Both his father and his mother dying young, Erasmus was left to the care of three guardians, who endeavoured to force him into a convent. They sent him for three years to a conventual preparatory school at Bois-le-duc (Hertogenbosch), and afterwards so far overcame his resistance that he entered upon the novitiate in a house of the regular canons of St Augustine, at Stein, near Gouda. He made his profession here in 1486, aet. 19; and was afterwards ordained priest by the bishop of Utrecht. Erasmus had no vocation for the devotional exercises of convent life, and was disgusted with the society of the monks,—coarse, ignorant, and illiterate. His aspiration was to escape to some university where he might study. From the very first, the love of letters was the one ruling motive of his life. An unexpected chance brought him deliverance. Henri de Bergues, bishop of Cambray, took him to be his secretary. With the permission of the prior of Stein, and the consent of the general of the order and of· the ordinary, the bishop of Utrecht, Erasmus left the convent. After a short stay with his new patron the bishop of Cambray, and with funds sparingly supplied by him, Erasmus entered the college of Montaigu in the university of Paris. Of the revolting economy of this college in respect of food and lodging he has left a graphic account in the Colloquies (Icthyophagia): “I carried nothing away from it,” he says, “but a body infected with disease, and a plentiful supply of vermin.” Rabelais, it will be remembered, has recorded a similar experience.

To eke out his scanty means he took pupils. With one of these, Lord Mountjoy, he came to England in 1497. According to Anthony Wood, he spent three years, 1497 to 1499, in Oxford. Many of the biographers make him return to Paris in 1498; but the chronology of this part of Erasmus’s life is confused. It is certain that he resided some time in Oxford, having a room in a small Augustinian house called St Mary’s College, in New-inn-hall Lane, and either there or in London made the acquaintance of the few Englishmen who were distinguished for learning, Colet, Grocyn, Linacer, Latimer, Sixtinus. In 1499 he was again in Paris, then at Orleans, then at St Omer’s in the Netherlands, and for the next five years he seems to have been continually on the move between France and Holland, his longest sojourn being at Louvain. In these years he had a hard struggle with poverty, supporting himself partly by pupils, partly by dedications. He wrote and delivered a Latin oration on the occasion of the reception of the archduke Philip at Brussels in 1504, for which he got a handsome fee. In April 1506 we find him again in England, first in London, and becoming acquainted with More and Warham, then at Cambridge, performing the exercises for the divinity degree, and commencing B.D. “The Athenae Cantabrigienses” of Cooper make him take the degree of D.D. at the university, but this is an error. His stay in England was not long, as he found opportunity to carry out a long cherished project of a journey to Italy. Want of funds had hitherto been the obstacle; “I have a longing to visit Italy,” he wrote in 1498, “but it is not easy to fly without wings.” He was engaged to escort the two sons of Baptista Boyer, physician to Henry VII., as far as Bologna. In September 1506 he λvas at Turin, and took the degree of D.D. in that university. He passed the winter of 1506-7 at Bologna, where he was witness of the triumphal entry of Julius IL, and where he made acquaintance with Paulus Bυmbasius and Scipio Carteromachus (Forteguerra). Here he obtained a papal dispensation permitting him to lay aside the dress of his order, though the story of his being mistaken for a plague-doctor in consequence of wearing it is justly dismissed by Drummond as a pleasant fiction. He visited Venice, where he stayed some time, for the purpose of passing through the press of Aldus a second and greatly enlarged edition of his Adagia. Here he was domesticated in the house of Asulanus, and made the acquaintance of the circle of learned men who were clustered round the Aldine press,—Marcus Musurus, Aleander, Baptista Egnatius, Arc.

