Part 10 (1/2)

If only Erasmus had been less concerned about public opinion! But that seemed impossible: he had a fear of men, or, we may call it, a fervent need of justification He would always see beforehand, and usually in exaggerated colours, the effect his word or deed would have upon men Of himself, it was certainly true as he once wrote: that the craving for fano those who cannot bear the consciousness of guilt, out of a sort of mental cleanliness Not to be able to repay a benefit with interest,creditors, unperforlect of the need of a friend' If he cannot discharge the obligation, he explains it away The Dutch historian Fruin has quite correctly observed: 'Whatever Erashtly understood interests was the fault of circu advice; he is never to blame himself' And what he has thus justified for himself becomes with him universal law: 'God relieves people of pernicious vows, if only they repent of them,' says the man who hierous fusion between inclination and conviction The correlations between his idiosyncrasies and his precepts are undeniable This has special reference to his point of view in theand abstinence from meat He too frequently vents his own aversion to fish, or talks of his inability to postpone meals, not to make this connection clear to everybody In the same way his personal experience in the monastery passes into his disapproval, on principle, of e of his youth in his memory, to which we have referred, is based on that need of self-justification It is all unconscious interpretation of the undeniable facts to suit the ideal which Erasmus had made of himself and to which he honestly thinks he answers The chief features of that self-conceived picture are a remarkable, simple sincerity and frankness, which make it impossible to him to dissemble; inexperience and carelessness in the ordinary concerns of life and a total lack of ambition All this is true in the first instance: there is a superficial Erase, but it is not the whole Erasmus; there is a deeper one who is almost the opposite and whom he himself does not know because he will not know him

Possibly because behind this there is a still deeper being, which is truly good

Does he not ascribe weaknesses to hi, ever dissatisfied with himself and his work

_Putidulus_, he calls hi content with himself It is that peculiarity which makes him dissatisfied with any work of his directly after it has appeared, so that he always keeps revising and supple to Colet But again he cannot help giving hi that quality itself into a virtue: it isand self-love

This bashfulness about hinomy, and is only persuaded with difficulty by his friends to sit for a portrait His own appearance is not heroic or dignified enough for hih-ho,'

he exclai the _Moria_: 'if Erasmus still looked like that, he would take a wife at once' It is that deep trait of dissatisfaction that suggests the inscription on his portraits: 'his writings will show you a better ie'

Erasmus's modesty and the contempt which he displays of the fame that fell to his lot are of a somewhat rhetorical character But in this we should not so eneral form common to all huether artificial His books, which he calls his children, have not turned out well He does not think they will live He does not set store by his letters: he publishes them because his friends insist upon it He writes his poeeniuses will soon appear ill eclipse him, so that Erasan survival He is fed up with it to repletion and would do nothing ladly than cast it off

Sometimes another note escapes him If Lee would help him in his endeavours, Erasmus would make him immortal, he had told the former in their first conversation And he threatens an unknown adversary, 'If you go on so ientleness does not give way and I cause you to be ranked, after a thousand years, a the incompetent physicians'

The self-centred elely as he in truth became a centre and objective point of ideas and culture

There really was a tied upon hi word fro he had, hownave in the way in which he thinks it requisite to treat all his friends, in an open letter, to a detailed, rather repellent account of an illness that attacked him on the way back from Basle to Louvain _His_ part, _his_ position, _his_ name, this more and more becomes the aspect under which he sees world-events Years will come in which his whole enormous correspondence is little more than one protracted self-defence

Yet this man who has so many friends is nevertheless solitary at heart

And in the depth of that heart he desires to be alone He is of adisposition; he is _a recluse_ 'I have alished to be alone, and there is nothing I hate so much as sworn partisans' Erasmus is one of those whom contact with others weakens The less he has to address and to consider others, friends or enemies, the more truly he utters his deepest soul Intercourse with particular people always causes little scruples in him, intentional amenities, coquetry, reticences, reserves, spiteful hits, evasions Therefore it should not be thought that we get to know him to the core from his letters Natures like his, which all contact with ive their best and deepest when they speak impersonally and to all

