HAPTER IV

FIRST STAY IN ENGLAND

1499-1500

First stay in England: 1499-1500--Oxford: John Colet--Erasmus's
aspirations directed towards divinity--He is as yet mainly a
literate--Fisher and More--Mishap at Dover when leaving England:
1500--Back in France he composes the _Adagia_--Years of trouble
and penury

Erasmus's first stay in England, which lasted from the early summer of
1499 till the beginning of 1500, was to become for him a period of
inward ripening. He came there as an erudite poet, the protege of a
nobleman of rank, on the road to closer contact with the great world
which knew how to appreciate and reward literary merit. He left the
country with the fervent desire in future to employ his gifts, in so far
as circumstances would permit, in more serious tasks. This change was
brought about by two new friends whom he found in England, whose
personalities were far above those who had hitherto crossed his path:
John Colet and Thomas More.

During all the time of his sojourn in England Erasmus is in high
spirits, for him. At first it is still the man of the world who speaks,
the refined man of letters, who must needs show his brilliant genius.
Aristocratic life, of which he evidently had seen but little at the
Bishop of Cambray's and the Lady of Veere's at Tournehem, pleased him
fairly well, it seems. 'Here in England', he writes in a light vein to
Faustus Andrelinus, 'we have, indeed, progressed somewhat. The Erasmus
whom you know is almost a good hunter already, not too bad a horseman, a
not unpractised courtier. He salutes a little more courteously, he
smiles more kindly. If you are wise, you also will alight here.' And he
teases the volatile poet by telling him about the charming girls and the
laudable custom, which he found in England, of accompanying all
compliments by kisses.[3]

It even fell to his lot to make the acquaintance of royalty. From
Mountjoy's estate at Greenwich, More, in the course of a walk, took him
to Eltham Palace, where the royal children were educated. There he saw,
surrounded by the whole royal household, the youthful Henry, who was to
be Henry VIII, a boy of nine years, together with two little sisters and
a young prince, who was still an infant in arms. Erasmus was ashamed
that he had nothing to offer and, on returning home, he composed (not
without exertion, for he had not written poetry at all for some time) a
panegyric on England, which he presented to