Chapter IV

ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1500 TO 1520.

Sect. I. 1501-1510.

Classical Learning of Italy in this Period—Of France, Germany, and England—Works of Polite Literature in Languages of Italy, Spain, and England.

Decline of learning in Italy. 1. The new century did not begin very auspiciously for the literary credit of Italy. We may, indeed, consider the whole period between the death of Lorenzo in 1492, and the pontificate of his son in 1513, as less brilliant than the two ages which we connect with their names. But when measured by the labours of the press, the last ten years of the fifteenth century were considerably more productive than any which had gone before. In the present decade a striking decline was perceptible. Thus, in comparing the numbers of books printed in the chief towns of Italy, we find—

1491-15001501-1510

Florence 179 47

Rome 460 41

Milan 228 99

Venice 1491 536[522]

Such were the fruits of the ambition of Ferdinand and of Louis XII., and the first interference of strangers with the liberties of Italy. Wars so protracted within the bosom of a country, if they do not prevent the growth of original genius, must yet be unfavourable to that secondary, but more diffused excellence, which is nourished by the wealth of patrons and the tranquillity of universities. Thus the gymnasium of Rome, founded by Eugenius IV., but lately endowed and regulated by Alexander VI., who had established it in a handsome edifice on the Quirinal hill, was despoiled of its revenues by Julius II., who, with some liberality towards painters, had no regard for learning; and this will greatly account for the remarkable decline in the typography of Rome. Thus, too, the Platonic school at Florence soon went to decay after the fall of the Medici, who had fostered it; and even the rival philosophy which rose upon its ruins, and was taught at the beginning of this century with much success at Padua by Pomponatius, according to the original principles of Aristotle, and by two other professors of great eminence in their time, Nifo and Achillini, according to the system of Averroes, could not resist the calamities of war: the students of that university were dispersed in 1509, after the unfortunate defeat of Ghiaradadda.

Press of Aldus. 2. Aldus himself left Venice in 1506, his effects in the territory having been plundered, and did not open his press again till 1512, when he entered into partnership with his father-in-law, Andrew Asola. He had been actively employed during the first years of the century. He published Sophocles, Herodotus, and Thucydides in 1502, Euripides and Herodian in 1503, Demosthenes in 1504. These were important accessions to Greek learning, though so much remained behind. A circumstance may be here mentioned, which had so much influence in facilitating the acquisition of knowledge, that it renders the year 1501 a sort of epoch in literary history. He that year not only introduced a new Italic character, called Aldine, more easily read perhaps than his Roman letters, which are somewhat rude; but, what was of more importance, began to print in a small octavo or duodecimo form, instead of the cumbrous and expensive folios that had been principally in use. Whatever the great of ages past might seem to lose by this indignity, was more than compensated in the diffused love and admiration of their writings. With what pleasure, says M. Renouard, must the studious man, the lover of letters, have beheld these benevolent octavos, these Virgils and Horaces contained in one little volume, which he might carry in his pocket while travelling or in a walk; which besides cost him hardly more than two of our francs, so that he could get a dozen of them for the price of one of those folios, that had hitherto been the sole furniture of his library. The appearance of these correct and well printed octavos ought to be as much remarked as the substitution of printed books for manuscripts itself.[523] We have seen above, that not only quartos, nearly as portable perhaps as octavos, but the latter form also, had been coming into use towards the close of the fifteenth century, though, I believe, it was sparingly employed for classical authors.

His academy. 3. It was about 1500, that Aldus drew together a few scholars into a literary association, called Aldi Neacademia. Not only amicable discussions, but the choice of books to be printed, of manuscripts and various readings, occupied their time, so that they may be considered as literary partners of the noble-minded printer. This academy was dispersed by the retirement of Aldus from Venice, and never met again.[524]

Dictionary of Calepio. 4. The first edition of Calepio’s Latin Dictionary, which, though far better than one or two obscure books that preceded it, and enriched by plundering the stores of Valla and Perotti, was very defective, appeared at Reggio in 1502.[525] It was so greatly augmented by subsequent improvers, that calepin has become a name in French for any voluminous compilation. This dictionary was not only of Latin and Italian, but several other languages; and these were extended in the Basle edition of 1581 to eleven. It is still, if not the best, the most complete polyglott lexicon for the European languages. Calepio, however moderate might be his erudition, has just claim to be esteemed one of the most effective instruments in the restoration of the Latin language in its purity to general use; for though some had by great acuteness and diligence attained a good style in the fifteenth century, that age was looked upon in Italy itself as far below the subsequent period.[526]

Several bad dictionaries, abridged from the Catholicon, appeared near the end of the fifteenth century, and at the beginning of the next. Du Cange, præfat in Glossar, p. 47.

Books printed in Germany. 5. We may read in Panzer the titles of 325 books printed during these ten years at Leipsic, 60 of which are classical, but chiefly, as before, small school-books; 14 out of 214 at Cologne; 10 out of 208 at Strasburg; 1 out of 84 at Basle; but scarcely any books whatever appear at Louvain. One printed at Erfurt in 1501 deserves some attention. The title runs Εισαγωγη προς των γραμματων Ελληνων, Elementale Introductorium in idioma Græcanicum, with some more words. Panzer observes: This Greek grammar, published by some unknown person, is undoubtedly the first which was published in Germany since the invention of printing. In this, however, as has already been shown, he is mistaken; unless we deny to the book printed at Deventer the name of a grammar. But Panzer was not acquainted with it. This seems to be the only attempt at Greek that occurs in Germany during this decade; and it is unnecessary to comment on the ignorance, which the gross solecism in the title displays.[527]

First Greek press at Paris. 6. Paris contributed in ten years 430 editions, thirty-two being of Latin classics. And in 1507 Giles Gourmont, a printer of that city, assisted by the purse of Francis Tissard, had the honour of introducing the Greek language on this side, as we may say, of the Alps; for the trifling exceptions we have mentioned scarcely affect his priority. Greek types had been used in a few words by Badius Ascensius, a learned and meritorious Parisian printer, whose publications began about 1498. They occur in his edition (1505) of Villa’s Annotations on the Greek Testament.[528] Four little books, namely, a small miscellaneous volume preceded by an alphabet, the Works and Days of Hesiod, the Frogs and Mice of Homer, and the Erotemata or Greek grammar of Chrysoloras, to which four a late writer has added an edition of Musæus, were the first fruits of Gourmont’s press. Aleander, a learned Italian, who played afterwards no inconsiderable part in the earlier period of the Reformation, came to Paris in 1508, and received a pension from Louis XII.[529] He taught Greek there, and perhaps Hebrew. Through his care, besides a Hebrew and Greek alphabet in 1508, Gourmont printed some of the moral works of Plutarch in 1509.

It is fair to say of Aleander, that he was the friend of Sadolet. In a letter of that excellent person to Paul III., he praises Aleander very highly, and requests for him the hat, which the Pope in consequence bestowed. Sadolet. Epist. l. xii. See, for Aleander, Bayle; Sleidan, Hist. de la Réformation, l. ii. and iii.; Roscoe’s Leo X., ch. xxi.; Jortin’s Erasmus, passim.

Early studies of Melanchthon. 7. We learn from a writer of the most respectable authority, Camerarius, that the elements of Greek were already taught to some boys in parts of Germany.[530] About 1508, Reuchlin, on a visit to George Simler, a schoolmaster in Hesse, found a relation of his own, little more than ten years old, who, uniting extraordinary quickness with thirst for learning, had already acquired the rudiments of that language; and presenting him with a lexicon and grammar, precious gifts in those times, changed his German name, Schwartzerd, to one of equivalent meaning and more classical sound, Melanchthon. He had himself set the example of assuming a name of Greek derivation, being almost as much known by the name of Capnio as by his own. And this pedantry, which continued to prevail for a century and a half afterwards, might be excused by the great uncouthness of many German, not to say French and English, surnames in their latinised forms. Melanchthon, the precocity of his youth being followed by a splendid maturity, became not only one of the greatest lights of the Reformation, but, far above all others, the founder of general learning in Germany.[531]

Learning in England. 8. England seems to have been nearly stationary in academical learning during the unpropitious reign of Henry VII.[532] But just hopes were entertained from the accession of his son in 1509, who had received in some degree a learned education. And the small knot of excellent men, united by zeal for improvement, Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer, Fisher, Colet, More, succeeded in bringing over their friend Erasmus to teach Greek at Cambridge in 1510. The students, he says, were too poor to pay him anything; nor had he many scholars.[533] His instruction was confined to the grammar. In the same year, Colet, dean of St. Paul’s, founded there a school, and published a Latin grammar; five or six little works of the kind had already appeared in England.[534] These trifling things are mentioned to let the reader take notice that there is nothing more worthy to be named. Twenty-six books were printed at London during this decade; among these Terence in 1504; but no other Latin author of classical name. The difference in point of learning between Italy and England was at least that of a century; that is, the former was more advanced in knowledge of ancient literature in 1400 than the latter was in 1500.

Erasmus and Budæus. 9. It is plain, however, that on the continent of Europe, though no very remarkable advances were made in these ten years, learning was slowly progressive, and the men were living who were to bear fruit in due season. Erasmus republished his Adages with such great additions as rendered them almost a new work; while Budæus, in his Observations upon the Pandects, gave the first example of applying philological and historical literature to the illustration of Roman law, by which others, with more knowledge of jurisprudence than he possessed, were in the next generation signally to change the face of that science.

