too much from prose, but prose of the best sort, be it understood. As
Philoxenus accounted those the most palatable fishes that are no true
fishes and the most savoury meat what is no meat, the most pleasant
voyage, that along the shores, and the most agreeable walk, that along
the water's edge; so I take especial pleasure in a rhetorical poem and a
poetical oration, so that poetry is tasted in prose and the reverse.'
That is the man of half-tones, of fine shadings, of the thought that is
never completely expressed. But he adds: 'Farfetched conceits may please
others; to me the chief concern seems to be that we draw our speech from
the matter itself and apply ourselves less to showing off our invention
than to present the thing.' That is the realist.

From this conception results his admirable, simple clarity, the
excellent division and presentation of his argument. But it also causes
his lack of depth and the prolixity by which he is characterized. His
machine runs too smoothly. In the endless _apologiae_ of his later
years, ever new arguments occur to him; new passages to point, or
quotations to support, his idea. He praises laconism, but never
practises it. Erasmus never coins a sentence which, rounded off and
pithy, becomes a proverb and in this manner lives. There are no current
quotations from Erasmus. The collector of the _Adagia_ has created no
new ones of his own.

The true occupation for a mind like his was paraphrasing, in which,
indeed, he amply indulged. Soothing down and unfolding was just the work
he liked. It is characteristic that he paraphrased the whole New
Testament except the Apocalypse.

Erasmus's mind was neither philosophic nor historic. His was neither the
work of exact, logical discrimination, nor of grasping the deep sense of
the way of the world in broad historical visions in which the
particulars themselves, in their multiplicity and variegation, form the
image. His mind is philological in the fullest sense of the word. But by
that alone he would not have conquered and captivated the world. His
mind was at the same time of a deeply ethical and rather strong
aesthetic trend and those three together have made him great.

The foundation of Erasmus's mind is his fervent desire of freedom,
clearness, purity, simplicity and rest. It is an old ideal of life to
which he gave new substance by the wealth of his mind. Without liberty,
life is no life; and there is no liberty without repose. The fa