quire support. In saying this, Battus, you will be telling
no lies. For I really mean to do all this.'

He was, indeed, in a serious mood on this point, as he was soon to prove
to the world. His conquest of Greek was a veritable feat of heroism. He
had learned the simplest rudiments at Deventer, but these evidently
amounted to very little. In March, 1500, he writes to Batt: 'Greek is
nearly killing me, but I have no time and I have no money to buy books
or to take a master'. When Augustine Caminade wants his Homer back which
he had lent to him, Erasmus complains: 'You deprive me of my sole
consolation in my tedium. For I so burn with love for this author,
though I cannot understand him, that I feast my eyes and re-create my
mind by looking at him.' Was Erasmus aware that in saying this he almost
literally reproduced feelings which Petrarch had expressed a hundred and
fifty years before? But he had already begun to study. Whether he had a
master is not quite clear, but it is probable. He finds the language
difficult at first. Then gradually he ventures to call himself 'a
candidate in this language', and he begins with more confidence to
scatter Greek quotations through his letters. It occupies him night and
day and he urges all his friends to procure Greek books for him. In the
autumn of 1502 he declares that he can properly write all he wants in
Greek, and that extempore. He was not deceived in his expectation that
Greek would open his eyes to the right understanding of Holy Scripture.
Three years of nearly uninterrupted study amply rewarded him for his
trouble. Hebrew, which he had also taken up, he abandoned. At that time
(1504) he made translations from the Greek, he employed it critically in
his theological studies, he taught it, amongst others, to William Cop,
the French physician-humanist. A few years later he was to find little
in Italy to improve his proficiency in Greek; he was afterwards inclined
to believe that he carried more of the two ancient languages to that
country than he brought back.

Nothing testifies more to the enthusiasm with which Erasmus applied
himself to Greek than his zeal to make his best friends share in its
blessings. Batt, he decided, should learn Greek. But Batt had no time,
and Latin appealed more to him. When Erasmus goes to Haarlem to visit
William Hermans, it is to make him a Greek scholar too; he has brought a
handbag full of books. But he had only his trouble for his pains.
Willi