CHAPTER IV
PARIS—THE "ADAGIA"—THE "ENCHIRIDION MILITIS CHRISTIANI"—PANEGYRIC ON PHILIP OF BURGUNDY
1500-1506

His "deserted Paris," "that Gallic dung-heap," was calling to Erasmus, perhaps with the same siren voice that has drawn thither so many another homeless genius, and he went. He was, if we may believe his later wails, pretty well supplied with money, which he had turned into French coin. He is very careful to insist that he had not received this money in England, but if not, it is difficult to imagine where it could have come from. He was aware of a law forbidding the exportation of gold from the realm, but had been advised by his friends that this law applied only to English coin and so felt safe. The customs officers at Dover, however, took another view of the matter and left him nothing but the small amount allowed by law, nor could his connections in high quarters ever avail him to make good his loss.

An account of the affair, written, so Erasmus says, "unless he is mistaken," twenty-seven years afterward, brings this incident into direct connection with the earliest piece of writing in which Erasmus presented himself to the world in his true character. Speaking[49] of his mishap from the lofty position of a famous scholar before whose biting satire the great ones of the earth might well tremble a little, he gives himself great praise for not having taken immediate vengeance on the king and the country which had used him so badly, by writing something against them. He refrained partly because it seemed an unworthy thing to do, and partly because he would not be the means of bringing down the royal wrath upon his dear friends in England; and so, having no resources, he determined to publish something that might pay. He had nothing on hand, but by reading hard for a few days he "got together in haste quite a 'forest' of adages, thinking that a book of this sort, whatever its quality, would, by its very usefulness, go into the hands of students."

This account of the origin of the famous Adages of Erasmus seems in the main reasonable. It was in the strictest sense a bread-and-butter undertaking, calculated to meet a demand which every writer of that day must feel and for which there was no adequate supply. The scholar, no matter how great his claim to individuality, could not get on without continual references to classical literature. They were, so to speak, the certificates of his scholarship; they took the place of the references to the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures by which the mediæval scholar had at once supported his views and demonstrated his learning. Of course such decoration ought to come naturally as a result of the writer's own wide reading and profound reflection in the classic literature, and during the really great times of the Revival of Learning, while scholarship was confined to comparatively few men, and these men of really commanding powers, such had been the case. By the time of Erasmus, however, the new learning was falling rapidly into its second stage; it was becoming more widely diffused and, naturally, was drawing to itself ever more and more second-rate material. Learning was coming to be fashionable, and at just that stage all aids to a ready acquirement of at least the appearance of scholarship were sure to be in demand. It is an evidence of Erasmus' practical good sense that he was ready to advance his most serious purposes by contributing to this popularisation of learning.

Erasmus was always fond of telling how rapidly he worked, but in the present case we have every reason to believe that his work was hasty and experimental in the extreme. Nothing more unscientific in form can well be imagined than this collection of scattered sayings from the writings, chiefly, of classic authors. The method, practically unchanged in the many later editions, was simply to jot down at random some verse of poetry or some word having a peculiar meaning and then to give a very brief explanation of its origin and value; then if the occasion warranted, upon this as a text to write a little essay. In this personal and individual comment lies the real importance of the Adages, in giving us an idea of their author. It was this personal element also which appealed most strongly to those of his own time who were capable of valuing it, but it was not this which commended the Adages, probably, to the widest circle of readers. To the great mass of young students and to the increasing numbers of men everywhere who were trying their hands at Latin composition, the book was rather an encyclopædia of classical quotations, from which they could select the needed decorations of their style without the trouble of going to the original sources.

To these two lines of patronage the Adages owed their great and immediate popularity. The first edition was printed at Paris in 1500 and contained about eight hundred selections. As to the method of the future editions Erasmus gives us some information. When he saw that the book was received with gratitude by scholars and was apparently going to live, and moreover that publishers were vying with each other in printing it, he kept enriching it from time to time as his own leisure or the supply of available books gave him opportunity. What he regarded as the final edition was printed at Basel by Froben in 1523. After that he merely annotated previous editions, "rather as giving to others material for a future work than as really making a new book with proper care."[50] This first edition of the Adages was dedicated to Mountjoy. Without the later additions it must, one would think, have been as dry reading as could well be imagined, but the fact of its popularity is unquestionable. Edition after edition appeared with great rapidity, so that we are now able to record no less than sixty-two within the author's lifetime.