Study of eastern languages. 10. The eastern languages began now to be studied, though with very imperfect means. Hebrew had been cultivated in the Franciscan monasteries of Tubingen and Basle before the end of the last century. The first grammar was published by Conrad Pellican in 1503. Eichhorn calls it an evidence of the deficiencies of his knowledge, though it cost him incredible pains. Reuchlin gave a better, with a dictionary, in 1506; which, enlarged by Munster, long continued to be a standard book. A Hebrew psalter, with three Latin translations, and one French, was published in 1509 by Henry Stephens, the progenitor of a race illustrious in typographical and literary history. Petrus de Alcala, in 1506, attempted an Arabic vocabulary, printing the words in Roman letter.[535]

Dramatic works. 11. If we could trust an article in the Biographie Universelle, a Portuguese, Gil Vicente, deserves the high praise of having introduced the regular drama into Europe; the first of his pieces having been represented at Lisbon in 1504.[536] But, according to the much superior authority of Bouterwek, Gil Vicente was a writer in the old national style of Spain and Portugal; and his early compositions are Autos, or spiritual dramas, totally unlike any regular plays, and rude both in design and execution. He became, however, a comic writer of great reputation among his countrymen at a later period, but in the same vein of uncultivated genius, and not before Machiavel and Ariosto had established their dramatic renown. The Calandra of Bibbiena, afterwards a cardinal, was represented at Venice in 1508, though not published till 1524. An analysis of this play will be found in Ginguéné; it bears only a general resemblance to the Menæchmi of Plautus. Perhaps the Calandra may be considered as the earliest modern comedy, or at least the earliest that is known to be extant; for its five acts and intricate plot exclude the competition of Maitre Patelin.[537] But there is a more celebrated piece in the Spanish language, of which it is probably impossible to determine the date; the tragi-comedy, as it has been called, of Calisto and Melibœa. |Calisto and Melibœa.| This is the work of two authors; one generally supposed to be Rodrigo Cota, who planned the story, and wrote the first act; the other, Fernando de Rojas, who added twenty more acts to complete the drama. This alarming number does not render the play altogether so prolix as might be supposed, the acts being only what with us are commonly denominated scenes. It is, however, much beyond the limits of representation. Some have supposed Calisto and Melibœa to have been commenced by Juan de la Mena before the middle of the fifteenth century. But this, Antonio tells us, shows ignorance of the style belonging to that author and to his age. It is far more probably of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella; and as an Italian translation appears to have been published in 1514, we may presume that it was finished and printed in Spain about the present decade.[538]

Its character. 12. Bouterwek and Sismondi have given some account of this rather remarkable dramatic work. But they hardly do it justice, especially the former, who would lead the reader to expect something very anomalous and extravagant. It appears to me, that it is as regular and well-contrived as the old comedies generally were: the action is simple and uninterrupted; nor can it be reckoned very extraordinary, that what Bouterwek calls the unities of time and place should be transgressed, when for the next two centuries they were never observed. Calisto and Melibœa was at least deemed so original and important an accession to literature, that it was naturalised in several languages. A very early imitation, rather than version, in English, appears to have been printed in 1530.[539] A real translation, with the title Celestina (the name of a procuress who plays the chief part in the drama, and by which it has been frequently known), is mentioned by Herbert under the year 1598. And there is another translation, or second edition, in 1631, with the same title, from which all my acquaintance with this play is derived. Gaspar Barthius gave it in Latin, 1624, with the title, Pornobosco-didascalus.[540] It was extolled by some as a salutary exposition of the effects of vice—

and condemned by others as too open a display of it. Bouterwek has rather exaggerated the indecency of this drama, which is much less offensive, unless softened in the translation, than in most of our old comedies. The style of the first author is said to be more elegant than that of his continuator; but this is not very apparent in the English version. The chief characters throughout are pretty well drawn, and there is a vein of humour in some of the comic parts.

Juan de la Enzina. 13. The first edition of the works of a Spanish poet, Juan de la Enzina, appeared in 1501, though they were probably written in the preceding century. Some of these are comedies, as one biographer calls them, or rather, perhaps, as Bouterwek expresses it, sacred and profane eclogues, in the form of dialogues, represented before distinguished persons on festivals. Enzina wrote also a treatise on Castilian poetry, which, according to Bouterwek, is but a short essay on the rules of metre.[541]

Arcadia of Sannazzaro. 14. The pastoral romance, as was before mentioned, began a little before this time in Portugal. An Italian writer of fine genius, Sannazzaro, adopted it in his Arcadia, of which the first edition was in 1502. Harmonious prose intermingled with graceful poetry, and with a fable just capable of keeping awake the attention, though it could never excite emotion, communicate a tone of pleasing sweetness to this volume. But we have been so much used to fictions of more passionate interest, that we hardly know how to accommodate ourselves to the mild languor of these early romances. A recent writer places the Arcadia at the head of Italian prose in that age. With a less embarrassed construction, he says, than Boccaccio, and less of a servile mannerism than Bembo, the style of Sannazzaro is simple, flowing, rapid, harmonious; if it should seem now and then too florid and diffuse, this may be pardoned in a romance. It is to him, in short, rather than to Bembo, that we owe the revival of correctness and elegance in the Italian prose of the sixteenth century; and his style in the Arcadia would have been far more relished than that of the Asolani, if the originality of his poetry had not engrossed our attention. He was the first who employed in any considerable degree the sdrucciolo verse, though it occurs before; but the difficulty of finding rhymes for it drives him frequently upon unauthorised phrases. He may also be reckoned the first who restored the polished style of Petrarch, which no writer of the fifteenth century had successfully emulated.[542]

Asolani of Bembo. 15. The Asolani of Peter Bembo, a dialogue, the scene of which is laid at Asola in the Venetian territory, were published in 1505. They are disquisitions on love, tedious enough to our present apprehension, but in a style so pure and polite, that they became the favourite reading among the superior ranks in Italy, where the coldness and pedantry of such dissertations were forgiven for their classical dignity and moral truth. The Asolani has been thought to make an epoch in Italian literature, though the Arcadia is certainly a more original and striking work of genius.

Dunbar. 16. I do not find at what time the poems in the Scottish dialect by William Dunbar were published; but the Thistle and the Rose, on the marriage of James IV. with Margaret of England in 1503, must be presumed to have been written very little after that time. Dunbar, therefore, has the honour of leading the vanguard of British poetry in the sixteenth century. His allegorical poem, The Golden Targe, is of a more extended range, and displays more creative power. The versification of Dunbar is remarkably harmonious and exact for his age; and his descriptions are often very lively and picturesque. But it must be confessed that there is too much of sunrise and singing-birds in all our mediæval poetry; a note caught from the French and Provençal writers, and repeated to satiety by our own. The allegorical characters of Dunbar are derived from the same source. He belongs, as a poet, to the school of Chaucer and Lydgate.[543]

Anatomy of Zerbi. 17. The first book upon anatomy, since that of Mundinus, was by Zerbi of Verona, who taught in the university of Padua in 1495. The title is, Liber Anatomiæ Corporis Humani et singulorum Membrorum illius, 1503. He follows in general the plan of Mundinus; and his language is obscure, as well as full of inconvenient abbreviations; yet the germ of discoveries that have crowned later anatomists with glory is sometimes perceptible in Zerbi; among others that of the Fallopian tubes.[544]

Voyages of Cadamosto. 18. We now, for the first time, take relations of voyages into our literary catalogue. During the fifteenth century, though the old travels of Marco Polo had been printed several times, and in different languages, and even those of Sir John Mandeville once; though the Cosmography of Ptolemy had appeared in not less than seven editions, and generally with maps, few, if any, original descriptions of the kingdoms of the world had gratified the curiosity of modern Europe. But the stupendous discoveries that signalised the last years of that age could not long remain untold. We may, however, give perhaps the first place to the voyages of Cadamosto, a Venetian, who, in 1455, under the protection of prince Henry of Portugal, explored the western coast of Africa, and bore a part in discovering its two great rivers, as well as the Cape de Verde islands. The relation of his voyages, says a late writer, the earliest of modern travels, is truly a model, and would lose nothing by comparison with those of our best navigators. Its arrangement is admirable, its details are interesting, its descriptions clear and precise.[545] These voyages of Cadamosto do not occupy more than thirty pages in the collection of Ramusio, where they are reprinted. They are said to have first appeared at Vicenza in 1507, with the title Prima Navigazione per l’Oceano alle Terre de’ Negri della Bassa Ethiopia di Luigi Cadamosto. It is asserted, however, by Brunet, that no edition exists earlier than 1519, and that this of 1507 is a confusion with the next book. This was a still more important production, announcing the great discoveries that Americo Vespucci was suffered to wrest, at least in name, from a more illustrious though ill-requited Italian: Mondo Nuovo, e Paeso nuovamente ritrovati da Alberico Vesputio Florentino intitolati. Vicenza, 1507. It does not appear that any earlier work on America had been published; but an epistle of Columbus himself, de Insulis Indiæ nuper inventis, was twice printed about 1493 in Germany, and probably in other countries; and a few other brief notices of the recent discovery are to be traced. We find also in 1508 an account of the Portuguese in the East, which, being announced as a translation from the native language into Latin, may be presumed to have appeared before.[546]

Sect. II. 1511-1520.

Age of Leo X.—Italian Dramatic Poetry—Classical Learning, especially Greek, in France, Germany, and England—Utopia of More—Erasmus—His Adages—Political Satire contained in them—Opposition of the Monks to Learning—Antipathy of Erasmus to them—Their attack on Reuchlin—Origin of Reformation—Luther—Ariosto—Character of the Orlando Furioso—Various Works of Amusement in modern Languages—English Poetry—Pomponatius—Raymond Lully.

Leo X., his patronage of letters. 19. Leo X. became pope in 1513. His chief distinction, no doubt, is owing to his encouragement of the arts, or, more strictly, to the completion of those splendid labours of Raffaelle, under his pontificate, which had been commenced by his predecessor. We have here only to do with literature; and in the promotion of this he certainly deserves a much higher name than any former pope, except Nicolas V., who, considering the difference of the times, and the greater solidity of his own character, as certainly stands far above him. Leo began by placing men of letters in the most honourable stations of his court. There were two, Bembo and Sadolet, who had by common confession reached a consummate elegance of style, in comparison of which the best productions of the last age seemed very imperfect. They were made apostolical secretaries. Beroaldo, second of the name, whose father, though a more fertile author, was inferior to him in taste, was intrusted with the Vatican library. John Lascaris and Marcus Musurus were invited to reside at Rome;[547] and the pope, considering it, he says, no small part of his pontifical duty to promote the Latin literature, caused search to be made everywhere for manuscripts. This expression sounds rather oddly in his mouth; and the less religious character of transalpine literature is visible in this as in everything else.