In 1508 he removed to Padua, where he spent the winter as tutor to Alexander Stewart, natural son of James IV., king of Scotland. Father and son fell together, not long after, at Flodden. In the early spring of 1509 the tutor and pupil removed to Siena, and from Siena Erasmus went on to Rome. As his reputation had gone before him, he was received wherever he came with marks of distinction. But he learnt nothing from intercourse with the Italian literati; the Renaissance had already spent itself, and Erasmus complains “In Italia frigent studia, fervent bella.” He had various offers of preferment, but a letter from Lord Mountjoy announcing the death of the king of England, April 1509, and magnifying the favourable disposition of the young sovereign Henry VIII. towards Erasmus, and towards learning in general, determined his return to this country. From London, where he was the guest of Thomas More, and where he wrote his Encomium Morias, he moved to Cambridge, whither he was invited by John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and lodged in Queen’s College, of which Fisher was president. By Fisher’s interest, he was appointed Lady Margaret’s professor of divinity, and afterwards regius reader of Greek. From his mention of the grammars of Chrysoloras and of Gaza as the text books on which he lectured, it may be inferred that the study of Greek was still in its infancy in that university. Gibbon’s sarcasm that “Eras mus learned Greek at Oxford and taught it at Cambridge” {Hist., ch. 66) has just this foundation.

The stipends of these chairs were small, and Erasmus refused to take fees from students mostly very poor. He lived upon presents from wealthy ecclesiastics. Archbish op Warham was his principal patron. Erasmus says, “He has given me a living worth a hundred nobles, and changed it at my request for a pension of one hundred crowns. Within these few years he has given me more than four hundred nobles without my asking; one day he gave me one hundred and fifty. From other bishops I have received more than one hundred. Lord Mountjoy has appointed me a pension of one hundred crowns.” He got fifteen angels from Colet for a dedication. He says, in the Compendium Vitce, that if the promises made to him had been performed he would have passed the rest of his days in England. But in this he perhaps deceived himself. At this period of his life, and till he was turned fifty, the agitation of locomotion, new places, and fresh faces were a necessity to him. An over-excited nervous sensibility was at the bottom of this feverish restlessness. In the autumn of 1513 he bade farewell to England, visited Lord Mountjoy at the Castle of Ham in Picardy, of which he was governor, and passed by the Rhine to Strasburg. Here he made the aquaintance of Wimpheling, Sebastian Brant, and the young Johann Sturm. He employed his time on board the tow-boat by which he leisurely ascended the river in correcting his “Commentarii de duplici copia,” &c., for a new edition. To Basel, -which was to be the home of his old age, he was attracted by the reputation of its press. But he met with such a hearty welcome from Froben and Amerbach, and found so agreeable a circle of men of learning, that he passed the whole winter 1514-15 here. The bishop of Basel, Christoph von Uten-heim, was so much pleased with him that he sought to domesticate him in his house; he made the acquaintance of Zwingli and of Hans Holbein, and drew round him a circle of young students full of ardour for learning, and consequently of admiration for Erasmus,—Glareanus, Oecolampadius, Beer, Myconius, Sapidus, and, above all, Beatus Rhenanus, who became his attached disciple and biographer.

Though from this time forward Basel became the centre of occupation and interest for Erasmus, yet for the next seven years he was in constant movement, from Basel to Flanders, thence to England in 1517, and back again to Basel. Offers of church preferment in various countries continued to be made to him. But his circumstances had improved so much, by pensions, the presents which -were showered upon him, and the sale of his books, that he was now in a position to refuse all proposals which would have interfered with his cherished independence. Aware how necessary it was, if he would maintain his literary supremacy, to keep on good terms with the powerful in church and state, and therefore cautious not to give offence in word or act, he was yet most anxious to avoid dependence on any individual. It suited him to be always competed for, and never to sell himself. The general ardour for the restoration of the arts and of learning created an aristocratic public, of which Erasmus was supreme pontiff. Luther spoke to the people and the ignorant; Erasmus had the ear of the educated class. His friends and admirers were distributed over all the countries of Europe, and presents were continually arriving from small as well as great, from a donation of 200 florins, made by Pope Clement VII., down to sweetmeats and comfits contributed by the nuns of Cologne {Ep. 666). From England, in particular, he continued to receive supplies of money. In the last year of his life, Cromwell sent him 20 angels, and Archbishop Crammer 18. Though Erasmus led a very hard-working and far from luxurious life, and had no extragavant habits, yet he could not live upon little. The excessive delicacy of his constitution exacted some unusual indulgences. He could not bear the iron stoves of Germany, and required an open fireplace, or a porcelain stove, in the room in which he worked. He was afflicted with the stone, and obliged to be particular as to the wine he drank. The white wines of Baden or the Rhine did not suit him; he could only drink those of Burgundy or Franche-Comté. No more acceptable present could be offered him than a cask of the light-red wine of the Jura. He could neither eat nor bear the smell of fish. “His heart,” he said, “was Catholic, but his stomach was Lutheran.” For his constant journeys he required two horses, one for himself and one for his attendant. And though he was almost alw ays found in horse-flesh by his friends, the keep had to be paid for. For his literary labours and his extensive correspondence he required one or more amanuenses. He often had occasion, on his own business, or on that of Froben’s press, to send special couriers to a distance, employing them by the way in collecting the free gifts of his tributaries.

