ing of the seventeenth century no longer tolerated these
things. Again, we are entitled to say, though Erasmus was not one of
those who combated this practice: the spirit which breathes from this is
that of Erasmus.

Cultured humanity has cause to hold Erasmus's memory in esteem, if for
no other reason than that he was the fervently sincere preacher of that
general kindliness which the world still so urgently needs.

SELECTION FROM THE LETTERS OF ERASMUS

_This selection from the vast correspondence of Erasmus is intended to
exhibit him at a few points in his strenuous and rather comfortless
life, always overworked, often ill, and perpetually hurried--many of his
letters have the postscript 'In haste' or 'I had no time to read this
over'--but holding always tenaciously to his aim of steering a middle
course; in religion between the corruption and fossilization of the old
and the uncompromising violence of the new: in learning between
neo-paganism on the one hand and the indolent refusal, under the pretext
of piety, to apply critical methods to sacred texts on the other. The
first letter has been included because it may provide a clue to his
later reluctance to trust his feelings when self-committal to any cause
seemed to be required of him, a reluctance not unnaturally interpreted
by his enemies as an arrogant refusal to 'yield to any'._

_The notes have been compiled from P. S. and H. M. Allen's_ Opus
epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, _Oxford, 1906-47, by the kind
permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, and references are
to the numbers of the letters in that edition_.

I. TO SERVATIUS ROGER[21]

[Steyn, _c._ 1487]

To his friend Servatius, greetings:

... You say there is something which you take very hard, which torments
you wretchedly, which in short makes life a misery to you. Your looks
and your carriage betray this, even if you were silent. Where is your
wonted and beloved cheerful countenance gone, your former beauty, your
lively glance? Whence come these sorrowful downcast eyes, whence this
perpetual silence, so unlike you, whence the look of a sick man in your
expression? Assuredly as the poet says, 'the sick body betrays the
torments of the lurking soul, likewise its joys: it is to the mind that
the face owes its looks, well or ill'.[22]

It is certain then, my Servatius, that there is something which troubles
you, which is destroying your former good health. But what am I to