To Caen, Toulouse, Athens or Colayne;
And at the last returneth home agayne
More ignorant.
The reproach conveyed in the last line was probably deserved by some whose foreign scholarship was only sought for fashion’s sake; but it does not certainly apply to the knot of illustrious Englishmen whom we find studying in the Italian schools at the close of the fifteenth century. Among them was Richard Pace, who had been brought up in the household of Langton, Bishop of Winchester, and had been sent by his patron to study at Padua, where he had Latymer and Cuthbert Tonstall for his tutors; William Linacre, who had repaired to Florence and been received into the family of Lorenzo de’ Medici, who, charmed with his modesty and talents, chose him for the companion of his son’s studies: and the amiable and simple-hearted William Lily, whose Greek learning had been acquired at Rhodes, and who was then perfecting himself in Latin literature in the schools of Rome and Florence. Colet also made the tour of Italy, after taking his degree at Magdalen, and on coming back to England, he returned a second time to Oxford, where in 1497 he found Grocyn and Linacre delivering public lectures on Greek. Their audience was at first a small one, for the new learning was regarded with no little jealousy and suspicion in many quarters, and parties ran high between the Greeks and the Trojans, as the adherents of the opposite factions were commonly called. The Greeks expended their wit on the dulness of their adversaries, whom they represented as “sleepy, surly fellows, who talked bad Latin, and never said a smart or clever thing;” whilst the Trojans denounced their brilliant rivals as dangerous innovators. The truth lay pretty evenly between the two parties. The Oxford studies were possibly in some respects behind the time, and not merely profane, but sacred learning also appears, from Wood’s account, to have been at a low ebb; and for this, as has been elsewhere shown, the lawyers and the logicians, the Lollards and the Anti-Roman party, must share the blame among them. Still, when we remember the enthusiasm with which men like More and Erasmus regarded the English universities, it is difficult to believe that sound and solid learning can have been entirely wanting at Oxford,[337] and considering what sort of clouds hung on the horizon, the “Scotists,” perhaps, did not show themselves such dull fellows after all, when they warned their disciples to keep clear of foreign fashions, and set afloat the well-known proverb, “Let the Greeks beware of heresy.”
Colet did not hesitate to join the party of the Greeks, and to this he was moved not merely by a love of polite literature, but by the contempt and aversion which he had conceived for the scholastic philosophy. At Florence he had not only attended the Greek lectures of Politian and Demetrius Chalycondylus, but he had listened to the preaching of Savonarola, from whom he had caught an enthusiasm for Scriptural studies, and a burning zeal for the reform of abuses. So soon, therefore, as he had been ordained deacon he flung aside the Master of the Sentences, and began to read public lectures on the Epistles of St. Paul, though with characteristic temper he had disdained to receive any degrees in Divinity, accounting the studies which he should have had to engage in for that purpose as wholly empty and unprofitable. His earnest eloquence and original mode of treatment drew him more hearers than the classic erudition of Grocyn had been able to command, and there was not a doctor of law or divinity in the whole university, but gladly came to hear the young preacher, bringing their books with them.
It was at this moment that Erasmus paid his first visit to England, having been invited over by Lord Mountjoy, his former pupil at Paris. Erasmus at this time supported himself partly by his tutorships, and partly by the pensions which he received from the sovereigns who sought to attach him to their Courts, and from the learned friends whose pecuniary assistance he availed himself of with considerable freedom. At Oxford he was received into St. Mary’s Priory by the kind-hearted Prior Charnock, and in his letters expresses the singular delight which he felt at all he heard and all he saw. He soon made acquaintance with Colet, and was by him introduced to More, then studying at Magdalen, and to Wolsey, bursar of the same college; and in company with these new friends (he wrote to Mountjoy) he would be content to live all his days in the farthest extremity of Scythia. In short, he drew so brilliant a picture of the pleasant hours they spent in one another’s company, that Mountjoy, who was but just married, could not resist the temptation of running down to Oxford, and beginning a fresh course of study under his old master.
The friendship that sprang up from that time between Erasmus and Colet was strong and enduring. Yet no two men could be more unlike in their real character, however much their literary tastes may have coincided. Colet was heart and soul in earnest, and herein lay the strength and nobleness of a disposition which, as his friend owns, had in it many a dash of human infirmity. “When he speaks,” writes Erasmus, “you would think he was more than man: it is not with voice alone, but with eyes, and countenance, and with his whole demeanour.” He was of a hot and haughty spirit, and impatient of the least affront, qualities which imparted a certain harshness and vehemence to all his words and actions. Yet he had (and who has not?) his softer side, and the stern and fiery orator, as rigid and severe to himself as he was to others, was a lover of children, and delighted to make himself little with little ones, whom he compared to the angels, though, as we shall presently see, his love even of them was somewhat lacking in tenderness. Erasmus himself was not likely to be led into the excesses to which a nature like Colet’s easily betrays itself. There was no real earnestness about him. Had he not left his Epistles behind him, we might be amazed that one so deficient in every sterling quality of soul could have found a way to the hearts of all with whom he associated. But his letters explain the mystery. There was no resisting the charm of his wit, and his extraordinary gift of treating every subject on which he touched in the way that was most agreeable. After the lapse of three hundred years, the reader, who possesses nothing but the dead written letter of that graceful eloquence, feels its indescribable magic, the “certain Erasmianism,” as Colet calls it, and is carried away against his will by the bewitching pleasantry of a writer whose whole life he knows to have been contemptible. There was, moreover, one most attractive quality which he shared with More: nothing was able to ruffle his temper; and he had the happiest ways of restraining the sallies of his more fiery companions, and preventing their table talk after dinner from ever ending in a quarrel. Thus, on one occasion, when a disputation had arisen upon the sin of Cain, Erasmus, who judged by Colet’s sparkling eyes that the conversation had lasted long enough, and wished to end it, invented on the spot a story from some pretended ancient author, by which ingenious fraud the argument was broken off, and the company parted in the best of humours. He was moreover an advocate for moderation in all things, even in hostility to the scholastics, and once took up the defence of St. Thomas against the attacks of Colet, and represented that the Angelic doctor really did seem to have studied the Scriptures. But this time Colet bore him down, and could not contain his impatience at hearing a word said in favour of one whose dogmatic definitions of theology he hesitated not to accuse of arrogance. More held an equal place in the affections of both his friends; he had all the wit of Erasmus without his flippancy, and all the earnestness of Colet without his asperity of temper. He chose the latter as his director, and learnt from him a singular love for the inspired writings, and many precious secrets of self-mastery and mortification; but he had some spiritual instincts to which Colet was an utter stranger; and while the one was venting his annoyance at what he deemed the childish superstitions of the Canterbury pilgrims, as he watched them crowding to kiss the relics of St. Thomas à Becket, the other, with truer humility, thought it not beneath the character of a man of letters to feed his faith at the homely springs of popular devotion, and visited many an old English shrine on foot—a rare thing in those days, when even the common people went on horse-back.
We will pass over a few years, which brought their usual changes to the Oxford friends in all save the mutual regard which they bore for one another. The princely boy to whom Erasmus had first been introduced in his schoolroom, and who had won his heart by challenging him to reply to a Latin epistle, was now on the throne, “tall in body, and mighty in will,” says Stow, “and so prosperous in his kingdom, that it was called ‘The Golden Realm.’” Wolsey, whom we left a Demy of Magdalen, was now Cardinal, and had just succeeded Warham as chancellor, having the learned Richard Pace for his secretary. The European politics which he sought to guide had not made him neglect the cause of letters:—
“Witness for him