s own name still cursed,
and he could not bear it or sit quiet under it.

His correspondence was still enormous. The high powers still appealed to
him for advice and help: of open meddling he would have no more; he did
not care, he said, to make a post of himself for every dog of a
theologian to defile. Advice, however, he continued to give in the old
style.

'Put down the preachers on both sides. Fill the pulpits with men who
will kick controversy into the kennel, and preach piety and good
manners. Teach nothing in the schools but what bears upon life and duty.
Punish those who break the peace, and punish no one else; and when the
new opinions have taken root, allow liberty of conscience.'

Perfection of wisdom; but a wisdom which, unfortunately, was three
centuries at least out of date, which even now we have not grown big
enough to profit by. The Catholic princes and bishops were at work with
fire and faggot. The Protestants were pulling down monasteries, and
turning the monks and nuns out into the world. The Catholics declared
that Erasmus was as much to blame as Luther. The Protestants held him
responsible for the persecutions, and insisted, not without reason, that
if Erasmus had been true to his conscience, the whole Catholic world
must have accepted the Reformation.

He suffered bitterly under these attacks upon him. He loved quiet--and
his ears were deafened with clamour. He liked popularity--and he was the
best abused person in Europe. Others who suffered in the same way he
could advise to leave the black-coated jackdaws to their noise--but he
could not follow his own counsel. When the curs were at his heels, he
could not restrain himself from lashing out at them; and, from his
retreat at Basle, his sarcasms flashed out like jagged points of
lightning.

Describing an emeute, and the burning of an image of a saint, 'They
insulted the poor image so,' he said, 'it is a marvel there was no
miracle. The saint worked so many in the good old times.'

When Luther married an escaped nun, the Catholics exclaimed that
Antichrist would be born from such an incestuous intercourse. 'Nay,'
Erasmus said, 'if monk and nun produce Antichrist, there must have been
legions of Antichrists these many years.'

More than once he was tempted to go over openly to Luther--not from a
noble motive, but, as he confessed, 'to make those furies feel the
difference between him and them.'

He was past sixty, with broken health and fa