Collected Works of Erasmus, volume III: The Correspondence of Erasmus, Letters 298 to 445 (1514 to 1516) by R.A.B. Mynors, D.F.S. (review)

418 LETTERS IN CANADA 1976 really significant. Frye rejects as irrelevant to narrative structure the question of credibility and belief, whether real or pretended: 'If one story is true and another of the same shape false, the difference between them can only be established by attaching a body of discursive writing to the true story, designed to verify or rationalize its truth' (p 18). In fact, the difference goes much deeper than the presence or absence of a documentary addendum would suggest. As Erich Auerbach shows in Mimesis, a narrator's desire to be believed by his audience affects his manipulation of causation and character, his selection of detail, the very texture of his style. It is no doubt true that the structure of Pamela is the same as that of the Ethiopica (each tells of a sorely tried virgin properly married at last), and it may be that both somehow derive from the same archetype. Having learned so much we have yet much to learn about the nature of either story. (WILLIAM NELSON) Collected Works of Erasmus, volume III: The Correspondence of Erasmus, Letters 298 to 445 ('5'4 to '5,6). Translated by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson; annotated by James K. McConica. University of Toronto Press. xvi, 392. $25.00 Appraising retrospectively his tremendous work of restoring and editing the texts of jerome, Erasmus assures several of his correspondents (and even, more formally, his readers) that, comparing jerome's efforts and his own, his own would surely be found to be more onerous. He does not go so far as to say they were also the more to be admired, but the suggestion comes to mind. Perhaps the translators and editor of this volume might find some satisfaction in Erasmus's own appreciation of such work. Still more happily they might listen to his exultant cry, 'The whole of jerome is being born again: and rejoice that now indeed the whole of Erasmus is being born again. It is, needless to say, a maturer and more sophisticated Erasmus who emerges from these pages, in which the correspondence with Froben, Bude, Schiirer, the Arnerbachs, and others of their kind looms large. He is the friend now of kings and emperors; Germany, England, France, Spain, and the Low Countries vie with one another now in inviting him to settle in their country. Directly or indirectly he is now in correspondence with the pope, papal legates, cardinals, archbishops; and with royalty - Charles of Burgundy and Henry of England; he mourns, as for an intimate friend, the death of Alexander Stewart, prince and archbishop . More intimate the exchange between such men of history as More, Colet, Fisher, ReuchIin, ZwingIi, Tunstall, Wolsey, Latimer, Pirckheimer, and Pieter Gillis. Yet he has retained a certain simplicity: he edits jerome but prays to him too (to get him somehow to Rome!); he regrets having to miss the HUMANITIES 419 marriage of the daughter of his dear 'Billibaldus' Pirckheimer; he writes to influential people on behalf of his friends; and he gives time generously not only to his exalted friends, but to humbler old friends and to the friends of friends; and he hopes to spend the rest of his life (if ever he reaches the end of his present mountainous work) reading and studying StPaul. More than half the 147 letters in this volume are 'from' letters. But welcome enough, for they help to anchor the reader firmly into the formidable business of translating and editing the New Testment and St Jerome and of collaborating with publishers, Froben especially, to bring this work to the public. More than in the earlier volumes we enter into Erasmus's very life; his difficulties, his anxieties, his exhaustion, even his embarrassment over the dedication, and finally his exultant achievement and the deluge of warm congratulatory letters as his many friends rejoice with him. The English is, as always, lively and fluent and very sensitive to the exigencies of decomm; the formal letters are rhetorically fine, intimate ones colloquial and witty. One of the former kind (letter 306:70-90) to Jacob Wimpfeling, presents in one paragraph a host of fine figures and might serve...