[300] It were much to be wished that Mr. Roscoe, who has so successfully turned his attention to the history of Italian Literature, of the period of Erasmus, would devote himself to the investigation of the philological history of the German schools, and more especially to the literary life of the great man of whom Lysander is above speaking. The biographical memoirs of Erasmus by Le Clerc, anglicised and enlarged by the learned Jortin, and Dr. Knight's life of the same, can never become popular. They want method, style and interest. Le Clerc, however, has made ample amends for the defectiveness of his biographical composition, by the noble edition of Erasmus's works which he put forth at Leyden, in the year 1703-6, in eleven volumes folio: of which volumes the reader will find an excellent analysis or review in the Act. Erudit., A.D. 1704, &c. Le Clerc, Bibl. Choisie, vol. i., 380; Du Pin's Bibl. Eccles., vol. xiv., and Biblioth. Fabric, pt. i., 359; from which latter we learn that, in the public library, at Deventer, there is a copy of Erasmus's works, in which those passages, where the author speaks freely of the laxity of the monkish character, have been defaced, "chartâ fenestrata." A somewhat more compressed analysis of the contents of these volumes appeared in the Sylloge Opusculorum Hist.-Crit., Literariorum, J.A. Fabricii, Hamb. 1738, 4to., p. 363, 378—preceded, however, by a pleasing, yet brief account of the leading features of Erasmus's literary life. Tn one of his letters to Colet, Erasmus describes himself as "a very poor fellow in point of fortune, and wholly exempt from ambition." A little before his death he sold his library to one John a Lasco, a Polonese, for only 200 florins. (Of this amiable foreigner, see Stypye's Life of Crammer; b. ii., ch. xxii.) Nor did he—notwithstanding his services to booksellers—and although every press was teeming with his lucubrations—and especially that of Colinæeus—(which alone put forth 24,000 copies of his Colloquies) ever become much the wealthier for his talents as an author. His bibliomaniacal spirit was such, that he paid most liberally those who collated or described works of which he was in want. In another of his letters, he declares that "he shall not recieve an obolus that year; as he had spent more than what he had gained in rewarding those who had made book-researches for him;" and he complains, after being five months at Cambridge, that he had, fruitlessly, spent upwards of fifty crowns. "Noblemen," says he, "love and praise literature, and my lucubrations; but they praise and do not reward." To his friend Eobanus Hessus (vol. vi., 25), he makes a bitter complaint "de Comite quodam." For the particulars, see the last mentioned authority, p. 363, 4. In the year 1519, Godenus, to whom Erasmus had bequeathed a silver bowl, put forth a facetious catalogue of his works, in hexameter and pentameter verses; which was printed at Louvain by Martin, without date, in 4to.; and was soon succeeded by two more ample and methodical ones by the same person in 1537, 4to.; printed by Froben and Episcopius. See Marchand's Dict. Bibliogr. et Histor., vol. i., p. 98, 99. The bibliomaniac may not object to be informed that Froben, shortly after the death of his revered Erasmus, put forth this first edition of the entire works of the latter, in nine folio volumes; and that accurate and magnificent as is Le Clerc's edition of the same (may I venture to hint at the rarity of large paper copies of it?), "it takes no notice of the Index Expurgatorius of the early edition of Froben, which has shown a noble art of curtailing this, as well as other authors." See Knight's Life of Erasmus, p. 353. The mention of Froben and Erasmus, thus going down to immortality together, induces me to inform the curious reader that my friend Mr. Edwards is possessed of a chaste and elegant painting, by Fuseli, of this distinguished author and printer—the portraits being executed after the most authentic representations. Erasmus is in the act of calmly correcting the press, while Froben is urging with vehemence some emendations which he conceives to be of consequence, but to which his master seems to pay no attention! And now having presented the reader ([p. 221], ante) with the supposed study of Colet, nothing remains but to urge him to enter in imagination, with myself, into the real study of Erasmus; of which we are presented with the exterior in the following view—taken from Dr. Knight's Life of Erasmus; p. 124.
