained nothing "which a good man would care to "retain." 1 At his first entrance his disposition was devout; but he wanted to worship: it was the living God whom he sought to serve, and the genuflexions, and crossings, and bell-ringings, and changes of vestments seemed to him little better than an idle mummery. He had hoped for scholarlike society, but, except young Hermann from Gouda, he found none to sympathize in his tastes, or join in his pursuits. Nor did the rule of his Order agree with him. His circulation was languid, his nervous system extremely sensitive. If called up to midnight devotions, after counting his beads and repeating the prescribed pater-nosters, a model monk would turn into bed and be asleep in five seconds; but, after being once aroused from his rest, Erasmus could only lie awake till the morning, listening to his more fortunate brethren as they snored along the corridor. For stock-fish his aversion was unconquerable. Sir Walter Scott mentions a brother clerk in the Court of Session who used to be thrown into agonies by the scent of cheese, and the mere smell of salted cod gave Erasmus a headache. And whilst by a bountiful supper his capacious colleagues were able to prepare overnight for the next day's fast, to the delicate frame of our scholar abstinence was so severe a trial

that he repeatedly fainted away. No wonder then that with the love of letters, the love of reality, and the love of liberty superadded to such constitutional inaptitudes, the "heaven on earth" at Steene soon became an irksome captivity.

1 Colloquia quam frigida, quam inepta, quam non sapientia Christum; convivia quam laica; denique tota vitæ ratio, cui si detraxeris ceremonias, non video quid relinquas expetendum." Opp. iii. 1527.

Not that the five years were utterly lost. True, he was disappointed in Cornelius Berden, the quondam chum whose glowing representations had first inveigled him. In the outset he was delighted with his apparent classical ardour, and rejoiced to burn with him the midnight oil, reading through a whole play of Terence at a single sitting. But it turned out that his motive was pure selfishness. He was ambitious of preferment, and, with the astuteness which he had learned during a short sojourn in Italy, he had entrapped into the convent his accomplished friend, as the cheapest way of obtaining a tutor. No wonder that, as soon as his treachery was detected, the victim bitterly resented his baseness. But, as we have already stated, in William Hermann he still found a kindred spirit. In poetical compositions and elegant Latinity they vied with one another, and any ancient treasure which either discovered they shared in common. Where the predisposition or susceptibility exists, a book read at the right time often gives an abiding complexion to the character, or a life-long direction to the faculties. The delight with which Pope when a schoolboy read Ogilby's Homer resulted in our English Iliad; and the copy of the "Faery Queen," which Cowley found on the window-seat of his mother's room, committed him to poetry for the rest of his days. In the same way Alexander Murray used to ascribe the first awakening of his polyglottal propensities to the specimens of the Lord's Prayer in many tongues which he found in Salmon's Geography, and our pleasant friend James Wilson was made a naturalist by the gift of "Three Hundred Wonderful Animals." A tendency towards scholarship our hero inherited from his father, along with his mirth and humour; and a peculiar flavour was given to his wit, as well as a tincture to his style, by his early admiration of Terence. And in the convent of Steene he found two writers who exerted a material influence on his subsequent history. One of these was Jerome, in whose letters he found such spoil that he transcribed the

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whole of them; and of many subsequent years it became the chosen pastime, as well as absorbing employment, to prepare for the press the collected works of this truly learned father. The other was the famous Italian, Laurentius Valla, whose Elegancies of the Latin Language" did so much to restore to modern times the speech of ancient Rome, and whose detection of the forgery which assigned the city of the Cæsars to Sylvester as a gift from Constantine may be regarded as the first decisive blow aimed at the temporal power of the Papacy.1 His critical acumen, and the skill with which he explained the niceties of a noble tongue, filled Erasmus with rapture, and the very truculence of the terrible Roman had a charm for his ardent disciple.2 Not that their dispositions were at all akin. Mild in his very mischief, and never so indignant as to be indiscreet, Erasmus was not born to be either a cynic or a bully; but in minds capable of unreserved admiration there is an isomorphous tendency, and, although the constituent elements may be distinct, the style into which they crystallize becomes identical. And, just as Hannah More could not help writing Johnsonese, as many a living writer nibs his pen and cuts the paper with Carlylian rhodium, so in the inspiration of our author we can sometimes detect the spell of a first love and an unconscious imitation of Valla. As a scholar and critic he was eventually no whit inferior; as a wit and a genius he immeasurably excelled. Yet through his subsequent career may be discerned the influence of

1 Unless we give precedence to Dante :"Ahi Costatin, di quanto mal fu matre Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!" Inferno, canto 19. "Ah Constantine! what evils caused to flow, Not, by conversion, but those fair domains Thou on the first rich Father didst bestow!" Wright.

Valla was born at Rome in 1407, where also in 1457 he died. His declamation against the Popedom did not see the light till long after his death, viz. 1492, about the time when Erasmus was taking leave of Steene.

2 See his 1st, 2d, and 103d Epistles.

his Italian predecessor, not only in his preference of classical Latinity at large to a narrow and foppish Ciceronianism; not only in the keen-eyed shrewdness and audacious sense which saw through the frailties of popes and the flaws of tradition; not only in the courage which set to work to translate the Greek Testament anew, undaunted by the awful claims of the Vulgate; but in the vituperative energy which he threw into his later polemical writings, and which is not unworthy of the critic who was constantly snapping at the heels of Poggio, and who had nearly torn Beccadelli in pieces because his remarks on Livy had gained the best bon-bons at Alphonso's table.

If Steene had few rewards for its students, the restraints were not very strict which it placed on its inmates. As long as they did not interfere with the rules of the Order, they were allowed to follow freely their own tastes and likings. We have mentioned that our Desiderius had a musical voice, and that when a little boy he was a chorister in Utrecht Cathedral. For the sister art of painting he is also said to have shown an early inclination, and a painted crucifix has come down with the inscription, "Despise not this picture: it was painted by Erasmus when he lived in the convent of Steene."1 Anecdotes are also current of other modes in which he occasionally enlivened his graver studies. For instance, it is told that there was a pear-tree in the orchard which monks of low degree were warned to leave untouched; for the prior had seen meet to reserve it for his own proper use. Our friend, however, having taken a private survey of the forbidden fruit, was obliged to own that in this instance his superior was right, and repeated his visits so often that the pears began to disappear with alarming rapidity. The prior determined if possible to find out the robber. For this purpose he took up

1 What has become of it we cannot tell. In the early part of last century it belonged to Cornelius Musius of Delft. Burigny, Vie d'Erasme, tome i. p. 37.