Stray Studies from England and ItalyGreene, John Richard
History
Stray Studies from England and Italy
Greene, John Richard
Italy -- Description and travel
It was with a letter from Erasmus in his hands that Hans Holbein stood
before the aged Archbishop, still young as when he sketched himself at
Basel with the fair, frank, manly face, the sweet gentle mouth, the
heavy red cap flinging its shade over the mobile, melancholy brow. But
it was more than the "seventy years" that he has so carefully noted
above it that the artist saw in the Primate's face; it was the still,
impassive calm of a life's disappointment. Only ten years before, at the
very moment when the painter first made his entry into Basel, Erasmus
had been forwarding to England the great work in which he had recalled
theologians to the path of sound biblical criticism. "Every lover of
letters," the great scholar wrote sadly, after the old man had gone to
his rest,--"Every lover of letters owes to Warham that he is the
possessor of my 'Jerome';" and with an acknowledgment of the Primate's
bounty such as he alone in Christendom could give the edition bore in
its forefront his memorable dedication to the Archbishop. That Erasmus
could find protection for such a work in Warham's name, that he could
address him with a conviction of his approval in words so bold and
outspoken as those of his preface, tell us how completely the old man
sympathized with the highest tendencies of the New Learning.
Of the Renascence, that "new birth" of the world--for I cling to a word
so eminently expressive of a truth that historians of our day seem
inclined to forget or to deny--of that regeneration of mankind through
the sudden upgrowth of intellectual liberty, Lambeth was in England the
shrine. With the Reformation which followed it Lambeth, as we shall see,
had little to do. But the home of Warham was the home of the revival of
letters. With a singular fitness, the venerable library which still
preserves their tradition, ousted from its older dwelling-place by the
demolition of the cloister, has in modern days found refuge in the Great
Hall, the successor and copy of that hall where the men of the New
Learning, where Colet and More and Grocyn and Linacre gathered round the
table of Warham.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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