again and again, to justify some bold
feat! He is critical, they say? Were not the Ancients critical? He
permits himself to insert digressions? So did the Ancients, etc.

Erasmus is in profound sympathy with that revered Antiquity by his
fundamental conviction that it is the practice of life which matters.
Not he is the great philosopher who knows the tenets of the Stoics or
Peripatetics by rote--but he who expresses the meaning of philosophy by
his life and his morals, for that is its purpose. He is truly a divine
who teaches, not by artful syllogisms, but by his disposition, by his
face and his eyes, by his life itself, that wealth should be despised.
To live up to that standard is what Christ himself calls _Renascentia_.
Erasmus uses the word in the Christian sense only. But in that sense it
is closely allied to the idea of the Renaissance as a historical
phenomenon. The worldly and pagan sides of the Renaissance have nearly
always been overrated. Erasmus is, much more than Aretino or
Castiglione, the representative of the spirit of his age, one over whose
Christian sentiment the sweet gale of Antiquity had passed. And that
very union of strong Christian endeavour and the spirit of Antiquity is
the explanation of Erasmus's wonderful success.

* * * * *

The mere intention and the contents of the mind do not influence the
world, if the form of expression does not cooperate. In Erasmus the
quality of his talent is a very important factor. His perfect clearness
and ease of expression, his liveliness, wit, imagination, gusto and
humour have lent a charm to all he wrote which to his contemporaries was
irresistible and captivates even us, as soon as we read him. In all that
constitutes his talent, Erasmus is perfectly and altogether a
representative of the Renaissance. There is, in the first place, his
eternal _a propos_. What he writes is never vague, never dark--it is
always plausible. Everything seemingly flows of itself like a fountain.
It always rings true as to tone, turn of phrase and accent. It has
almost the light harmony of Ariosto. And it is, like Ariosto, never
tragic, never truly heroic. It carries us away, indeed, but it is never
itself truly enraptured.

The more artistic aspects of Erasmus's talent come out most
clearly--though they are everywhere in evidence--in those two
recreations after more serious labour, the _Moriae Encomium_ and the
_Colloquia_. But just those two