Part 7 (1/2)
For his living other books had to serve. He had a sufficient number now, and the printers were eager enough about them, though the profit which the author made by them was not large. After leaving Aldus at Venice, Erasmus had returned to the publisher who had printed for him as early as 1505--Josse Badius, of Brabant, who, at Paris, had established the Ascensian Press (called after his native place, a.s.sche) and who, a scholar himself, rivalled Aldus in point of the accuracy of his editions of the cla.s.sics. At the time when Erasmus took the _Moria_ to Gourmont, at Paris, he had charged Badius with a new edition, still to be revised, of the _Adagia_. Why the _Moria_ was published by another, we cannot tell; perhaps Badius did not like it at first. From the _Adagia_ he promised himself the more profit, but that was a long work, the alterations and preface of which he was still waiting for Erasmus to send. He felt very sure of his ground, for everyone knew that he, Badius, was preparing the new edition. Yet a rumour reached him that in Germany the Aldine edition was being reprinted. So there was some hurry to finish it, he wrote to Erasmus in May 1512.
Badius, meanwhile, had much more work of Erasmus in hand, or on approval: the _Copia_, which, shortly afterwards, was published by him; the _Moria_, of which, at the same time, a new edition, the fifth, already had appeared; the dialogues by Lucian; the Euripides and Seneca translations, which were to follow. He hoped to add Jerome's letters to these. For the _Adagia_ they had agreed upon a copy-fee of fifteen guilders; for Jerome's letters Badius was willing to give the same sum and as much again for the rest of the consignment. 'Ah, you will say, what a very small sum! I own that by no remuneration could your genius, industry, knowledge and labour be requited, but the G.o.ds will requite you and your own virtue will be the finest reward. You have already deserved exceedingly well of Greek and Roman literature; you will in this same way deserve well of sacred and divine, and you will help your little Badius, who has a numerous family and no earnings besides his daily trade.'
Erasmus must have smiled ruefully on receiving Badius's letter. But he accepted the proposal readily. He promised to prepare everything for the press and, on 5 January 1513, he finished, in London, the preface to the revised _Adagia_, for which Badius was waiting. But then something happened. An agent who acted as a mediator with authors for several publishers in Germany and France, one Francis Berckman, of Cologne, took the revised copy of the _Adagia_ with the preface entrusted to him by Erasmus to hand over to Badius, not to Paris, but to Basle, to Johannes Froben, who had just, without Erasmus's leave, reprinted the Venetian edition! Erasmus pretended to be indignant at this mistake or perfidy, but it is only too clear that he did not regret it. Six months later he betook himself with bag and baggage to Basle, to enter with that same Froben into those most cordial relations by which their names are united. Beatus Rhena.n.u.s, afterwards, made no secret of the fact that a connection with the house of Froben, then still called Amerbach and Froben, had seemed attractive to Erasmus ever since he had heard of the _Adagia_ being reprinted.
Without conclusive proofs of his complicity, we do not like to accuse Erasmus of perfidy towards Badius, though his att.i.tude is curious, to say the least. But we do want to commemorate the dignified tone in which Badius, who held strict notions, as those times went, about copyright, replied, when Berckman afterwards had come to offer him a sort of explanation of the case. He declares himself satisfied, though Erasmus had, since that time, caused him losses in more ways, amongst others by printing a new edition of the _Copia_ at Stra.s.sburg. 'If, however, it is agreeable to your interests and honour, I shall suffer it, and that with equanimity.' Their relations were not broken off. In all this we should not lose sight of the fact that publis.h.i.+ng at that time was yet a quite new commercial phenomenon and that new commercial forms and relations of trade are wont to be characterized by uncertainty, confusion and lack of established business morals.
The stay at Cambridge gradually became irksome to Erasmus. 'For some months already', he writes to Ammonius in November 1513, 'we have been leading a true snail's life, staying at home and plodding. It is very lonely here; most people have gone for fear of the plague, but even when they are all here, it is lonely.' The cost of sustenance is unbearable and he makes no money at all. If he does not succeed, that winter, in making a nest for himself, he is resolved to fly away, he does not know where. 'If to no other end, to die elsewhere.'
