much as sworn partisans.' Erasmus
is one of those whom contact with others weakens. The less he has to
address and to consider others, friends or enemies, the more truly he
utters his deepest soul. Intercourse with particular people always
causes little scruples in him, intentional amenities, coquetry,
reticences, reserves, spiteful hits, evasions. Therefore it should not
be thought that we get to know him to the core from his letters. Natures
like his, which all contact with men unsettles, give their best and
deepest when they speak impersonally and to all.

After the early effusions of sentimental affection he no longer opens
his heart unreservedly to others. At bottom he feels separated from all
and on the alert towards all. There is a great fear in him that others
will touch his soul or disturb the image he has made of himself. The
attitude of warding off reveals itself as fastidiousness and as
bashfulness. Budaeus hit the mark when he exclaimed jocularly:
'_Fastidiosule!_ You little fastidious person!' Erasmus himself
interprets the dominating trait of his being as maidenly coyness. The
excessive sensitiveness to the stain attaching to his birth results from
it. But his friend Ammonius speaks of his _subrustica verecundia_, his
somewhat rustic _gaucherie_. There is, indeed, often something of the
small man about Erasmus, who is hampered by greatness and therefore
shuns the great, because, at bottom, they obsess him and he feels them
to be inimical to his being.

It seems a hard thing to say that genuine loyalty and fervent
gratefulness were strange to Erasmus. And yet such was his nature. In
characters like his a kind of mental cramp keeps back the effusions of
the heart. He subscribes to the adage: 'Love so, as if you may hate one
day, and hate so, as if you may love one day'. He cannot bear benefits.
In his inmost soul he continually retires before everybody. He who
considers himself the pattern of simple unsuspicion, is indeed in the
highest degree suspicious towards all his friends. The dead Ammonius,
who had helped him so zealously in the most delicate concerns, is not
secure from it. 'You are always unfairly distrustful towards me,'
Budaeus complains. 'What!' exclaims Erasmus, 'you will find few people
who are so little distrustful in friendship as myself.'

When at the height of his fame the attention of the world was indeed
fixed on all he spoke or did, there was some ground for a certain
feeling on his