Roman gymnasium. 20. The personal taste of Leo was almost entirely directed towards poetry and the beauties of style. This, Tiraboschi seems to hint, might cause the more serious learning of antiquity to be rather neglected. But there does not seem to be much ground for this charge. We owe to Leo the publication, by Beroaldo, of the first five books of the Annals of Tacitus, which had lately been found in a German monastery. It appears that in 1514 above one hundred professors received salaries in the Roman university, or gymnasium, restored by the pope to its alienated revenues.[548] Leo seems to have founded a seminary distinct from the former, under the superintendence of Lascaris, for the sole study of Greek, and to have brought over young men as teachers from Greece. In this academy a Greek press was established, where the scholiasts on Homer were printed in 1517.[549]

Roscoe remarks that medical botany was one of the sciences taught, and that it was the earliest instance. If this be right, Bonafede of Padua cannot have been the first botanical professor in Europe, as we read that he died in 1533. But in the roll of these Roman professors we only find that one was appointed ad declarationem simplicium medicinæ. I do not think this means more than the materia medica; we cannot infer that he lectured upon the plants themselves.

Latin Poetry. 21. Leo was a great admirer of Latin poetry; and in his time the chief poets of Italy seem to have written several of their works, though not published till afterwards. The poems of Pontanus, which naturally belong to the fifteenth century, were first printed in 1513 and 1518; and those of Mantuan, in a collective form, about the same time.

Italian tragedy. 22. The Rosmunda of Rucellai, a tragedy in the Italian language, on the ancient regular model, was represented before Leo at Florence in 1515. It was the earliest known trial of blank verse; but it is acknowledged by Rucellai himself, that the Sophonisba of his friend Trissino, which is dedicated to Leo in the same year, though not published till 1524, preceded and suggested his own tragedy.[550] |Sophonisba of Trissino.| The Sophonisba is strictly on the Greek model, divided only by the odes of the chorus, but not into five portions or acts. The speeches in this tragedy are sometimes too long, the style unadorned, the descriptions now and then trivial. But in general there is a classical dignity about the sentiments, which are natural, though not novel; and the latter part, which we should call the fifth act, is truly noble, simple, and pathetic. Trissino was thoroughly conversant with the Greek drama, and had imbibed its spirit; seldom has Euripides written with more tenderness, or chosen a subject more fitted to his genius; for that of Sophonisba, in which many have followed Trissino with inferior success, is wholly for the Greek school; it admits, with no great difficulty, of the chorus, and consequently of the unities of time and place. It must, however, always chiefly depend on Sophonisba herself; for it is not easy to make Masinissa respectable, nor has Trissino succeeded in attempting it. The long continuance of alternate speeches in single lines, frequent in this tragedy, will not displease those to whom old associations are recalled by it.

It may be observed, that, notwithstanding the testimony of Rucellai himself above quoted, it is shown by Walker (Appendix, No. 3), that blank verse had been occasionally employed before Trissino.

Rosmunda of Rucellai. 23. The Rosmunda falls in my opinion below the Sophonisba, though it is the work of a better poet; and perhaps, in language and description it is superior. What is told in narration, according to the ancient inartificial form of tragedy, is finely told; but the emotions are less represented than in the Sophonisba; the principal character is less interesting, and the story is unpleasing. Rucellai led the way to those accumulations of horrible and disgusting circumstances which deformed the European stage for a century afterwards. The Rosmunda is divided into five acts, but preserves the chorus. It contains imitations of the Greek tragedies, especially the Antigone, as the Sophonisba does of the Ajax and the Medea. Some lines in the latter, extolled by modern critics, are simply translated from the ancient tragedians.

Comedies of Ariosto. 24. Two comedies by Ariosto seem to have been acted about 1512, and were written as early as 1495, when he was but twenty-one years old, which entitles him to the praise of having first conceived and carried into effect the idea of regular comedies, in imitation of the ancient, though Bibbiena had the advantage of first occupying the stage with his Calandra. The Cassaria and Suppositi of Ariosto are, like the Calandra, free imitations of the manner of Plautus, in a spirited and natural dialogue, and with that graceful flow of language which appears spontaneous in all his writings.[551]

Books printed in Italy. 25. The north of Italy still endured the warfare of stranger armies: Ravenna, Novara, Marignan, attest the well-fought contention. Aldus, however, returning to Venice in 1512, published many editions before his death in 1516. Pindar, Plato, and Lysias first appeared in 1513, Athenæus in 1514, Xenophon, Strabo, and Pausanias in 1516, Plutarch’s Lives in 1517. The Aldine press then continued under his father-in-law, Andrew Asola, but with rather diminished credit. It appears that the works printed during this period, from 1511 to 1520, were, at Rome 116, at Milan 91, at Florence 133, and at Venice 511. This is, perhaps, less than from the general renown of Leo’s age we should have expected. |Cælius Rhodiginus.| We may select, among the original publications, the Lectiones Antiquæ of Cælius Rhodiginus (1516), and a little treatise on Italian grammar by Fortunio, which has no claim to notice but as the earliest book on the subject.[552] The former, though not the first, appears to have been by far the best and most extensive collection hitherto made from the stores of antiquity. It is now hardly remembered; but obtained almost universal praise, even from severe critics, for the deep erudition of its author, who, in a somewhat rude style, pours forth explanations of obscure, and emendations of corrupted passages, with profuse display of knowledge in the customs and even philosophy of the ancients, but more especially in medicine and botany. Yet he seems to have inserted much without discrimination of its value, and often without authority. A more perfect edition was published in 1550, extending to thirty books instead of sixteen.[553]

Greek printed in France and Germany. 26. It may be seen, that Italy, with all the lustre of Leo’s reputation, was not distinguished by any very remarkable advance in learning during his pontificate; and I believe it is generally admitted, that the elegant biography of Roscoe, in making the public more familiar with the subject, did not raise the previous estimation of its hero and of its times. Meanwhile the cisalpine regions were gaining ground upon their brilliant neighbour. From the Parisian press issued in these ten years eight hundred books; among which were a Greek Lexicon by Aleander, in 1512, and four more little grammatical works, with a short romance in Greek. This is trifling indeed; but in the cities on the Rhine something more was done in that language. A Greek grammar, probably quite elementary, was published at Wittenberg in 1511; one at Strasburg in 1512,—thrice reprinted in the next three years. These were succeeded by a translation of Theodore Gaza’s grammar by Erasmus in 1516, by the Progymnasmata Græcæ Literaturæ of Luscinius, in 1517, and by the Introductiones in Linguam Græcam of Croke, in 1520. Isocrates and Lucian appeared at Strasburg in 1515; the first book of the Iliad next year, besides four smaller tracts;[554] several more followed before the end of the decade. At Basle the excellent printer Frobenius, an intimate friend of Erasmus, had established himself as early as 1491.[555] Besides the great edition of the New Testament by Erasmus, which issued from his press, we find, before the close of 1520, the Works and Days of Hesiod, the Greek Lexicon of Aldus, the Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle, the first two books of the Odyssey, and several grammatical treatises. At Cologne two or three small Greek pieces were printed in 1517. And Louvain, besides the Plutus of Aristophanes in 1518, and three or four others about the same time, sent forth in the year 1520 six Greek editions, among which were Lucian, Theocritus, and two tragedies of Euripides.[556] We may hence perceive, that the Greek language now first became generally known and taught in Germany and in the Low Countries.

Greek scholars in these countries. 27. It is evident that these works were chiefly designed for students in the universities. But it is to be observed, that Greek literature was now much more cultivated than before. In France there were, indeed, not many names that could be brought forward; but Lefevre of Etaples, commonly called Faber Stapulensis, was equal to writing criticism on the Greek Testament of Erasmus. He bears a high character among contemporary critics for his other writings, which are chiefly on theological and philosophical subjects; but it appears by his age that he must have come late to the study of Greek.[557] That difficult language was more easily mastered by younger men. Germany had already produced some deserving of remembrance. A correspondent of Erasmus, in 1515, writes to recommend Œcolampadius as not unlearned in Greek literature.[558] Melanchthon was, even in his early youth, deemed competent to criticise Erasmus himself. At the age of sixteen, he lectured on the Greek and Latin authors of antiquity. He was the first who printed Terence as verse.[559] The library of this great scholar was in 1835 sold in London, and was proved to be his own by innumerable marginal notes of illustration and correction. Beatus Rhenanus stands perhaps next to him as a scholar; and we may add the names of Luscinius, of Bilibald Pirckheimer, a learned senator of Nuremberg, who made several translations, and of Petrus Mosellanus, who became about 1518 lecturer in Greek at Leipsic.[560] He succeeded our distinguished countryman, Richard Croke, a pupil of Grocyn, who had been invited to Leipsic in 1514, with the petty salary of 15 guilders, but with the privilege of receiving other remuneration from his scholars, and had the signal honour of first imbuing the students of northern Germany with a knowledge of that language.[561] One or two trifling works on Greek grammar were published by Croke during this decennium. Ceratinus, who took his name, in the fanciful style of the times, from his birthplace, Horn in Holland, was now professor of Greek at Louvain; and in 1525, on the recommendation of Erasmus, became the successor of Mosellanus at Leipsic.[562] William Cop, a native of Basle, and physician to Francis I., published in this period some translations from Hippocrates and Galen.