Added to the stress of circ.u.mstances, the plague, reappearing again and again, and attacks of his kidney-trouble, there came the state of war, which depressed and alarmed Erasmus. In the spring of 1513 the English raid on France, long prepared, took place. In co-operation with Maximilian's army the English had beaten the French near Guinegate and compelled Therouanne to surrender, and afterwards Tournay. Meanwhile the Scotch invaded England, to be decisively beaten near Flodden. Their king, James IV, perished together with his natural son, Erasmus's pupil and travelling companion in Italy, Alexander, Archbishop of Saint Andrews.
Crowned with martial fame, Henry VIII returned in November to meet his parliament. Erasmus did not share the universal joy and enthusiastic admiration. 'We are circ.u.mscribed here by the plague, threatened by robbers; we drink wine of the worst (because there is no import from France), but, _io triumphe!_ we are the conquerors of the world!'
His deep aversion to the clamour of war, and all it represented, stimulated Erasmus's satirical faculties. It is true that he flattered the English national pride by an epigram on the rout of the French near Guinegate, but soon he went deeper. He remembered how war had impeded his movements in Italy; how the entry of the pope-conqueror, Julius II, into Bologna had outraged his feelings. 'The high priest Julius wages war, conquers, triumphs and truly plays the part of Julius (Caesar)' he had written then. Pope Julius, he thought, had been the cause of all the wars spreading more and more over Europe. Now the Pope had died in the beginning of the year 1513.
And in the deepest secrecy, between his work on the New Testament and Jerome, Erasmus took revenge on the martial Pope, for the misery of the times, by writing the masterly satire, ent.i.tled _Julius exclusus_, in which the Pope appears in all his glory before the gate of the Heavenly Paradise to plead his cause and find himself excluded. The theme was not new to him; for had he not made something similar in the witty Cain fable, by which, at one time, he had cheered a dinner-party at Oxford?
But that was an innocent jest to which his pious fellow-guests had listened with pleasure. To the satire about the defunct Pope many would, no doubt, also gladly listen, but Erasmus had to be careful about it.
The folly of all the world might be ridiculed, but not the worldly propensities of the recently deceased Pope. Therefore, though he helped in circulating copies of the ma.n.u.script, Erasmus did his utmost, for the rest of his life, to preserve its anonymity, and when it was universally known and had appeared in print, and he was presumed to be the author, he always cautiously denied the fact; although he was careful to use such terms as to avoid a formal denial. The first edition of the _Julius_ was published at Basle, not by Froben, Erasmus's ordinary publisher, but by Cratander, probably in the year 1518.
Erasmus's need of protesting against warfare had not been satisfied by writing the _Julius_. In March 1514, no longer at Cambridge, but in London, he wrote a letter to his former patron, the Abbot of Saint Bertin, Anthony of Bergen, in which he enlarges upon the folly of waging war. Would that a Christian peace were concluded between Christian princes! Perhaps the abbot might contribute to that consummation through his influence with the youthful Charles V and especially with his grandfather Maximilian. Erasmus states quite frankly that the war has suddenly changed the spirit of England. He would like to return to his native country if the prince would procure him the means to live there in peace. It is a remarkable fact and of true Erasmian navete that he cannot help mixing up his personal interests with his sincere indignation at the atrocities disgracing a man and a Christian. 'The war has suddenly altered the spirit of this island. The cost of living rises every day and generosity decreases. Through lack of wine I nearly perished by gravel, contracted by taking bad stuff. We are confined in this island, more than ever, so that even letters are not carried abroad.'
This was the first of Erasmus's anti-war writings. He expanded it into the adage _Dulce bellum inexpertis_, which was inserted into the _Adagia_ edition of 1515, published by Froben and afterwards also printed separately. Hereafter we shall follow up this line of Erasmus's ideas as a whole.
