"For if you so weakened, so fired my mind at that first interview, what would you not have done, if I had come into closer and more permanent relations? For what heart of adamant would not be moved by the gentle courtesy of your manner, your honeyed speech, your curious learning, your counsel so friendly and so sincere; especially by the evident good-will of so great a prelate. I already felt my decision perceptibly weakening and began even to repent of my plan and yet I was ashamed to seem so inconstant a person. I felt my love for the City, which I had hardly thrust aside, silently growing again, and in short, had I not torn myself away from Rome at once, never should I have left it. I snatched myself away, lest I should be blown back again and rather flew to England than journeyed thither. [Flying we have seen, was Erasmus' favourite method of travelling on paper.]
"Now, then, you will ask, have I repented of my decision? Do I regret that I did not follow the advice of so loving a counsellor? Lying is not my trade. The thing affects me variously. I cannot help a longing for Rome as often as the great multitude of attractions there crowds upon my thoughts."
Then he enumerates freedom, libraries, literary associations, and so on.
"These things make it impossible that any fortune, however kind, could banish this Roman longing from my heart. As to England, though my fortune has not been so bad as to make me regret it, yet, to tell the truth, it has not at all corresponded either to my wishes or the promises of my friends."
He recounts the favours, actual and expected, of his English patrons, especially of Warham, to whom he here pays one of his usual glowing tributes: "So it came about that what I had abandoned at Rome from so many distinguished cardinals, and so many famous bishops and learned men, all this I seemed to have recovered in this one man." After all, the picture grows a little brighter as he goes on. Now he is ready for Rome again. True, things are looking up again in England,—he wishes it to be quite clear that he is not being turned out of the country, but he hears that under the patronage of the great Leo all talent is streaming towards Rome. He tells what he has done and what he proposes to do, puts in a good word for the persecuted Reuchlin, and promises to be in Rome the coming winter (1515).
A letter of the same date to Raphael, the cardinal of St. George, repeats the same impressions of England—vast promises, of which we have no other documentary evidence, and disappointments, equally without witness. On his own evidence we know of a sufficient provision in England to supply all modest requirements of a scholar, and we have a right to take him at his word that he wanted nothing more.
From Ham, Erasmus made his way pretty directly to Basel, taking the route by the Rhine valley. His travelling experiences are summed up in the very amusing Colloquy called Diversoria, "The Inns," which has been so effectively employed by Mr. Charles Reade in his "The Cloister and the Hearth." The especial point of this dialogue is the difference between the inns of France and of Germany. As to the former, Erasmus takes those of Lyons as typical. Bertulphus begins by saying that he cannot see why so many people want to stay two or three days at Lyons—for his part, he always wants to get to his journey's end as fast as he can. William replies:
"Why, I wonder how anyone can ever tear himself away from there."
Bert. "Why so?"