Colleges at Alcala and Louvain. 28. Cardinal Ximenes, about the beginning of the century, founded a college at Alcala, his favourite university, for the three learned languages. This example was followed by Jerome Busleiden, who by his last testament, in 1516 or 1517, established a similar foundation at Louvain.[563] From this source proceeded many men of conspicuous erudition and ability; and Louvain, through its Collegium trilingue, became in a still higher degree than Deventer had been in the fifteenth century not only the chief seat of Belgian learning, but the means of diffusing it over parts of Germany. Its institution was resisted by the monks and theologians, unyielding though beaten adversaries of literature.[564]

Latin style in France. 29. It cannot be said, that many yet on this side of the Alps wrote Latin well. Budæus is harsh and unpolished; Erasmus fluent, spirited, and never at a loss to express his meaning; nor is his style much defaced by barbarous words, though by no means exempt from them; yet it seldom reaches a point of classical elegance. Francis Sylvius (probably Dubois), brother of a celebrated physician, endeavoured to inspire a taste for purity of style in the university of Paris. He had, however, acquired it himself late, for some of his writings are barbarous. The favourable influence of Sylvius was hardly earlier than 1520.[565] The writer most solicitous about his diction was Longolius (Christopher de Longueil), a native of Malines, the only true Ciceronian out of Italy; in which country, however, he passed so much time, that he is hardly to be accounted a mere cisalpine. Like others of that denomination, he was more ambitious of saying common things well, than of producing what was well worthy of being remembered.

Greek scholars in England. 30. We have the imposing testimony of Erasmus himself, that neither France nor Germany stood so high about this period as England. That country, he says, so distant from Italy, stands next to it in the esteem of the learned. This, however, is written in 1524. About the end of the present decennial period we can produce a not very small number of persons possessing a competent acquaintance with the Greek tongue, more, perhaps, than could be traced in France, though all together might not weigh as heavy as Budæus alone. Such were Grocyn, the patriarch of English learning, who died in 1519; Linacre, whose translation of Galen, first printed in 1521, is one of the few in that age that escape censure for inelegance or incorrectness; Latimer, beloved and admired by his friends, but of whom we have no memorial in any writings of his own; More, known as a scholar by Greek epigrams of some merit;[566] Lilly, master of St. Paul’s school, who had acquired Greek at Rhodes, but whose reputation is better preserved by the grammars that bear his name; Lupsett, who is said to have learned from Lilly, and who taught some time at Oxford; Richard Croke, already named; Gerard Lister, a physician, to whom Erasmus gives credit for skill in the three languages; Pace and Tunstall, both men well known in the history of those times; Lee and Stokesley, afterwards bishops, the former of whom published Annotations on the Greek Testament of Erasmus at Basle in 1520;[567] and probably Gardiner; Clement, one of Wolsey’s first lecturers at Oxford;[568] Brian, Wakefield, Bullock, and a few more, whose names appear in Pits and Wood, or even who are not recorded; for we could not without presumption attempt to enumerate every person who at this time was not wholly unacquainted with the Greek language. Yet it would be an error, on the other hand, to make a large allowance for omissions; much less to conclude that every man who might enjoy some reputation in a learned profession could in a later generation have passed for a scholar. Colet, for example, and Fisher, men as distinguished as almost any of that age, were unacquainted with the Greek tongue, and both made some efforts to attain it at an advanced age.[569] It was not till the year 1517 that the first Greek lecture was established at Oxford by Fox, bishop of Hereford, in his new foundation of Corpus Christi College. Wolsey, in 1519, endowed a regular professorship in the university. It was about the same year that Fisher, chancellor of the university of Cambridge, sent down Richard Croke, lately returned from Leipsic, to tread in the footsteps of Erasmus as teacher of Greek.[570] But this was in advance of our neighbours; for no public instruction in that language was yet given in France.

Quid tandem non præstitisset admirabilis ista naturæ felicitas, si hoc ingenium instituisset Italia? si totum Musarum sacris vacasset? si ad justam frugem ac velut autumnum suum maturuisset? Epigrammata lusit adolescens admodum, ac pleraque puer; Britanniam suam nunquam egressus est, nisi semel atque iterum principis sui nomine legatione functus apud Flandros. Præter rem uxoriam, præter curas domesticas, præter publici muneris functionem et causarum undas, tot tantisque regni negotiis distrahitur, ut mireris esse otium vel cogitandi de libris. Epist. clxix. Aug. 1517. In the Ciceronianus he speaks of More with more discriminating praise, and the passage is illustrative of that just quoted.

Mode of teaching in schools. 31. By the statutes of St. Paul’s school, dated in 1518, the master is to be lerned in good and clene Latin literature, and also in Greke, iff such may be gotten. Of the boys he says, I wolde they were taught always in good literature both Latin and Greke. But it does not follow from hence that Greek was actually taught; and considering the want of lexicons and grammars, none of which, as we shall see, were published in England for many years afterwards, we shall be apt to think that little instruction could have been given.[571] This, however, is not conclusive, and would lead us to bring down the date of philological learning in our public seminaries much too low. The process of learning without books was tedious and difficult, but not impracticable for the diligent. The teacher provided himself with a lexicon which was in common use among his pupils, and with one of the grammars published on the Continent, from which he gave oral lectures, and portions of which were transcribed by each student. The books read in the lecture-room were probably copied out in the same manner, the abbreviations giving some facility to a cursive hand; and thus the deficiency of impressions was in some degree supplied, just as before the invention of printing. The labour of acquiring knowledge strengthened, as it always does, the memory; it excited an industry which surmounted every obstacle, and yielded to no fatigue; and we may thus account for that copiousness of verbal learning which sometimes astonishes us in the scholars of the sixteenth century, and in which they seem to surpass the more exact philologers of later ages.

If we could depend on the accuracy of all this, we must suppose that Greek was taught at Eton so early, that one who acquired the rudiments of it in that school might die at an advanced age in 1535. But this is not to be received on Pits’s authority. And I find, in Harwood’s Alumni Etonenses, that Horman became head master as early as 1485: no one will readily believe, that he could have learned Greek while at school: and the fact is, that he was not educated at Eton, but at Winchester.

The Latin grammar which bears the name of Lilly was compiled partly by Colet, partly by Erasmus.

Few classical works printed here. 32. It is to be observed, that we rather extol a small number of men who have struggled against difficulties, than put in a claim for any diffusion of literature in England, which would be very far from the truth. No classical works were printed except four editions of Virgil’s Bucolics, a small treatise of Seneca, the first book of Cicero’s Epistles (the latter at Oxford in 1519), all merely of course for learners. We do not reckon Latin grammars. And as yet no Greek types had been employed. In the spirit of truth, we cannot quite take to ourselves the compliment of Erasmus; there must evidently have been a far greater diffusion of sound learning in Germany; where professors of Greek had for some time been established in all the universities, and where a long list of men ardent in the cultivation of letters could be adduced.[572] Erasmus had a panegyrical humour towards his friends, of whom there were many in England.

State of learning in Scotland. 33. Scotland had, as might naturally be expected, partaken still less of Italian light than the south of Britain. But the reigning king, contemporary with Henry VII., gave proofs of greater good-will towards letters. A statute of James IV., in 1496, enacts that gentlemen’s sons should be sent to school in order to learn Latin. Such provisions were too indefinite for execution, even if the royal authority had been greater than it was; but it serves to display the temper of the sovereign. His natural son, Alexander, on whom, at a very early age, he conferred the archbishopric of St. Andrews, was the pupil of Erasmus in the Greek language. The latter speaks very highly of this promising scion of the house of Stuart in one of his adages.[573] But, at the age of twenty, he perished with his royal father on the disastrous day of Flodden Field. Learning had made no sensible progress in Scotland; and the untoward circumstances of the next twenty years were far from giving it encouragement. The translation of the Æneid by Gawin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, though we are not at present on the subject of poetry, may be here mentioned in connection with Scottish literature. It was completed about 1513, though the earliest edition is not till 1553. This translation, says Warton, is executed with equal spirit and fidelity; and is a proof that the Lowland Scotch and English languages were now nearly the same. I mean the style of composition, more especially in the glaring affectation of anglicising Latin words. The several books are introduced with metrical prologues, which are often highly poetical, and show that Douglas’s proper walk was original poetry. Warton did well to explain his rather startling expression, that the Lowland Scotch and English languages were then nearly the same: for I will venture to say, that no Englishman, without guessing at every other word, could understand the long passage he proceeds to quote from Gawin Douglas. It is true that the differences consisted mainly in pronunciation, and consequently in orthography; but this is the great cause of diversity in dialect. The character of Douglas’s original poetry seems to be that of the middle ages in general,—prolix, though sometimes animated, description of sensible objects.[574]

Utopia of More. 34. We must not leave England without mention of the only work of genius that she can boast in this age; the Utopia[575] of Sir Thomas More. Perhaps we scarcely appreciate highly enough the spirit and originality of this fiction, which ought to be considered with regard to the barbarism of the times, and the meagreness of preceding inventions. The Republic of Plato no doubt furnished More with the germ of his perfect society; but it would be unreasonable to deny him the merit of having struck out the fiction of its real existence from his own fertile imagination; and it is manifest, that some of his most distinguished successors in the same walk of romance, especially Swift, were largely indebted to his reasoning, as well as inventive talents. Those who read the Utopia in Burnet’s translation, may believe that they are in Brobdignag; so similar is the vein of satirical humour and easy language. If false and impracticable theories are found in the Utopia (and perhaps he knew them to be such), this is in a much greater degree true of the Platonic Republic; and they are more than compensated by the sense of justice and humanity that pervades it, and his bold censures on the vices of power. These are remarkable in a courtier of Henry VIII.; but, in the first year of Nero, the voice of Seneca was heard without resentment. Nor had Henry much to take to himself in the reprehension of parsimonious accumulation of wealth, which was meant for his father’s course of government.