Though the summer of 1514 was to bring peace between England and France, Erasmus had now definitely made up his mind to leave England. He sent his trunks to Antwerp, to his friend Peter Gilles and prepared to go to the Netherlands, after a short visit to Mountjoy at the castle of Hammes near Calais. Shortly before his departure from London he had a curious interview with a papal diplomat, working in the cause of peace, Count Canossa, at Ammonius's house on the Thames. Ammonius pa.s.sed him off on Erasmus as a merchant. After the meal the Italian sounded him as to a possible return to Rome, where he might be the first in place instead of living alone among a barbarous nation. Erasmus replied that he lived in a land that contained the greatest number of excellent scholars, among whom he would be content with the humblest place. This compliment was his farewell to England, which had favoured him so. Some days later, in the first half of July 1514, he was on the other side of the Channel. On three more occasions he paid short visits to England, but he lived there no more.
[Ill.u.s.tration: XIII. JOHANNES FROBEN, 1522-3
Reproduced by gracious permission of H.M. The Queen]
[Ill.u.s.tration: XIV. THE PRINTER'S EMBLEM OF JOHANNES FROBEN]
CHAPTER XI
A LIGHT OF THEOLOGY
1514-16
On the way to success and satisfaction--His Prior calls him back to Steyn--He refuses to comply--First journey to Basle: 1514-16--Cordial welcome in Germany--Johannes Froben--Editions of Jerome and the New Testament--A Councillor to Prince Charles: _Inst.i.tutio Principis Christiani_, 1515--Definitive dispensation from Monastic Vows: 1517--Fame--Erasmus as a spiritual centre--His correspondence--Letter-writing as an art--Its dangers--A glorious age at hand
Erasmus had, as was usual with him, enveloped his departure from England with mystery. It was given out that he was going to Rome to redeem a pledge. Probably he had already determined to try his fortune in the Netherlands; not in Holland, but in the neighbourhood of the princely court in Brabant. The chief object of his journey, however, was to visit Froben's printing-office at Basle, personally to supervise the publication of the numerous works, old and new, which he brought with him, among them the material for his chosen task, the New Testament and Jerome, by which he hoped to effect the restoration of theology, which he had long felt to be his life-work. It is easy thus to imagine his anxiety when during the crossing he discovered that his hand-bag, containing the ma.n.u.scripts, was found to have been taken on board another s.h.i.+p. He felt bereft, having lost the labour of so many years; a sorrow so great, he writes, as only parents can feel at the loss of their children.
To his joy, however, he found his ma.n.u.scripts safe on the other side. At the castle of Hammes near Calais, he stayed for some days, the guest of Mountjoy. There, on 7 July, a letter found him, written on 18 April by his superior, the prior of Steyn, his old friend Servatius Rogerus, recalling him to the monastery after so many years of absence. The letter had already been in the hands of more than one prying person, before it reached him by mere chance.
It was a terrific blow, which struck him in the midst of his course to his highest aspirations. Erasmus took counsel for a day and then sent a refusal. To his old friend, in addressing whom he always found the most serious accents of his being, he wrote a letter which he meant to be a justification and which was self-contemplation, much deeper and more sincere than the one which, at a momentous turning-point of his life, had drawn from him his _Carmen Alpestre_.
He calls upon G.o.d to be his witness that he would follow the purest inspiration of his life. But to return to the monastery! He reminds Servatius of the circ.u.mstances under which he entered it, as they lived in his memory: the pressure of his relations, his false modesty. He points out to him how ill monastic life had suited his const.i.tution, how it outraged his love of freedom, how detrimental it would be to his delicate health, if now resumed. Had he, then, lived a worse life in the world? Literature had kept him from many vices. His restless life could not redound to his dishonour, though only with diffidence did he dare to appeal to the examples of Solon, Pythagoras, St. Paul and his favourite Jerome. Had he not everywhere won recognition from friends and patrons?
He enumerates them: cardinals, archbishops, bishops, Mountjoy, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and, lastly, John Colet. Was there, then, any objection to his works: the _Enchiridion_, the _Adagia_? (He did not mention the _Moria_.) The best was still to follow: Jerome and the New Testament. The fact that, since his stay in Italy, he had laid aside the habit of his order and wore a common clerical dress, he could excuse on a number of grounds.