"he once showed me a printed book which I knew for certain I had never read; but in the numerous marginal notes I recognised my own handwriting. I asked him where he had got the book. 'I acknowledge the writing,' I said, 'but the book I have never read nor had in my possession.' 'Oh, yes,' he replied, 'you read it once, but you have forgotten it; otherwise where did this writing come from?' Finally, with a laugh, he confessed the trick."
Marcus Musurus, his acquaintance at Venice, was here at Padua the best friend and helper of Erasmus. He was in full activity as professor of Greek, and though we have no record of any regular instruction to the visitor, it is certain that Erasmus applied to him for many details of his own work and held him always in grateful memory. Indeed his short residence of but a few weeks at Padua seems to have been an exception to the rule of tediousness. He refers to Padua afterwards as the seat of a more serious scholarship than was to be found at other Italian university towns. The formation of the League of Cambrai between King Louis XII. of France, Pope Julius II., the Emperor Maximilian, and the King of Spain against the republic of Venice broke up the quiet circle of Paduan scholars. Troops of the allies began to make their appearance in Venetian territory and Erasmus, reluctantly he says, was forced to move southward. He travelled in the suite of the boy-archbishop, stopping first at Ferrara, where he met a choice circle of resident scholars, among whom was the young Englishman, Richard Pace. It was at Pace's house that he was presented to the Ferrarese Humanists. A very pretty little story is recalled by one of them, Cœlius Calcagninus, who in writing to Erasmus in 1525 reminds him of their meeting in Ferrara, and gives him a brief account of the other scholars whom he had met there.
"We were talking," he writes, "of Aspendius the harp-player, and the question came up as to the meaning of intus canere and extra canere, when you suddenly drew forth from your pouch a copy of your Adages, just printed at Venice. From that moment I began to admire the genius and learning of Erasmus, and scarce ever have I heard mention of his name without recalling that conversation almost with reverence. My witness is Richard Pace, that man most learned himself and by nature made to be the promoter of the studies of the most learned men."
Only a few days were spent at Ferrara and still less time at Bologna. The party reached Siena at the very end of 1508 or the beginning of 1509, and there settled definitely for the work of the young archbishop. We have a very engaging picture of Erasmus as a teacher of rhetoric in his comments upon the Adage, "Thou wast born at Sparta; do honour to it."[78] He represents his pupil as a model of all the virtues and gives us again an insight into his method of teaching. It is always the same which he had himself employed in learning, the method of persistent practice in repeating and writing the language itself. A style was to be formed only by becoming absolutely familiar with the classic model.
Yet the life at Siena, serene and charming as it may have been for the pupil, was, if we may judge by his expressions in other connections, more or less a bore to the master. He liked to think of himself as an authority on the art of teaching, but he seems always to have regarded teaching as being, for himself, an interruption to the higher interests of his life. After a few weeks he was restless again, and begged permission of his pupil to go on alone to Rome.
It is easy for a modern to picture the charm which the Eternal City with its countless memorials of the ancient world must have exercised upon a man whose life was devoted to the study of that world, who spoke and wrote its language, and who drew from it almost the whole material of his intellectual occupation. None of the biographers of Erasmus has been quite able to resist the temptation to tell what he must have thought and felt in this august presence; but candour compels us to say that his own witness on this point is as meagre as can well be imagined. Only one or two scattered expressions give us any reason to think that his impressions of Rome were at all of the kind they ought in all reason to have been. It was the pontificate of Julius II., a man indeed chiefly devoted to the political interests of his great place, but also an eager patron of art and learning, doing his part in the attempt, never quite successful, to make Rome a real centre of culture. What was true of the pope was true also of that group of great prelates who formed around him a court more splendid and not less worldly than that of any purely temporal ruler. Say what one may and, in all truth, must say of the corruption and scandal of the Roman institution, it was a life of immense activity and, for a thinking man, one of great interest. Rome was alive with building; painting and sculptural decoration were being carried to a height unheard of in human history. The ancient monuments were, it is true, fast disappearing to make room and to furnish material for new construction, but enough was left to give the interested traveller abundant suggestion of what had been. That Erasmus saw and, after his fashion, noted these things is certain; but he felt no impulse to dwell upon them or to speak of them to others. His life during this first[79] visit at Rome was more completely that of the literary traveller and sight-seer than it had ever been anywhere. There is no pretence that he busied himself with study or with composition. So far as he had any aim it seems to have been to make acquaintance with men of his own kind and their patrons,—nor is there the slightest room for suspicion that in making these connections he had in view any ulterior advantage to himself. His best introduction was the book of Adages, by this time widely known and everywhere justly welcomed as a monument of vast learning, immense industry, and an originality of thought not less noteworthy.
Perhaps the most intimate companion of these Roman days was Scipio Carteromachos, a Tuscan scholar, with whom Erasmus had made acquaintance at Bologna, and for whom he expresses unusual regard. "He was a man," he writes, "of curious and accurate learning, but so averse to display that unless you called him out you would swear that he was quite ignorant of letters." They had met again at Padua, and now lived for awhile at Rome apparently in the greatest intimacy, sharing the same bed at times, though this it would seem was not an unusual proof of friendship with Erasmus. Through Carteromachos he was introduced to many others, scholars of the same type and frequenters of the papal court. The result was that he found himself brought into relation with the most distinguished Roman circle. He makes the most of this fact afterward in defending himself from the charge of unfaithfulness to the papal cause, and there would seem to be no room for doubt that he was at least a well tolerated guest of the men who were giving the tone to the ruling society of the capital. He claims intimate acquaintance with Tommaso Inghirami, the most popular preacher of the city, the type of religious orator who gave scandal to the more serious by garnishing his oratory rather with classic allusion and quotation than with proofs and texts of the Bible. In his treatise on a false purity of style called Ciceronianus, Erasmus gives us a choice specimen of this kind of preaching.[80]
He says that he was urged by his learned friends at Rome to attend the discourse of a famous pulpit orator whose name he would rather have understood than expressed. The subject was the death of Christ. Pope Julius II. himself was present, a most unusual honour, and with him a great crowd of cardinals, bishops, and visiting scholars. The opening and closing parts of the discourse, longer than the real sermon itself, were occupied with praises of Julius, whom the orator called