Precarious as these means of subsistence seem, he preferred the independence thus obtained to an assured position which would have involved obligations to a patron or professional duties which his weak health would have made onerous. He accepted the diploma of D.D. from the theological faculty at Louvain, but declined an offered professorship, saying “he did not like teaching.” The duke of Bavaria offered to meet this objection by dispensing with teaching, if he would only reside, and would have named him on these terms to a chair in his new university of Ingolstadt, with a salary of 200 ducats, and the reversion of one or more prebendal stalls. The archduke Ferdinand offered a pension of 400 florins, if he would only come to reside at Vienna. Adrian VI. offered him a deanery (Ep. 859), but the offer seems to have been of a possible and not an actual deanery. Offers, flattering but equally vague, were made from France, on the part of the bishop of Bayeux, and even of Francis I. “Invitor amplissimis conditionibus; offeruntur dignitates et episcopatus; rex essem si juvenis essem ,, (Ep. 735). Erasmus declined all, and about the end of the year 1520 settled permanently at Basel, in the capacity of general editor and literary adviser of Froben’s press. He had a house of his own in Louvain, and as a subject of the emperor, and attached to his court by a pension, it would have been convenient to him to have fixed his residence there. But the bigotry of the Flemish clergy, and the monkish atmosphere of the university of Louvain, overrun with Dominicans and Franciscans, united for once in their enmity to the new classical learning, inclined Erasmus to seek a more congenial home in Basel. Here a freer spirit reigned, and here he had already formed several fast friendships. But that which had most influence upon his choice was the fact that Basel had been made, by two enterprising publishers, Froben and Johann Amerbach, the centre of the German booktrade. The arrival of Erasmus was an event in Basel. He had a public reception, and received addresses on the part of the bishop and clergy, the municipality, and the university. But to Froben his arrival was the advent of the very man whom he had long wanted. Froben’s enterprise, united with Erasmus’s editorial skill, raised the press of Basel, for a time, to be the most important in Europe. The death of Froben in 1527, the final separation of Basel from the empire, the wreck of learning in the religious disputes, and the cheap paper and scamped work of the Frankfort presses, gradually withdrew the trade from Basel. But during the eight years of Erasmus’s co-operation the Froben press took the lead of all the presses in Europe, both in the standard value of the works published and in style of typographical execution. Like some other publishers who preferred reputation to returns in money, Froben died poor, and his impressions never reached the splendour afterwards attained by those of the Estiennes, or of Plantin. The series of the Fathers alone contains Jerome (1516-18),Cyprian (1520),Pseudo-Arnobius (1522), Athanasius (Latin, 1522), Hilarius (1523), Irenaeus (Latin, 1526), Ambrose (1527), Augustine (1528), Epiphanius (1529), Chrysostom on St Matthew (Latin, 1530), Basil (Greek, 1532, the first Greek author printed in Germany), and Origen (Latin, 1536). In these editions, partly texts, partly translations, it is impossible to determine the respective shares of Erasmus and his many helpers. The prefaces and dedications are all written by him, and some of them, as that to the Hilarius, are of importance for the history as well of the times as of Erasmus himself. Of his most important edition, that of the Greek text of the New Testament, something will be said further on.

