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because you despise method and art. I attribute some importance to them, especially in a teacher.'
Colet replied,
What is it that you say I shall not approve? What is there of Erasmus that I do not approve? I have run through that Epistle of yours about Studies, not having been able as yet to peruse it leisurely; and as I read it, I not only approve it all, but I truly admire your genius, and art, and learning, and copiousness, and eloquence. I have often wished that the boys at our school could be taught in the way you explain. I have often wished too, that we had such teachers as you have most wisely described, and when I came to that passage at the end of your Epistle, in which you profess that you could bring lads to a fair capacity of speaking both languages in fewer years than those pedants teach them to construe a sentence, Oh Erasmus, how I wished then, that I had you as a teacher in our school! But I hope that you will give us some aid, if it is only in teaching our masters, when you come away from those Cambridge people. I will keep your copies, as you bid me, entire.8
Dean Colet is here referring to the ending of the authorized form, not to that of the version printed in 1511.9 Thus by September 13, 1511, Erasmus had put De Ratione Studii at least approximately into its final form, and Colet was inviting him to put this program into operation at St. Paul's.
Erasmus was at the same time helping to procure an undermaster for Paul's. We shall see that he also wrote or adapted several texts for the school. One of these was Copia, to which fittingly enough the essay is regularly attached. It is thus clear that Paul's was shaped quite completely by Erasmus. Of course, not all approved. Colet
writes to Erasmus about March, 1512,
I have one amusing thing to tell you. I hear that a bishop, who is regarded as one of the wiser sort, in a great meeting of people, took our school to task, and said that I had founded a useless and indeed a mischievous thing, in fact, to use his own words, a house of Idolatry. I believe that he said this, because the Poets are read there! Observations of this sort do not anger me, but make me laugh.1¬
The reader should not overlook the reference to "the Poets;" the objector was certainly not referring to the "Christian Poets," which some have supposed were the only poets to be taught at Paul's.
It is thus clear that this school at Paul's was founded both upon
' Nichols, F. M., The Epistles of Erasmus, Vol. II, p. 2i; Allen, Opvs Epistolarum, Vol. I, p. 467.
' Nichols, Erasmus, Vol. II, p. 24; Allen, Opus Epistolarvm, Vol. I, p. 470.
Erasmus, Opera (1703), Vol. I, p. 530.
10 Nichols, Erasmus, Vol. II, p. 63; Allen, Opus Epistolarvm, Vol. I, p. 508.
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