After the early effusions of sentier opens his heart unreservedly to others At bottom he feels separated froreat fear in hie he hasoff reveals itself as fastidiousness and as bashfulness Budaeus hit the mark when he exclaimed jocularly: '_Fastidiosule!_ You little fastidious person!' Eras as maidenly coyness The excessive sensitiveness to the stain attaching to his birth results from it But his friend Ammonius speaks of his _subrustica verecundia_, his so of the sreatness and therefore shuns the great, because, at bottom, they obsess hi

It seeratefulness were strange to Erasmus And yet such was his nature In characters like his a kind of mental cramp keeps back the effusions of the heart He subscribes to the adage: 'Love so, as if you may hate one day, and hate so, as if you may love one day' He cannot bear benefits

In his inmost soul he continually retires before everybody He who considers hihest degree suspicious towards all his friends The dead Ammonius, who had helped him so zealously in the most delicate concerns, is not secure from it 'You are always unfairly distrustful towards me,'

Budaeus complains 'What!' exclaims Erasmus, 'you will find few people who are so little distrustful in friendshi+p as ht of his fame the attention of the world was indeed fixed on all he spoke or did, there was so alatched and threatened But when he was yet an unknown man of letters, in his Parisian years, we continually find traces in hiarded as athe last period of his life this feeling attaches especially to two enemies, Eppendorf and Aleander

Eppendorf employs spies everywhere atch Erasmus's correspondence with his friends Aleander continually sets people to combat him, and lies in wait for him wherever he can His interpretation of the intentions of his assailants has the ingenious self-centred element which passes the borderline of sanity He sees the whole world full of calu his peace: nearly all those who once were his best friends have becoues at banquets, in conversation, in the confessional, in sermons, in lectures, at court, in vehicles and shi+ps The minor enemies, like troublesome vermin, drive him to weariness of life, or to death by insomnia He compares his tortures to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, pierced by arrows But his is worse, for there is no end to it For years he has daily been dying a thousand deaths and that alone; for his friends, if such there are, are deterred by envy

He iness Now and again there suddenly coht an undercurrent of aversion and hatred which we did not suspect Where had land? Which country had he always praised more? But suddenly a bitter and unfounded reproach escapes hi become faithless to his monastic vows, 'for no other reason do I hate Britain h it has always been pestilent to o so far His expressions of hatred or spite are, as a rule, restricted to the feline They are aimed at friends and enemies, Budaeus, Lypsius, as well as Hutten and Beda

Occasionally we are struck by the expression of coarse pleasure at another's ards malice, we should not entleness Compared with most of his contemporaries he remains moderate and refined

Erasmus never felt happy, was never content This may perhaps surprise us for a y, of his gay jests and his hu tallies very ith his character It also proceeds froh spirits he considers himself in all respects an unhappy man 'The most miserable of all men, the thrice-wretched Erasmus,' he calls himself in fine Greek terms His life 'is an Iliad of calamities, a chain of misfortunes How can anyone envy _me_?' To no one has Fortune been so constantly hostile as to hi in his youth in a poetical couin: from earliest infancy the sa him Pandora's whole box seems to have been poured out over hi takes the special fored by unlucky stars with Herculean labour, without profit or pleasure to hiht have been so much easier if he had taken his chances He should never have left Italy; or he ought to have stayed in England 'But an i with faithless friends and inveterate poverty' Elsewhere he says nedly: 'But we are driven by fate'

That immoderate love of liberty had indeed been as fate to hireat seeker of quiet and liberty who found liberty late and quiet never By no ht becolereat restless one He was never truly satisfied with anything, least of all hat he produced himself 'Why, then, do you overwhelm us with so many books', someone at Louvain objected, 'if you do not really approve of any of them?' And Erasmus ansith Horace's word: 'In the first place, because I cannot sleep'

A sleepless energy, it was that indeed He cannot rest Still half seasick and occupied with his trunks, he is already thinking about an answer to Dorp's letter, just received, censuring the _Moria_ We should fully realize what it means that time after time Erasmus, who, by nature, loved quiet and was fearful, and fond of coood fare, undertakes troublesoes, which he detests, for the sake of his work and of that alone