His inconsistency with his opinions. 35. It is possible that some passages in the Utopia, which are neither philosophical nor reconcilable with just principles of morals, were thrown out as mere paradoxes of a playful mind; nor is it easy to reconcile his language as to the free toleration of religious worship with those acts of persecution which have raised the only dark cloud on the memory of this great man. He positively indeed declares for punishing those who insult the religion of others, which might be an excuse for his severity towards the early reformers. But his latitude as to the acceptability of all religions with God, as to their identity in essential principles, and as to the union of all sects in a common worship, could no more be made compatible with his later writings or conduct, than his sharp satire against the court of Rome for breach of faith, or against the monks and friars for laziness and beggary. Such changes, however, are very common, as we may have abundantly observed, in all seasons of revolutionary commotions. Men provoke these, sometimes in the gaiety of their hearts with little design, sometimes with more deliberate intention, but without calculation of the entire consequences, or of their own courage to encounter them. And when such men, like More, are of very quick parts, and, what is the usual attendant of quick parts, not very retentive of their opinions, they have little difficulty in abandoning any speculative notion, especially when, like those in the Utopia, it can never have had the least influence upon their behaviour. We may acknowledge, after all, that the Utopia gives us the impression of its having proceeded rather from a very ingenious than a profound mind; and this apparently, is what we ought to think of Sir Thomas More. The Utopia is said to have been first printed at Louvain in 1516;[576] it certainly appeared at the close of the preceding year; but the edition of Basle in 1518, under the care of Erasmus, is the earliest that bears a date. It was greatly admired on the Continent; indeed there had been little or nothing of equal spirit and originality in Latin since the revival of letters.

Learning restored in France. 36. The French themselves give Francis I. the credit of having been the father of learning in that country. Galland, in a funeral panegyric on that prince, asks if at his accession (in 1513) any one man in France could read Greek or write Latin? Now this is an absurd question, when we recollect the names of Budæus, Longolius, and Faber Stapulensis; yet it shows that there could have been very slender pretensions to classical learning in the kingdom. Erasmus, in his Ciceronianus, enumerates among French scholars, not only Budæus, Faber, and the eminent printer, Jodocus Badius (a Fleming by birth), whom, in point of style, he seems to put above Budæus, but John Pin, Nicolas Berald, Francis Deloin, Lazarus Baif, and Ruel. This was however in 1529, and the list assuredly is not long. But as his object was to show that few men of letters were worthy of being reckoned fine writers, he does not mention Longueil, who was one; or whom, perhaps, he might omit, as being then dead.

Jealousy of Erasmus and Budæus. 37. Budæus and Erasmus were now at the head of the literary world; and as the friends of each behaved rather too much like partizans, a kind of rivalry in public reputation began, which soon extended to themselves, and lessened their friendship. Erasmus seems to have been, in a certain degree, the aggressor; at least, some of his letters to Budæus indicate an irritability, which the other, as far as appears, had not provoked. Budæus had published in 1514 an excellent treatise, De Asse, the first which explained the denominations and values of Roman money in all periods of history.[577] Erasmus sometimes alludes to this with covert jealousy. It was set up by a party against his Adages, which he justly considered more full of original thoughts and extensive learning. But Budæus understood Greek better; he had learned it with prodigious labour, and probably about the same time with Erasmus, so that the comparison between them was not unnatural. The name of one is at present only retained by scholars, and that of the other by all mankind; so different is contemporary and posthumous reputation. It is just to add that, although Erasmus had written to Budæus in far too sarcastic a tone,[578] under the smart of that literary sensitiveness which was very strong in his temper, yet when the other began to take serious offence, and to threaten a discontinuance of their correspondence, he made amends by an affectionate letter, which ought to have restored their good understanding. Budæus, however, who seems to have kept his resentments longer than his quick-minded rival, continued to write peevish letters; and fresh circumstances arose afterwards to keep up his jealousy.[579]

This rather unpleasing correspondence between two great men, professing friendship, yet covertly jealous of each other, is not ill described by Von der Hardt, in the Historia Litteraria Reformationis. Mirum dictu, qui undique aculei, sub mellitissima oratione, inter blandimenta continua. Genius utriusque argutissimus, qui vellendo et acerbe pungendo nullibi videretur referre sanguinem aut vulnus inferre. Possint profecto hæ literæ Budæum inter et Erasmum illustre esse et incomparabile exemplar delicatissimæ sed et perquam aculeatæ concertationis, quæ videretur suavissimo absolvi risu et velut familiarissimo palpo. De alterutrius integritate neuter visus dubitare; uterque tamen semper anceps, tot annis commercio frequentissimo. Dissimulandi artificium inexplicabile, quod attenti lectoris admirationem vehat, eumque præ dissertationum dulcedine subamara in stuporem vertat. p. 46.

Character of Erasmus. 38. Erasmus diffuses a lustre over his age which no other name among the learned supplies. The qualities which gave him this superiority were his quickness of apprehension, united with much industry, his liveliness of fancy, his wit and good sense. He is not a very profound thinker, but an acute observer: and the age for original thinking was hardly come. What there was of it in More produced little fruit. In extent of learning, no one perhaps was altogether his equal. Budæus, with more accurate scholarship, knew little of theology, and might be less ready perhaps in general literature than Erasmus. Longolius, Sadolet, and several others, wrote Latin far more elegantly; but they were of comparatively superficial erudition, and had neither his keen wit, nor his vigour of intellect. As to theological learning, the great Lutheran divines must have been at least his equals in respect of scriptural knowledge, and some of them possessed an acquaintance with Hebrew, of which Erasmus knew nothing; but he had probably the advantage in the study of the fathers. It is to be observed, that by far the greater part of his writings are theological. The rest either belong to philology and ancient learning, as the Adages, the Ciceronianus, and the various grammatical treatises, or may be reckoned effusions of his wit, as the Colloquies and the Encomium Moriæ.

His Adages severe on kings. 39. Erasmus, about 1517, published a very enlarged edition of his Adages, which had already grown with the growth of his own erudition. It is impossible to distinguish the progressive accessions they received without a comparison of editions; and some probably belong to a later period than the present. The Adages, as we read them, display a surprising extent of intimacy with Greek and Roman literature.[580] Far the greater portion is illustrative; but Erasmus not unfrequently sprinkles his explanations of ancient phrase with moral or literary remarks of some poignancy. The most remarkable, in every sense, are those which reflect with excessive bitterness and freedom on kings and priests. Jortin has slightly alluded to some of these; but they may deserve more particular notice, as displaying the character of the man, and perhaps the secret opinions of his age.

Instances in illustration. 40. Upon the adage, Frons occipitio prior, meaning, that every one should do his own business, Erasmus takes the opportunity to observe, that no one requires more attention to this than a prince, if he will act as a real prince, and not as a robber. But at present our kings and bishops are only the hands, eyes, and ears of others, careless of the state, and of everything but their own pleasure.[581] This, however, is a trifle. In another proverb, he bursts out: Let any one turn over the pages of ancient or modern history, scarcely in several generations will you find one or two princes, whose folly has not inflicted the greatest misery on mankind. And after much more of the same kind: I know not whether much of this is not to be imputed to ourselves. We trust the rudder of a vessel, where a few sailors and some goods alone are in jeopardy, to none but skilful pilots; but the state, wherein the safety of so many thousands is concerned, we put into any hands. A charioteer must learn, reflect upon, and practise his art; a prince need only be born. Yet government, as it is the most honourable, so is it the most difficult of all sciences. And shall we choose the master of a ship, and not choose him, who is to have the care of many cities, and so many souls? But the usage is too long established for us to subvert. Do we not see that noble cities are erected by the people; that they are destroyed by princes? that the community grows rich by the industry of its citizens, is plundered by the rapacity of its princes? that good laws are enacted by popular magistrates, are violated by these princes? that the people love peace; that princes excite war?[582]

An non videmus egregia oppida a populo condi, a principibus subverti? rempublicam civium industria ditescere, principum rapacitate spoliari? bonas leges ferri a plebeiis magistratibus, a principibus violari? populum studere paci, principes excitare bellum?

41. It is the aim of the guardians of a prince, he exclaims in another passage, that he may never become a man. The nobility, who fatten on public calamity, endeavour to plunge him into pleasures, that he may never learn what is his duty. Towns are burned, lands are wasted, temples are plundered, innocent citizens are slaughtered, while the prince is playing at dice, or dancing, or amusing himself with puppets, or hunting, or drinking. O race of the Bruti, long since extinct! O blind and blunted thunderbolts of Jupiter! We know indeed that those corrupters of princes will render account to Heaven, but not easily to us. He passes soon afterwards to bitter invective against the clergy, especially the regular orders.[583]

42. In explaining the adage, Sileni Alcibiadis, referring to things which, appearing mean and trifling, are really precious, he has many good remarks on persons and things, of which the secret worth is not understood at first sight. But thence passing over to what he calls inversi Sileni, those who seem great to the vulgar, and are really despicable, he expatiates on kings and priests, whom he seems to hate with the fury of a modern philosopher. It must be owned he is very prolix and declamatory. He here attacks the temporal power of the church with much plainness; we cannot wonder that his Adages required mutilation at Rome.

