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 Grocyn that Erasmus rowed up the river to the Primate's
board. Warham addressed a few kindly words to the poor scholar before
and after dinner, and then drawing him aside into a corner of the hall
(his usual way when he made a present to any one) slipped into his hand
an acknowledgment for the book and dedication he had brought with him.
"How much did the Archbishop give you?" asked his companion as they
rowed home again. "An immense amount!" replied Erasmus, but his friend
saw the discontent on his face, and drew from him how small the sum
really was. Then the disappointed scholar burst into a string of
indignant questions: was Warham miserly, or was he poor, or did he
really think such a present expressed the value of the book? Grocyn
frankly blurted out the true reason for Warham's economy in his shrewd
suspicion that this was not the first dedication that had been prefixed
to the 'Hecuba,' and it is likely enough that the Primate's suspicion
was right. At any rate, Erasmus owns that Grocyn's sardonic comment, "It
is the way with you scholars," stuck in his mind even when he returned
to Paris, and made him forward to the Archbishop a perfectly new
translation of the 'Iphigenia.'
Few men seem to have realized more thoroughly than Warham the new
conception of an intellectual and moral equality before which the old
social distinctions were to vanish away. In his intercourse with this
group of friends he seems utterly unconscious of the exalted station
which he occupied in the eyes of men. Take such a story as Erasmus tells
of a visit of Dean Colet to Lambeth. The Dean took Erasmus in the boat
with him, and read as they rowed along a section called 'The Remedy for
Anger' in his friend's popular 'Handbook of the Christian Soldier.' When
they reached the hall however Colet plumped gloomily down by Warham's
side, neither eating nor drinking nor speaking in spite of the
Archbishop's good-humoured attempt to draw him into conversation. It was
only by starting the new topic of a comparison of ages that the
Archbishop was at last successful; and when dinner was over Colet's
ill-temper had utterly fled. Erasmus saw him draw aside an old man who
had shared their board, and engage in the friendliest greeting. "What a
fortunate fellow you are!" began the impetuous Dean, as the two friends
stepped again into their boat; "what a tide of good-luck you bring with
you!" Erasmus, of course, protested (one can almost see the
half-earnest, half-humorous smile on his lip) that he was the most
unfortunate fellow on earth. He was at any rate a bringer of good
fortune to his friends, the Dean retorted; one friend at least he had
saved from an unseemly outbreak of passion. At the Archbishop's table,
in fact, Colet had found himself placed opposite to an uncle with whom
he had long waged a bitter family feud, and it was only the singular
chance which had brought him thither fresh from the wholesome lessons of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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