"If I am not approved by everyone—a thing I do not strive for—surely I am in good standing with the chief men at Rome. There was not a cardinal who did not receive me as a brother, though I had no such ambition for myself, especially the cardinal of St. George, the cardinal of Bologna, cardinal Grimani, the cardinal of Fornovo [?], and he who is now supreme pontiff, to say nothing of archdeacons and men of learning; and this honour was paid, not to wealth, which I neither have nor desire, nor to ambition, to which I was ever a stranger, but to letters alone, which our countrymen laugh at, but the Italians worship.
"In England there is not a bishop who is not glad to salute me, who does not seek me as a table-companion, who does not wish me as an inmate of his house. The king himself, just before my departure from Italy, wrote me a most affectionate letter with his own hand, and still speaks of me in the most honourable and friendly fashion. As often as I pay my respects to him he embraces me most affectionately and looks at me with such friendly eyes that you can see that he thinks as well of me as he speaks. The queen wished me to be her teacher; everyone knows that, if I had chosen to spend even a few months at the royal court, I might have heaped up as many benefices as you please, but I subordinate everything to the opportunity of leisure for study."
Then follows a very glowing account of the money he has received in England from Warham, Mountjoy, and others.
"The two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, are vying with each other to get possession of me; at Cambridge I taught for many months Greek and sacred literature, and that for nothing as I am determined always to do.[102] There are colleges there, in which there is so much of true religion that you could not fail to prefer them to any 'religious' life, if you should see them. There is at London John Colet, dean of St. Paul's, a man who combines the greatest learning with the most admirable piety, a man of great influence with all men; he is so fond of me, as everyone knows, that he lives not more intimately with anyone than with me, —to say nothing of countless others, lest I weary you at once with my boasting and my much speaking."
As to his writings he calls the attention of Servatius to the Enchiridion as adapted to lead many to piety, the Adagia as useful to all kinds of learning, and the Copia as serviceable to preachers. The Praise of Folly he naturally and prudently leaves unmentioned.
"During the last two years, besides much other work, I revised the epistles of Jerome, marking with an obelus spurious and interpolated passages. By a comparison of ancient Greek texts I have emended the whole New Testament and have annotated more than a thousand passages, not without profit for the theologians. I have begun commentaries to the epistles of Paul and shall complete them when I have disposed of the others. For I have made up my mind to spend my life in sacred studies and to this end I am devoting all my spare time. In this work men of great repute say that I can do what others cannot; in your kind of life I should simply accomplish nothing at all. I am on intimate terms with many learned and serious men, both here [England?] and in Italy and in France, but I have thus far found no one who would advise me to return to you, or think it the better course. Nay, more, even your predecessor, Nicholas Wittenherus, always used to advise me rather to attach myself to some bishop, adding that he knew both my nature and the ways of his brethren."
Finally he goes into the old story of his monastic gown, "laid aside in Italy lest I be killed, in England because it would not be tolerated," and concludes by repeating his determination not to return to a kind of life in which, now more than ever, there was no place for him.[103] This letter shows us how Erasmus could paint his English life when it was a question of raising his market price. The same note of self-valuation is sounded in a letter to his old friend, the abbot of St. Bertin in Flanders, written from London in 1513 or 1514. He is seriously considering returning to his own country and would be glad to do so, if only the prince—presumably Charles of Burgundy, the future emperor—would give him a fortune sufficient for his modest leisure (ociolum). "Not that Britain displeases me or that I am tired of my Mæcenases." He gets enough and could get more, if he would go round about it ever so little,—we remember his letters to Ammonius,—only times are bad; an island is an isolated kind of place anyway, and wars are making England doubly an island. Then comes one of his usual tirades against war in the abstract.
Gradually an almost conventional form of reference to England develops itself in his writing. From a letter[104] written to Cardinal Grimani in 1515, evidently after he had been in Basel and returned to England again, we quote a specimen. He begins with an apology for not accepting the invitation given by the cardinal at their first and only meeting to return to him with a view to remaining in Italy.
"I will explain this to you very simply and, as befits a German, frankly. At that time I had fully decided to go to England. I was called thither by ancient ties of friendship, by the most ample promises of powerful friends, by the devoted favour of the most prosperous of kings. I had chosen this country as my adopted fatherland; the resting-place of my declining years [he was forty-one at the time]. I was invited, nay I was importuned in repeated letters and was promised gold almost in mountains. From all this I, hitherto a man of severe habits, a despiser of wealth, conceived a picture in my mind of such a power of gold as ten streams of Pactolus could hardly have washed down. And I was afraid that if I should return to your Eminence I might change my mind.