Part 5 (1/2)

Here, in the stillness of the Alpine landscape, there arose something more of Erasmus's deepest aspirations than in the lament to Servatius.

But in this case, too, it is a stray element of his soul, not the strong impulse that gave direction and fullness to his life and with irresistible pressure urged him on to ever new studies.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] A. 189, Philip le Beau, who had unexpectedly come to England because of a storm, which obliged Mountjoy to do court-service.

CHAPTER VIII

IN ITALY

1506-9

Erasmus in Italy: 1506-9--He takes his degree at Turin--Bologna and Pope Julius II--Erasmus in Venice with Aldus: 1507-8--The art of printing--Alexander Stewart--To Rome: 1509--News of Henry VIII's accession--Erasmus leaves Italy

At Turin Erasmus received, directly upon his arrival, on 4 September 1506, the degree of doctor of theology. That he did not attach much value to the degree is easy to understand. He regarded it, however, as an official warrant of his competence as a writer on theological subjects, which would strengthen his position when a.s.sailed by the suspicion of his critics. He writes disdainfully about the t.i.tle, even to his Dutch friends who in former days had helped him on in his studies for the express purpose of obtaining the doctor's degree. As early as 1501, to Anna of Borselen he writes, 'Go to Italy and obtain the doctor's degree? Foolish projects, both of them. But one should conform to the customs of the times.' Again to Servatius and Johannes Obrecht, half apologetically, he says: 'I have obtained the doctor's degree in theology, and that quite contrary to my intention, only because I was overcome by the prayers of friends.'

Bologna was now the destination of his journey. But when Erasmus arrived there, a war was in progress which forced him to retire to Florence for a time. Pope Julius II, allied with the French, at the head of an army, marched on Bologna to conquer it from the Bentivogli. This purpose was soon attained, and Bologna was a safe place to return to. On 11 November 1506, Erasmus witnessed the triumphal entry of the martial pope.

Of these days nothing but short, hasty letters of his have come down to us. They speak of unrest and rumours of war. There is nothing to show that he was impressed by the beauty of the Italy of the Renaissance. The scanty correspondence dating from his stay in Italy mentions neither architecture, nor sculpture, nor pictures. When much later he happened to remember his visit to the Chartreuse of Pavia, it is only to give an instance of useless waste and magnificence. Books alone seemed to occupy and attract Erasmus in Italy.

At Bologna, Erasmus served as a mentor to the young Boerios to the end of the year for which he had bound himself. It seemed a very long time to him. He could not stand any encroachment upon his liberty. He felt caught in the contract as in a net. The boys, it seems, were intelligent enough, if not so brilliant as Erasmus had seen them in his first joy; but with their private tutor Clyfton, whom he at first extolled to the sky, he was soon at loggerheads. At Bologna he experienced many vexations for which his new relations with Paul Bombasius could only in part indemnify him. He worked there at an enlarged edition of his _Adagia_, which now, by the addition of the Greek ones, increased from eight hundred to some thousands of items.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VII. t.i.tle-page of the _Adagia_, printed by Aldus Manutius in 1508]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIII. VIEW OF VENICE, 1493]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IX. PORTRAIT MEDAL OF ALDUS MANUTIUS. On the reverse the Aldine emblem]

[Ill.u.s.tration: X. A page from the _Praise of Folly_ with a drawing by Holbein of Erasmus at his desk.]

From Bologna, in October 1507, Erasmus addressed a letter to the famous Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, in which he requested him to publish, anew, the two translated dramas of Euripides, as the edition of Badius was out of print and too defective for his taste. What made Aldus attractive in his eyes was, no doubt, besides the fame of the business, though it was languis.h.i.+ng at the time, the printer's beautiful type--'those most magnificent letters, especially those very small ones'. Erasmus was one of those true book-lovers who pledge their heart to a type or a size of a book, not because of any artistic preference, but because of readableness and handiness, which to them are of the very greatest importance. What he asked of Aldus was a small book at a low price. Towards the end of the year their relations had gone so far that Erasmus gave up his projected journey to Rome, for the time, to remove to Venice, there personally to superintend the publication of his works.

Now there was no longer merely the question of a little book of translations, but Aldus had declared himself willing to print the enormously increased collection of the _Adagia_.

Beatus Rhena.n.u.s tells a story which, no doubt, he had heard from Erasmus himself: how Erasmus on his arrival at Venice had gone straight to the printing-office and was kept waiting there for a long time. Aldus was correcting proofs and thought his visitor was one of those inquisitive people by whom he used to be pestered. When he turned out to be Erasmus, he welcomed him cordially and procured him board and lodging in the house of his father-in-law, Andrea Asolani. Fully eight months did Erasmus live there, in the environment which, in future, was to be his true element: the printing-office. He was in a fever of hurried work, about which he would often sigh, but which, after all, was congenial to him. The augmented collection of the _Adagia_ had not yet been made ready for the press at Bologna. 'With great temerity on my part,'

Erasmus himself testifies, 'we began to work at the same time, I to write, Aldus to print.' Meanwhile the literary friends of the New Academy whom he got to know at Venice, Johannes Lascaris, Baptista Egnatius, Marcus Musurus and the young Jerome Aleander, with whom, at Asolani's, he shared room and bed, brought him new Greek authors, unprinted as yet, furnis.h.i.+ng fresh material for augmenting the _Adagia_.

These were no inconsiderable additions: Plato in the original, Plutarch's _Lives_ and _Moralia_, Pindar, Pausanias, and others. Even people whom he did not know and who took an interest in his work, brought new material to him. Amid the noise of the press-room, Erasmus, to the surprise of his publisher, sat and wrote, usually from memory, so busily occupied that, as he picturesquely expressed it, he had no time to scratch his ears. He was lord and master of the printing-office. A special corrector had been a.s.signed to him; he made his textual changes in the last impression. Aldus also read the proofs. 'Why?' asked Erasmus. 'Because I am studying at the same time,' was the reply.

Meanwhile Erasmus suffered from the first attack of his tormenting nephrolithic malady; he ascribed it to the food he got at Asolani's and later took revenge by painting that boarding-house and its landlord in very spiteful colours in the _Colloquies_.

When in September 1508, the edition of the _Adagia_ was ready, Aldus wanted Erasmus to remain in order to write more for him. Till December he continued to work at Venice on editions of Plautus, Terence, and Seneca's tragedies. Visions of joint labour to publish all that cla.s.sic antiquity still held in the way of hidden treasures, together with Hebrew and Chaldean stores, floated before his mind.

Erasmus belonged to the generation which had grown up together with the youthful art of printing. To the world of those days it was still like a newly acquired organ; people felt rich, powerful, happy in the possession of this 'almost divine implement'. The figure of Erasmus and his _[oe]uvre_ were only rendered possible by the art of printing. He was its glorious triumph and, equally, in a sense, its victim. What would Erasmus have been without the printing-press? To broadcast the ancient doc.u.ments, to purify and restore them was his life's pa.s.sion.

The certainty that the printed book places exactly the same text in the hands of thousands of readers, was to him a consolation that former generations had lacked.

Erasmus is one of the first who, after his name as an author was established, worked directly and continually for the press. It was his strength, but also his weakness. It enabled him to exercise an immediate influence on the reading public of Europe such as had emanated from none before him; to become a focus of culture in the full sense of the word, an intellectual central station, a touchstone of the spirit of the time.