d Argyropulos
on hearing a translation of Thucydides by the German Reuchlin; but the
glory, whether of Reuchlin or of the Teutonic scholars who followed him,
was soon eclipsed by that of Erasmus. His enormous industry, the vast
store of classical learning which he gradually accumulated, Erasmus shared
with others of his day. In patristic study he may have stood beneath
Luther; in originality and profoundness of thought he was certainly
inferior to More. His theology, though he made a greater mark on the world
by it than even by his scholarship, he derived almost without change from
Colet. But his combination of vast learning with keen observation, of
acuteness of remark with a lively fancy, of genial wit with a perfect good
sense--his union of as sincere a piety and as profound a zeal for rational
religion as Colet's with a dispassionate fairness towards older faiths, a
large love of secular culture, and a genial freedom and play of mind--this
union was his own, and it was through this that Erasmus embodied for the
Teutonic peoples the quickening influence of the New Learning during the
long scholar-life which began at Paris and ended amidst sorrow and
darkness at Basle. At the time of Colet's return from Italy Erasmus was
young and comparatively unknown, but the chivalrous enthusiasm of the new
movement breaks out in his letters from Paris, whither he had wandered as
a scholar. "I have given up my whole soul to Greek learning," he writes,
"and as soon as I get any money I shall buy Greek books--and then I shall
buy some clothes." It was in despair of reaching Italy that the young
scholar made his way in 1498 to Oxford, as the one place on this side the
Alps where he would be enabled through the teaching of Grocyn to acquire a
knowledge of Greek. But he had no sooner arrived there than all feeling of
regret vanished away. "I have found in Oxford," he writes, "so much polish
and learning that now I hardly care about going to Italy at all, save for
the sake of having been there. When I listen to my friend Colet it seems
like listening to Plato himself. Who does not wonder at the wide range of
Grocyn's knowledge? What can be more searching, deep, and refined than the
judgement of Linacre? When did Nature mould a temper more gentle,
endearing, and happy than the temper of Thomas More?"

[Sidenote: Revival of Letters]

But the new movement was far from being bounded by the walls of Oxford.
The printing press was making let