mentous trifle which has for ever
linked the name of young Hans Holbein with that of Erasmus. Whether, as
some say, the scholar gave him the order, or, as seems more likely, some
friend of both had the copy, now in the Basel Museum, on the margins of
which the lad drew his spirited pen-and-ink sketches,--it is on record
that they were made before the end of December, and that Erasmus himself
was delighted with their wit and vigour. And, in truth, they are
exceedingly clever, both in the art with which a few strokes suggest a
picture, and in that by which the picture emphasises every telling point
in the satire. But a great deal too much has been built upon both the
satire and the sketches; a great deal, also, falsely built upon them.

They have been made to do duty, in default of all genuine proofs, as
supports to the theory by which Protestant writers have claimed both
Erasmus and Holbein as followers of Luther in their hearts, without
sufficient courage or zeal to declare themselves such. I confess that,
though myself no less ardent as a Protestant than as an admirer of
Holbein, I cannot, for the life of me, see any justification for either
the claim or its implied charge of timorousness.

Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_--like so many a paradox started as a
joke,--had no notion of being serious at all until it was seriously
attacked. Some four years before its illustrations riveted the name of a
stripling artist to that of the world-renowned scholar, Erasmus had
fallen ill while a guest in the sunny Bucklersbury home where three tiny
daughters and a baby son were the darlings of Sir Thomas More and his
wife. To beguile the tedium of convalescence the invalid had scribbled
off a jeu d'esprit, with its punning play on More's name, _Encomium
Moriae_, in which every theme for laughter, in a far from squeamish day,
was collected under that title. Read aloud to More and his friends, it
was declared much too good to be limited to private circulation; and
accordingly, with some revision and expansion, it was printed. That it
scourged with its mockery those things in both Church and State which
Erasmus and More and many another fervent Churchman hated,--such as the
crying evils which called aloud for reformation in the highest places,
and above all, that it lashed the detested friars whom the best churchmen
most loathed,--these things were foregone conclusions in such a
composition. But a laugh, even a satirical laugh, at the expe