After many refreshing days passed at St. Omer, Erasmus returned to Paris to pursue his literary labours. These, notwithstanding all the hindrances of ill-health and poverty, never seemed to have flagged.[297] He had already made up his mind to devote himself to the Herculean task of correcting the text of St. Jerome’s voluminous works, with a view to their publication.[298] The first edition of his ‘Adagia’ had been printed in 1501; and during a visit to Louvain and Antwerp, in 1503, he was able to publish some other works—his afterwards famous ‘Enchiridion’ amongst the rest.[299] But notwithstanding all his indomitable energy, and the often repeated kindness of Battus and the Marchioness, it would be difficult to imagine a longer catalogue of troubles and disappointments—and these too of that harassing and vexatious kind which are most trying to the temper—than is contained in the letters of Erasmus during these dreary years.[300]

He might well have been excused if, lost sight of as it would seem by his English friends, he had himself forgotten his promise to Colet on leaving Oxford, amidst the cares of his continental life.

Erasmus remembers his promise to Colet.

But whilst these necessities not a little interrupted, as was likely, those studies to which Colet’s example and precept had urged him, and lengthened out the preliminary labours which Erasmus had made up his mind must precede his active participation in Colet’s work, they did not, it seems, damp his energy, or induce him to look back after putting his hand to the plough. This and more lies touchingly hinted in the following letter written by Erasmus to Colet on receipt of the news of the elevation of his friend to the dignity of Doctor and Dean.

Erasmus to Colet.[301]

‘If our friendship, most learned Colet, had been of a common-place kind, or your habits those of the common run of men, I should indeed have been somewhat fearful lest it might have been extinguished, or at least cooled, by our long and wide separation.... But I prefer to believe that the cause of my having received no letter from you now for several years, lies rather in your press of business, or ignorance of my whereabouts, or even in myself, than in your forgetfulness of an old friend....

‘I am much surprised that you have not yet given to the world any of your commentaries on St. Paul and the Gospels. I know your modesty, but surely you ought to conquer that, and print them for the public good.

Erasmus congratulates Colet on his preferment.
Wants to devote himself to Scripture studies.
Greek and Hebrew studies.

‘As to the title of Doctor and Dean, I do not so much congratulate you about these—for I know well they will bring you nothing but labour—as those for whose good you are to bear them.

‘I cannot tell you, dearest Colet, how, by hook and by crook, I struggle to devote myself to the study of sacred literature—how I regret everything which either delays me or detains me from it. But constant ill-fortune has prevented me from extricating myself from these hindrances. When in France, I determined that if I could not conquer these difficulties I would cast them aside, and that once freed from them, with my whole mind I would set to work at these sacred studies, and devote the rest of my life to them. Although three years before I had attempted something on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans,[302] and had completed four volumes at one pull, I was nevertheless prevented from going on with it, owing chiefly to the want of a better knowledge of Greek. Consequently, for nearly these three years past, I have buried myself in Greek literature; nor do I think the labour has been thrown away. I began also to dip into Hebrew, but, deterred by the strangeness of the words, I desisted, knowing that one man’s life and genius are not enough for too many things at a time. I have read through a good part of the works of Origen, under whose guidance I seemed really to get on, for he opened to me, as it were, the springs and the method of theological science.