43. But by much the most amusing and singular of the Adages is Scarabæus aquilam quærit; the meaning of which, in allusion to a fable that the beetle, in revenge for an injury, destroyed the eggs of the eagle, is explained to be, that the most powerful may be liable to the resentment of the weakest. Erasmus here returns to the attack upon kings still more bitterly and pointed than before. There is nothing in the Contre un of La Boetie, nothing, we may say, in the most seditious libel of our own time, more indignant and cutting against regal government than this long declamation: Let any physiognomist, not a blunderer in his trade, consider the look and features of an eagle, those rapacious and wicked eyes, that threatening curve of the beak, those cruel cheeks, that stern front, will he not at once recognise the image of a king, a magnificent and majestic king? Add to these a dark, ill-omened colour, an unpleasing, dreadful, appalling voice, and that threatening scream, at which every kind of animal trembles. Every one will acknowledge this type, who has learned how terrible are the threats of princes, even uttered in jest. At this scream of the eagle the people tremble, the senate shrinks, the nobility cringes, the judges concur, the divines are dumb, the lawyers assent, the laws and constitutions give way; neither right nor religion, neither justice nor humanity avail. And thus, while there are so many birds of sweet and melodious song, the unpleasant and unmusical scream of the eagle alone has more power than all the rest.[584]

44. Erasmus now gives the rein still more to his fancy. He imagines different animals, emblematic no doubt of mankind, in relation to his eagle. There is no agreement between the eagle and the fox, not without great disadvantage to the vulpine race; in which however they are perhaps worthy of their fate, for having refused aid to the hares when they sought an alliance against the eagle, as is related in the Annals of Quadrupeds, from which Homer borrowed his Battle of the Frogs and Mice.[585] I suppose that the foxes mean the nobility, and the hares the people. Some allusions to animals that follow I do not well understand. Another is more pleasing: It is not surprising, he says, that the eagle agrees ill with the swans, those poetic birds; we may wonder more, that so warlike an animal is often overcome by them. He sums up all thus: Of all birds the eagle alone has seemed to wise men the apt type of royalty; not beautiful, not musical, not fit for food; but carnivorous, greedy, plundering, destroying, combating, solitary, hateful to all, the curse of all, and with its great powers of doing harm, surpassing them in its desire of doing it.[586]

45. But the eagle is only one of the animals in the proverb. After all this bile against those the royal bird represents, he does not forget the beetles. These of course are the monks, whose picture he draws with equal bitterness and more contempt. Here, however, it becomes difficult to follow the analogy, as he runs a little wildly into mythological tales of the Scarabæus, not easily reduced to his purpose. This he discloses at length: There are a wretched class of men, of low degree, yet full of malice; not less dingy, nor less filthy, nor less vile than beetles; who nevertheless by a certain obstinate malignity of disposition, though they can never do good to any mortal, become frequently troublesome to the great. They frighten by their ugliness, they molest by their noise, they offend by their stench; they buzz round us, they cling to us, they lie in ambush for us, so that it is often better to be at enmity with powerful men than to attack those beetles, whom it is a disgrace even to overcome, and whom no one can either shake off, or encounter, without some pollution.[587]

In a letter to Budæus, Ep. ccli., Erasmus boasts of his παρρησια in the Adages, naming the most poignant of them; but says, in proverbio αετον κανθαρος μαιευεται, plane lusimus ingenio. This proverb, and that entitled Sileni Alcibiadis, had appeared before 1515; for they were reprinted in that year by Frobenius, separately from the other Adages, as appears by a letter of Beatus Rhenanus in Appendice ad Erasm. Epist. Ep. xxviii. Zasius, a famous jurist, alludes to them in another letter, Ep. xxvii., praising fluminosas disserendi undas amplificationis immensam ubertatem. And this, in truth, is the character of Erasmus’s style. The Sileni Alcibiadis were also translated into English, and published by John Gough; see Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities, article 1433.

There is not a little severity in the remarks Erasmus makes on princes and nobles in the Moriæ Encomium. But with them he seems through life to have been a privileged person.

46. It must be admitted, that this was not the language to conciliate; and we might almost commiserate the sufferance of the poor beetles thus trod upon; but Erasmus knew that the regular clergy were not to be conciliated, and resolved to throw away the scabbard. With respect to his invectives against kings, they proceeded undoubtedly, like those, less intemperately expressed, of his friend More in the Utopia, from a just sense of the oppression of Europe in that age by ambitious and selfish rulers. Yet the very freedom of his animadversions seems to plead a little in favour of these tyrants, who, if they had been as thorough birds of prey as he represents them, might easily have torn to pieces the author of this somewhat outrageous declamation, whom on the contrary they honoured and maintained. In one of the passages above quoted, he has introduced, certainly in a later edition, a limitation of his tyrannicidal doctrine, if not a palinodia, in an altered key. Princes, he says, must be endured, lest tyranny should give way to anarchy, a still greater evil. This has been demonstrated by the experience of many states; and lately the insurrection of the German boors has taught us, that the cruelty of princes is better to be borne than the universal confusion of anarchy. I have quoted these political ebullitions rather diffusely, as they are, I believe, very little known, and have given the original in my notes, that I may be proved to have no way over-coloured the translation, and also that a fair specimen may be presented of the eloquence of Erasmus, who has seldom an opportunity of expressing himself with so much elevation, but whose rapid, fertile, and lively, though not very polished style, is hardly more exhibited in these paragraphs, than in the general character of his writings.

His Greek Testament. 47. The whole thoughts of Erasmus began now to be occupied with his great undertaking, an edition of the Greek Testament with explanatory annotations and a continued paraphrase. Valla, indeed, had led the inquiry as a commentator; and the Greek text without notes was already printed at Alcala by direction of Cardinal Ximenes; though this edition, commonly styled the Complutensian, did not appear till 1522. That of Erasmus was published at Basle in 1516. It is strictly therefore the princeps editio. He employed the press of Frobenius, with whom he lived in friendship. Many years of his life were spent at Basle.

Patrons of letters in Germany. 48. The public, in a general sense of the word, was hardly yet recovered enough from its prejudices to give encouragement to letters. But there were not wanting noble patrons who, besides the immediate advantages of their favour, bestowed a much greater indirect benefit on literature, by making it honourable in the eyes of mankind. Learning, which is held pusillanimous by the soldier, unprofitable by the merchant, and pedantic by the courtier, stands in need of some countenance from those before whom all three bow down; wherever at least, which is too commonly the case, a conscious self-respect does not sustain the scholar against the indifference or scorn of the prosperous vulgar. Italy was then, and perhaps has been ever since, the soil where literature, if it has not always most flourished, has stood highest in general estimation. But in Germany also, at this time, the emperor Maximilian, whose character is neither to be estimated by the sarcastic humour of the Italians, nor by the fond partiality of his countrymen, and especially his own, in his self-delineation of Der Weisse König, the Wise King, but really a brave and generous man of lively talents, Frederic, justly denominated the Wise, elector of Saxony, Joachim elector of Brandeburg, Albert archbishop of Mentz, were prominent among the friends of genuine learning. The university of Wittenberg, founded by the second of these princes in 1502, rose in this decade to great eminence, not only as the birthplace of the Reformation, but as the chief school of philological and philosophical literature. That of Frankfort on the Oder was established by the elector of Brandeburg in 1506.

Resistance to learning. 49. The progress of learning, however, was not to be a march through a submissive country. Ignorance, which had much to lose, and was proud as well as rich, ignorance in high places, which is always incurable, because it never seeks for a cure, set itself sullenly and stubbornly against the new teachers. The Latin language, taught most barbarously through books whose very titles, Floresta, Mammotrectus, Doctrinale Puerorum, Gemma Gemmarum, bespeak their style,[588] with the scholastic logic and divinity in wretched compends, had been held sufficient for all education. Those who had learned nothing else could of course teach nothing else, and saw their reputation and emoluments gone all at once by the introduction of philological literature and real science. Through all the palaces of Ignorance went forth a cry of terror at the coming light—A voice of weeping heard and loud lament. The aged giant was roused from his sleep, and sent his dark hosts of owls and bats to the war. One man above all the rest, Erasmus, cut them to pieces with irony or invective. They stood in the way of his noble zeal for the restoration of letters.[589] He began his attack in his Encomium Moriæ, the praise of folly. This was addressed to Sir Thomas More, and published in 1511. Eighteen hundred copies were printed, and speedily sold; though the book wanted the attraction that some later editions possess, the curious and amusing engravings from designs of Holbein. It is a poignant satire against all professions of men and even against princes and peers; but the chief objects are the mendicant orders of monks. Though this sort of men, he says, are so detested by everyone, that it is reckoned unlucky so much as to meet them by accident, they think nothing equal to themselves, and hold it a proof of their consummate piety, if they are so illiterate as not to be able to read. And when their asinine voices bray out in the churches their psalms, which they can count, but not understand,[590] then it is they fancy that the ears of the saints above are enraptured with the harmony; and so forth.

Erasmus gives a lamentable account of the state of education when he was a boy, and probably later: Deum immortalem! quale sæculum erat hoc, cum magno apparatu disticha Joannis Garlandini adolescentibus operosis et prolixis commentariis enarrabantur! cum ineptis versiculis dictandis, repetendis et exigendis magna pars temporis absumeretur; cum disceretur; Floresta et Floretus; nam Alexandrum iter tolerabiles numerandum arbitror.

I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that Erasmus was certainly born in 1465, not in 1467, as Bayle asserts, whom Le Clerc and Jortin have followed. Burigni perceived this; and it may be proved by many passages in the Epistles of Erasmus. Bayle quotes a letter of Feb. 1516, wherein Erasmus says, as he transcribes it: Ago annum undequinquagesimum. But in the Leyden edition, which is the best, I find, Ego jam annum ago primum et quinquagesimum. Epist. cc. Thus he says also, 15th March, 1528: Arbitror me nunc ætatem agere, in quo M. Tullius decessit. Some other places I have not taken down. His epitaph at Basle calls him, jam septuagenarius, and he died in 1536. Bayle’s proofs of the birth of Erasmus in 1467 are so unsatisfactory, that I wonder how Le Clerc should have so easily acquiesced in them. The Biographie Universelle sets down 1467 without remark.

Antony Wood, with rather an excess of academical prejudice, insinuates that the Trojans, who waged war against Oxonian Greek, were Cambridge men, as it is reported. He endeavours to exaggerate the deficiencies of Cambridge in literature at this time, as if all things were full of rudeness and barbarousness; which the above letters of More and Erasmus show not to have been altogether the case. On the contrary, More says that even those who did not learn Greek contributed to pay the lecturer.

It may be worth while to lay before the reader part of two orations by Richard Croke, who had been sent down to Cambridge by Bishop Fisher, chancellor of the university. As Croke seems to have left Leipsic in 1518, they may be referred to that, or perhaps more probably the following year. It is evident that Greek was now just incipient at Cambridge.

