, never-failing energy, of
his gay jests and his humour. But upon reflection this unhappy feeling
tallies very well with his character. It also proceeds from his general
attitude of warding off. Even when in high 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 him. She
has sworn his destruction, thus he sang in his youth in a poetical
complaint addressed to Gaguin: from earliest infancy the same sad and
hard fate has been constantly pursuing him. Pandora's whole box seems to
have been poured out over him.

This unhappy feeling takes the special form of his having been charged
by unlucky stars with Herculean labour, without profit or pleasure to
himself:[16] troubles and vexations without end. His life might 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 immoderate
love of liberty caused me to wrestle long with faithless friends and
inveterate poverty.' Elsewhere he says more resignedly: 'But we are
driven by fate'.

That immoderate love of liberty had indeed been as fate to him. He had
always been the great seeker of quiet and liberty who found liberty late
and quiet never. By no means ever to bind himself, to incur no
obligations which might become fetters--again that fear of the
entanglements of life. Thus he remained the great restless one. He was
never truly satisfied with anything, least of all with what 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 answers with 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 comfort, cleanliness
and good fare, undertakes troublesome and dangerous journeys, even
voyages, which he detests, for the sake of his work and of that alone.

He is not only restless, but also precipitate. Helped by an inc