nn valley, writing to Erasmus
in 1523, manages to achieve a Latin letter, but apologizes
for only being able to write in German characters.

The rising German feeling expresses itself on all sides in the letters
of the humanists. A young Frieslander, studying at Oxford in 1499,
writes to a fellow-countryman there: 'Your verses have shown me what I
never could have believed, that German talents are no whit inferior to
Italian.' Hutten in 1516 writes of Reuchlin and Erasmus as 'the two
eyes of Germany, whom we must sedulously cherish; for it is through
them that our nation is ceasing to be barbarous'. Beatus Rhenanus, in
editing the poems of Janus Pannonius (d. 1472), says in his preface,
1518: 'Janus and Erasmus, Germans though they are and moderns, give me
as much satisfaction to read as do Politian and Hermolaus, or even
Virgil and Cicero.' Erasmus in 1518 writes to thank a canon of Mainz
who had entertained him at supper. After compliments on his host's
charming manners, his erudition free from superciliousness--if he
could have known Gibbon, he surely must have used those immortal words
of praise, 'a modest and learned ignorance'--and his wit and elegance
of speech, he goes on: 'One might have been listening to a Roman. Now
let the Italians go and taunt Germans with barbarism, if they dare!'
In 1519 a canon of Brixen in Tirol writes to Beatus: 'Would to God
that Germany had more men like you, to make her famous, and stand up
against those Italians, who give themselves such airs about their
learning; though men of credit now think that the helm has been
snatched from their hands by Erasmus.' This is how Zwingli writes in
1521 of an Italian who had attacked Luther and charged him with
ignorance: 'But we must make allowances for Italian conceit. In their
heads is always running the refrain, "Heaven and earth can show none
like to us". They cannot bear to see Germany outstripping them in
learning.' Rarely a different note is heard, evoked by rivalry perhaps
or the desire to encourage. Locher from Freiburg could call Leipzig
barbarous. Erasmus wrote to an Erfurt schoolmaster that he was glad to
see Germany softening under the influence of good learning and putting
off her wild woodland ways. But these are exceptions: towards
insolence from the South an unbroken front was preserved.

In another direction the strong national feeling manifested itself; in
the study of German antiquity and the composition