A very apt and pretty comment on the doctor-fabrication of our own day and land.
He concludes with certain definite statements as to the work he has in hand, which show that in spite of all his complaints he was going steadily on with his studies and with his production as well. They show further that he was perfectly sincere in his declarations that he needed money in order that he might do a kind of work from which he could hope for little pecuniary profit excepting in the form of payment for dedications. The Veere episode throughout is full of mysteries. We have no means whatever of knowing how long it went on, how often, or for how long periods, Erasmus was a guest at Tournehens, nor how much help he actually received from his noble patroness. The only date which clearly connects this correspondence with other events is a reference in the letter to the Marchioness to the anniversary of his departure from England, and that is, on other accounts, extremely uncertain. We may safely guess, however, that this connection covers several years just before and just after 1500. Battus died in 1502 and by that time the Lady Anna had contracted a marriage "plusquam servile." The letter[38] which tells these facts was written the same year at Louvain, whither Erasmus says he had fled from the plague. He complains that he has little chance of earning anything there and yet says he had declined an offer of a place to teach made to him by the magistrates. "I am wholly devoted to the study of Greek and have not been playing with my work; for I have got along so well that I can write fairly in Greek whatever I wish to say, and that ex tempore."
CHAPTER III
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND
1498-1500
Mr. Seebohm, in his amiable study of the Oxford Reformers,[39] is inclined to find the motive of Erasmus' first visit to England in his desire to pursue his studies, and especially that of Greek, under circumstances more favourable than he could find elsewhere; but connecting this visit with his earlier experiences and especially recalling the struggle for maintenance in which he was just then engaged, we can hardly fail to find at least suggestions of other motives. That his visit did, in fact, powerfully influence his study and his thought there can be little doubt.
The immediate occasion of the journey, which we may safely place in the summer or autumn of 1498, was an invitation of young Lord Mountjoy. Of all the English youths whom Erasmus had known intimately at Paris, Mountjoy was the favourite. He seems to have been sincerely attached to his teacher and to have done his part in making easier for him the rugged path of pure scholarship. Writing from England to Robert Fisher, another of these young men, who was then in Italy, Erasmus says[40]:
"You would have seen me there, too, long since had not Lord Mountjoy, even as I was girded for the journey, carried me off to his own England. For whither would I not follow a youth so cultivated, so gentle, so amiable? I would follow him, so help me God! to the infernal regions."
The English trip must be regarded in a way as a substitute for the Italian. He was "girded" for Italy in every way but one. He could not find the money, and he took this chance of living on that English generosity of which he had made so successful trial at Paris. Nor was he in any way disappointed. During the year and a half, perhaps, of his first visit he was entertained by one and another of the patrons of English learning, or by some of the English scholars themselves—for scholarship in England was taking on that character which it has ever since maintained, of being joined with wealth and station. This was a type of scholarship so far unfamiliar to Erasmus and it made its due impression upon him. He liked everything in England. He writes to Fisher:
"You will ask me how I like your England. Well, if you ever believed me in anything, my dear Robert, I pray you believe me in this, that nothing has ever pleased me so much. I have found here a climate pleasant and healthful, and such cultivation and learning, not of the hair-splitting and trivial sort, but profound, exact and classic, both in Latin and in Greek, that now I feel no great longing for Italy, except for what is to be seen there. When I hear my friend Colet I seem to be listening to Plato's self. Who does not marvel at the complete mastery of the sciences in Grocyn? Was ever anything keener, more profound or more acute than the judgment of Linacre? Has Nature ever made a more gentle, a sweeter or a happier disposition than Thomas More's?"