s
people of pernicious vows, if only they repent of them,' says the man
who himself had broken a vow.

There is in Erasmus a dangerous 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 the
matter of fasting and 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 monastic life.

The distortion of the image 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 Erasmus who answers to that image, 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 himself? Certainly. He is, in spite of
his self-coddling, ever dissatisfied with himself and his work.
_Putidulus_, he calls himself, meaning the quality of never being
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 supplementing. 'Pusillanimous' he
calls himself in writing to Colet. But again he cannot help giving
himself credit for acknowledging that quality, nay, converting that
quality itself into a virtue: it is modesty, the opposite of boasting
and self-love.

This bashfulness about himself is the reason that he does not love his
own physiognomy, and is only persuaded with difficulty by his friends to
sit for a portrait. His own appearance is not heroic or dignified enough
for him, and he is not duped by an artist who flatters him: 'Heigh-ho,'
he exclaims, on seeing Holbein's thumbnail sketch illustrating the
_Moria_: 'if