Note 300 — The Drawing Room.

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.