sistently or brilliantly true to an idea than Erasmus was to his; and it is wonderful how much he achieved.
His services to the new learning took various forms. He wrote school-books, bringing out his view that boys were kept too long over grammar, and ought to begin reading some good author as soon as possible. His own Colloquies were meant partly as models of colloquial Latin; the book was long a standard one in education. These lively dialogues are prose idylls with an ethical purpose,—the dramatic expression of the writer's views on the life of the day. Thus the dialogue between the Learned Lady and the Abbot depicts monastic illiteracy; that between the Soldier and the Carthusian brings out the seamy side of the military calling. Lucian has influenced the form; but the dramatic skill which blends earnestness with humour is the author's own; there are touches here and there which might fairly be called Shakspearian. Then he made collections of striking thoughts and fine passages in the classics. His chief book of this kind was the Adagia. Many of the classical proverbs are made texts for little essays on the affairs of the day. Thus he takes up a Latin proverb, "The beetle pursues the eagle"—based on the fable of the beetle avenging itself for an insult by destroying the eagle's eggs—the moral being that the most exalted wrong-doer is never safe from the vengeance of the humblest victim. This suggests to him an ingenious satire on the
