n the man who
desires nothing but quiet and liberty, and who through his own
restlessness, and his inability not to concern himself about other
people, never found a really fixed abode or true independence. Erasmus
is one of those people who always seem to say: tomorrow, tomorrow! I
must first deal with this, and then ... As soon as he shall be ready
with the new edition of the New Testament and shall have extricated
himself from troublesome and disagreeable theological controversies, in
which he finds himself entangled against his wish, he will sleep, hide
himself, 'sing for himself and the Muses'. But that time never came.

Where to live when he shall be free? Spain, to which Cardinal Ximenes
called him, did not appeal to him. From Germany, he says, the stoves and
the insecurity deter him. In England the servitude which was required of
him there revolted him. But in the Netherlands themselves, he did not
feel at his ease, either: 'Here I am barked at a great deal, and there
is no remuneration; though I desired it ever so much, I could not bear
to stay there long'. Yet he remained for four years.

Erasmus had good friends in the University of Louvain. At first he put
up with his old host Johannes Paludanus, Rhetor of the University, whose
house he exchanged that summer for quarters in the College of the Lily.
Martin Dorp, a Dutchman like himself, had not been estranged from him by
their polemics about the _Moria_; his good will was of great importance
to Erasmus, because of the important place Dorp occupied in the
theological faculty. And lastly, though his old patron, Adrian of
Utrecht, afterwards Pope, had by that time been called away from Louvain
to higher dignities, his influence had not diminished in consequence,
but rather increased; for just about that time he had been made a
cardinal.

Erasmus was received with great complaisance by the Louvain divines.
Their leader, the vice-chancellor of the University, Jean Briard of Ath,
repeatedly expressed his approval of the edition of the New Testament,
to Erasmus's great satisfaction. Soon Erasmus found himself a member of
the theological faculty. Yet he did not feel at his ease among the
Louvain theologians. The atmosphere was a great deal less congenial to
him than that of the world of the English scholars. Here he felt a
spirit which he did not understand and distrusted in consequence.

In the years in which the Reformation began, Erasmus was the victim of a
gr