to art, to metaphysics, to antiquarian pedantry. He
endeavoured to make men familiar with the wisdom of the ancients by a
collection of 1451 adages selected from their works. His Colloquies,
the most popular book of his age, sold in 24,000 copies. At first he
was more a scholar than a divine; and though he learnt Greek late, and
was never a first-rate Hellenist, published editions of the classics.
In later life the affairs of religion absorbed him, and he lived for
the idea that reform of the Church depended on a better knowledge of
early Christianity, in other words, on better self-knowledge, which
could only result from a slow and prolonged literary process. He
started from the beginning by his edition of the Greek Testament,
begun here, at Queens' in 1512, published at Bale by Froben in 1516.
It had already been printed from better MSS. by Cardinal Ximenes in
the fifth volume of the Complutensian Polyglot, which did not appear
until 1522. Therefore Erasmus's edition is the first ever
published. It was produced at last, in a hurry, to secure the
priority, and was not greatly improved afterwards. Part of the
Apocalypse was wanting in all his MSS. He restored it by translating
it into Greek from the Vulgate, and in six verses made thirty
mistakes. His second edition had a letter of approbation from Leo X,
and it was the edition which Luther used for his translation. It is a
sign of the want of religious interest in the Renaissance, especially
in Italy, that printing had been going on for sixty years, and 24,000
works issued from the press, some of them more than a hundred times,
before anybody thought of the Greek Testament.

Erasmus occupied his later years with the works of the Fathers, also
printed by Froben, the Greeks in Latin translations. "Letters," he
said, "had remained Pagan in Italy, until he taught them to speak of
Christ." Just as he was entirely destitute of the national fibre, so
too he stood apart from the schools or currents of his time. His
striving was to replace the scholastics by the Fathers, systematic
theology by spiritual religion; and those Doctors of the Church who
inclined to system, such as St. Augustine, repelled him. It may be
said that he was not attracted by St. Paul, and preferred the Gospels
to the Epistles. He esteemed Seneca more highly than many Christian
divines. Although he chose to employ the weapon of irony, and
abstained from the high horse and the big word, he