of Jerome and the New Testament--A Councillor to Prince Charles:
_Institutio Principis Christiani_, 1515--Definitive dispensation
from Monastic Vows: 1517--Fame--Erasmus as a spiritual
centre--His correspondence--Letter-writing as an art--Its
dangers--A glorious age at hand

Erasmus had, as was usual with him, enveloped his departure from England
with mystery. It was given out that he was going to Rome to redeem a
pledge. Probably he had already determined to try his fortune in the
Netherlands; not in Holland, but in the neighbourhood of the princely
court in Brabant. The chief object of his journey, however, was to visit
Froben's printing-office at Basle, personally to supervise the
publication of the numerous works, old and new, which he brought with
him, among them the material for his chosen task, the New Testament and
Jerome, by which he hoped to effect the restoration of theology, which
he had long felt to be his life-work. It is easy thus to imagine his
anxiety when during the crossing he discovered that his hand-bag,
containing the manuscripts, was found to have been taken on board
another ship. He felt bereft, having lost the labour of so many years; a
sorrow so great, he writes, as only parents can feel at the loss of
their children.

To his joy, however, he found his manuscripts safe on the other side. At
the castle of Hammes near Calais, he stayed for some days, the guest of
Mountjoy. There, on 7 July, a letter found him, written on 18 April by
his superior, the prior of Steyn, his old friend Servatius Rogerus,
recalling him to the monastery after so many years of absence. The
letter had already been in the hands of more than one prying person,
before it reached him by mere chance.

It was a terrific blow, which struck him in the midst of his course to
his highest aspirations. Erasmus took counsel for a day and then sent a
refusal. To his old friend, in addressing whom he always found the most
serious accents of his being, he wrote a letter which he meant to be a
justification and which was self-contemplation, much deeper and more
sincere than the one which, at a momentous turning-point of his life,
had drawn from him his _Carmen Alpestre_.

He calls upon God to be his witness that he would follow the purest
inspiration of his life. But to return to the monastery! He reminds
Servatius of the circumstances under which he entered it, as they lived
in his memory: the pressure of his relat