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seems good reason to believe that the tone of aelfpity that pervades all these accounts was assumed for purposes at which one may guess, but as to which one can not be certain. He was doubtless born out of wedlock, well cared for by his parents till their early death, and then given the best education open to a young man of his day in a series of monastic or semimonastie schools. All thin early education is made by him in the light of later experience to appear like one long conspiracy to force him into the monastic life, but there is no other evidence for this, and recent criticism has suggested ample motives for his desire to give his life-history this peculiar turn. Re was admitted to the priesthood and took the monastic vows at about the age of twenty-five, but there -is no record that he ever exercised the priestly functions, and monasticism was one of the chief objects of his attack in his lifelong assault upon the evils of the Church.

Almost immediately after his consecration the way was opened to him for study at-the University of Paris, then the chief seat of the later scholastic

Erasmus led the life of an independent scholar, independent of country, of academic ties, of religious allegiance, of everything that could interfere with the free development of his intellect and the freedom of his literary expression. The chief centers of his activity were Paris, Louvain, England, and Basel; yet it could never be said that he was identified with any one of these. His residences in England were fruitful in the making of lifelong friendships with the leaders of English thought in the stirring days of Henry VIII.-John Colet, Thomas More, Thomas Linacre, and William Grocyn. He held at Cambridge an honorable position as Lady Margaret professor of divinity, and there seems to have been no reason except his unconquerable aversion to a routine life, why he should not have spent his days as an English professor. He was offered many positions of honor and profit in the academic world, but declined them all on one or another pretext, preferring the uncertain, but as -it proved sufficient rewards of independent literary activity. In Italy he spent three years (1506-09), part of the time in connection with the publishing house of Aldus Manutius at Venice, but otherwise with far leas active association with Italian scholars than might have been expected. The residence at Louvain exposed Erasmus to the petty criticism of men nearer to him in blood and political connections, but hostile to all the principles of literary and religious progress to which he was devoting his life. From this lack of sympathy, which he always represented as persecution, he sought refuge in the more congenial. atmosphere of Basel, where under the shelter of Swiss hospitality he could express himself with freedom and where he was always surrounded by devoted friends. Here he was associated for many years with the great publisher Froben, and hither came the multitude of his admirers from all quar-

Erasmus's literary productivity began comparatively late in his life. It was not until he had made

forma of Church life did not proceed from any questionings as to the troth of the traditional doctrine, nor from any hostility to the organization of the Church itself. Rather, he felt called upon to use his learning in a purification of the doctrine and in a liberalizing of the institutions of Christianity. He began as a scholar, trying to free the methods of scholarship from the rigidity and formalism of medieval traditions; but he was not satisfied with this. He conceived of himself as, above all else, a preacher of righteousness. It was his lifelong conviction that what was needed to regenerate Europe was sound learning applied frankly and fearlessly to the administration of public affairs in Church and State. It is this conviction that gives unity and consistency to a life which at first eight seems to have been full of fatal contradictions. Erasmus was a marked individual, holding himself aloof from all entangling obligations; yet he was in a singularly true sense the center of the literary movement of his time. In his correspondence he put himself in touch with more than five hundred men of the highest importance in the world of politics and of thought, and his advice on all kinds of subjects was eagerly sought, if none too readily followed.

Naturally, Erasmus has been moat widely known for his critical and satirical writings, such as the

" Praise of Folly " (Paris, 1509) and