us's fame, his earlier writings, too,
had risen in the public estimation. The great success of the
_Enchiridion militis christiani_ had begun about 1515, when the times
were much riper for it than eleven years before. 'The _Moria_ is
embraced as the highest wisdom,' writes John Watson to him in 1516. In
the same year we find a word used, for the first time, which expresses
better than anything else how much Erasmus had become a centre of
authority: _Erasmiani_. So his German friends called themselves,
according to Johannes Sapidus. More than a year later Dr. Johannes Eck
employs the word still in a rather friendly sense, as a generally
current term: 'all scholars in Germany are Erasmians,' he says. But
Erasmus did not like the word. 'I find nothing in myself', he replies,
'why anyone should wish to be an Erasmicus, and, altogether, I hate
those party names. We are all followers of Christ, and to His glory we
all drudge, each for his part.' But he knows that now the question is:
for or against him! From the brilliant latinist and the man of wit of
his prime he had become the international pivot on which the
civilization of his age hinged. He could not help beginning to feel
himself the brain, the heart and the conscience of his times. It might
even appear to him that he was called to speak the great redeeming word
or, perhaps, that he had already spoken it. The faith in an easy triumph
of pure knowledge and Christian meekness in a near future speaks from
the preface of Erasmus's edition of the New Testament.

How clear did the future look in those years! In this period Erasmus
repeatedly reverts to the glad motif of a golden age, which is on the
point of dawning. Perennial peace is before the door. The highest
princes of the world, Francis I of France, Charles, King of Spain, Henry
VIII of England, and the emperor Maximilian have ensured peace by the
strongest ties. Uprightness and Christian piety will flourish together
with the revival of letters and the sciences. As at a given signal the
mightiest minds conspire to restore a high standard of culture. We may
congratulate the age, it will be a golden one.

But Erasmus does not sound this note long. It is heard for the last time
in 1519; after which the dream of universal happiness about to dawn
gives place to the usual complaint about the badness of the times
everywhere.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] For a full translation of this important letter see pp. 212-18.

[14] The nam