us is a proof of the strong affection he could inspire.

At the root of this desire of friendship lies a great and sincere need
of affection. Remember the effusions of almost feminine affection
towards Servatius during his monastic period. But at the same time it is
a sort of moral serenity that makes him so: an aversion to disturbance,
to whatever is harsh and inharmonious. He calls it 'a certain occult
natural sense' which makes him abhor strife. He cannot abide being at
loggerheads with anyone. He always hoped and wanted, he says, to keep
his pen unbloody, to attack no one, to provoke no one, even if he were
attacked. But his enemies had not willed it, and in later years he
became well accustomed to bitter polemics, with Lefevre d'Etaples, with
Lee, with Egmondanus, with Hutten, with Luther, with Beda, with the
Spaniards, and the Italians. At first it is still noticeable how he
suffers by it, how contention wounds him, so that he cannot bear the
pain in silence. 'Do let us be friends again,' he begs Lefevre, who does
not reply. The time which he had to devote to his polemics he regards as
lost. 'I feel myself getting more heavy every day,' he writes in 1520,
'not so much on account of my age as because of the restless labour of
my studies, nay more even by the weariness of disputes than by the work,
which, in itself, is agreeable.' And how much strife was still in store
for him then!

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
fame has less sharp spurs than the fear of ignominy. Erasmus is with
Rousseau among 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, makes him ashamed and sad. He cannot abide 'dunning creditors,
unperformed duty, neglect 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 Erasmus did contrary to his duty
and his rightly understood interests was the fault of circumstances or
wrong advice; he is never to blame himself'. And what he has thus
justified for himself becomes with him universal law: 'God relieve