We left him making the best of his way to Dover, with his purse full of golden crowns, kindly bestowed by his English friends in order that he might now carry out his long-cherished intention of going to Italy. But the Fates had decreed against him. King Henry VII. had already reached the avaricious period of his life and reign. Under cover of an old obsolete statute, he had given orders to the Custom House officers to stop the exportation of all precious metals, and the Custom House officers in their turn, construing their instructions strictly to the letter, had seized upon Erasmus’s purseful of golden crowns, and relieved him of the burden, for the benefit of the King’s exchequer.[279] The poor scholar proceeded without them to cross to Boulogne.
He was a bad sailor, and the hardships of travel soon told upon his health. He was heart-sick also; as well he might be, for this unlucky loss of his purse had utterly disconcerted once more his long-cherished plans. On his arrival at Paris, after a wretched and dangerous journey,[280] he was taken ill, and recovered only to bear his bitter disappointment as best he could. Before he had yet recovered from his illness he wrote this touching letter to Arnold, the young legal friend of More, with whom a few weeks before he and More had visited the Royal nursery.
Erasmus to Arnold.[281]
Erasmus gives up all hope of going to Italy.
‘Salve, mi Arnolde. Now for six weeks I having been suffering much from a nocturnal ague, of a lingering kind but of daily recurrence, and it has nearly killed me. I am not yet free from the disease, but still somewhat better. I don’t yet live again, but some hope of life dawns upon me. You ask me to tell you my plans. Take this only, to begin with: To mortify myself to the world, I dash my hopes. I long for nothing more than to give myself rest, in which I might live wholly to God alone, weep away the sins of a careless life, devote myself to the study of the Holy Scriptures, either read somewhat or write. This I cannot do in a monastery or college. One could not be more delicate than I am; my health will bear neither vigils, nor fasts, nor any disturbance, even when at its best. Here, where I live in such luxury, I often fall ill; what should I do amid the labours of college life?
Cost of going to Italy.
‘I had determined to go to Italy this year, and to work at theology some months at Bologna; also there to take the degree of Doctor; then in the year of Jubilee to visit Rome; which done, to return to my friends and then to settle down. But I am afraid that these things that I would, I shall not be able to accomplish. I fear, in the first place, that my health would not stand such a journey and the heat of the climate. Lastly, I reckon that I could not go to Italy, nor live there without great expense. It costs a great deal also to prepare for a degree. And the Bishop of Cambray gives very sparingly. He altogether loves more liberally than he gives, and promises everything much more largely than he performs. It is partly my own fault for not pressing him. There are so many who are even extorting. In the meantime I shall do what seems for the best. Farewell.’
What was he to do? It was clear that he did not know what to do. The worst of it was that the unfortunate loss of the price of many months’ leisure,[282] not only obliged him to postpone sine die his project of visiting Italy, but also to spend a large portion of his time and strength for the next few years in a struggle almost for subsistence. For the wolf must in some way or other be kept from the door; and Erasmus was poor!
Poverty of Erasmus.
His Greek studies.
Erasmus visits Holland.
For a few months he struggled on at Paris, living in lodgings with an old fellow student ‘sparingly,’[283] hard at work at a collection of Greek and Latin proverbs—his Adagia—partly in order to raise the wind, partly to improve himself in Greek. Sometimes borrowing and sometimes begging, whatever money came to his hands went forthwith first in buying Greek books and then in clothes.[284] Later in the year, the prevalence of the Plague in Paris drove him to Orleans. He would have gone to Italy, but he had not the means.[285] In December he returned to Paris to continue his struggling life.[286] In a letter written in January, 1501, on the anniversary of his misfortune at Dover, he described himself ‘as having now for a whole year been sailing under a stormy sky against the waves and against the winds.’[287] To add to his troubles, the Plague again broke out in Paris; and, terrified by the number of funerals passing his door, the poor scholar fled from the city to spend a few weeks in his native country.[288] During his stay in Holland he visited the monastery at Stein,[289] where in early years he had tasted the bitters of the monastic life. Neither there nor elsewhere in Holland did he find a resting-place.