literary trifles. Colet lectured on the Bible without knowing Greek; Erasmus, feeling that he would
like to do work on the Bible, considered that a knowledge of Greek was essential. After leaving
England at the beginning of 1500, he set to work to learn Greek, though he was too poor to afford
a teacher; by the autumn of 1502, he was proficient, and when in 1506 he went to Italy, he found
that the Italians had nothing to teach him. He determined to edit Saint Jerome, and to bring out a
Greek Testament with a new Latin translation; both were achieved in 1516. The discovery of
inaccuracies in the Vulgate was subsequently of use to the Protestants in controversy. He tried to
learn Hebrew, but gave it up.
The only book by Erasmus that is still read is The Praise of Folly. The conception of this book
came to him in 1509, while he was crossing the Alps on the way from Italy to England. He wrote
it quickly in London, at the house of Sir Thomas More, to whom it is dedicated, with a playful
suggestion of appropriateness since "moros" means "fool." The book is spoken by Folly in her
own person; she sings her own praises with great gusto, and her text is enlivened still further with
illustrations by Holbein. She covers all parts of human life, and all classes and professions. But for
her, the human race would die out, for who can marry without folly? She counsels, as an antidote
to wisdom, "taking a wife, a creature so harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as
might mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humour of men." Who can be happy
without flattery or without selflove? Yet such happiness is folly. The happiest men are those who
are nearest the brutes and divest themselves of reason. The best happiness is that which is based
on delusion, since it costs least: it is easier to imagine oneself a king than to make oneself a king
in reality. Erasmus proceeds to make fun of national pride and of professional conceit: almost all
professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their
conceit.
There are passages where the satire gives way to invective, and Folly utters the serious opinions of
Erasmus; these are concerned with ecclesiastical abuses. Pardons and indulgences, by which
priests "compute the time of each soul's residence in purgatory"; the worship of saints, even of the
Virgin, "whose blind devotees think it manners to place the mother before the Son"; the disputes
of theologians as to the Trinity and the Incarnation; the doctrine of transubstantiation; the