As for the pecuniary rewards which Erasmus may have had in view, there is no indication that they were immediate or considerable. The ethics of book-publishing were at that time in a highly rudimentary state. So far as one can see there was nothing to prevent any printer from putting forth any writing that by any chance got into his hands. Erasmus in a dedicatory letter to Mountjoy with a later edition[51] says that his reason for the new publication was that the earlier editions had been printed so badly that one might suppose the errors had been made intentionally. In another place[52] he says, with an unusual effort at accuracy, that the first edition of the Adages was published on the 15th of June, 1500, while he was absent from Paris. This date is certainly a very early one, and we have to bear in mind that Erasmus' object in giving it was to prove that he had got ahead of a rival compiler of proverbs who had accused him of stealing his thunder. It agrees, however, with our other indications. The most singular thing about it is that a young author, putting forth his first ambitious publication, should have been willing to absent himself from the place where the work was being done. The fact was, probably, that Erasmus was frightened half out of his wits by the presence of the plague in Paris, and this impression is strengthened by the pains he takes to convince his friend Faustus Andrelinus of his uncommon freedom from the vulgar emotion of fear. He was at Orleans and Faustus had urged him to come back to Paris; had even, so Erasmus says, called him a coward by the mouth of his own servant.

"This reproach would not be endured even if made against a Swiss soldier; against a poet, a lover of ease and quiet, it doesn't stick at all. And yet, in matters of this sort, to have no dread whatever seems to me rather the part of a log than of a brave man. When the fight is with an enemy that can be driven back, whose blows can be returned, who can be conquered by fighting, then if a man wants to seem brave, let him, for all I care. The Lernean Hydra, last and hardest of all the labours of Hercules, could not be overcome with steel but could be beaten by Greek fire; but what can you do against an evil that can be neither seen nor conquered? There are some things which it is better to run away from than to conquer. The brave Æneas did not go into battle with the sirens, but turned his helm far away from that shore of danger. 'But,' you say, 'there is no danger'—well, meanwhile I, on the safe side of danger, see a great many persons dying. I imitate the fox in Horace:—'I am alarmed at the footsteps, so many leading towards you and so few away.' In this condition of things I wouldn't hesitate to fly, not merely to Orleans, but to Cadiz or to the farthest of the far Orkneys; not because I am a timid person or of less than manly courage, but because I really do fear—not to die, for we are all born to die—but to die by my own fault. If Christ warned his disciples to flee from the wrath of their persecutors by straightway changing their residence, why should I not evade so deadly a foe when I conveniently can?"

Yet he is not happy at Orleans; the Muses grow chilly in that city of law-books; he means to come back, and meanwhile he begs Faustus to write a prefatory letter to his Adages, which he has just put forth. He asks this not for the merit of the work, for he does not flatter himself so far as not to see how poor it is—but the worse the goods the more they need recommendation. Faustus gave the letter and it duly appeared, but whether it did not just suit Erasmus, or whether he could not quite bear to have his work recommended by anyone, he saw fit later to declare that the printer had wormed it out of Faustus. Perhaps, too, Faustus had a little overdone it and in the extravagance of this festive person's praise Erasmus may have detected a little sting of sarcasm. In a letter to his friend and pupil, Augustinus, Erasmus reproves him for taking too flattering a tone towards himself and says, by the way,

"that exaggeration of Faustus, in which he says that in me alone is the very sanctuary of letters, was not so very delightful to me, both because extravagant praise suits neither my modesty nor my deserts and because such figures of speech are as a rule not believed and simply arouse envy. They are moreover akin to irony, just as what you wrote me, although in most flattering terms, did not really flatter me at all: 'O, most attentive teacher, I, thy devoted pupil, dedicate myself to thee; command me as thou wilt; naught that I have is mine, but all is thine!' All that kind of talk, it seems to me, ought to be kept as far as possible from a sincere attachment. For where there is real affection as there is, I think, between us, what use is there in such figures of speech? And where affection is insincere they are wont to be turned into a suspicion of malice. Therefore you would greatly oblige me if you would completely banish such exaggerations from your letters, that simple affection may find its proper language and that you may bear in mind that you are writing to an attached friend and not to a tyrant."