This letter[514] written and despatched to the printer, Erasmus proceeded with his journey. The Rhine, swollen by the rains and the rapid melting of Alpine snows, had overflowed its banks; so that the journey, always disagreeable and fatiguing, was this time more than usually so. It was more like swimming, Erasmus said, than riding. But by the end of August[515] he was again hard at work in Froben’s printing-office putting the finishing strokes to his two great works.[516] By the 7th of March, 1516, he was able to announce that the New Testament was out of the printer’s hands, and the final colophon put to St. Jerome.[517]
It is time therefore that we should attempt to realise what these two great works were, and what the peculiar significance of their concurrent publication.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ‘NOVUM INSTRUMENTUM’ COMPLETED.—WHAT IT REALLY WAS (1516).
Main object of the ‘Novum Instrumentum.’
Not the Greek text.
The New Testament of Erasmus ought not to be regarded by any means as a mere reproduction of the Greek text, or criticised even chiefly as such. The labour which falls to the lot of a pioneer in such a work, the multiplied chances of error in the collation by a single hand, and that of a novice in the art of deciphering difficult manuscripts, the want of experience on the part of the printers in the use of Greek type, the inadequate pecuniary means at the disposal of Erasmus, and the haste with which it was prepared, considering the nature of the work,—all tended to make his version of the Greek text exceedingly imperfect, viewed in the light of modern criticism. He may even have been careless, and here and there uncandid and capricious in his choice of readings,—all this, of which I am incapable of forming a conclusive judgment, I am willing to grant by-the-bye. The merit of the New Testament of Erasmus does not mainly rest upon the accuracy of his Greek text,[518] although this had cost him a great deal of labour, and was a necessary part of his plan.
I suppose the object of an author may be most fairly gathered from his own express declarations, and that the prefaces of Erasmus to his first edition—the ‘Novum Instrumentum,’ as he called it—are the best evidence that can possibly be quoted of the purpose of Erasmus in its publication. To these, therefore, I must beg the reader’s attention.