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Erasmus
by
Up in Frankfort was a writer-printer, who, not being able to answer the arguments of Erasmus, called him bad names. But this gentle pen-pusher in Frankfort, who passed his vocabulary at Froben’s proofreader, Erasmus in time calls a “schamp,” because he used cheap paper, cheap ink and close margins. Soon after, the word was carried to England and spelled “scamp”–a man who cheats in quality, weight, size and count. But the first use merely meant a printer who scamps his margins and so cheats on paper. I am sorry to see that Erasmus imitated his enemies and at times was ambidextrous in the use of the literary stinkpot. His vocabulary was equal to that of Muldoon. Erasmus refers to one of his critics as a “scenophylax-stikken,” and another he calls a “schnide enchologion-schistosomus.” And perhaps they may have been–I really do not know.
But as an authority on books Erasmus can still be read. He it was who fixed the classic page margin–twice as wide at the top as on the inside; twice as wide at the outside as the top; twice as wide at the bottom as at the side. And any printer who varies from this displays his ignorance of proportion. Erasmus says, “To use poor paper marks the decline of taste, both in printer and in patron.” After the death of Erasmus, Froben’s firm failed because they got to making things cheap. “Compete in quality, not in price,” was the working motto of Erasmus.
All of the great bookmaking centers languished when they began to scamp. That worthy wordissimus at Frankfort who called Erasmus names gave up business and then the ghost, and Erasmus wrote his epitaph, and thus supplied Benjamin Franklin an idea–“Here lies an old book, its cover gone, its leaves torn, the worms at work on its vitals.”
The wisdom of doing good work still applies, just as it did in the days of Erasmus.
Erasmus proved a very valuable acquisition to Froben. He became general editor and literary adviser of this great publishing-house, which was then the most important in the world.
Besides his work as editor, Erasmus also stood sponsor for numerous volumes which we now know were written by literary nobodies, his name being placed on the title-page for commercial reasons.
At that time and for two hundred years later, the matter of attributing a book to this man or that was considered a trivial affair. Piracies were prevalent. All printers revised the work of classic authors if they saw fit, and often they were specially rewarded for it by the Church. It was about this time that some one slipped that paragraph into the works of Josephus about Jesus. The “Annals” of Tacitus were similarly doctored, if in fact they were not written entire, during the Sixteenth Century. It will be remembered that the only two references in contemporary literature to Jesus are those in Josephus and Tacitus, and these the Church proudly points to yet.
During the last few years of his life Erasmus accumulated considerable property. By his will he devised that this money should go to educate certain young men and women, grandchildren and nephews and nieces of his old friend, Johann Froben. He left no money for masses, after the usual custom of Churchmen, and during his last illness was not attended by a priest. For several years before his death he made no confessions and very seldom attended church service. He said, “I am much more proud of being a printer than a priest.”
A statue of Erasmus in bronze adorns one of the public squares in Rotterdam, and Basel and Freiburg have honored themselves, and him also, in like manner.
As a sample of the subtle and keen literary style of Erasmus, I append the following from “In Praise of Folly:”
The happiest times of life are youth and old age, and this for no reason but that they are the times most completely under the rule of folly, and least controlled by wisdom. It is the child’s freedom from wisdom that makes it so charming to us; we hate a precocious child. So women owe their charm, and hence their power, to their “folley,” that is, to their obedience to the impulse. But if, perchance, a woman wants to be thought wise, she only succeeds in being doubly a fool, as if one should train a cow for the prize-ring, a thing wholly against Nature. A woman will be a woman, no matter what mask she wear, and she ought to be proud of her folly and make the most of it.