I shall conclude this Erasmiana (if the reader will premit me so to entitle it) with a wood-cut exhibition of a different kind: it being perhaps the earliest portrait of Erasmus published in this country. It is taken from a work entitled, "The Maner and Forme of Confesion," printed by Byddell, in 8vo., without date; and is placed immediately under an address from Erasmus, to Moline, Bishop of Condome; dated 1524; in which the former complains bitterly of "the pain and grief of the reins of his back." The print is taken from a tracing of the original, made by me, from a neat copy of Byddel's edition, in the collection of Roger Wilbraham, Esq. I am free to confess that it falls a hundred degrees short of Albert Durer's fine print of him, executed A.D. 1526.
Lis. Let me go and bring it here! While you talk thus, I long to feast my eyes upon these grand books.
Lysand. You need not. Nor must I give to Erasmus a greater share of attention than is due to him. We have a large and varied field—or rather domain—yet to pass over. Wishing, therefore, Lorenzo speedily to purchase a small bronze figure of him, from the celebrated large one at Rotterdam, and to place the same upon a copy of his first edition of the Greek Testament printed upon vellum,[301] by way of a pedestal—I pass on to the notice of other bibliomaniacs of this period.
[301] In the library of York cathedral there is a copy of the first edition of Erasmus's Greek and Latin Testament, 1516, fol., struck off upon vellum. This, I believe, was never before generally known.
Subdued be every harsher feeling towards Wolsey, when we contemplate even the imperfect remains of his literary institutions which yet survive! That this chancellor and cardinal had grand views, and a magnificent taste, is unquestionable: and I suppose few libraries contained more beautiful or more numerous copies of precious volumes than his own. For, when in favour with his royal master, Henry VIII., Wolsey had, in all probability, such an ascendency over him as to coax from him almost every choice book which he had inherited from his father, Henry VII.; and thus I should apprehend, although no particular mention is made of his library in the inventories of his goods[302] which have been published, there can be no question about such a character as that of Wolsey having numerous copies of the choicest books, bound in velvet of all colours, embossed with gold or silver, and studded even with precious stones! I conceive that his own Prayer Book must have been gorgeous in the extreme! Unhappy man—a pregnant and ever-striking example of the fickleness of human affairs, and of the instability of human grandeur! When we think of thy baubles and trappings—of thy goblets of gold, and companies of retainers—and turn our thoughts to Shakspeare's shepherd, as described in the soliloquy of one of our monarchs, we are fully disposed to admit the force of such truths as have been familiar to us from boyhood, and which tell us that those shoulders feel the most burdened upon which the greatest load of responsibility rests. Peace to the once proud, and latterly repentant, spirit of Wolsey!
[302] In the last Variorum edition of Shakspeare, 1803, vol. xv., p. 144, we are referred by Mr. Douce to "the particulars of this inventory at large, in Stowe's Chronicle, p. 546, edit. 1631:" my copy of Stowe is of the date of 1615; but, not a syllable is said of it in the place here referred to, or at any other page; although the account of Wolsey is ample and interesting. Mr. Douce (ibid.) says that, among the Harl. MSS. (no. 599) there is one entitled "An Inventorie of Cardinal Wolsey's rich householde stuffe; temp. Hen. VIII.; the original book, as it seems, kept by his own officers." In Mr. Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa, vol. ii., 283-349, will be found a copious account of Wolsey's plate:—too splendid, almost, for belief. To a life and character so well known as are those of Wolsey, and upon which Dr. Fiddes has published a huge folio of many hundred pages, the reader will not here expect any additional matter which may convey much novelty or interest. The following, however, may be worth submitting to his consideration. The Cardinal had poetical, as well as political, enemies. Skelton and Roy, who did not fail to gall him with their sharp lampoons, have shewn us, by their compositions which have survived, that they were no despicable assailants. In the former's "Why come ye not to Court?" we have this caustic passage:
| He is set so high In his hierarchy Of frantic frenesy And foolish fantasy, That in chamber of stars All matters there he mars, Clapping his rod on the borde No man dare speake a word; For he hath all the saying Without any renaying: He rolleth in his records | He saith: "How say ye my lords? Is not my reason good?" Good!—even good—Robin-hood? Borne upon every side With pomp and with pride, &c. To drink and for to eat Sweet ypocras, and sweet meat, To keep his flesh chaste In Lent, for his repast He eateth capons stew'd Pheasant and partidge mewed. |
| Warton's Hist. Engl. Poetry, vol. ii., 345. | |