Two other Englishmen, both his seniors by some years, became friends of Erasmus during this first visit,—William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre. Grocyn was primarily a scholar and teacher, versed especially in Greek. Linacre was a physician of the highest repute in his day, and identified with the whole future of medical science in England through his foundation of the London College of Physicians. Both had studied in Italy and there had put themselves under the influence of the leading personages in the later humanistic generation. Both had become skilled in Greek learning, and were doing their parts, each in his own way, to further the advancement of Greek study in England. Grocyn was probably teaching Greek at Oxford when Erasmus came thither, and so far as he ever acknowledged obligations to any teacher, the younger man admits the great profit he derived from this riper talent. In regard to Linacre he notes especially a severe and painful accuracy which was, probably, the reason why he left so little behind to attest his scholarship. He could not satisfy his own exacting standards. With both these men Erasmus seems to have lived on terms of affectionate intimacy. There are indications that they were at times rather tired of his persistent begging, but this did not interfere with their friendly interest, which ended only with their lives.
Delighted as he plainly was with everything and everybody in England, better treated than he had ever been in his life, why did not Erasmus take his own advice and settle down there in some regular occupation? So cosmopolitan a genius as his could hardly have dreaded a change of residence; the scholar's home was wherever the sun shone, and certainly never was man more free to follow the bent of his own wishes than was Erasmus. That the idea was not a strange one to him is clear from many indications. Especially was it forced upon him by a suggestion from Colet that he might stay on at Oxford and join him in what seemed then likely to be his life-work of expounding the fundamental documents of Christianity upon the "new" basis of science and common sense. What Colet's arguments were on this point we can only guess from a reply of Erasmus, but they seem to have been such as would come naturally from one scholar to another in whom he thought he recognised a spirit kindred to his own. Colet lived in that new world of thought which was the old, and saw before him the mission of clearing away the mediæval rubbish that had piled up in the long interval between the really old theology of the Greek Fathers and the new thought of his own times. And here he seemed to have found the man of all others best fitted to help him—young, learned in the language and filled with the spirit of the ancients, free from all ties of family or home and, apparently, deeply serious in his interest in religious things. Colet had had a test of his quality in several active discussions on points of theology, which had brought out at once his learning and his desire for truth even at the sacrifice of his own less well-considered opinions. Erasmus had shown a docility in revising his judgments in very marked contrast to his firmness when dealing with other opponents. The difference was, that in facing Colet he found an opponent who was using his own weapons with equal skill and even greater courage. In the letter of Erasmus declining to remain at Oxford we hear nothing of the question of ways and means. It is impossible that it should not have been in his mind, but there is every reason to suppose that it did not influence his decision. The only trustworthy patron he had yet found was an Englishman; there was a chance of a university appointment, and, failing this, the prospect of private pupils was better in England than anywhere else. We are told ad nauseam of a considerable money loss which he suffered on leaving England. So that we are sure almost beyond a doubt that his reasons for declining what must have been a very tempting proposition were somehow connected with his larger scholarly ambitions.[48]Of course he makes as much as possible of his own modesty: Colet "is (to quote Plautus) asking water of a rock." How should he have the face to teach what he has never learned; how warm the frost of others when he himself was all of a shiver with fear? He praises Colet for his courage and zeal in the cause of the "ancient" theology as against the "new-fangled race of theologians, who spend their lives in mere arguments and sophistical quibbling." Not that he altogether condemns these studies, for he approves of every kind of study,
"but taken by themselves, with no admixture of more refined and ancient letters, they seem to make a man a conceited and disputatious fellow—whether they can ever make him a wise man, let others decide. For they seem to exhaust the mind with a kind of crude and barren subtlety; there is no sap in them, nor any real breath of life.
"I am not speaking against learned and approved professors of theology, for I look up to them with the greatest respect, but against that mean and haughty herd of theologians who think all the writings of all authors are worth nothing compared to themselves. When you, Colet, went into the fight against this unassailable horde that, so far as in you lay, you might restore that ancient and pure theology, now overgrown with their thorns, to its early splendour and dignity, you took upon yourself, so help me God!—a task in many ways most admirable, most loyal to the name of Theology itself, most wholesome for all studious men and especially for this blooming University of Oxford—but, I don't conceal it, a task full of difficulty and of opposition. Yet you will overcome the difficulty with your learning and your industry, and your great soul can afford to overlook the opposition. There are, too, among those theologians not a few who are both willing and able to help such honest efforts as yours. Nay, there is no one who would not join hands with you, since there is not a doctor in this famous school who has not listened most attentively to your lectures on St. Paul, now going on for the third year....
"I am not wondering that you should take upon your shoulders a burden to which you may be equal, but that you call me, a man of no account whatever, to share in so great an enterprise. For you ask me—nay you urge upon me, that as you are lecturing upon Paul so I, by expounding the ancient Moses or the eloquent Isaiah, should strive to rekindle the studies of this school—chilled, as you say, by these long months of winter."
He goes on to protest his unfitness for the task and especially to defend himself against the charge that he had given Colet reason to believe he might accept his suggestion.
"Nor did I come hither to teach poetry or rhetoric, which have ceased to be agreeable to me since they ceased to be necessary. I refuse the one, because it does not accord with my plans, the other because it is beyond my powers. You blame me wrongly in the one case, my dear Colet, because I have never had before me the profession of so-called secular literature, and you urge me in vain to the other, because I know that I am unequal to it. Besides, if I were never so fit, I could not do it, for I must soon go back to my deserted Paris."
We seem to find here a suggestion that Colet had laid before him two propositions,—one that he might become a teacher of the classic literature in which he was already a master; the other that he should join with himself in setting the meaning of Scripture free from the absurd trammels which the scholastic methods of interpretation had laid upon it. Either of these tasks, with a reasonable prospect of support and the delightful intercourse of academic life, would, one must suppose, have been a supreme attraction for Erasmus. The only possible explanation of his refusal is his dread of putting his neck into any yoke whatever, no matter how easy it might be. A possible suggestion of this motive is found in the somewhat enigmatic sentence that "poetry and rhetoric had ceased to interest him since they had ceased to be necessary." This may have meant that literature in itself was important to him only as a means of livelihood, and since he was, at least temporarily, provided for, he did not care to teach it at Oxford. Literature was henceforth to be a means to the higher end of redeeming theology, the regina disciplinarum, the "queen of sciences," from her present degradation. But for this latter work he was not as yet prepared. If we ask why he did not choose to continue his preparation under the very favourable conditions at Oxford, we may perhaps find a partial answer in his deep-seated dislike of the work of teaching. He could talk beautifully about it, but it seems pretty clear that he always hated it. So Oxford lost a professor, but the world gained a man.