Collected Works of Erasmus, Volume I: The Correspondence of Erasmus, trans. by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson (review)

360 LETTERS IN CANADA HUMANITIES Collected Works of Erasmus, Volume I: The Correspondence of Erasmus, Letters , to '4' ('484 to '500). Translated by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson; annotated by Wallace K. Ferguson. University of Toronto Press, xxviii, 368, $25.00 Erasmus, at the time when he was spending long hours gathering up and editing the pithy sayings of an earlier day, said that the desire to 'bring some profit and pleasure to prospective readers' was his purpose and incentive. What Erasmus was doing then for the Adages is surely comparable to what Sir Roger Mynors and Professor D.F.S. Thomson are now doing for the Erasmian correspondence: making available and comprehensible to the many what was heretofore the perquisite of only a few. As for the 'profit and pleasure: this first volume is a worthy sampling of it, and an earnest of more to come. It spans the years from '484 to '500, the years of Erasmus's growth from adolescence to mature manhood , from being an ill-adjusted novice in an Augustinian monastery to being a cosmopolitan figure, suave, well-travelled, well-informed, highly revered - though loudly impecunious withal. Already the second volume of letters is published, and next year will also see the first volume of the literary and educational works, comprising translations of the Parabolae, the Antibarbari, De copia, and De ratione studii. Queens, they say, may be looked at even by cats, but it would be a highly Latinate reviewer who could comment, without effrontery, on the secure accuracy, perceptiveness, and elegance of the work of translation by such scholars as those responsible for this volume. This reviewer would proffer, however, a few samples of the easy fluency of the English and the witty matching of the English idiom to the Erasmian Latin. 'I was all agog: for example, translates gestiebat animus, and 'a kind of debonair gaiety' stands for quadam lepida festivitate; a tristis ... Areopagitica quispiam becomes I a dismal elder statesman' and a senex fucatissimus an 'elderly humbug'! Erasmus can pun with libros and liberos, and the translators find that 'science' and 'scions' will supply nicely. Sometimes the cutting edge that the Latin puts in one part of speech moves into another to catch the easier English rhythm: thus Erasmus, anticipating a long chat with a friend says that then plenis (ut aiunt) buecis nugabimur, and the English reads: 'and then we shall have a mouthful of follies.' Finding an English equivalent for Erasmus's quoting Martial in his scornful mimicry of the affected use of archaic words must have been fun for the translators: the Martial line had read: attonitusque legit, 'terrai frugiferai': the English puts it thus: 'and "hervest-berying erthe" astounded reads.' But all this noting of witty fragments is to catch the sprinkle and miss HUMAN1T1ES 361 the roll and ripple of the entire work. A sample, picked almost at random, might give the flavour of this fluent English that catches something of the 'racinessl sometimes posited of Erasmusls language: When the ranks were thus arrayed [at a dinner party probably at Magdalen College, Oxford] war broke out at once over our cups of drinks, but not from them, and not a drinker's war. While there were many subjects on which there was little agreement, we quarrelled particularly fiercely over the following. Colet asserted that the sin by which Cain first angered God was that, as though he lacked faith in the Creator's good will and placed too much trust in his own efforts, he was the first to plough the earth, whereas Abel pastured his sheep, in contentment with things that grew of themselves. Two of us argued separately against this, the theologian using syllogistic logic while I employed the methods of rhetoric. The Greeks maintain that Hercules himself cannot fight against two; yet Colet, single-handed, had the better of us all. He seemed to become intoxicated with a sort of holy frenzy, and to exhibit in his bearing something of superhuman exaltation and majesty. His voice was altered, his eyes had a different look, and his features and expression were transformedi he 'greater seemed, possessed by deity.' [The quotation...