Maittaire says of these two orations of Richard Croke: Editio rarissima, cujusque unum duntaxat exemplar inspexisse mihi contigit. The British Museum has a copy, which belonged to Dr. Farmer; but he must have seen another copy, for the last page of this being imperfect, he has filled it up with his own hand. The book is printed at Paris by Colinæus in 1520.

The subject of Croke’s orations, which seem not very correctly printed, is the praise of Greece and of Greek literature, addressed to those who already knew and valued that of Rome, which he shows to be derived from the other. Quin ipsæ quoque voculationes Romanæ Græcis longe in suaviores, minusque concitatæ sunt, cum ultima semper syllaba rigeat in gravem, contraque apud Græcos et inflectatur nonnunquam et acuatur. Croke of course spoke Greek accentually. Greek words, in bad types, frequently occur through this oration.

Croke dwells on the barbarous state of the sciences, in consequence of the ignorance of Greek. Euclid’s definition of a line was so ill translated, that it puzzled all the geometers till the Greek was consulted. Medicine was in an equally bad condition; had it not been for the labours of learned men, Linacre, Cop, Ruel, quorum opera felicissime loquantur Latinè Hippocrates, Galenus et Dioscorides, cum summa ipsorum invidia, qui, quod canis in præsepi, nec Græcam linguam discere ipsi voluerunt, nec aliis ut discerent permiserunt. He then urges the necessity of Greek studies for the theologian, and seems to have no respect for the Vulgate above the original.

Turpe sanè erit, cum mercator sermonem Gallicum, Illyricum, Hispanicum, Germanicum, vel solius lucri causa avide ediscat, vos studiosos Græcum in manus vobis traditum rejicere, quo et divitiæ et eloquentia et sapientia comparari possunt. Imo perpendite rogo viri Cantabrigienses, quo nunc in loco vestræ res sita sunt. Oxonienses quos ante hæc in omni scientiarum genere vicistis, ad literas Græcas pertugere, vigilant, jejunant, sudant et algent; nihil non faciunt ut eas occupent. Quod si contingat, actum est de fama vestra. Erigent enim de vobis tropæum nunquam succumbuturi. Habent duces præter cardinalem Cantuariensem, Wintoniensem, cæteros omnes Angliæ episcopos, excepto uno Roffensir summo semper fautore vestro, et Eliensi, &c.

Favet præterea ipsis sancta Grocini et theologo digna severitas, Linacri πολυμαθεια et acre judicium, Tunstali non legibus magis quam utrique linguæ familiaris facundia, Stopleii triplex lingua, Mori candida et eloquentissima urbanitas, Pacei mores doctrina et ingenium, ab ipso Erasmo, optimo eruditionis censore, commendati; quem vos olim habuistis Græcarum literarum professorum, utinamque potuissetis retinere. Succedo in Erasmi locum ego, bone Deus, quam infra illum, et doctriná et famâ, quamquam me, ne omnino nihili fiam, principes viri, theologici doctores, jurium etiam et medicinæ, artium præterea professores innumeri, et præceptorem agnovere, et quod plus est, a scholis ad ædes, ab ædibus ad scholas honorificentissime comitati perduxere. Dii me perdant, viri Cantabrigienses, si ipsi Oxonienses stipendio multorum nobilium præter victum me non invitavere. Sed ego pro mea in hanc academiam et fide et observantia, &c.

In his second oration, Croke exhorts the Cantabrigians not to give up the study of Greek. Si quisquam omnium sit qui vestræ reipublicæ bene consulere debeat, is ego sum, viri Cantabrigienses. Optime enim vobis esse cupio, et id nisi facerem, essem profecto longe ingratissimus. Ubi enim jacta literarum mearum fundamenta, quibus tantum tum apud nostrates, tum vero apud exteros quoque principes, favoris mihi comparatum est; quibus ea fortuna, ut licet jam olim consanguineorum iniquitate paterna hæreditate sim spoliatus, ita tamen adhuc vivam, ut quibusvis meorum majorum imaginibus videar non indignus. He was probably of the ancient family of Croke. Peter Mosellanus calls him, in a letter among those of Erasmus, juvenis cum imaginibus.

Audio ego plerosque vos a litteris Græcis dehortatos esse. Sed vos diligenter expendite, qui sint et plane non alios fore comperitis, quam qui igitur linguam oderunt Græcam quia Romanam non norunt. Cæterum jam deprehendo quid facturi sint, qui nostras literas odio prosequuntur, confugiunt videlicet ad religionem, cui uni dicent omnia postponenda. Sentio ego cum illis, sed unde quæso orta religio, nisi è Græciâ? quid enim novum testamentum, excepto Matthæo? quid enim vetus? nunquid Deo auspice a septuaginta Græcè redditum? Oxonia est colonia vestra; uti olim non sine summa laude a Cantabrigia deducta, ita non sine summo vestro nunc dedecore, si doctrina ab ipsis vos vinci patiamini. Fuerunt olim illi discipuli vestri, nunc erunt præceptores? Utinam quo animo hæc a me dicta sunt, eo vos dicta interpretemini; crederetisque, quod est verissimum, si quoslibet alios, certe Cantabrigienses minime decere literarum Græcarum esse desertores.

The great scarcity of this tract will serve as an apology for the length of these extracts, illustrating, as they do, the commencement of classical literature in England.

Unpopularity of The monks. 50. In this sentence Erasmus intimates, what is abundantly confirmed by other testimony, that the mendicant orders had lost their ancient hold upon the people. There was a growing sense of the abuses prevailing in the church, and a desire for a more scriptural and spiritual religion. We have seen already that this was the case seventy years before. And in the intermediate period the exertions of a few eminent men, especially Wessel of Groningen, had not been wanting to purify the doctrines and discipline of the clergy. More popular writers assailed them with satire. Thus everything was prepared for the blow to be struck by Luther; better indeed than he was himself; for it is well known that he began his attack on indulgences with no expectation or desire of the total breach with the see of Rome which ensued.[591]

The book excites odium. 51. The Encomium Moriæ was received with applause by all who loved merriment, and all who hated the monks; but grave men, as usual, could not bear to see ridicule employed against grave folly and hypocrisy. A letter of one Dorpius, a man, it is said, of some merit, which may be read in Jortin’s Life of Erasmus,[592] amusingly complains, that while the most eminent divines and lawyers were admiring Erasmus, his unlucky Moria had spoiled all, by letting them see that he was mischievously fitting asses’ ears to their heads. The same Dorpius, who seems, though not an old man, to have been a sworn vassal of the giant Ignorance, objects to anything in Erasmus’s intended edition of the Greek Testament, which might throw a slur on the accuracy of the Vulgate.

Erasmus attacks the monks. 52. Erasmus was soon in a state of war with the monks; and in his second edition of the New Testament printed in 1518, the notes, it is said, are full of invectives against them. It must be confessed that he had begun the attack, without any motive of provocation, unless zeal for learning and religion is to count for such, which the parties assailed could not be expected to admit, and they could hardly thank him for spitting on their gaberdine. No one, however, knew better how to pay his court; and he wrote to Leo X. in a style rather too adulatory, which in truth was his custom in addressing the great, and contrasts with his free language in writing about them. The custom of the time affords some excuse for this panegyrical tone of correspondence, as well as for the opposite extreme of severity.

Their contention with Reuchlin. 53. The famous contention between Reuchlin and the German monks, though it began in the preceding decennial period, belongs chiefly to the present. In the year 1509, one Pfeffercorn, a converted Jew, induced the inquisition at Cologne to obtain an order from the emperor for burning all Hebrew books except the Bible, upon the pretext of their being full of blasphemies against the Christian religion. The Jews made complaints of this injury; but before it could take place, Reuchlin, who had been consulted by the emperor, remonstrated against the destruction of works so curious and important, which, from his partiality to Cabbalistic theories, he rated above their real value. The order was accordingly superseded, to the great indignation of the Cologne inquisitors, and of all that party throughout Germany which resisted the intellectual and religious progress of mankind. Reuchlin had offended the monks by satirising them in a comedy which he permitted to be printed in 1506. But the struggle was soon perceived to be a general one; a struggle between what had been and what was to be. Meiners has gone so far as to suppose a real confederacy to have been formed by the friends of truth and learning through Germany and France, to support Reuchlin against the mendicant orders, and to overthrow, by means of this controversy, the embattled legions of ignorance.[593] But perhaps the passages he adduces do not prove more than their unanimity and zeal in the cause. The attention of the world was first called to it about 1513; that is, it assumed about that time the character of a war of opinions, extending, in its principle and consequences, beyond the immediate dispute.[594] Several books were published on both sides; and the party in power employed its usual argument of burning what was written by its adversaries. One of these writings is still known, the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum; the production, it is said, of three authors, the principal of whom was Ulric von Hutten, a turbulent hotheaded man, of noble birth and quick parts, and a certain degree of learning, whose early death seems more likely to have spared the reformers some degree of shame, than to have deprived them of a useful supporter.[595] Few books have been more eagerly received than these epistles at their first appearance in 1516,[596] which surely proceeded rather from their suitableness to the time, than from much intrinsic merit; though it must be owned that the spirit of many temporary allusions, which delighted or offended that age, is now lost in a mass of vapid nonsense and bad grammar, which the imaginary writers pour out. Erasmus, though not intimately acquainted with Reuchlin, could not but sympathise in a quarrel with their common enemies in a common cause. In the end the controversy was referred to the pope; but the pope was Leo; and it was hoped that a proposal to burn books, or to disgrace an illustrious scholar, would not sound well in his ears. But Reuchlin was disappointed, when he expected acquittal, by a mandate to supersede, or suspend, the process commenced against him by the inquisition of Cologne, which might be taken up at a more favourable time.[597] This dispute has always been reckoned of high importance; the victory in public opinion, though not in judicature, over the adherents to the old system, prostrated them so utterly, that from this time the study of Greek and Hebrew became general among the German youth; and the cause of the Reformation was identified in their minds with that of classical literature.[598]

Origin of the Reformation. 54. We are now brought, insensibly perhaps, but by necessary steps, to the great religious revolution which has just been named. I approach this subject with some hesitation, well aware that impartiality is no protection against unreasonable cavilling; but neither the history of literature, nor of human opinion upon the most important subjects, can dispense altogether with so extensive a portion of its materials. It is not required, however, in a work of this nature, to do much more than state shortly the grounds of dispute, and the changes wrought in the public mind.

