knew too much about him. They had seen him in his smallnesses and
feebleness. There he had been obliged to obey others--he who, above all
things, wanted to be free. Distaste of the narrow-mindedness, the
coarseness and intemperance which he knew to prevail there, were summed
up, within him, in a general condemnatory judgement of the Dutch
character.

Henceforth he spoke as a rule about Holland with a sort of apologetic
contempt. 'I see that you are content with Dutch fame,' he writes to his
old friend William Hermans, who like Cornelius Aurelius had begun to
devote his best forces to the history of his native country. 'In Holland
the air is good for me,' he writes elsewhere, 'but the extravagant
carousals annoy me; add to this the vulgar uncultured character of the
people, the violent contempt of study, no fruit of learning, the most
egregious envy.' And excusing the imperfection of his juvenilia, he
says: 'At that time I wrote not for Italians, but for Hollanders, that
is to say, for the dullest ears'. And, in another place, 'eloquence is
demanded from a Dutchman, that is, from a more hopeless person than a
B[oe]otian'. And again, 'If the story is not very witty, remember it is
a Dutch story'. No doubt, false modesty had its share in such sayings.

After 1496 he visited Holland only on hasty journeys. There is no
evidence that after 1501 he ever set foot on Dutch soil. He dissuaded
his own compatriots abroad from returning to Holland.

Still, now and again, a cordial feeling of sympathy for his native
country stirred within him. Just where he would have had an opportunity,
in explaining Martial's _Auris Batava_ in the _Adagia_, for venting his
spleen, he availed himself of the chance of writing an eloquent
panegyric on what was dearest to him in Holland, 'a country that I am
always bound to honour and revere, as that which gave me birth. Would I
might be a credit to it, just as, on the other hand, I need not be
ashamed of it.' Their reputed boorishness rather redounds to their
honour. 'If a "Batavian ear" means a horror of Martial's obscene jokes,
I could wish that all Christians might have Dutch ears. When we consider
their morals, no nation is more inclined to humanity and benevolence,
less savage or cruel. Their mind is upright and void of cunning and all
humbug. If they are somewhat sensual and excessive at meals, it results
partly from their plentiful supply: nowhere is import so easy and
fertility so great. Wha