[4] Biblia Latina, 1529, c. 2.
VIII
THE POINT OF VIEW
There is one thing in the world which is constantly with us, and which has probably continued unchanged throughout all ages of history: the weather. Yet Erasmus' writings contain no traces of that delight in brilliant sunshine which most Northerners feel, nor of that wonder at the beauties of the firmament which was so real to Homer. He frequently remarks that the weather was pestilent, that the winds blew and ceased not, that the sea was detestably rough and the clouds everlasting; but of the praise which accompanies enjoyment there is scarcely a word. His utmost is to say that the climate of a place is salubrious. He often describes his journeys. As he rode on horseback across the Alps or was carried down the Rhine in a boat, he must have had ample opportunity to behold the glories which Nature sometimes spreads before us in our Northern clime, and lavishes more constantly on less favoured regions. But the loveliness of blue skies and serene air, the glitter of distant snows, the soft radiance of the summer moon, and the golden architrave of the sunset he had no eyes to see.
Such indifference to the beauties of Nature admits, however, of some explanation. With a scantier population than that which now covers the earth, there was less agriculture and more of waste and unkempt places not yet reduced to the service of mankind. Solitudes were vaster and more complete. In a country so well cared for as England is to-day, it is difficult to imagine how unpleasing can be the aspect of land over which Nature still has the upper hand, how desolate and dreadful the great mountain areas which men now have to seek at the ends of the earth, where the smoke rises not and even the lone goatherd has not penetrated. To-day our difficulty is to escape from the thronging pressure of millions: we rarely experience what in the sixteenth century must often have been felt—the shrinking to leave, the joy of returning to, the kindly race of men. Ascham in the Toxophilus (1545), when discussing the relaxations open to the scholar who has been 'sore at his book', urges that 'walking alone into the field hath no token of courage in it'. But though this may have been true by that time in the immediate neighbourhood of English towns, it was not yet true abroad; for Thomas Starkey in his Dialogue (1538), almost as valuable a source as the Utopia, praises foreign cities with their resident nobles by comparison with English, which are neglected and dirty 'because gentlemen fly into the country to live, and let cities, castles and towns fall into ruin and decay'.
It is tantalizing, too, considering how abundant are Erasmus' literary remains, that we get so little description of places from him. He travelled far and wide, in the Low Countries, up and down the Rhine, through France, southwards to Rome and Naples. He was a year in Venice, three years at Cambridge, eight years at Basle, six at Freiburg. What precious information he might have given us about these places, which then as now were full of interesting buildings and treasures of art! what a mine of antiquarian detail, if he had expatiated occasionally! But a meagre description of Constance, a word or two about Basle in narrating an explosion there, glimpses of Walsingham and Canterbury in his colloquy on pilgrimages—that is almost all that can be culled from his works about the places he visited. When he came to Oxford, Merton tower had been gladdening men's eyes for scarcely fifty years, and the tower of Magdalen had just risen to rival its beauty; Duke Humfrey's Library and the Divinity School were still in their first glory, and the monks of St. Frideswide were contemplating transforming the choir of their church into the splendid Perpendicular such as Bray had achieved at Westminster and Windsor for Henry VII. But Erasmus tells us nothing of what he saw; only what he heard and said. This lack of enjoyment in Nature, lack of interest in topography and archaeology, was probably personal to him. It was not so with some of his friends. More and Ellenbog, as we have seen, could feel the beauty in the night
'Of cloudless climes and starry skies'.
Aleander in a diary records the exceptional brilliance of the planet Jupiter at the end of September 1513. He pointed it out to his pupils in the Collège de la Marche at Paris, and together they remarked that its rays were strong enough to cast a shadow. Ellenbog enjoyed the country, and Luther also was susceptible to its charms. Budaeus had a villa to which he delighted to escape from Paris, and where he laid out a fine estate. Beatus Rhenanus after thirty years retained impressions of Louis XII's gardens at Tours and Blois and of a 'hanging garden' in Paris; and could write a detailed account of the Fugger palace at Augsburg with its art treasures. Or think of the painters. The Flemings of the fifteenth century had learnt from the Italians to fit into their pictures landscapes seen through doors or windows, gleaming in sunshine, green and bright. Van Eyck's 'Adoration of the Lamb' is set in beautiful scenery; grassy slopes and banks studded with flowers, soft swelling hills, and blue distances crowned with the towers he knew so well, Utrecht and Maestricht and Cologne and Bruges. Even in the interiors of Durer and Holbein, where no window opens to let in the view, Nature is not left wholly unrepresented; for flowers often stand upon the tables, carnations and lilies and roses, arranged with taste and elegance. On the whole the enjoyment of Nature formed but a small part in the outlook of that age as compared with the prominence it receives in modern literature and life; but we should be wrong in inferring that it was wholly absent.
To the men of the fifteenth century the earth was still the centre of the universe: the sun moved round it like a more magnificent planet, and the stars had been created