y
that he had frequently pulled off Agricola's boots, when he came home
the worse for his potations; but that no one had ever seen Wessel
under the influence of wine. Wessel, indeed, lived to a green old age,
but killed himself by working too hard.

II

SCHOOLS

Erasmus was born at Rotterdam on the vigil of SS. Simon and Jude, 27
October: probably in 1466, but his utterances on the subject are
ambiguous. Around his parentage he wove a web of romance, from which
only one fact emerges clearly--that his father was at some time a
priest. Current gossip said that he was parish priest of Gouda; a
little town near Rotterdam, with a big church, which in the sixteenth
century its inhabitants were wealthy enough to adorn with some fine
stained glass. There in the town school, under a master who was
afterwards one of the guardians of his scanty patrimony, Erasmus'
schooldays began, and he made acquaintance with the Latin grammar of
Donatus. After an interval as chorister at Utrecht, he was sent by his
parents to the school at Deventer, which, with that of the
neighbouring and rival town of Zwolle, enjoyed pre-eminence among the
schools of the Netherlands at that date. It was connected with the
principal church of the town, St. Lebuin's; and doubtless among those
aisles and chapels, listening perhaps to the merry bells, whose chimes
still proclaim the quarters far and wide, he caught the first breath
of that new hope to which he was to devote his whole life. The school
was controlled by the canons of St. Lebuin, who appointed the head
master; but, as at Zwolle, some of the teachers were drawn from that
sober and learned order, the Brethren of the Common Life, whose parent
house was at Deventer.

Of Erasmus' life in the school we have little knowledge. He tells us
that he was there in 1475, when preachers came from Rome announcing
the jubilee which Sixtus IV had so conveniently found possible to hold
after only twenty-five years. From one of his letters we can picture
him wandering by the river side among the barges, and marking the slow
growth of the bridge of boats which it took the town of Deventer
several years to throw across the rapid Yssel. He probably entered the
lowest class, the eighth, and by 1484, when at the age of eighteen he
left in consequence of the outbreak of plague mentioned in Hegius'
letter to Agricola, he had not made his way above the third; thus
giving little indication of his future fame. An e