In this “mill,” as he calls it, Erasmus continued to grind for eight years, from his 53rd to his 61st year, getting through in that time an amount of literary labour to which most men in robust health would scarcely have proved equal. Besides his work as editor, he was always writing himself some book or pamphlet called for by the event of the day, some general fray in which he was compelled to mingle, or some personal assault which it was necessary to repel. He was himself painfully conscious how much his reputation as a writer was damaged by this extempore production. “An author,” he says, “should handle with deliberate care the subject which he has selected, should keep his work long by him and retouch it many times before it sees the light. These things it has never been my good fortune to be able to do. Accident has determined my subject for me. I have written on without stopping, and published with such precipitation that changed circumstances have often compelled entire re-writing in the second edition” (Ep. ad Botzhem.). He was the object of those solicitations which always beset the author whose name upon the title page assures the sale of a book. He was besieged for dedications, and as every dedication meant a present proportioned to the circumstances of the dedicatee, there was a natural temptation to be lavish of them. Add to this a correspondence so extensive a3 to require him at times to write forty letters in one day, “I receive daily,” he writes, “letters from remote parts, from kings, princes, prelates, and men of learning, and even from persons of whose existence I was ignorant.” His day was thus one of incessant mental activity, and he had acquired the power of working with such rapidity that J. C. Scaliger, one of his detractors, says (Orat. 2 pro Cicerone) that he had been told by Aldus that Erasmus did more work in one day than others did in two. Under the heading “Herculei Labores,” in The Adayia, he hints at the immense labour which this compilation had cost him. But hard work was so far from breeding a distaste for his occupation, that reading and writing grew ever more delightful to him (literarum assiduitas non modo mihi fastidium non parit, sed voluptatem; crescit scribendo scribendi studium).

In 1527 Johann Froben died, and the disturbances at Basel, occasioned by the zealots for the religious revolution which was in progress throughout Switzerland, began to make Erasmus desirous of changing his residence. He selected Freiburg in the Breisgau, as a city which was still in the dominion of the emperor, and was free from religious dissension. Thither he removed in April 1529. He was received with public marks of respect by the authorities, who granted him the use of an unfinished residence which had been begun to be built for the late emperor Maximilian. Erasmus proposed only to remain at Freiburg for a few months, but found the place so suited to his habits that he bought a house of his own, and remained there six years. A desire for change of air—he fancied Freiburg was damp,—rumours of a new war with France, and the necessity of seeing his Ecclesiastes through the press, took him back to Basel in 1535. He lived now a very retired life, and saw only a small circle of intimate friends. It was now that a last attempt was made by the papal court to enlist him in some public -way against the Reformation. On the election of Paul III. in 1534, he had, as usual, sent the new pope a congratulatory letter. After his arrival in Basel, he received a complimentary answer, together with the nomination to the deanery of Deventer, the income of which was reckoned at 1500 ducats. This nomination was accompanied with an intima tion that more was in store for him, and that steps would be taken to provide for him the income, viz., 3000 ducats, λvhich was necessary to qualify for the cardinal’s hat. But Erasmus was even less disposed now than he had been before to barter his reputation for honours. His health had been for some years gradually declining, and disease in the shape of gout gaining upon him. In the winter of 1535-6, he was confined entirely to his chamber, many days to his bed. Though thus afflicted he never ceased his literary activity, dictating his tract On the Purity of the Church, and revising the sheets of a translation of Origen which was passing through Froben’s press. His last letter is dated 28th June 1536, and subscribed “Eras. Rot. aegra manu.” “I have never been so ill in my life before as I am now,—for many days unable even to read.” Dysentery setting in carried him off 12th July 1536, in his 69th year.

By his will, now preserved in the library at Basel, he left what he had to leave, with the exception of some legacies, to Boniface Amerbach, Johann Froben’s son-in-law, partly for himself, partly...