ot definitely decline any of these offers;
neither did he accept any. He always wanted to keep all his strings on
his bow at the same time. In the early summer of 1517 he was asked to
accompany the court of the youthful Charles, who was on the point of
leaving the Netherlands for Spain. But he declined. His departure to
Spain would have meant a long interruption of immediate contact with the
great publishing centres, Basle, Louvain, Strassburg, Paris, and that,
in turn, would have meant postponement of his life-work. When, in the
beginning of July, the prince set out for Middelburg, there to take ship
for Spain, Erasmus started for Louvain.

He was thus destined to go to this university environment, although it
displeased him in so many respects. There he would have academic duties,
young latinists would follow him about to get their poems and letters
corrected by him and all those divines, whom he distrusted, would watch
him at close quarters. But it was only to be for a few months. 'I have
removed to Louvain', he writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 'till I
shall decide which residence is best suited to old age, which is already
knocking at the gate importunately.'

As it turned out, he was to spend four years (1517-21) at Louvain. His
life was now becoming more stationary, but because of outward
circumstances rather than of inward quiet. He kept deliberating all
those years whether he should go to England, Germany or France, hoping
at last to find the brilliant position which he had always coveted and
never had been able or willing to grasp.

The years 1516-18 may be called the culmination of Erasmus's career.
Applauding crowds surrounded him more and more. The minds of men were
seemingly prepared for something great to happen and they looked to
Erasmus as the man! At Brussels, he was continually bothered with visits
from Spaniards, Italians and Germans who wanted to boast of their
interviews with him. The Spaniards, with their verbose solemnity,
particularly bored him. Most exuberant of all were the eulogies with
which the German humanists greeted him in their letters. This had begun
already on his first journey to Basle in 1514. 'Great Rotterdamer',
'ornament of Germany', 'ornament of the world' were some of the simplest
effusions. Town councils waited upon him, presents of wine and public
banquets were of common occurrence. No one expresses himself so
hyperbolically as the jurist Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg. 'I