“My object,” says Froude in his Preface, “has been rather to lead historical students to a study of Erasmus’s own writings than to provide an abbreviated substitute for them.”  The students who took the advice will have found that Froude was guilty of some strange inadvertences, such as mistaking through a misprint a foster brother for a collection of the classics, but they will not have discovered anything which substantially impairs the value of his work.  His paraphrases were submitted to two competent scholars, who drew up a long and rather formidable list of apparently inaccurate renderings.  These were in turn submitted to the accomplished Latinist, Mr. Allen of Corpus, who is editing the Letters of Erasmus for the Clarendon Press.  Mr. Allen thought that in several cases Froude had given the true meaning better than a more literal translation would give it.  There remain a number of rather trivial slips, which do not appreciably diminish the merit of the best attempt ever made to set Erasmus before English readers in his habit as he was.  The Latin of Erasmus is not always easy.  He wrote it beautifully, but not naturally, as an exercise in imitation of Cicero.  Without a thorough knowledge of Cicero and of Terence he is sometimes unintelligible, in a few cases the text of his letters is corrupt, and in others his real meaning is doubtful.  One of the most glaring blunders, “idol” for “old,” is obviously due to the printer, and a more careful comparison with the Latin would have easily removed them all.  But at seventy-six a little laxity may be pardoned, and these were the only Oxford lectures which Froude himself prepared for the press.  The publication of English Seamen and the Council of Trent was posthumous.

Between 1867 and 1893 Froude had become more favourable to Erasmus, or more sympathetic with his point of view.  It was not that he admired Luther less.  On the contrary, his Protestant convictions grew stronger with years, and to the last he raised his voice against the Anglo-Catholic revival.  But he seemed to feel with more force the saying of Erasmus that “the sum of religion is peace.”  He translated and read out to his class the whole of the satiric dialogue held at the gate of Paradise between St. Peter and Julius ii., in which the wars of that Pontiff are ruthlessly flagellated, and the wicked old man threatens to take the celestial city by storm.  Erasmus, averse as he was from violent measures, had no lack of courage, and in his own name he told the truth about the most dignified ecclesiastics.  No artifices imposed upon him, and he acknowledged no master but Christ.  He translated the arch-sceptic Lucian, about whom Froude has himself written a delightful essay.  “I wish,” said Froude, “I wish more of us read Lucian now.  He was the greatest man by far outside the Christian Church in the second century.”  Lucian lived in an age when miracles the most grotesque were supported by witnesses the most serious, and when, as he said, the one safeguard