[741] Bouterwek, p. 309. Andres, vii. 149.
Ethical writings of Erasmus and Melanchthon. 30. The writings of Erasmus are very much dedicated to the inculcation of Christian ethics. The Enchiridion Militis Christiani, the Lingua, and, above all, the Colloquies, which have this primary object in view, may be distinguished from the rest. The Colloquies are, from their nature, the most sportive and amusing of his works; the language of Erasmus has no prudery; nor his moral code, though strict, any austerity; it is needless to add, that his piety has no superstition. The dialogue is short and pointed, the characters display themselves naturally, the ridicule falls, in general, with skill and delicacy; the moral is not forced, yet always in view; the manners of the age, in some of the Colloquies, as in the German Inn, are humorously and agreeably represented. Erasmus, perhaps, in later times, would have been successful as a comic writer. The works of Vives breathe an equally pure spirit of morality. But it is unnecessary to specify works of this class, which, valuable as they are in their tendency, form too much the staple literature of every generation to be enumerated in its history. The treatise of Melanchthon, Moralis Philosophiæ Epitome, stands on different grounds. It is a compendious system of ethics, built in great measure on that of Aristotle, but with such variation as the principles of Christianity, or his own judgment, led him to introduce. Hence, though he exhorts young students, as the result of his own long reflection on the subject, to embrace the Peripatetic theory of morals, in preference of those of the Stoic or Epicurean school,[742] and contends for the utility of moral philosophy, as part of the law of God, and the exposition of that of nature, he admits that the reason is too weak to discern the necessity of perfect obedience, or the sinfulness of natural appetite.[743] In this epitome, which is far from servilely following the Aristotelian dogmas, he declares wholly against usury, less wise in this than Calvin, and asserts the magistrate’s right to punish heretics.
[742] Ego vero qui has sectarum controversias diu multumque agitavi, ἄνω καὶ κάτω στρέφων, ut Plato facere præcipit, valde adhortor adolescentulos, ut repudiatis Stoicis et Epicureis, amplectantur Peripatetica. Præfat. ad. Mor. Philos. Epist. (1549).
[743] Id. p. 4. The following passage, taken nearly at random, may serve as a fair specimen of Melanchthon’s style:
Primum cum necesse sit legem Dei, item magistratuum leges nosse, ut disciplinam teneamus ad coercendas cupiditates, facile intelligi potest, hanc philosophiam etiam prodesse, quæ est quædam domestica disciplina, quæ cum demonstrat fontes et causas virtutum, accendit animos ad earum amorem; abeunt enim studia in mores, atque hoc magis invitantur animi, quia quo propius aspicimus res bonas, eo magis ipsas et admiramur et amamus. Hic autem perfecta notitia virtutis quæritur. Neque vero dubium est, quin, ut Plato ait, sapientia, si quod ejus simulacrum manifestum in oculos incurreret, acerrimos amores excitaret. Nulla autem fingi effigies potest, quæ propius exprimat virtutem et clarius ob oculos ponat spectantibus, quam hæc doctrina. Quare ejus tractatio magnam vim habet ad excitandos animos, ad amorem rerum honestarum, præsertim in bonis ac mediocribus ingeniis, p. 6.
He tacitly retracts in this treatise all he had said against free-will in the first edition of the Loci Communes; in hac quæstione moderatio adhibenda est, ne quas amplectamur opiniones immoderatas in utramque partem, quæ aut moribus officiant, aut beneficia Christi obscurent, p. 34.
Sir T. Elyot’s Governor. 31. Sir Thomas Elyot’s Governor, published in 1531, though it might also find a place in the history of political philosophy, or of classical literature, seems best to fall under this head; education of youth being certainly no insignificant province of moral science. The author was a gentleman of good family, and had been employed by the king in several embassies. The Biographia Britannica pronounces him “an excellent grammarian, poet, rhetorician, philosopher, physician, cosmographer, and historian.” For some part of this sweeping eulogy we have no evidence; but it is a high praise to have been one of our earliest English writers of worth, and though much inferior in genius to Sir Thomas More, equal perhaps in learning and sagacity to any scholar of the age of Henry VIII. The plan of Sir Thomas Elyot in his Governor, as laid down in his dedication to the king, is bold enough. It is “to describe in our vulgar tongue the form of a just public weal, which matter I have gathered as well of the sayings of most noble authors, Greek and Latin, as by mine own experience, I being continually pained in some daily affairs of the public weal of this most noble realm almost from my childhood.” But it is far from answering to this promise. After a few pages on the superiority of regal over every other government, he passes to the subject of education, not of a prince only, but any gentleman’s son, with which he fills up the rest of his first book.
Severity of education. 32. This contains several things worthy of observation. He advises that children be used to speak Latin from their infancy, and either learn Latin and Greek together, or begin with Greek. Elyot deprecates “cruel and yrous schoolmasters, by whom the wits of children be dulled, whereof we need no better author to witness, than daily experience.”[744] All testimonies concur to this savage ill-treatment of boys in the schools of this period. The fierceness of the Tudor government, the religious intolerance, the polemical brutality, the rigorous justice, when justice it was, of our laws, seem to have engendered a hardness of character, which displayed itself in severity of discipline, when it did not even reach the point of arbitrary or malignant cruelty. Every one knows the behaviour of Lady Jane Grey’s parents towards their accomplished and admirable child; the slave of their temper in her brief life, the victim of their ambition in death. The story told by Erasmus of Colet is also a little too trite for repetition. The general fact is indubitable; and I think we may ascribe much of the hypocrisy and disingenuousness, which became almost national characteristics in this and the first part of the next century, to the rigid scheme of domestic discipline so frequently adopted; though I will not say but that we owe some part of the firmness and power of self-command, which were equally manifest in the English character, to the same cause.
[744] Chap. x.
He seems to avoid politics. 33. Elyot dwells much and justly on the importance of elegant arts, such as music, drawing, and carving, by which he means sculpture, and of manly exercises, in liberal education; and objects with reason to the usual practice of turning mere boys at fifteen to the study of the laws.[745] In the second book he seems to come back to his original subject, by proposing to consider what qualities a governor ought to possess. But this soon turns to long commonplace ethics, copiously illustrated out of ancient history, but perhaps, in general, little more applicable to kings than to private men, at least those of superior station. It is plain that Elyot did not venture to handle the political part of his subject as he wished to do. He seems worthy, upon the whole, on account of the solidity of his reflections, to hold a higher place than Ascham, to whom, in some respects, he bears a good deal of resemblance.