Twenty Select Colloquies of Erasmus - Paperback

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS GerritG erritsoon, illegitimate son of Gerrit Elias, b. Rotterdam, 1466. Ed. Deventer, Stein where he took priests orders and Paris. His life was spent at various of the European seats of learning, chiefly in England and at Padua, Basle, Louvain and Freiburg. Though the chief of the New Learning, and inimical to the Sorbonne, the stronghold of ecclesiastical teaching, he was attacked by the Lutherans for his refusal to throw in his lot with their leader, an attitude due to his intense dislike of any form of fanaticism. It was not until late in life that he was openly acnokwledged the leader of scholarship in Europe. He died at Basle in 1536. His chief works, in addition to his Letters, are-Enchiridh Militit Christiani, Encomium Moriae, Colloquia, together with his editions of The New Testament and the Wwks of St. Jerome. LESTRANGE, SIR ROGER 1616-1704. Ed. Cam bridge. During his early life he was a strong Royalist adherent, and was imprisoned by the Parliamentary party from 1644-1648. Thereafter further Royalist intrigues led to his flight-to Holland. He returned to England in 1653, and was for many years an agent of Charles I1 as well as a strong pro-monarchy pamphleteer. After the Restoration 1663, the King appointed him surveyor and licenser of the printing presses. He also founded several newssheets, The Intelligencer, The News, and The City Mercury. He became M. P. for Winchester in 1685, and was in the same year knighted. He was deprived of office in 1689, and underwent several terms of imprisonment between this date and 1696. In addition to many pamphlets, his works include translations of Quevedos Visions 1667, Aesops Fables 1692 andJosephus Histories 1702. WHE S N ir Roger LEstrange sat him down to translate the Colloquies of Erasmus, he was not persuaded to his task merely by a love of letters. He made his choice of a subject, he tells his readers, for his own sake, and not theirs. The Fanatiqug says he, will have me to be a Favourer of the Plot, or as all Episcopal mer. are accounted now a days a Papist in Masquerade. And true it was that all wise men moved warily in the dark hour of the, Plot. Nobody was safe from the attacks of Oates and Bedloe. A half-understood danger seemed to threaten all those who touched the bitter controversy. The fear bred of ignorance and suspicion was universal, and never was it more clearly proved than in 1678 and the years that followed what agitation and false witness might achieve. There . were no limits which the credulity of a panic-stricken people did not reach. Every fire which flared in London, even the Great Fire itself, was ascribed to the direct and personal malice of the Pope. Milton was a known frequenter of a Popish Club, said Titus Oates Lambert a Papist of thirty years standing. Cromwell himself was in league with the Jesuits, who, having set on foot the Great Rebellion, were active in 1650 with the Presbyterians of Scotland to the undoing of Charles 11. In this gallimaufry of lying and superstition, what honest man would not take fright Even the stalwart heart of koger LEstrange failed him. Although he could not restrain his hand from the controversy, he abated his ferocity before the terror of Oates, whom he treated with an unaccustomed courtesy, vii and assumed a tone of moderation and uncertainty, strange in one so deeply Plot-learned as he. He confessed that thefuture was dim in his eyes...