his love
of scoffing, but, as in the _Moria_ and _Colloquia_, ennobled by an
almost passionate sincerity of Christian disposition and a natural sense
of measure. The _Ciceronianus_ is a masterpiece of ready, many-sided
knowledge, of convincing eloquence, and of easy handling of a wealth of
arguments. With splendid, quiet and yet lively breadth flows the long
conversation between Bulephorus, representing Erasmus's opinions,
Hypologus, the interested inquirer, and Nosoponus, the zealous
Ciceronian, who, to preserve a perfect purity of mind, breakfasts off
ten currants.

Erasmus in drawing Nosoponus had evidently, in the main, alluded to one
who could no longer reply: Christopher Longolius, who had died in 1522.

The core of the _Ciceronianus_ is where Erasmus points out the danger to
Christian faith of a too zealous classicism. He exclaims urgently: 'It
is paganism, believe me, Nosoponus, it is paganism that charms our ear
and our soul in such things. We are Christians in name alone.' Why does
a classic proverb sound better to us than a quotation from the Bible:
_corchorum inter olera_, 'chick-weed among the vegetables', better than
'Saul among the prophets'? As a sample of the absurdity of
Ciceronianism, he gives a translation of a dogmatic sentence in
classical language: 'Optimi maximique Jovis interpres ac filius,
servator, rex, juxta vatum responsa, ex Olympo devolavit in terras,'
for: Jesus Christ, the Word and the Son of the eternal Father, came into
the world according to the prophets. Most humanists wrote indeed in that
style.

Was Erasmus aware that he here attacked his own past? After all, was it
not exactly the same thing which he had done, to the indignation of his
opponents, when translating _Logos_ by _Sermo_ instead of by _Verbum_?
Had he not himself desired that in the church hymns the metre should be
corrected, not to mention his own classical odes and paeans to Mary and
the Saints? And was his warning against the partiality for classic
proverbs and turns applicable to anything more than to the _Adagia_?

We here see the aged Erasmus on the path of reaction, which might
eventually have led him far from humanism. In his combat with humanistic
purism he foreshadows a Christian puritanism.

As always his mockery procured him a new flood of invectives. Bembo and
Sadolet, the masters of pure Latin, could afford to smile at it, but the
impetuous Julius Caesar Scaliger violently inveighed against him,
espe