d
nor encouraged them. Erasmus's strong propensity to fancy himself
menaced and injured tinged this position with the martyrdom of oppressed
talent. To Cornelius he complains in fine Horatian measure of the
contempt in which poetry was held; his fellow-monk orders him to let his
pen, accustomed to writing poetry, rest. Consuming envy forces him to
give up making verses. A horrid barbarism prevails, the country laughs
at the laurel-bringing art of high-seated Apollo; the coarse peasant
orders the learned poet to write verses. 'Though I had mouths as many as
the stars that twinkle in the silent firmament on quiet nights, or as
many as the roses that the mild gale of spring strews on the ground, I
could not complain of all the evils by which the sacred art of poetry is
oppressed in these days. I am tired of writing poetry.' Of this effusion
Cornelius made a dialogue which highly pleased Erasmus.

Though in this art nine-tenths may be rhetorical fiction and sedulous
imitation, we ought not, on that account, to undervalue the enthusiasm
inspiring the young poets. Let us, who have mostly grown blunt to the
charms of Latin, not think too lightly of the elation felt by one who,
after learning this language out of the most absurd primers and
according to the most ridiculous methods, nevertheless discovered it in
its purity, and afterwards came to handle it in the charming rhythm of
some artful metre, in the glorious precision of its structure and in all
the melodiousness of its sound.

[Illustration: I. ERASMUS AT THE AGE OF 51]

[Illustration: II. VIEW OF ROTTERDAM, EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY]

Nec si quot placidis ignea noctibus
Scintillant tacito sydera culmine,
Nec si quot tepidum flante Favonio
Ver suffundit humo rosas,
Tot sint ora mihi...

Was it strange that the youth who could say this felt himself a
poet?--or who, together with his friend, could sing of spring in a
Meliboean song of fifty distichs? Pedantic work, if you like, laboured
literary exercises, and yet full of the freshness and the vigour which
spring from the Latin itself.

Out of these moods was to come the first comprehensive work that Erasmus
was to undertake, the manuscript of which he was afterwards to lose, to
recover in part, and to publish only after many years--the
_Antibarbari_, which he commenced at Steyn, according to Dr. Allen. In
the version in which eventually the first book of the _Antibarbari_
appeared, it reflects, it is t