55. The proximate cause of the Reformation is well known. Indulgences, or dispensations granted by the pope from the heavy penances imposed on penitents after absolution by the old canons, and also, at least in later ages, from the pains of purgatory, were sold by the papal retailers with the most indecent extortion, and eagerly purchased by the superstitious multitude, for their own sake, or that of their deceased friends. Luther, in his celebrated theses, propounded at Wittenberg, in November 1517, inveighed against the erroneous views inculcated as to the efficacy of indulgences, and especially against the notion of the pope’s power over souls in purgatory. He seems to have believed, that the dealers had exceeded their commission, and would be disavowed by the pope. This, however, was very far from being the case; and the determination of Leo to persevere in defending all the abusive prerogatives of his see, drew Luther on to levy war against many other prevailing usages of the church, against several tenets maintained by the most celebrated doctors, against the divine right of the papal supremacy, and finally to renounce all communion with a power which he now deemed an antichristian tyranny. This absolute separation did not take place till he publicly burned the pope’s bull against him, and the volumes of the canon law, at Wittenberg, in November 1520.

Popularity of Luther. 56. In all this dispute Luther was sustained by a prodigious force of popular opinion. It was perhaps in the power of his sovereign, Frederic elector of Saxony, to have sent him to Rome, in the summer of 1518, according to the pope’s direction. But it would have been an odious step in the people’s eyes, and a little later would have been impossible. Miltitz, an envoy despatched by Leo in 1519, upon a conciliatory errand, told Luther that 25,000 armed men would not suffice to make him a prisoner, so favourable was the impression of his doctrine upon Germany. And Frederic himself, not long afterwards, wrote plainly to Rome, that a change had taken place in his country; the German people were not what they had been; there were many men of great talents and considerable learning among them, and the laity were beginning to be anxious about a knowledge of Scripture; so that unless Luther’s doctrine, which had already taken root in the minds of a great many both in Germany and other countries, could be refuted by better argument than mere ecclesiastical fulminations, the consequence must be so much disturbance in the empire, as would by no means redound to the benefit of the Holy See.[599] In fact, the university of Wittenberg was crowded with students and others, who came to hear Luther and Melanchthon. The latter had at the very beginning embraced his new master’s opinions with a conviction he did not in all respects afterwards preserve. And though no overt attempts to innovate on the established ceremonies had begun in this period, before the end of 1520 several preached against them, and the whole north of Germany was full of expectation.

Simultaneous reform by Zwingle. 57. A counterpart to the reformation that Luther was thus effecting in Saxony might be found at the same instant in Switzerland, under the guidance of Zwingle. It has been disputed between the advocates of these leaders, to which the priority in the race of reform belongs. Zwingle himself declares, that in 1516, before he had heard of Luther, he began to preach the gospel at Zurich, and to warn the people against relying upon human authority.[600] But that is rather ambiguous, and hardly enough to substantiate his claim. In 1518, which of course is after Luther’s appearance on the scene, the Swiss reformer was engaged in combating the venders of indulgences, though with less attention from the court of Rome. Like Luther, he had the support of the temporal magistrate, the council of Zurich. Upon the whole, they proceeded so nearly with equal steps, and were so little connected with each other, that it seems difficult to award either any honour of precedence.[601]

The prejudice of Milner against Zwingle throughout is striking, and leads him into much unfairness. Thus he asserts him, v. 510, to have been consenting to the capital punishment of some Anabaptists at Zurich. But, not to mention that their case was not one of mere religious dissidence, it does not by any means appear that he approved their punishment, which he merely relates as a fact. A still more gross misrepresentation occurs in p. 526.

Reformation prepared beforehand. 58. The German nation was, in fact, so fully awakened to the abuses of the church, the disclaimer of papal sovereignty in the councils of Constance and Basle had been so effectual in its influence on the public mind, though not on the external policy of church and state, that, if neither Luther nor Zwingle had ever been born, there can be little question that a great religious schism was near at hand. These councils were to the Reformation what the parliament of Paris was to the French Revolution. Their leaders never meant to sacrifice one article of received faith; but the little success they had in redressing what they denounced as abuses, convinced the laity that they must go much farther for themselves. What effect the invention of printing, which in Italy was not much felt in this direction, exerted upon the serious minds of the Teutonic nations, has been already intimated, and must appear to every reflecting person. And when this was followed by a more extensive acquaintance with the New Testament in the Greek language, nothing could be more natural than that inquisitive men should throw away much of what seemed the novel superstructure of religion, and, what in other times such men had rarely ventured should be encouraged by the obvious change in the temper of the multitude to declare themselves. We find that Pellican and Capito, two of the most learned scholars in western Germany, had come, as early as 1512, to reject altogether the doctrine of the real presence. We find also that Œcolampadius had begun to preach some of the protestant doctrines in 1514.[602] And Erasmus, who had so manifestly prepared the way for the new Reformers, continued, as it is easy to show from the uniform current of his letters, beyond the year 1520, favourable to their cause. His enemies were theirs, and he concurred in much that they preached, especially as to the exterior practices of religion. Some, however, of Luther’s tenets he did not and could not approve; and he was already disgusted by that intemperance of language and conduct, which, not long afterwards, led him to recede entirely from the Protestant side.[603]

Dangerous tenets of Luther. 59. It would not be just, probably, to give Bossuet credit in every part of that powerful delineation of Luther’s theological tenets, with which he begins the History of the Variations of Protestant churches. Nothing, perhaps, in polemical eloquence is so splendid as this chapter. The eagle of Meaux is there truly seen, lordly of form, fierce of eye, terrible in his beak and claws. But he is too determined a partizan to be trusted by those who seek the truth without regard to persons and denominations. His quotations from Luther are short, and in French; I have failed in several attempts to verify the references. Yet we are not to follow the Reformer’s partizans in dissembling altogether, like Isaac Milner, or in slightly censuring, as others have done, the enormous paradoxes which deform his writings, especially such as fall within the present period. In maintaining salvation to depend on faith as a single condition, he not only denied the importance, in a religious sense, of a virtuous life, but asserted that every one who felt within himself a full assurance that his sins were remitted (which, according to Luther, is the proper meaning of Christian faith), became incapable of sinning at all, or at least of forfeiting the favour of God, so long, but so long only, as that assurance should continue. Such expressions are sometimes said by Seckendorf and Mosheim to have been thrown out hastily, and without precision; but I fear it will be found on examination that they are very definite and clear, the want of precision and perspicuity being rather in those which are alleged as inconsistent with them, and as more consonant to the general doctrine of the Christian church.[604] It must not be supposed for a moment that Luther, whose soul was penetrated with a fervent piety, and whose integrity as well as purity of life are unquestioned, could mean to give any encouragement to a licentious disregard of moral virtue; which he valued, as in itself lovely before God as well as man, though in the technical style of his theology, he might deny its proper obligation. But his temper led him to follow up any proposition of Scripture to every consequence that might seem to result from its literal meaning; and he fancied that to represent a future state as the motive of virtuous action, or as any way connected with human conduct, for better or worse, was derogatory to the free grace of God, and the omnipotent agency of the Spirit in converting the soul.[605]

60. Whatever may be the bias of our minds as to the truth of Luther’s doctrines, we should be careful, in considering the Reformation as a part of the history of mankind, not to be misled by the superficial and ungrounded representations which we sometimes find in modern writers. Such is this, that Luther, struck by the absurdity of the prevailing superstitions, was desirous of introducing a more rational system of religion; or, that he contended for freedom of inquiry, and the boundless privileges of individual judgment; or, what others have been pleased to suggest, that his zeal for learning and ancient philosophy led him to attack the ignorance of the monks, and the crafty policy of the church, which withstood all liberal studies.

Real explanation of them. 61. These notions are merely fallacious refinements, as every man of plain understanding, who is acquainted with the writings of the early reformers, or has considered their history, must acknowledge. The doctrines of Luther, taken altogether, are not more rational, that is, more conformable to what men, à priori, would expect to find in religion, than those of the church of Rome; nor did he ever pretend that they were so. As to the privilege of free inquiry, it was of course exercised by those who deserted their ancient altars, but certainly not upon any latitudinarian theory of a right to judge amiss. Nor, again, is there any foundation for imagining that Luther was concerned for the interests of literature. None had he himself, save theological; nor are there, as I apprehend, many allusions to profane studies, or any proof of his regard to them, in all his works. On the contrary, it is probable that both the principles of this great founder of the Reformation, and the natural tendency of so intense an application to theological controversy, checked for a time the progress of philological and philosophical literature on this side of the Alps.[606] Every solution of the conduct of the reformers must be nugatory, except one, that they were men absorbed by the conviction that they were fighting the battle of God. But among the population of Germany or Switzerland, there was undoubtedly another predominant feeling; the sense of ecclesiastical oppression, and scorn for the worthless swarm of monks and friars. This may be said to have divided the propagators of the Reformation into such as merely pulled down, and such as built upon the ruins. Ulric von Hutten may pass for the type of the one, and Luther himself of the other. And yet it is hardly correct to say of Luther, that he erected his system on the ruins of popery. For it was rather the growth and expansion in his mind of one positive dogma, justification by faith, in the sense he took it (which can be easily shown to have preceded the dispute about indulgences[607]), that broke down and crushed successively the various doctrines of the Romish church; not because he had originally much objection to them, but because there was no longer room for them in a consistent system of theology.[608]