s a true German, he refused
it, and fled, penniless and sick, to Basle, in Switzerland.

Here the great Humanist, Erasmus, reigned supreme. Erasmus disavowed
all sympathy with his former friend and fellow-student. He called
Hutten a dangerous and turbulent man, and warned the Swiss against him.
Erasmus had noticed, with horror, in those who had studied Greek, that
the influence of Lutheranism was fatal to learning; that zeal for
philology decreased as zeal for religion increased. Already Erasmus,
like Reuchlin, was ranged on the side of the Pope. So, in letters and
pamphlets, Erasmus attacked Hutten; and the poet was not slow in giving
as good as he received. And this war between the Humanist and the
Reformer gave great joy to the Obscurantists, who feared and hated them
both.

"Humanism," says Strauss, "was broad-minded but faint-hearted, and in
none is this better seen than in Erasmus. Luther was a narrower man,
but his unvarying purpose, never looking to left nor right, was his
strength. Humanism is the broad mirror-like Rhine at Bingen. It must
grow narrower and wilder before it can break through the mountains to
the sea."

Repulsed by Erasmus at Basle, Hutten fled to Muelhausen. Attacked by
assassins there, he left at midnight for Zuerich, where he put himself
under the protection of Ulrich Zwingli. In Zwingli, the purest,
loftiest, and clearest of insight of all of the leaders of the
Reformation, Hutten found a congenial spirit. His health was now
utterly broken. To the famous Baths of Pfaffers he went, in hope of
release from pain. But the modern bath-houses of Ragatz were not built
in those days, and the daily descent by a rope from above into the dark
and dismal chasm was too much for his feeble strength. Then Zwingli
sent him to a kindly friend, the Pastor Hans Schnegg, who lived on the
little Island of Ufnau, in the Lake of Zuerich. And here at Ufnau, worn
out by his long, double conflict with the Pope and with disease, Ulrich
von Hutten died in 1523, at the age of thirty-five. "He left behind
him," wrote Zwingli, "nothing of worth. Books he had none; no money,
and no property of any sort, except a pen."

[Illustration: Ulrich Zwingli.]

What was the value of this short and troubled life? Three hundred
years ago it was easy to answer with Erasmus and the rest--Nothing.
Hutten had denounced the Pope, and the Pope had crushed him. He had
stirred up noble men to battle for freedom, and