36 HOMAGE PAID TO GENIUS. Romans raised temples, statues, and constituted public games, to which the Persians, the Arabians, the Turks, and even the Chinese, presented the most magnificent rewards. As the inhabitants of Languedoc established floral games, at which they bestowed golden flowers as prizes to the fortunate poets; as Rome crowned Petrarch with laurel; as Ravenna erected a marble tomb to the memory of Dante, and Certaldo a statue to Boccaccio; as delighted princesses touched with their fragrant lips the cheeks of poets; as the Venetians paid to Sannazarius six hundred pistoles for six verses; as Baif received a silver image of Minerva from his native city, and Ronsard had apartments reserved for him in the palace of Charles IX. of France, and also the honor of receiving poetical epistles from that monarch: behold the Hollander has raised a superb bronze figure to the memory of that great restorer of the Latin tongue, Erasmus. This statue stands upon an arch crossing a canal, and is nearly ten feet high; it was finished in 1622, and is said to be the chef-d'œuvre of Henry de Keiser, a very celebrated statuary and architect. It has been said, that in the quality of the different statues which the Dutch raised to the memory of Erasmus, may be traced the different degrees of zeal with which his memory was cherished by them. In 1540 they raised a statue of wood; seventeen years afterwards, blushing for the little respect they had observed, they exchanged it for one of blue stone; and in sixty-five years following apotheothized him by the noble memorial of their veneration, which I contemplated with equal admiration and delight. In 1572 the Spaniards, Vandal-like, shot at the stone statue with their muskets, and threw it in the canal, from whence it was afterwards raised and again set up, by order of the magistrates, upon the expulsion of the Spaniards; upon whom the Dutch retaliated in the most spirited and gallant manner, by attacking that nation through her colonial establishments in the East and West-Indies, and in Africa, and by capturing the rich galleons of their merciless invaders. The bronze figure is clad in an ecclesiastical habit, with an open book in his hand. Various attempts have at different times been made to convert the sage into a turncoat: before the revolution which expelled the stadtholder and his family, every concavity in his dress was crammed, on certain holidays, with oranges; during the hey-day of the republican form of government, amidst the celebration of its festivals, he was covered with tri-coloured rib 38 REVOLUTIONARY WHIMS. bons, when the juice of the orange was never suffered to pass the lips of a true patriot!! Even the marigold, first consecrated by poets to the Virgin, and afterwards used as a symbol of the House of Orange, "The marigold, whose courtier's face Echoes the sun, and doth unlace Her at his rise," was expelled from the gardens of the new republicans. Oh, Liberty! happy had it been for millions, if all the outrages perpetrated in thy hallowed name had spent themselves upon ribbons, oranges, and marigolds! Oudaan the poet has done honor to this star of erudition, whose works filled ten folio volumes, and whose talents had nearly raised him to a cardinalate under Pope Paul III. in the following lines in Dutch, which are inscribed on his pedestal : Hier rees die groote zon, en ging te Bazel onder! Waar met de Lievde, en Vreede, en Godgeleerdheid praald, Or thus in English : INSCRIPTION, Erasmus, here, the eloquent and wise, That Sun of Learning! rose, and spread his beam And shed on Basil's towers his parting gleam. There his great relics lie: he blest the place: No proud preserver of his fame shall prove The Parian pile; tho' fraught with sculptur'd grace→→→ Reader! his mausoleum is above. 39 The reader may perhaps be pleased with the following anecdote. When Erasmus was in England, which he visited several times, and where he was honored with the friendship of Archbishop Warham, Bishops Tonstal and and Fox, Dean Colet, Lord Montjoy, Sir Thomas More, and other distinguished men, he mentions a custom then prevalent amongst the females of this country, the discontinuance of which, considering how much improved they are since the time of Erasmus, and how their natural charms are heightened by the grace of the Grecian drapery, must be a subject of infinite regret with all who love and cherish the sex, as it ought to be loved and cherished. ERASMUS. Sunt hic in Anglia nymphæ divinis vultibus, blandæ, faciles. Est præterea mos nunquam satis laudandis, sive quò venias, omnium osculis rece peris, sive discedas aliquo, osculis dimitteris. Redis redduntur suavia; venitur ad te propinantur suavia, disceditur abs te, dividuntur basia; oc curritur alicui, basiatur affatim; denique quocumque te moveas, suaviorum plena sunt omnia. "The women in England are divinely beautiful, affable, and good-humoured. There is a custom also here, which can never be sufficiently commended. When you go any where, you are received by all with kisses; when you depart, you are dismissed with kisses. On your return, kisses are again bestowed on you. When they visit you, kisses are presented; when they go away, kisses also pass between you. If you meet any body, kisses are plentifully distributed. In short, whatever you do, whereever you go, you are sure of kisses in abundance." This is language sufficiently warm to prove that Erasmus carried the feelings of a man under the cowl of a monk. Erasmus was very accomplished: he is said to have imbibed from Hans Holbein a fine taste for painting, and to have painted several pictures whilst in the convent at Gouda. Holbein owed the patronage of Henry VIII. to Erasmus, for at his request it was that he came to London, and by him was introduced to Sir Thomas More, who employed and entertained him in his own house for three years, during which his likenesses, and the execution of his works, attracted the notice of the king, who took him into his service, and paid him as long as he lived: although he once hazarded the severest displeasure of his royal and turbulent patron; for being dispatched by Cromwell to paint the Lady Ann of Cleves, Holbein so |