FRIDAY, 12th.
1536 Death of Erasmus.—He was one of the most learned men of the extraordinary age in which he flourished. Equally courted by the Sovereigns of France and England, and by the Popes of the House of Medici, he could never be induced to abandon the learned pursuits in which he delighted, for the employments or benefices so profusely offered to him. The cotemporary of Luther, it has been said of him, that there was not an error which Luther sought to reform that Erasmus had not made the subject either of severe censure or keen satire; yet, restrained by the natural timidity of his temper, by his love of peace, and hoping that mild measures would produce a gradual amelioration of the vices he so loudly censured, he chose rather to assume the character of a mediator between Luther and the Church of Rome, than openly to join the party of the reformers. He died at Basle, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and was interred in the Cathedral of that town.