BONIFACE AMERBACH OF BASEL 236 From "Erasmi Opera," published at Leyden, 1703. CHARLES V. 262 From an engraving by Bartel Beham, 1531. PHILIP MELANCHTHON 280 From the drawing by Holbein in Windsor Castle. FRONTISPIECE (ERASMUS SEATED) TO "ERASMI OPERA," PUBLISHED AT LEYDEN, 1703 296 ERASMUS WITH "TERMINUS" 315 From a woodcut by Holbein in the Basel Museum. ERASMUS 334 From a copper engraving by Albert Dürer. FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ERASMUS TO JOHANNES LANGE 342 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 364 From a contemporary woodcut. BILIBALD PIRKHEIMER OF NUREMBERG 415 From an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, in "Erasmi Opera," published at Leyden, 1703. TITLE-PAGE TO THE "COLLOQUIES OF ERASMUS," PUBLISHED AT AMSTERDAM, 1693 424 Portrait of Erasmus and others. TITLE-PAGE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION OF THE "APOPHTHEGMS OF ERASMUS," TRANSLATED BY UDALL, 1542 450 INSCRIPTION ON THE TOMB OF ERASMUS, AT BASEL 460 From Knight's "Life of Erasmus." INTRODUCTION The student of Erasmus is at first overwhelmed by the abundance of the material before him. A man who has left to posterity enough to fill eleven folio volumes would seem to have made a biographer unnecessary. Especially when two of these volumes are filled with personal letters, more than eighteen hundred in number, and addressed to some five hundred correspondents, it might well seem that the best biography would be a faithful transcript of what the man himself has given us. And, in fact, almost all that we know about Erasmus comes through himself. The singular thing is that with this great mass of material we know so little that is definite about him. He lived in one of the most eventful periods of the world's history, and was in some kind of personal relation with its leading actors; and yet his life, from beginning to end, has not one event more important or stirring than a journey in winter, an attack of illness, a quarrel with some fellow scholar, or a change of residence. Our whole knowledge of his early life up to the period of production is derived from a very brief record made by himself many years afterward and made obviously with both a literary and a practical purpose.