friendship with More, ten or eleven years
his junior, Erasmus persuaded his patron to take him for a while to
Oxford. Mountjoy promised but could not perform. The Earl of Warwick
was to be tried in Westminster Hall, and Mountjoy as a peer must be in
his place. So Erasmus rode in to Oxford, over Shotover and across
Milham ford, alone.

As an Austin canon he had a claim on St. Mary's, a college which had
been established in 1435 at the instance of a number of Augustinian
abbots and priors, for the purpose of bringing young canons to Oxford
to profit by the life and studies of the university; in much the same
way that Mansfield and Manchester Colleges have joined us in recent
years. For two or three months he was here, enjoying the society of
the learned and attending Colet's lectures on the Epistles of St.
Paul; invited to dine in college halls, as a congenial visitor is
to-day, and spending the afternoons, not the evenings, in discussions
arising out of the conversation over the dinner-table. His ready wit
and natural vivacity, his wide reading and serious purpose, made
themselves felt. Even Colet the austere was delighted with him and
begged him to stay. He was lecturing himself on St. Paul; let Erasmus
take some part of the Old Testament and expound it to fascinated
audiences. Oxford laid her spell upon the young Dutch canon--upon whom
does she not?--but he was not yet ready. To give his life to sacred
studies was the purpose that was riveting itself upon him; but he
could not accomplish what he wished without Greek at the least--he
never made any serious attempt to learn Hebrew--and Greek was not to
be had in Oxford, hardly indeed anywhere in Western Europe outside
Italy and perhaps Spain. Indeed, for some years to come this
university was to display her characteristic, or may be her admirable,
caution towards the new light offered to her from without.

We must bear in mind the well-reasoned hostility of the Church to--or
at least hesitation about--the revival of learning. In the period we
are considering the powers of evil were very real. Men instinctively
accepted the existence of a kingdom of darkness, extending its borders
over the sphere of knowledge as over the other sides of human
activity. Greek was the language of some of the most licentious
literature--Sappho's poems were burnt by the Church at Constantinople
in 1073--and of many detestable heresies; and thus though the Council
of Vienne, with missionary z