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Had Erasmus seen fit to make England his home, his head, too, would have paid the forfeit, as did the head that wrote “Utopia.” What an absurd use to make of a head–to separate it from the man’s body!

Italy received Erasmus with the same royal welcome that England had supplied. Scholars who knew the Greek and Roman classics were none too common. Most monks stopped with the writings of the saints, as South Americans balk at long division.

Erasmus could illumine an initial, bind a book, give advice to printers, lecture to teachers, give lessons on rhetoric and oratory, or entertain the ladies with recitations from the Iliad and the Odyssey.

So he went riding back and forth, stopping at cities and towns, nunneries and monasteries, until his name became a familiar one to every scholar of England, Germany and Italy. Scholarly, always a learner, always a teacher, gracious, direct, witty, men began to divide on an Erasmus basis. There were two parties: those for Erasmus and those against him.

In Fifteen Hundred Seventeen, came Luther with his bombshells of defiance. This fighting attitude was far from Erasmus–his weapons were words. Between bouts with prelates, Luther sent a few thunderbolts at Erasmus, accusing him of vacillation and cowardice. Erasmus replied with dignity, and entered into a lengthy dispute with Melanchthon, Luther’s friend, on the New Humanism which was finding form in revolution.

Erasmus prophesied that by an easy process of evolution, through education, the monasteries would all become schools and workshops. He would not destroy them, but convert them into something different. He fell into disfavor with the Catholics, and was invited by Henry the Eighth to come to England and join the new religious regime. But this English Catholicism was not to the liking of Erasmus. What he desired was to reform the Church, not to destroy it or divide it.

His affairs were becoming critical: monasteries where he had once been welcomed now feared to have him come near, lest they should be contaminated and entangled. It was rumored that warrants of arrest were out. He was invited to go to Rome and explain his position.

Erasmus knew better than to acknowledge receipt of the letter. He headed his horse for Switzerland, the land of liberty. At Basel he stopped at the house of Froben, the great printer and publisher. He put his horse in the barn, unsaddled him, and said, “Froben, I’ve come to stay.”

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I was mousing around the other day in a book that is somewhat disjointed and disconnected, and yet interesting–“The Standard Dictionary”–when I came across the word “scamp.” It is a handy word to fling, and I am not sure but that it has been gently tossed once or twice in my direction. Condemnation is usually a sort of subtle flattery, so I’m not sad. To scamp means to cut short, to be superficial, slipshod, careless, indifferent–to say, “Let ‘er go, who cares–this is good enough!” If anybody ever was a stickler for honest work, I am that bucolic party. I often make things so fine that only one man out of ten thousand can buy them, and I have to keep ’em myself.

You know that, when you get an idea in your head, how everything you read contains allusions to the same thing. Knowledge is mucilaginous. Well, next day after I was looking up that pleasant word “scamp,” I was reading in the Amusing Works of Erasmus, when I ran across the word again, but spelled in Dutch, thus, “schamp.” Now Erasmus was a successful author, and he was also the best authority on paper, inks, bindings, and general bookmaking in Italy, Holland or Germany. Being a lover of learning, and listening to the lure of words, he never wallowed in wealth. But in his hunt for ideas he had a lot of fun. Kipling says, “There is no hunt equal to a man hunt.” But Kip is wrong–to chase a thought is twice the sport. Erasmus chased ideas, and very naturally the preachers chased Erasmus–out of England, through France, down to Italy and then he found refuge at Basel with Froben, the great Printer and Publisher.